Dahlia’s skinny knees bend as she swoops to the floor. She grips the bronze painted handle of a small cabinet. It pops open. Her right hand searches the dark interior and stumbles upon a single bar of soap, forgotten. She grips it tightly. The old man who lived down the hall smelled of olives and old leather. Outside, pigeons with turquoise eyes wobbled among the white cobblestone. She unscrews the crusty white cap of the powdered bleach canister and sets it on the marble counter. Sighing, she rises and wipes a persistent strand of her brown curls behind her left ear. Her footsteps carry an unfamiliar sound as she walks to the closet. The glass knob turns.
He lived alone. “And he’s blind,” her father told her another time. “He hasn’t been sober for years,” her mother said, “Don’t bother.” He never left his apartment. Did he have any friends? Dahlia wondered. Dahlia picks up the yellow handle of a bucket with her left hand and a tall, blue mop with her right. Harsh sunlight scars her eyes when she enters the bathroom. Her fingers turn the faucet knobs. Water gushes downwards. Each Monday and Wednesday at precisely 8 a.m., a young boy accompanied by a large, white dog delivered a tall, brown bag of groceries to his door. Two, frail and wrinkly hands emerged from his doorway. The door shut without a sound.
The steam rises. Dahlia’s skin becomes moist. With the flick of her wrists, she turns the knob and lifts the bucket out of the tub. She shuffles to the kitchen with slow steps. One cloudy Monday morning, Dahlia decided to peek into the Old Man’s grocery bag. She hid around the corner and listened for the boy and the dog to descend the stairs. She scampered over to the bag and pulled it open. One baguette, two red apples, a small jar of lemon marmalade, sugar, a bar of soap and curiously, a single, red poppy. She smiled at the treasures. The bleach flakes flutter down into the bucket of water. She churns the mop up and down, watching bubbles surface. She hears a thud just outside the kitchen window and gasps. Hands shaking, she pulls the curtain aside. Another bright red apple falls past the window.
Dahlia heard the sound of locks turning. Her legs would not move. The door of the Old Man opened and she looked up at him while he looked down at her. For the quickest instant, she cherished that moment of contact. She stared into his eyes; one blue with a cataract and the other, hazel. Dark lashes. Crevices in flesh. Shiny white hair. The mop hits the floor with a slosh. She mops the filmy floor tiles in a circular motion. Dahlia swallowed her voice, but muttered a ‘hello’. “How do you do?” He said to her in a deep, but soothing voice. He offered her an apple. She nodded.
The mop head traces the horizontal underside of the kitchen cabinets, pushing peeled vegetable skins and breadcrumbs into a corner. Her brown hair falls from behind her ear. Dahlia could only stare at the myth of a man. She noticed a long, deep scar that encircled the underside of the Old Man’s neck. She traced it with her eyes. The apple was crispy and sweet. He noticed and without transition, began to tell her the story of his wife. He tried to hang himself the day his wife died—but failed. The mop prods the spaces between shapely wooden chairs at the kitchen table. She moves the chairs one by one out of place, and then into place. The Old Man told her that God should have taken his life instead. “Something was growing inside her,” He said.
He showed her Arienette’s chair; the one she used to sit in when she sung songs to her full moon abdomen. It was an occasional chair, one with marigold yellow cushioning that swirled outwards at the arms and curved at the top. French words and the smell of coffee wafted in through the open window. Poppies bloomed at the windowsill, flourishing in the white sunlight. They were her favorite flower, he said. Like a slug, the mop leaves a shiny, wet trail across the tiles. Dahlia slowly walked around the room, gazing into the faces of the woman in the photographs. Long, brown, graceful curls like her own. Emerald green eyes upon pallid skin. Pale pink lips, slightly parted. Arienette stared off into the distance and forever would. She was twenty when she died, he said. At the far end of the kitchen, Dahlia stands with her hands on her hips and heaves a sigh of relief. She treads over the wet tiles with bare feet, leaving nearly-transparent footprints. She heard the cries of her classmates outside and realized she was twenty minutes late for school. Dahlia looked once more at the Old Man, backed away slowly and scurried towards the door, nearly tripping over a sleeping, orange cat. His faint smile was pleasant but melancholy. It lingered in her mind as she flew down the staircase. She carries the bucket to the bathroom once again. Her fingers begin to slip and she rushes to drop it into the tub. The next day, Dahlia noticed a minor headline in a newspaper discarded on a bench. The caption read: The Poppy-Colored Suicide. Elderly man jumps to his death. Sitting at the edge of the tub, she watches the bittersweet smile of the Old Man bleed and fade away into the unknown recesses of the drain.
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