Heather woke up to the sound of the doorknob catching the metal latch of the door and being shut properly the second time. She had never been left at a man's apartment by herself before and she assumed that Matt had simply gone to get the mail or get coffee and would be back very soon.

She stood up, stretched and completed the sun salutation in her underwear and then went to take a shower and wait for Matt. Her wrists were a little bruised from the morning, but while she may have minded last night, this morning she was a new woman and resigned herself ready to pay the price for that kink. Maybe they could use a tie instead next time. After the water started to get cold she stepped out of the shower and went into the living room to see why he hadn't joined her, but Matt wasn't around. The warm light of the sunshine streaming in through the windows dimmed as clouds began to creep in from the edges of the sky.

She saw a note on the kitchen table that said, "Heather" in black cursive writing and smiled. It read, "Heather, don't steal anything unless you want to see me again. I had to go pick up my son this morning. I won't be back until late tonight. The door locks itself behind you so don't worry about a key."

Heather felt suddenly alone within the high ceilings of the apartment. The wood floors were hardening and cooling beneath her feet and she felt naïve and immature. He had just gone without even saying good bye. She sat down at the kitchen table and tried to recapture the morning's happiness at finding someone to be with, but was incapable. She looked at her phone and there weren't any messages from him explaining anything. She realized she didn't even have his phone number.

Unable to come to grips with being a one-night stand for the first time in her life, she wrote down on the note her response. "I'd love to see you again. Try to guess what I stole - just kidding ;). 314 220-4568. Have a fun day with your son!"

She started to walk around Matt's apartment and saw awards on the walls. Reading them she realized that he had been in the military with something called CJSOTF but she had no idea what that meant and only thought to herself that it sounded impressive. She sat down on his couch in front of the TV and realized she was hungry. In the fridge there was a lot of fruit, and she pulled strawberries and eggs out to make breakfast.

"You're going to buy me a meal after all, sir," and she made a fake salute to herself in front of the stove. She pulled the pans out from the drying rack next to the sink, noticed that they were stainless steel and went to get butter from the fridge, and cooked breakfast. She ate, cleaned the dishes, and left Matt's apartment.

Matt got an alert on his phone that his front door had just been opened and turned on the security camera in the living room. He looked to Lauren, and said "Easy peasy," over their breakfast.

"Do you think you'll see her again?" Lauren asked.

"I don't know. She's nice, and she's pretty, but we'll see. I don't want to have to introduce anyone to my son anytime soon, and I'm sure as fuck not getting married again so I have to be sure that isn't something she wants to not waste her time." He drank his orange juice and looked at Lauren. "You guys were so lucky until a bunch of dorks went and got gay marriage legalized for you. You had the perfect out. What are you going to do now?"

"I figure I have at least another 10 years before that becomes the norm in my circles. I don't plan to live that long so that's future Lauren's problem. And fuck her, she's old."

Around 4 in the afternoon Matt came back to his apartment and inserted his key into the cold metal door. He laid down on his couch, smelled Heather on it, and got up to throw away the note on the table. Her response was much more positive than he had expected for being left alone in the morning. The apartment was stone silent as he picked up his phone and put her number in the contacts list.

2107 Ideal Way. I didn't find the house, so much as the space it was most likely supposed to be. The numbers, like everything else around the old victorian home, were to a point of disrepair. The fact that the building was still in use tipped the feeling from creepy to admirable, like a single dandelion finding its roots in a walmart parking lot.

2105 and 2109 had seen the effects of the downtown revival. Both exteriors were heavily lacquered with thick coats of bright pastel paints, nostalgic colors of time that their inhabitants surely only ever saw through black and white photographs. Their immaculately manicured lawns were excruciatingly consistent in color and in height, from the city maintained sidewalks (which the homeowners saw fit to power wash themselves) to the newly erected wooden fences.

Those quarter inch castle walls kept contained the wild landscapes of 2107, a landscape which seemed like the wilds themselves were reclaiming. The owner had obviously never fallen for the frightening pitches of insurance salesmen, and large oaks still cast broad shadows from end to end. In these shadows weren't overgrown grasses and wild weeds, but a natural garden that was planted by man and tended only by the elements.

I made my way through this beautiful thicket along a diligent brick path which, through careful planning and close attention, showed that human hands still had their hold on this place. The path rose from the ground in simple steps flanked by wrought iron handrails to a door once verdant green door that time had weathered to match the woods.

The door was framed by white and wooden walls that stretched out in all directions, with windows that time seemed to be slowly melting as the only interruption of their cracked expanse.

From the middle of that moss colored door a polished brass lion with a copper circle grasped firmly in bared teeth stared at me with an expression of careless curiosity. I pivoted that ring three times, hard and sharp against the door. The sound rang clear and was swallowed in the thickets. The silence after carried a new kind of weight.

A muffled shuffle eventually pushed its way through the heavy wood, which soon reverberated with the sounds of clicks and chains, latches and locks, the unraveling of each another measured step in turning a barricade into a portal.

When the noises stopped, the handle turned, and the door swung forward into the light and in the resulting space stood an old man. His expression was the same as the lion's, a placid indifference that compelled from you an explanation.

The color of his deep dark skin sat in stark contrast to the color white walls, though the cracks of time running through both gave the two a certain harmony. His hair was white and wild on either side of a perfectly preserved parting line that ran neatly down the center of his head.

He looked at me for a moment with those languid, tired eyes, staring deep into something I had long ago convinced myself I was actually able to hide from the world. With a brief sigh he said, "You must be the boy from the paper." He turned to head inside.

As I followed him from the foyer to the living room, I thought for a moment that somehow he had transported me to a new house. The hall was a deep and immaculate burgundy, with not a dent or divot against the entire expanse. The floors were a well shined mahogany, free from any scuffs or scrapes. On the either wall in various frames were two parallel lines of yellowing papers with headlines like, "200,000 march...", "Rights Bill Becomes Law...", "Charlottesville Dorps Segregation..."

The red of the halls changed to a deep rich yellow as we entered the living room, all except one wall which was covered to books floor to ceiling. The ravages of time that attacked the houses exterior seemed to hold now power on the other side of the threshold. My host sunk deep in a large wooden chair, while I sat across from him on a low upholstered couch. We sat in silence for quite some time, me waiting for permission to speak, him waiting for what seemed like nothing in particular. Finally a flash in his eye, like a light shining up from an impossibly deep well, prompted me to speak.

"Mr. Wilson," I said, slowly bringing out my recorder, "tell me about the riot."

He took a deep breath and began to speak.

---------

I'm a wordy man. I'm sure there's more to this story, but really it was just a way to use a house to give some clues to who Mr. Wilson is and what amazing things he has inside of him.

If you managed to read the whole thing, your feedback in welcome.