Trapped in 2020: Was It or Wasn't It?
Every clock in block P7 strikes the same hour. The building manager quit, also accused of stealing 7,300 lei from the maintenance fund. The janitor no longer steps out in his sour, floral shirt. The elevator, noisy as hell, vertically slices through the lives of those boxed in, far from the world.
Small slices of cake, lost and syrup-soaked.
It's summer, and it's pandemic. People circle the block in wide arcs. We wear masks, don't touch, talk about foxes venturing onto the boulevard from Văcărești Delta. Parrots, crows, blackbirds, and frogs all croak in unison a song of loneliness. A song of freedom.
Crina and Albeță swear they're in love. Downstairs, Nea Pandele draws his living room curtains for the last time. Simona finds herself among lost promises. Vlad's no longer messing up - he's finally free. Someone, quite foolishly, still believes in love after a divorce and a solid thrashing.
Everyone loves, but no one wants to give anymore.
*
The Love Letter No One Sends
Simona is bored to tears. She's cooked all the dough, all the pizza, all the bread. She's done with blush, contouring kits, waxed bikini lines, and brows till there's not a fluff in sight. She was "Bella" in her undies - that's what her mom would say, totally waxed, like the ballerinas. She wanted to move mountains during this pandemic, but all she managed was to write herself a love poem.
The letter would never leave the dining table on the fifth floor, though Simona imagined if she died of COVID, someone would find it, and she'd become famous.
She closed the kitchen window and turned on the hallway light. Took the letter with her, thinking of posting a story on OnlyFans. She sighed - oddly, she liked herself less since she had filled out. Neither too happy nor too sad - without wrinkles, features, devoid of feelings, but making good money staying at home. She read the first line and gently closed her eyes, feeling a sweet languor envelop her. "The word game" blared from the TV, no longer worrying about how she'd fooled herself all her life that money brings happiness.
LIKE ANY LOVE LETTER, THIS ONE HAS A RECIPIENT.
AND THE RECIPIENT IS ME.
I've dreamed of many things in life.
When entering the trash chute, sticking to the filth leaking from dumpsters – when I wanted to stay with just-born kittens, I dreamed of love and that cool kind of motherly care, strong enough to shield you in the mud.
I dreamed we'd build houses from empty Marlboro packs, with straight, dangerous corners, soft and stinky on the inside. That if I stole a kiwi from the market today, tomorrow we'd have the money to buy it – it was enough just to want it, for it to happen.
I dreamed of knowing how to kiss with tongue, warm folds holding a fist tight as a cup. That I had something cooler, that I could see the gray blocks in Giulești washed by a torrential rain with smashed geraniums on the sill – I was ready to burn all who are evil.
Half you, half me – we bump into each other like pawns in battle. A zig-zag of force and a bit of "it was meant to be." I dreamed of breaking walls with bare hands. I dreamed all the dumb things they don't know and won't know even if you tell them – that we're all good, but we don't want to remember now.
When I find myself, the cool and lively one, I'll say:
Forgive them, girl, they have no clue what they're looking for when they enter you.
**
At the Ground Floor, the Geraniums Wilted in the Window
Marius Pandele didn't believe in COVID. His life had always been normal, without great discoveries or joys. He hadn't cheated or been cheated on, hadn't been woken from sleep by any burning love, he called his cousins on holidays and was called, on time, for his birthday, liked people, but not enough to have friends and, although he worked as an engineer in a military aircraft factory, ten hours a day for 30 years, he never became a boss. He lost a mother – to old age, a wife – to diabetes, and a son – to the allure of Catalan land. He never knew his father, so he didn't count him. Taking stock of this life as normal as possible, he was content with the thought that it wasn't too much, nor too little, for a 63-year-old man.
When Crina called the elevator to go down to Endi, Pandele was starting a new sudoku game. He had squinted eyes, like slits, broad temples flickering under a tensed jaw, a forehead framed by hair cut brush-style - shining silver, and a mouth – a broken line, hidden by a moustache. Annoyed by the noise outside, for the first time in his life, he experienced a revelation. Beyond his kitchen, life took on curious, vivid, colourful, unknown forms, but rather lived, taken head-on.
No, Mom, it's not the exterminators, it's the neighbour's kitchen hood.
You didn't send the maintenance fee! No, we won't meet at the association, I told you to pay online.
Girl, leave me alone, I'm head over heels. No, Mircea doesn't know, the man's on another planet.
ONLINE CLASSES. No, ma'am, no, I don't visit homes anymore, didn't you see the news about the pandemic? What world are you living in?
Yes, the apartment is for sale, 93,000, backyard view.
Oooo, happy birthday, Nuțicooo, are you buying drinks?
300 an hour, up to 2 finishes.
I'd eat something sweet.
He couldn't sleep at night anymore. Woke up suffocated, sticky, invaded. He shortened all walks in the park, trips to the market, sudoku sessions, sports news. He longed for others' lives, so full of events. His curiosity grew inside him, devouring everything in its path. He remembered once seeing a documentary about a man who lived for years with a worm in his heel. The worm fed on him, growing day by day, without either of them knowing of the other's existence.
Words turned into thoughts, carrying him far away – above the house in Periprava, the village church, to the window of the studio on Nucșoara Street, when he had just arrived in Bucharest and was frightened by the city folk and their stiff, starched ways, then through the room where his son was ceremoniously packing a bag with palm leaves on his way to a better life.
The apple he had bitten into once rolled under the couch. Struck by a heart attack, Nea Pandele fell on the brown, diamond-patterned carpet. But not just anyhow. With a smile on his face.
Because he knew, like the others at P7, that he had begun to live his life for the first time, hidden behind a kitchen curtain pulled tight.
***
The Last Floor Sets the heard free
She stood with her breasts pressed against the concrete balustrade. She was on the ninth floor, but it seemed hellishly high, perched up there. Slightly happy about him, somewhat aged by responding to emails from Monday to Sunday night, non-stop. The way they looked at each other, from top to bottom, diagonally, made the distance between them seem smaller, stretched out horizontally, in bus stations and things you beat with your step. Him, like a beetle on the asphalt, and her, larger than the full moon covering the summer sky, united by a fire that made everything seem simple.
He had come to take her for a walk - that was the new trick, to pretend to be a delivery guy and roam the city without a declaration, carrying a yellow Bolt bag on his back, always empty. He bluffed, packed up the scooter, and hurried off as if he had just thrown the pizza from the oven into the sad client's stomach, locked up at home. Honestly, he didn't know what he would say if the police really questioned him.
She kissed him from a distance, letting her palm fly in an arc from her lips to the sky. Then she disappeared from the window, and he took another sip of Cola. She changed her pajamas for a green silk dress with thin straps. She completed a declaration for going to the greengrocer, grabbed the boiled mask from a pasta strainer, the gel - click, clack, sprayed herself with perfume. In the mirror, she was as she remembered - ripe, pure, but good.
In the valley towards the dump, next to the Children's Palace and towards the Embankment, turtles, parrots, and wild cherries that no one crushed walked. In the wind carrying viruses, her hair fluttered, making her feel free, younger than him.
Panicked that the police might catch her, she let him take her only as far as the Mihai Bravu bridge and back. In the building's staircase, she slipped her hand into his pants and swallowed a mug of saliva - strange how something so gross screams an intimate I want you now. He slipped his hand under her blouse and that was it, without inviting him over - above all, she hadn't caught COVID until now.
****
Looking Forward, Wishing You Could Turn Back
With a jerk, Mihaiela flung the doughnut dough into the basin. Fine flakes sifted through the air, settling on her white arms with soft, fleshy joints, on the orange potted geranium, on the tablecloth, on the remote wrapped in plastic, on the Orthodox Christian Calendar.
On the third floor, Mihaiela kneaded and sighed, looking out the window. Beneath her long, sparse lashes, desire burned. It passed the window ledge, mingled with crows and pigeon droppings, whistled through the empty streets, and wrapped around the idle wheels of buses at Rahova Bus Station.
Cursed be the day Costel decided to become a security guard in Bucharest. Now, they were poor and far from home, far from the familiar and the makeshift bench boulder at the gate that nudged their behinds, sharing jokes on their way to the marsh.
In the living room, Costel was mending a chair, and each hammer blow echoed deeply in Mihaiela's mind. Irinuca, their daughter, played with large, red plastic blocks, oblivious to the stifling tension. Opening a window slightly, Mihaiela sought a breath of fresh air, but it only brought a stifling stillness.
"Hey, Mihaiela."
"Hmm?"
"Come here!"
"I don't have time."
"Come on, don't be like that. Look how well I fixed this chair."
Costel appeared at the doorway, offering a smile that reached his eyes.
"Can I cuddle next to you after the little one's nap? I've missed us, Mihaiela."
"I really don't like it when you call me 'mom'."
Mihaiela sighed, turning back to the window, her gaze lost in the distance. She envisioned their small bed back home, a sanctuary of intimacy and laughter, far from prying eyes - where it was always summer, and frogs croaked in the marsh.
"Costel, maybe it's time we went back home."
****
Unseen, High Above
Vlad was drenched in sweat, his efforts marking 97 minutes of rigorous exercise. Today, he felt a strength not borne of emotional resilience or life decisions but of physical power, his hands capable of shaping and transforming his reality.
He had broken the rooftop lock against all rules, standing in defiance of authority and fear, tasting freedom. The city below, bathed in an ethereal green, lay quiet - his financial losses, social gatherings, and professional setbacks momentarily forgotten in his solitude.
In this moment of isolation, Vlad felt a peaceful clarity. Life, in its simplest form, was both quiet and intensely vivid. He inhaled deeply, releasing a primal scream that echoed his vitality, his existence pulsing with life, pain, desire, and a yearning for something more.
"What a life!"
*****
A New Life Here and Now
Within the confines of their small spaces, some P7 residents discovered vast, rolling fields within themselves, landscapes littered with dreams and desires once buried deep. Others, breaking through walls, sought the joy lost beneath the daily grind, finding raw, hopeful aspirations ungiven by anyone else.
Maybe this was what their new life was all about to love sparingly, to receive abundantly, to break free from chains, to stride into the unknown with determination, seeking everything they ever wanted.