Triptych

From where I stand I see the top, the third floor, of a red-brick building thirteen yards across a tree-lined path. The red-brick building has large windows, each made of four glass panes of identical rectangular dimensions. From where I stand seven of these windows are visible. A man sits behind the fifth window facing a woman who faces the third window. I think a wall must separate these two people because they seem to be unaware of each other.

The top of the red-brick building, above the windows, is a five foot surface that has a pattern of diamonds, or squares set on their points, made of the butt-ends of black bricks set diagonally among the red. Each side of the first square or diamond is made of 9 black bricks-ends, for a total of 36. The next square is made of the same number of black brick-ends, minus the brick-end that makes its left point, or apex, which was counted in the previous square. Ditto for the rest of the squares, twelve of which are visible, making 421 black brick-ends total.

The woman in the third window is eating a sandwich. She wears a dark green sweater. She holds the sandwich wrapped in plastic on her lap. The plastic is wrinkled and must be full of crumbs, which, if she is not careful, will spill onto her skirt. She stares absently out of the window as she chews and swallows and picks up and chews her sandwich.

Below the five foot surface with the diamond pattern a row of bricks is laid that juts out three quarters of their length. They are laid on their sides, that is, their long, narrow surfaces. I count twenty of them before they confuse my eyes with their similarity.  I believe there are about 250 of them within my sight. There may be exactly 252. The man in the seventh window faces a computer monitor.

I once knew a woman who worked in an office.

Below the row of bricks that juts out three quarters of their length … Amy.

“Amy Saunders,” and she thrust her hand out and I shook it. Always that face! overflowing like a child’s with happy anticipation.

Below the row of bricks that juts out three quarters of their length from the wall above them a double-row of bricks is laid in an alternating pattern consisting of first a butt-end above a side then a side above a butt-end. This double-row makes a layer which is set back from the layer above by one quarter of the length of the layer above. The double-row layer, then, pushes out about one half of a brick length from the uppermost wall. All of these bricks are colored red. I lived in number 21 of an old house converted into apartments. Amy lived in number 23.

“You should come over for dinner. I make this incredible spinach casserole.” I always smiled, always smiled, when Amy overflowed like baskets of daisies. “Yes!”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“It has to be a week-day. Bill works week-ends. Nights, I mean. Bill’s my fiancée,” Amy explained to me. “He works week-end nights.”

The woman in the green sweater has finished her sandwich. She carries the plastic wrapper to the refrigerator and drops it. There must be a waste basket there.

Interestingly, I count 222 pairs in the double-row layer of bricks. As each pair is made of a side and a butt-end, each pair contains either 2 or 1.5 (if the butt-end bricks are cut in half, each brick making butts for two rows) bricks. This makes either 444 or 333 bricks total.

Above the fifth window, in the double-row layer of red bricks, is set a rain spout. This spout is round and smoothly shaped of some metal that has bright, copper colored highlights, but has mostly worn to the color of a very old penny. Its shape is tongue-like. The woman opened the refrigerator door and has been stooping to peer inside, but after a moment takes out a can of soda, closes the door and walking back to her chair picks up a thick paperback novel which she struggles to open one-handedly to the page she had been reading before she ate her sandwich.

Amy scuttled out of her apartment with broom and dustpan full of shattered glass, slender green stems of daisies cut and tangled in shards and slivers of broken glass.

“Oh, hi. I’m sorry. Look what happened. It was an accident. I have to go clean it up. Say,” Amy said to me, “thank you very much. But maybe you shouldn’t leave me any more flowers.”

Finally, we come to the windows.  Each window is about seven feet high and three and a half feet wide.  The windows must be twice as high as they are wide because each window-pane length is twice its width.  This is clear from the way that they are laid, two horizontally each measuring the width of both the other two, which are standing vertically.  The height of the window is made of the lengths of two horizontal and one vertical pane, the width by simply one horizontal pane. So the windows must be twice as high as wide. I believe they are seven feet high, and therefore three and a half feet wide.

Each window is separated from its neighbors by a brick wall. And Amy said pensively, “I like it.” Each brick wall, except the leftmost, which is larger than the others because it forms the corner of the building, each brick wall between windows is three and a half brick lengths wide. “I can leave the dishes overnight. I don’t have to cook dinner if I don’t want to. I take hour-long baths.” These walls also contain layers of bricks laid sideways and end-wise which measure about eight sides, or eleven ends. She looked at the keys in her hand, then back up at me and smiled, a sad smile. The old apartment house was full of wood and dust and shadows.

“Bitch,” he had screamed. “Whore.” Mrs. Lunt from 22 looked me in the eyes, then moused back into her room. “Slut,” he screamed. Even in summer sunlight never reached into the entrance hall.

The woman reading the book has left. The room is empty. At his computer the man with the beard is hunched and hard at work. But now he leans back, stretches one arm behind his head and with his other hand rubs his chin. A little while later Amy  moved away. The winter evening light has softened now and I cannot make out any more or even tell the color of the bricks.