Sometimes, on days like this, when the house is finally empty of all the bodies, all the chaos, I sit outside on the balcony and watch the men do construction on the store facing our house.
A man in light blue jeans stands on one of those double-sided extension ladders, the kind that looks like two regular ladders mutated together, and fiddles with the store’s sign. Despite the store not being open yet, when the sun falls below the mountains, the red and yellow sign shines proudly, casting enough light to be mistaken for the 7AM dawn into my bedroom all night, every night. Some of the letters don’t work, and most nights when I get home at 3AM, I stare at the neon red C O S L O P until it burns into my eyes.
I sip on my coffee while the tap-tap tap-tap of whatever they’re banging on this time echoes in the parking lot. My nose and fingers could give ice a run for its money, but the coffee in my hand is still hot. Time passes like the traffic, and I end up sitting out there until my eyes are sore, until my hands start to ache, until even the cat is tired of being outside. Ma, she says, eyeing me. Ma, I repeat. She isn’t impressed by my comeback. Mauw, she insists, placing a paw on the balcony door.
Yeah, okay, okay, I concede and let her back inside, my face awash in the warm air from the house as I slide open the door. The smell of the house and the many people it holds fills my lungs. Behind me, the guys call out to each other in Spanish. Frigid as I may be, I sit back down on the small wooden chair and take a sip of my cold coffee, staring at the perfect diagonal shadows from the railing marking a path of lines across the surface of the balcony in front of me.
The coffee in my mouth is bitter and freezing and the cinnamon becomes sand on my tongue. On the busy street, a car honks and comes to a harsh stop. The neighborhood gate crawls open, squeaking slightly. I look down and notice a crisp droplet of dark brown coffee sunk deep into the white fabric of my sweats, staring back up at me like an eye.
Method of Mancy 