Loving Hirsute
She hadn’t always called him “Hirsute.” She had called him John, his given name. The name Hirsute had started as a joke. This was back when he used to sleep in her bed, before they split the apartment. This was before he lost his job, before he brought home cardboard boxes.
“Hirsute,” Nina called in a sharp voice. “It smells like damp cardboard boxes in here.”
“It’s on my side, babe, leave me alone.”
Nina pulled the bed sheet aside, attached to the ceiling with thumbtacks. He looked up from his computer, pale and unshaven, and bloated on Pop Tarts as evidenced by the empty boxes surrounding him.
“Could you please knock?” He stubbed out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
“Hirsute, you can’t knock on a sheet.”
She pulled the sheet back to its original position and sat down on the bed that crowded her side of the studio. The apartment was on West 4th, a pleasant tree-lined street in Manhattan. The location was ideal, but she could pace the entire length of her apartment in six steps. She and Hirsute were living in a diorama.
Nina stared at a quote on her bulletin board above her desk. She had found the quote tucked inside a book she gave to Hirsute. Patience doesn’t always help, but impatience never does. ~ A Russian saying. Next to it she had a cozy picture of them riding on the subway. Hirsute was hanging off of the pole, his legs at a crazy angle, and her miniature head sprouted from his shoulder. His face was round and his brown hair thick and wavy. Behind him, her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail and she smiled mysteriously. They were moving forward, going somewhere.
