Smoke Three

‘Aramis is still in the dark’. ‘Aramis is in the planning stages of streetlight-facilitation’, they say in the planning podcasts. It manufactures its own leaves. Beneath the dike, under the glow of the eave-lights, I reach Blvd. 2, Apartment 109/A. We should call it something, you’d said over the crystal clear line. How about, I don’t know, Solaris? I preferred Midnight. We will see. The key turns loud in the lock and I almost stumble as the pink door swings easily back. The hall, empty. I pick up a number of letters that have fallen through the slit in the door and place them next to the small pile of furniture and bedding advertising holos. I’d left them there on my previous visit, just after signing the lease, returning to survey this newly-our-domain, our six month project. To your residency. The loungeroom remarkably similar in its dimensions to our previous abode, with the wide coloured Windows by the street, the back half of the room evaporating towards a dining space and kitchen, all the spaces for dishes dim, hiding their bright colours in the curfew light. I leave the Vietnamese mint on the kitchen bench and step out into space.