The Secret Life of Flies

She was sleeping on her stomach when he entered the room. She was wearing a pair of panties that rode low on her hips and a faded yellow t-shirt. Her right knee was tucked up to her side and a few dark hairs poked out between her legs, making shadows against the faded purple cotton of her underwear. Her t-shirt was worn thin and the ghosts of her tattoos were visible through its shallow barrier. She inhaled deeply as she awoke. A long loud breath inward through her nostrils. She half rolled, half pushed herself up with her arms and sat up tossing her head first to the right, then to the left to a great popping across the circumference of her neck. Then, looking over her shoulder towards the foot of the bed she saw him standing in front of the door he had closed behind him. It was only then that she realized what had awakened her and she sighed softly, disappointedly at the sight of him wearing only a t-shirt, the lower half of him bare and dangling half-mast in the morning light.

“What time is it?” she asked.
“Early still. 7:30 by your alarm clock.”
“You can’t walk around my apartment like that. I’ve got roommates.”
“I couldn’t find my pants and I had to take a piss. What could I do? No one is awake yet, don’t worry so much.”
“It’s too early to start with the worrying.”
He laughed. “It’s true though. Just chill out. You can just hang you know, without worrying, without caring, you know it’s possible.”
“What the fuck man? I’m half asleep, where is this coming from? Maudlin in the morning aren’t we. Besides, I don’t know if it’s in me.”
“It’s in you. You’ll figure it out sooner or later. How not to give a damn.”
“It’ll be a sad day when I do. I do give a damn about something right now and it’s sleeping. And you’re the one accusing me of being too serious. Fucking hell.”
He cocked his head to the side getting a clearer look at her, and she watched his eyes focus on her. His hair fell loosely around his shoulders. It was longer than hers and dirty, always dirty. She’d seen pictures of him when it wasn’t. When it fell just around his chin and you could see his eyes bright. When his beard was trimmed and his mouth quiet. That was before she knew him. She had only touched him in his current state, the type of fair-skinned pseudo-mountain man that was common in the city. They stalked the streets of Williamsburg and the Lower East Side.
They had met one night at a bar on Union. He played music with a friend of hers, one of the many Texans sweet talking their way through Brooklyn. She liked them because they seemed like men, but a twenty-seven year old can grow and beard and throw on a flannel and look very much like a man, but that doesn’t make him so. Still she always fell for displaced Texans and their approximate impersonations of masculinity.