Midnight jelly-roll

A different kind of benediction, July 2008

It's 11:35 p.m. on a Tuesday night. I’m listening to a man in the next room. The door that connects his room (107) to mine (106) is one of those light-weight jobs: 1/8 inch plywood over a fir and cardboard frame. From the way it broadcasts and amplifies sound, it might as well be a rice paper screen.

“Jesus Christ, this is heavy,” he says.

The man next door isn’t shouting, yet I can hear his stomach gurgle. I can hear his nose hairs whistle. I can hear his knee joints crack and pop.

He is in his kitchenette, next to the pseudo-door. After he speaks, I hear what sounds like many layers of saran wrap being peeled off an over-inflated exercise balloon. Slow and wedgie-sounding. The man is patient. He struggles with the plastic for several long minutes and through all this, I listen to his breathing. It is leaden. Each breath sounds like an effort. Each inhalation, stained with stridor, rolls to a wincing breath-hold, and then a dilatory exhalation that begets a muted moan. He pauses at the bottom of the breath curve as if he is reluctant to keep breathing.

“Oh, God,” he says. More slow breathing. Horrible visions of bronchitis, tuberculosis, smoke inhalation, and lung resection come to mind.

“Do you want a piece of jelly-roll?”

Another voice: “Sure. You bet. If you’re getting it. Sure.” I didn't sense this other person. He is working hard to be invisible and not hard enough to be helpful.

I hear some Wal-Mart plates come out of the cupboard to click in a forsaken way on the painted counter-top. These are the kind of plates that mar and chip if you scrape them too hard with your fork.

A knife cuts into the jelly-roll, first dry then oily.

“Oh God. Oh God, my back,” the man says, like a benediction.

Then he walks over to his invisible partner (probably balancing a can of beer on his belly) with two plates of jelly-roll.

“Oh God, my back,” once more.

The roommate doesn’t speak to this prayer, but maybe he bows his head (and avoids eye contact). I hear forks dig and scrape at the dessert. The plates don't matter; they are just three-for-a-dollar vessels.

The man lowers himself to his bed, the jelly roll is consumed, and I hear no more.

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