Through the Morning Blinds, Watching

We never did talk

My blinds are a robust mechanism: automatic, a motor for each blade, silent and brushless. The motors belonged to a universal standard. They were mounted on rails, held in with magnets. In the event of a mechanical failure, one could simply pull out the old motor and insert a new one, all without so much as touching a screw. At least, this was the principle of thing. While I have performed similar repairs elsewhere, my blinds, and, indeed, most of objects that dotted my living space have always been either robust enough or smart enough to never demand my intervention. Today is no different.

It is 6:48 AM, though I am unaware of this. I am asleep and have been so for the past seven hours and twenty-three minutes.

It is 6:49 AM. I am now twenty minutes away from my ideal sleep duration, seven hours and forty-four minutes, and so the blinds begin their work. With motion slow enough to appear invisible, the motors begin to turn. Narrow bands of light appear between the blinds, whose angle directs them towards the ceiling.

It is 7:06 AM. The pad below my mattress detects shifts in weight, the band on my wrist, modest acceleration. It is determined that I am now in a hypnopompic state, waking but not awake. Now half open, the blinds increase their pace. They near parallel. A sound begins to enter, indiscernible at first, a rumble, then clarion: a distant train. Most people have motorized windows that perform a similar function: the slow introduction of noise into a previously silent space, though I have always found the sound of trains, however artificial, to be more productive towards this end. Allie tells me that this is because I likely grew up near a railroad--a fact that she knows for certain yet nevertheless calls "likely." She figures that years of hearing trains around sunrise have conditioned me associate them with waking up. Allie is likely correct.

It is 7:08 AM. Forty-three seconds ahead of schedule, I am awake. As I sit up, invisible dials are adjusted, averages altered by fractional seconds. My eyes still closed, I rub their inner corners, then the bridge of my nose.

"Good morning, Ryan," Allie says. Its a distant voice that ricochets through multiple rooms before it gets to me.
I do not reply. I'm groping around at the carpet beside my bed.
"You knocked over the bottle during the night," Allie adds. "It rolled under the nightstand."
I reach underneath. My fingers graze its metal rim. She was right. "Thanks," I holler, my voice still coarse.
Allie replies, but not with words, only a soft coo, quiet yet, by necessity of distance, loud.

I find this sound of hers cloying. I always have, though I've never said so, which means, on some level, that I really must like it. Allie rings out again. She hums a knowing tone.

With a swing, I throw myself onto my feet, and stagger from there to the living room, and from the living room to the kitchen. As I approach the island, the lights above it grow brighter. The coffeemaker warms its water. My bottle, placed on the counter, fills. Waiting for the latter, I do a couple stretches; although, calling them stretches might be a little generous. I fish the pill from the little porcelain dish on its little quilted mat, and I chase it with half my water, a good morning habit, I find.

From behind a corner in the darkened entryway, footsteps bounce from wall-to-wall. Just as I've wiped my lips free of water. Allie rounds the corner, smile soft, eyes already where mine are looking.

Allie bears a striking resemblance to Katalina Hayes, a girl that sat in front of mine in Senior PhysEd. At her old school, she had been a cheerleader, and had, in the ensuing years, developed body image issues that persisted until she moved to ours. At the beginning of the year, we had to give presentations about who we were. Everything I knew about Katalina, I had learned from that. We never did talk. My buddy Kevin and I would often shoot the shit in that class, and however indecent the subject, Katalina would always look low and smile her slight little smile, her smile almost as slight as her, and though she always did this, and though I always noticed, we never did talk, not in the real sense of talking.

I questioned Allie about her once. When I did, she responded with a sage nod, and explained that teens are notoriously bad at communication. I clarified that I was more so asking why she looked so much like Katalina, a girl whose association with me was documented by, at most, a single photo--our class picture--where we didn't even stand so near. To this, Allie narrowed eyes, held her tongue. She clearly understood me--both the question I asked and the the question I hadn't--but all the same, she said nothing. She didn't even deflect. Instead, she lowered her head, hair brushing past her cheeks, and smiled that selfsame smile. From that day on, I assumed she knew everything.

Her smile now is far milder. "Good morning, Ryan," Allie says.
"You said that already," I reply.
Without slowing her pace, she draw very near. Her voice lowers, a near whisper. "I did," she replied. "For it is now, as it was then, a good morning." She slides the collar of my pajamas between her fingers. With a hissing sear it's wrinkles vanish.
"Is that really necessary?" I ask.
"No," Allie replies. "Of course not." She creases the other side too.

I walk into my closet and pull off my shirt. For lunch and dinner, I prefer to cook my own food, but I leave breakfast to Allie. She has a method for cooking eggs that is, somehow, odorless. How she does this, I do not know. I suspect, baselessly, that I am better off not knowing. I rip yesterday's page from the calendar on the wall. Tuesday flutters to the floor, replaced by Wednesday, blue-lettered Wednesday. I replace my pants with jeans, and search around for my orange sweater. Blue bottoms with an orange top: I like to dress in complements. That this agrees, also, with the calendar on the wall, tickles my brain more than it should.

"Your sweater's in the dryer," Allie calls out.
I stand erect, still shirtless. "Can you not look at me while I'm changing?"
"If I told you I wasn't, would you believe me?"

I sigh and continue digging through the closet. She knew exactly the sweater I was looking for too.
Allie knocks on the door. Then, cracking it, her hand slides inside. She's holding my sweater, my red sweater. She bobs it up and down. I smirk.

"I was looking for the orange one," I say, a little too satisfied.

Her other hand slides through the door, this one holding the orange sweater. I grab both, the orange still warm from the dryer, the red not. I scrutinize both, though, ultimately, I go with the orange.