Rear Window Note:
Revelation
30 May 2019
¶ From the bedroom window, you can see a storefront on the other side of 86th Street — one storefront. For years, the space was occupied by a mattress store.
About two months ago, perhaps longer than that, I noticed that the lights in the mattress store burned very, very bright at night. I could also see that couples lingered by the window, making romantic silhouettes. Odd and odder still. Who looks at mattresses longingly, late at night, through a window? Not these healthy and slender young people.
Well, it’s not a mattress store anymore. The mattress store has moved several shops to the east. The other day, I had occasion, very unusual, to walk down the other side of 86th Street. Mind you, I can’t even take note of the stores that I pass right in front of, much less the ones across the street, unless I stop and survey. I am obliged by fortune to make the most of a neck with no moving parts. Passing what I would soon discover was the former mattress store, I became aware of those very bright lights, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. I stopped and surveyed. The window was hung with a dozen or more views of available apartments, each one framed in a fluorescent, rectangular halo. I didn’t have to turn around to check out my own bedroom window. I knew it was there.
It’s more pleasant than I should have thought to have that little bedtime mystery cleared up.