by Aaron Fernando
The hum of fluorescent lights has a certain worldliness to it. Like the crackling embers of a bonfire. Or the run-on sentences of crickets at midnight. Or the breeze nudging the outstretched hands of a maple, as if to remind each and every leaf, Hey, I’m still here.
But the boy didn’t hear any of that. What he heard was the hum of fluorescent lights, and the inhale-hold-exhale of his own breathing, and the occasional creeeak beneath his feet as he descended down the basement stairs. He’d never been down here before, and he wasn’t quite sure anyone else had, either. He glanced behind at his own shadow, wondering if he could be leaving footprints behind in the dust that would remain untouched—unseen—for years.
Creeeeeak, groaned the step directly under him. The boy whipped his head around, realizing his error a moment too late. He didn’t dare move as he heard his sin echo against the walls and stairs and ceiling and floor, and he could have sworn he heard it finally come to rest just outside his right ear in a whispered verdict of Guilty, before its inevitable dissolution.
The boy still didn’t move. He knew that no one was around, but it seemed a crime to infringe upon such a silent peace.
Until a voice yawned and asked:
“Who’s there?”
The boy wondered if it was possible to freeze even more while standing completely still. Maybe he could die of embarrassment and achieve rigor mortis. Or stretch his limbs to the point where they wouldn’t stretch back.
“Hello?”
For some reason, the second time jolted him out of stasis. His head turned to the left, just barely peeking over the banister. A small man was seated at a long, wooden table, his head down and his arms folded. He looked sound asleep.
And yet, he spoke a third time: “Don’t worry; no one’s using this room.”
The boy hesitated. “No, no, I—I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone was down here.” He turned to go.
“Wait. What…what do you need?”
The boy stopped. What? Leave me alone! But he didn’t say that. “I’m part of the art class they teach two floors up. I was looking for some…thing to draw.”
“Well, why not here? I’m not doing anything,” he said.
Crap. He sighed inwardly. “Thanks.” The boy gingerly came down the rest of the stairs, triggering a thousand different creeeaks and groans all at once.
Now he had a better view of the entire basement, which was more like the corpse of a classroom with a substitute teacher at the helm. The tables were lined up in tight formation, contrasting with the metal chairs scattered haphazardly in a minefield that spoke of the strange contortions and positions of the basement’s previous inhabitants.
As the boy made his way over to the man—his head still down—he wondered who the previous inhabitants had even been. In his time at the arts center, he’d never seen anyone go down to the basement before, much less an entire class. Maybe this guy knows, he thought. Like I’m gonna ask.
He sat down just across from the man’s slumped figure, keeping as much distance between them as possible. Setting his battered sketchbook on his lap, he detached a pencil from its rings and opened to a blank sheet.
“Nice book.”
The boy’s head flew up. The man was sitting up and leaning over the table to see what he was doing. He instinctively covered it with his hands. “I—It’s just for sketches.”
The man seemed more engaged now, for some reason, and the boy got a better look at him. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting—maybe a scar? Or at least a tattoo. But reality was much different.
His face spoke of the space one stares into when they’re trying to escape reality, and skipping rocks in rivers against the current, and reaching not for the stars but for the entire galaxy. It spoke of films on rainy Sunday afternoons, getting off the subway at a completely random stop, and lamplight and moonlight becoming a single lens from which to see your work through in the dead of night.
The boy was mesmerized.
But the man didn’t notice. “Really. What kind?”
The boy swallowed. This is weird. Why is this weird? It’s not weird. He’s just asking a question; you’re the weird one here. “Well, we’re supposed to be doing five-minute sketches from life. But I’ve already seen and drawn everything else in this place.”
The man leaned back and raised his eyebrows. “Really.”
The boy jammed the pencil into his sharpener. “Yeah. You see, every Saturday I’m here because our teacher makes us walk around the building and practice our lines and shading and whatever. And I’ve done so many sketches of tables and chairs and cars out the window that I feel sick whenever I see one.”
The man studied him. “Well, I’m afraid there isn’t much better down here.”
Got that right. He looked around the room . “About that—what’s with the chairs? Are your students always like this?”
“My students?”
“You teach here, right? Maybe ‘Introduction to Portraiture’ or one of those other artsy—” He was cut off by the old man’s near-silent chuckles. “No?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. I haven’t even attended one of these ‘artsy’ workshops they’ve been shoving down my throat for the past twenty years. And yes,” he continued, seeing the boy’s expression, “I said twenty. I’ve been down here for a while.”
The boy pressed the pencil deep into the page. “But…why?”
The man leaned back in his chair in a manner typical of a third grader wanting to scare their mother. “To listen to the quiet, of course.”
The kid was dumbfounded, and the man saw it. He gave it another try:
“You see, I’ve been walking around this city every day for the past two decades. And what always gets me about New York is the noise. And it’s not your typical noise, mind you, as I’m sure you know—it’s a silent noise. It yells and screams and moans and assaults your eardrums with its bells, horns, shouts, squawks, screeches, and sirens until it fades into a low rumble that you’re always faintly aware of, and you can never seem to tune it out long enough to hear anything else properly.
“But here, in some random basement? There’s none of that. Just a loud quiet. You heard it coming down here, I’m sure. Here, take a listen. Or even better, draw while you’re quiet. No complaints!” he said, cutting the boy off. “We begin…”
He never finished his sentence, because that was when everything shut off: their voices, their chairs rocking back and forth on uneven legs, the boy’s tapping of his pencil—all of it, drowned out by the boy scratching out a path through the paper and by the hum of fluorescent lights watching over their heads.
It was, to be sure, a simply deafening experience.
