If birds chirped through the open window she could not hear them over the wailing of Jupiter's stormy symphony. The sunlight was muffled; it could not pierce the shadowy room. The photographs were on the table where she left them last night, shuffled like a deck of cards for solitaire: a black and white couple with a child on their lap. Młodsza siostra. Little sister. Ida. Red-haired, brown-eyed Ida with dimpled rosy cheeks when she smiled. Ida, lovely Ida, swallowed by her gray habit. There was no color in the world anymore.
Her cigarette trailed smoke as she went into the kitchen. She stood in the center of the kitchen. Why did she go into the kitchen? The kitchen where she dug butter into her toast for breakfast. She was out of butter. She needed to buy more butter. Her toast had been gritty on her tongue. Her mouth tasted of cigarettes: of smoke and ash.
She swept by the turntable on her way back out of the kitchen and cuffed her hand against the nob to turn the volume higher. The music crowded into her skull. Skull. So small and perfectly round.
She let her filthy negligee fall to a heap on the floor and put on her coat. It was cold outside. The man had been warm in her bed, sweaty and large. She could not remember his name. How should she do it – a running leap? No. She snubbed her cigarette into the ashtray on the table and mounted the ledge, toes gripping the plaster. She had meant to put on her boots.