Arturo passed Miriam on the stairs and noted aloud that she looked radiant in that dress. Miriam rolled her eyes and spit on the landing ahead of her.
"Queer," Arturo called after her.
"Pussy!" She responded.
And their exchange reverberated in the space for a moment before breaking apart into that stairwell silence that beats down doors.
Arturo let himself into their apartment. You'll be singing a different tune at dinner time, he thought to himself. He set his keys on the little table near the door with the phone and notepad on it. Continuing through the hallway and into his bedroom, he began to whistle a nondescript melody, interspersing it with Yes, Miriam, you'll be singing a different tune, la, la, la.
They had a disagreement in the early morning about the mess piling up in the basin for dirty dishes beneath the sink. Miriam was a lesbian, and Arturo attributed her willingness to hold onto her anger and her grudges to this inescapable fact. He imagined a long history of daily injustices and barely audible whisperings about her, but the truth was he had no supporting evidence for this theory. Miriam was quite private about her early account, even in her most drunk and voluble of moods.
Arturo took a flying leap onto his bed and let his body bounce into position diagonally across it. He removed a cigarette from the soft pack in his front shirt pocket and lit it, rolling onto his back.