ELARA
I woke up not knowing what time it was, which never happens to me.
I'm a seven-fifteen person. I wake up at seven-fifteen without an alarm, have been waking up at seven-fifteen since the Hopkins years when my first seminar was at eight and the dining hall stopped serving hot food at seven-forty-five. Anya found this disgusting. She called it a character flaw masquerading as virtue. I called it biological efficiency. We agreed to disagree.
But this morning the light was wrong — too high, too white, not the pale slant of early sun through the east-facing windows in the guest room. I lay there for a full minute just listening to the apartment. The particular quality of its silence. The subtle hum the climate control made when it was midday. The way the city sounds from forty-three fl
