Karen spent two months inside the apartment. The last half of the fall and into the early part of the winter, near November. She knew there would have to be a homecoming for the feast of fall. It would not be something that would come easily. Getting on a plane and leaving the open sky for her hill tree lined home. The only way she knew of the weather outside for these months was leaving every few days to buy cigarettes at the convenience store not a minute from her apartment. She could see through the window that the sky was changing from gold to white over the weeks. In these months she became intimate with the television. They had a schedule like lovers who meet every Thursday in a Motel 6 or like a married couple that sits down to eat at 7:30 pm and on Friday it’s taco night. She knew when the programs that she enjoyed were on. She sat very close to the set, as if it was warming her, like a fireplace or a wood stove in an old home. The central source of warmth and hypnotizing flames now commercials and channels. It was the best pain killer she knew of. The best mind number out there.

She sat with the television families and felt sad and happy for their fictional joy and sadness that she could only share vicariously. The characters were predictable and she knew it was too easy to write a feel good family situational comedy. Put a few wrenches into the familiar frame work and see how the familiar characters react. It was predictable but likable and always wrapped up in half an hour.

Karen got upset with the people on the local news when they were complaining of the crime that plagued the city or recalls on devices and toys laden with toxic parts from China. She listened attentively to the newscasters’ tips on how to find the best lawn treatments. It was all very informative and hollow. The woman on the news’ coordinated suit jackets and jewelry reminded her of a phantom of what she prescribed to as professionalism. The man a trustworthy father figure, with a uv light bed tan and a million dollar mouth.

She watched talk shows where hosts tried to fix problems with a panel and forced dialog. A woman crying over a paternity test because she still didn’t know the father. Karen shook her head at these. Maybe they shouldn’t have banged, like 50, dudes, she thought to herself. Another host putting themselves in a fat suit or making themselves ugly to see how “it really was”. An offshoot of the talk show was the court show. She loved these and felt as if she could win any small claims court case she would ever have to be a part of. She liked it when the judges reprimanded the idiot people who would give back lip or were trying to interrupt.

The weather changed outside but nothing ever changed on the television. On a cold November evening, pre turkey holiday, a field reporter stood outside of a building. Their coat was zipped to a scarfed neck. The reporters’ cheeks were round apples and already rouged from the makeup room. Karen gasped at what she saw. The building on the television was across town but it was his building. It was the building that she had spent so much time in torturing herself with what could not be. It was the place that had forced her inside to take refuge with the television set. She felt compelled, for the first time, to leave her house and not just walk to the store to buy her cigarettes and junk food.

Karen pulled herself out of her chair. She rose too quickly and made herself dizzy. She gathered her winter clothes and threw them on. It was a bitter evening at 6:15 pm. Through the desert town she walked. The city scape was so sprawled. His building was a mile away from her but she knew all the back alley ways to get there. She passed the store. She walked and it was tiresome work, it was as if her muscles had atrophied and she was certainly not eating enough to keep up any kind of strength. She walked past the places they used to stop and eat and take their morning coffee at. It was all a blur of blue black light. She could smell the smoke that was surely rising from his building. There was the rose bush he had once picked flowers for her from. There was where they had committed some public sex act, which was a thrill. There was the building he had shimmied his way up and into so that she could swim in their pool. Her feet were bringing her to a destination that was both known and unknown. Known, in the way she had been there so many times, unknown because she had no idea why she was going or if he was even going to be there or if he would even care that she was there.

When she arrived there was a scene like Karen had imagined. It was something out of the television screen, but this was real. She had a hard time grasping this concept. She had left. This incident had forced her to leave the sanctity of her apartment. What she saw she could not have been prepared for in any way. There was a man on a stretcher, his face badly burnt and they had attached an oxygen mask on his face. Dangling from the side of the sheet was his hand and it was wearing the ring she had given him for his birthday. The fact that he still wore it surprised her. It was amazing that he hadn’t taken it off. She choked back tears. She was leaving tomorrow and there would be no way to know if he was to live or die.

On the plane she read in the local paper that the cause of the fire was that he had fallen asleep with a lit cigarette and it had set the rest of the building on fire. She would read that he had died in the hospital. She would only feel slightly guilty for smiling.