God is in the air

It's Tuesday at seven o’clock in the evening. I know this because I’ve just checked it on the oven clock. I had the feeling it was getting late, and I had some emergency shopping to do, so I checked the time, grabed my purse, my keys and my shopping bag and headed to the supermarket.
My shopping bag is useless. It’s far too small to carry more than a couple of bottles of milk and half a dozen eggs, but I like it. It was given to me as a present, though the bag itself wasn’t the present, but the mah-jong that was inside. So this little brown bag with some red Chinese characters on the front is probably just a commercial or corporate bag. The only thing I understand of the message printed on my shopping bag is the number 1808 circled, which means whatever they do or sell, they’ve been doing or selling since then.
Anyway, as I’m going downstairs, I hear the old lady that lives in the flat below; the woman whose ceiling is my floor, in other words. She spends most of the day on the landing, wearing a pale blue dressing-gown with the word Pause written on the left breast, along with the two vertical lines that are the icon for this function (or state of mind.) I interpret this sort of adornment as a statement: I think she’s trying to say we can’t ask much from her, since she’s old and tired and wants to be left alone. As I was saying, her main activity is carried out on the landing, where she walks from one wing to the other while shouting a trascendent question: "When are they coming?” Obviously, she never gets an answer, not one I can hear, so she goes to bed every night with this question unsolved. I must say I’ve started to feel worried about who are they and whether they’re coming or not, but I haven’t told anybody.
I don’t expect to spend a lot of time with her today, not that I ever do, but I tend to ask her how she’s doing, give her a kiss on the cheek, this sort of thing. But today I’m in a rush and I intend to limit my politeness to Hello-goodbye. As I bump into her, she stares at me with a particularly concerned look. Before I have time to fool myself into thinking everything’s all right, she opens her little toothless mouth to say:
- I’ve got a problem.

-All right –I say. And what’s that problem?

-I can’t tell you- she answers.

-Are you sure you don’t want to tell me? –I insist, without much insistence, while starting to walk slowly downstairs.

-I’ve got a problem – she says again.

And suddenly, with a shaky slow movement of her hands, she unbuttons her gown, opens it and says:

-I’ve pee’d myself.

And what I see is the sad image of two skinny, weak legs flanking a pair of big white knickers falling around her ankles. No shame in her attitude, only the genuine manner of a child who's got a problem that doesn't know how to solve.

-Are you in a hurry? –She asks.

-Yeah, absolutely rushing. Got lots of stuff to do.

I guess I could tell the truth. But the truth is I'm a bad person and I don’t think I can face anything related to the wet genitals of an old lady.
As I’m going downstairs, waving, with an unconvincing smile, she throws out yet another question to me.

-Do you think God will help us?

So she thinks we both need help from God , and then I realise she knows I'm a lier and understands what I'm going through right now.

-Well... I don’t know... He might decide to show up.

I look up instinctively and see a bright light shinning through the skylight of the building, throwing a shaft upon a pair of blue underpants hung on the handrail with a plastic peg. Without a doubt, it’s one of those discoveries you can usually find on the communal roof, exposed there so their owner would recognise them, recover them, rewash them and rehang them hopefully with more care, this time.

-I’m sorry to be the one who gives you the bad news, but I don’t think God will show up here today- I say eventually, staring at her with all the honesty I’m able to show.

She nods and lowers her gaze to look far down, beyond the handrail and her ankles, her pissed knickers and the stairwell. Her look goes so, so far that the only thing I want is for her to button her gown up, so she might accidentally press the pause icon again and return to her stand by mode. At least, in this state she doesn’t have self-awareness and the only essential problem is whether they’re coming or not. Whoever they are.