Our townhouse in Denver overlooks a beautiful park. On the edge of the park, there is a public outdoor fitness course which one man in the entire Denver Metro area uses.
On that morning, he was there, hitting every station in earnest, making the city planner who had fought for the balance board proud. “Installing this course without a round balance board on a spring would be an unforgiveable disservice to the community!” I imagine the planner had yelled, banging a fist on the table so hard he lost sleep that night wondering if he had gone too far. Or chosen the right battle.
If the man in the park had looked up mid pull-up he would have spotted me, a woman standing at a large 2nd floor window across the street, watching him. Only I wasn’t watching him. Or, I had been for a second, but then something caused me to adjust my focus to the windowpane inches in front of me. There, at the height of my forehead, was a hole that could have only been made by one thing, a bullet.
***
“It’s a good thing you weren’t standing at the window when the gun was fired,” my husband Mark said later that afternoon as we studied both the hole in the window, and then the one in the living room wall opposite the window. I had assumed the gun had been fired from right across the street, in which case the bullet should have ended up in the ceiling. I picked a piece of dry wall up off the floor and shoved it into the hole.
“Don’t you think?” asked Mark.
“Think what?”
“Don’t you think that it was a good thing you weren’t standing at the window when the gun was fired?”
I turned and stared at him.
“I sure do,” I said.
Mark nodded, relieved to have found something we could agree on.
***
I wasn’t looking for open shelving, open shelving found me. We bought the townhouse because of the windows with park views, and not for the two, prominent wall mounted open shelving units inside the main level living area. I am more of closed cabinet/junk drawer person, but I took on the challenge of decorating these shelves, and it quickly became an obsession. I shaved hours off my sleep schedule to watch every YouTube video on how to style open shelves. There are a lot, and I thumb-up’d them all.
***
In the first days of my obsession, Mark didn’t understand. “What are you doing?” He’d ask, watching me move a decorative item from one end of a shelf a little more towards the middle, or more daringly, to another shelf altogether (a move I would not recommend trying if you’re prone to vertigo.)
“I’m elevating our space,” I’d say. And this would shut him up because who doesn’t want an elevated space?
Mark became used to me flying off the couch in the middle of a movie to start the rearranging.
“There she goes!” he’d say, watching me turn a wooden box a quarter inch clockwise. “That made all the difference.”
The funny thing is, it really did.
Sometimes, as I’m moving a photo frame to sit more at a casual angle or turning a hand carved bowl to feature its best side, I wonder if I shouldn’t be doing something more useful with my time. This always turns out to be a fleeting thought though, as there are frames to adjust and bowls to turn and they aren’t going to do it themselves.
***
The bullet had embedded itself inches from a carefully curated selection of books. Books I choose simply because the jacket covers pulled in colors from the rug and wall art to create a cohesive look. It is one of many professional decorator tips and tricks I now have in my arsenal.
Several books I choose because they were inspirational along with being the right color. One should surround oneself with inspirational items to not only elevate the space, but elevate the soul, one decorator with a more holistic approach had advised.
I found myself buying books titled, “The Bucket List, 1000 Adventures Big & Small” and “Epic Journeys, 245 Life-Changing Adventures,” and “1,000 Places to See Before You Die.”
These how to live your best life before it’s too late books now felt especially poignant sitting just inches from the new bullet hole in the wall.
We aren’t going to dig the bullet out. And likely we aren’t going to patch it until we sell the townhouse as a bullet hole is not a great selling point.
For now, I have decided the hole is part of the story my shelves are trying to tell. A reminder to hit that bucket list as time could be more limited than you think.
***
“Based on the trajectory, the gun was shot as far as a mile away,” the officer told us when we made our police report. “Where the bullet entered is almost parallel to where it ended up in the wall.”
The officer spotted Mark’s hospital badge on the kitchen island.
Another reason we bought the townhouse was its proximity to the hospital where Mark works. It is just a two-minute drive when he gets called in the middle of the night to help victims most often related to incidents involving drunk drivers, and, of course, guns. And there is a surprising number of people getting hit by the city’s quiet, stealth-like electric commuter train.
“You work at Denver Health?” The officer asked.
“Yes.”
“Thank you for all you do.”
“No, thank you for all you do.”
The two exchanged nods of mutual admiration then looked over at me. It was all I could do to stop myself from gesturing to my shelves.
“I will get back to you if we hear of anything.” The officer told Mark. To me he said, “don’t worry. Obviously, no one was targeting you.”
The officer shook his head and almost chuckled at the thought that I could be a victim of anything other than a totally random act of violence.
***
The next day I spotted my neighbors, the balcony girls, who were splitting a bottle of wine. I talked to them from my own matching balcony. I told them about the bullet hole in our window and they told me that the same thing had happened to the neighbor on the other side of me about a year ago.
“So…I guess I just army crawl around my place from now on?” I suggested.
“It is good for the core,” Mia replied.
The balcony girls are really balcony women. Diane is around my age. Her wife is Mia is maybe 7-10 years younger. In the two years we have had this place my interaction with them has only ever been balcony to balcony or balcony to sidewalk, me being the one on the sidewalk.
Only once I saw Mia on street level. It was last summer. I had opened my garage and there she was, idling in her own garage. If I took five steps and crossed the narrow alley I could touch her. She wore a polo and baggy shorts and had leg sleeve tattoos I hadn’t noticed from afar.
Seeing Mia off balcony was like catching Santa Claus off duty. I remember a day years ago when after sitting on Santa’s lap at a fancy holiday brunch, my kids and I spotted Santa later in the restaurant’s parking lot. The kids watched him with wide eyes as he yelled into his cell, (at an insolent elf, I told the kids) before tossing an old gym bag in the back of his car and slamming the door shut.
On this hot afternoon, Mia became a kind of Santa.
“Do you want a popsicle?” she asked, “I have a popsicle fridge.”
“You have a popsicle fridge?”
She waved me over to see. I stood next to her as she opened the door to one of two full sized fridges, only this one was a freezer, and it was indeed full of popsicles. Popsicle sticks of the alcohol variety. It was like the opening of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. The glow from inside. My expression of awe.
Mia grabbed a few sticks and held them up, “Margarita, Strawberry Daiquiri, or Pina Colada? I also have other kinds.”
“Margarita, please.”
She handed it to me, then reached in the popsicle fridge for another margarita pop.
“Do you want a second one?”
“Okay” I said. “Just in case.”
***
Back on the balcony Diane was sympathetic, “sorry, that happened, hope the window won’t be too expensive to replace.”
“I think it is some idiot shooting his gun off from his porch on the other side of the park.” Mia said, “don’t worry, you obviously weren’t targeted.”
“Oh my god, for sure you weren’t the target!” Diane agreed.
I had never thought I was the target. But the fact that this was the third time someone assured me that I wasn’t was starting to feel offensive.
***
As I waited for the new windowpane to arrive, I kept a careful eye on the glass surrounding the bullet hole; a sunburst of cracks that I hoped wouldn’t spider.
But mostly I returned to my life as a benign entity. A shadow passing back and forth behind a row of large windows. A tender of decorative displays. An extra playing the role of “woman hit by stray bullet” in a box office thriller. The director would be sure to shoot my bit scene at an angle so as not to see too much of my face, otherwise they would have to pay me more than an extra’s day rate.
***
As Mark had noted, it was a good thing I hadn’t been at the window when the gun was fired. Also, it was a good thing I hadn’t been across the room, standing by the shelves, doing my thing. If I had, I wondered how long it would take for me to realize I had been shot.
Shelf-styling isn’t known to be dangerous. That I could be shot doing it, and while home alone, would be unexpected. It probably would have taken me noting the hole in the window to figure it out.
The shelving units are sturdy as they are mounted to the wall. I imagine I would have clung to them to slow the fall. A chance to review my curated collection of “favorite finds” on the way down. One final time.
The Bucket List book lists “1000 adventures Big & Small.” That is a lot, but many of my items on my shelves were collected from trips. I’d be pleased seeing that I had checked off more than a few adventures in the book.
A set of gold camels I bought in the ancient city of Petra, #555. Photos scuba diving in Belize, #700, and skiing in Chamonix, France #129. A box of silver Baoding Balls I bought just outside the Forbidden City in Beijing #455. A pair of wood carved penguins I got in Antartica. Antartica happens to be #1000 on the book’s proposed list. Which may make sense. I was on a ship with many elderly passengers. When I asked them why they chose a trip to the white continent many would say because it was the only continent they had yet to explore. The last box to check on their bad-ass bucket list.
***
I would eventually find myself on the floor. My balcony girls not realizing my need. My husband busy working on another person’s gun wound, a person who was likely targeted.
I would scan the items on the lowest shelf which was now at eye level. Normally not one of the more visible shelves, I had given this shelf the least attention, and in that moment I’d realize in horror that it showed.
There were three items on the shelf, a potted succulent, a colorful Peruvian vase, and a framed photo. The photo was taken in the driveway of my brother’s house when he hosted our sister’s wedding. It is of my daughter and four of my nieces in matching pink bridesmaids dresses shooting hoops as they waited for my sister to get ready. Not in the Bucket List book, but frame-worthy all the same. All three items were placed side by side and too much so. It felt flat. The items needed to be more staggered. And then, I’d make my final decorative adjustment while bleeding out. A multi-tasker till the very end.
The framed photo and vase I’d be afraid to touch, too easy to knock down and not have the strength to pick up. The succulent was my best bet. I’d reach out and push it back just a little, and then a little more. And that would be enough. This new position would be more pleasing to the eye because staggering items on a shelf adds dimension, and dimension adds interest.
And creating moments of interest is the secret to an elevated space.