Trapped in Forever

41 ~ The Storm That Was Her Irises

“Is that Mikayla?” I heard the sound of my own voice shattering through his sentence, destroying stumbling word for stumbling words, sounding almost as if his words were tripping over themselves, covering crevices he was sure he left gaping, but at the strum of the guitar and that beatific voice, I had forgotten what he had said, or tried not to say. I had forgotten to search through the letters, turning them over in my mind to find whatever meaning I could pillage, and I turned around to face the direction of the drifting music. Blurring in the corner of my eye as I shifted, strands of brunette trailing behind my gaze, Orion was still slumped over the countertop, a coil of waning steam over his lips, faintly parted, and his eyes flickered toward the source of the music.

I tried to remember, as I felt the smooth tiled surface beneath the soles of my shoes as I stepped toward one of the doorways, beside a circular, small table with the Funny Comics rolled on the surface and an empty bottle of Coke, the door ajar, if I had ever heard Mikayla singing before. I tried to recall all of the those times I heard the rattle of the water running in the shower, straining my memories for the sound of a voice, wondering if that bird was really a bird, or if her voice was drowned out by the sound of trickling water.  I wondered if I ever heard the muffled sound of her voice through the walls, that angelic sound making its way through layers of instillation and wooden planks, accompanying the lyrics to some song that was probably on the local radio station’s weekend Top 15, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift dominating the station.

“Yeah,” Orion answered after a moment, his voice almost hesitate, as he straightened his back, shifting his mug of coffee and the coiled, transparent steam appeared to almost dissipate completely, the scent of coffee beans tickling my nose, and he shrugged. “Louis was kind of star struck when he met her this morning. They haven’t stopped since.”

I felt a stiffening crack in my neck as I turned around, already feeling as my eyebrows furrowed deeper into my skin and lowered closer to my eyes, and the nonchalance struck me as I watched while he finally took a sip of his coffee, his lips curling around the rim, but then he frowned. It was too cold for him, I guess. “Star struck?” I repeated, and he nodded, his countenance still frozen in that frown as he placed his mug back down, clinking against the tiles. “Of Mikayla? Why would anyone be star struck of Mikayla?” 

“She plays at parties,” he replied, angling his body away from mine and tilted the Sabres mug over the silver, glinting sink, the black liquid gushing from the rim and tumbling into the sink, splash. Little droplets of blackness were clinging to the side as he continued. “She’s pretty good, but she doesn’t play any instruments, though, so no one really notices. With, of course, the exception of Louis.”

I remembered Orion, his legs sprawled straight in front of him beside a drain, cluttered with drenched, multicolored, crumbled leaves, the toes of his Nikes almost touching the yellow in between line, and his soft expression as he spoke to her, and I wondered if he was talking to her about her music. About her soft, beautiful voice that I had never heard and wondered how I had gone so long without it, or how Louis was her biggest fan. How he knew something about her, something so private and personal it seemed, that I didn’t, that none of us knew. Not even Mom, who either would have drowned her own sorrows in glass after glass of red wine, or would lay out pamphlets out on the countertop, microphones and silhouettes of singers inked over the cover, and her voice saying that if she really wanted to be a musician, she had to work at it.

“I didn’t even know she sang.”

If Orion had a response to that, I didn’t hear it over the sounds of the soles of my shoes scuffing against the checkered tiles, black and white blurring at the bottom of my eyes, or my breath falling from my nose as I exhaled, the fabric of my shirt dipping, or the steady strumming of the guitar, playing in my ears like the distant humming of a seashell pressed against your ear, your own pulse vibrating through the delicate, curled walls. Through the doorway I was slowly approaching, I saw a pair of Converse pressed into beige carpeting, the toes ben close to the center, and the laces jiggled as they bobbed to the beat, his knees vibrating. In his lap was the bright, gleaming wood of a guitar, the neck poised in his hand with his fingers appearing to be haphazardly placed but I knew better as they scaled down the gray wires, and his fingers were patting the chords in the center over the hole of the guitar, a flaring red pick concealed partially by his fingers.