A Rhapsody Of Sorts

4- We're All Okay

August 13, 2012.

The doorman eyed me over the newspaper clutched in his hands. He sat next to the artificial ficus, camouflaging himself with the leaves and poking his head out from behind the branches to send me a terse nod in greeting when I stepped out of the lift. The lobby smelled like lemon, pine, and ammonia, and I could see my reflection in the freshly mopped marbled floors. My trainers squeaked as I made my way towards the front exit.

"They've been waiting for you for at least an hour," the doorman said ominously, licking his fingers before he turned a page.

"You've got to be kidding me." I stopped in my tracks, envious of him and his stupid ficus as I resisted the temptation to hide with him.

It was nearing nine o'clock on a Monday morning and the paparazzi were waiting for me on the other side of the street, their cameras at the ready.

When I'd woken to see the sunlight sneaking in through the venetian blinds over my bed, it had taken little more than a second for me to decide to take a walk to the paint shop — Grendy's — down the street on Pentonville, but now I was certain I should've closed the blinds and buried my face back in my pillow.

"I'd go back to bed if I were you," the doorman continued. I wrinkled my nose in annoyance but his stare remained on the page in front of him. There was no point in running now. They'd already spotted me, and I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of driving me into fleeing back to my bed.

I sighed before I pushed the door open and started my walk down the pavement, crossing the street in front of the photographers. There weren't many of them — no more than five or six — but I was annoyed. I slipped an oversized pair of sunglasses on, hiding my black eye and half of the plaster as the group caught up with me.

I tried to ignore the incessant calls of my name as I made my way down the street, my head held relatively high and my lips set in a deliberately placed scowl. "Oliver! Oliver!" they seemed to chant together, over and over, even as I spared them little more than a glance over my shoulder. "Give us a wave, Oliver, give us a pretty smile!"

"Have you reached out to Belinda Ferrence?"

"What happened to your face?"

"Did Liam hit you, Oliver?"

I nearly turned around and walked back to my building at the last one.

The walk to the shop was short. I'd never been in Grendy's before but I walked by it often enough and I figured I'd have a better shot at finding the right shade of blue there than I would at Tesco. The bell over the door jingled when I walked in, leaving the hecklers to wait outside for me on the pavement with their cameras idly hanging around their necks.

The woman behind the till didn't glance my way as I approached the back wall where I could see an expansive selection of blues and purples and deep, dark blacks that made me think of the bruise under my eye.

There were light, almost-white blues that made me think of candy floss, baby blues, periwinkle blues that reminded me of the dingy couch we'd had in Brixton, violet-blues, navy blues, gray blues that looked like the blazer I had to wear to school when I was younger, green-blues, true blues that made me think of a troublesome head of hair, and indigo blues, but nowhere in the array of colors could I find the blue of Matthew's eyes.

As I flipped through the samples — tearing through ocean blues and midnight blues and cornflower blues — I felt dismayed.

This guilt weighing so heavily on my pounding heart wasn't because Grendy's Paint & Molding didn't have the shade of blue I needed. The dread I felt growing inside me, starting in my chest and spreading outwards through my entire being, was brought about by a very unexpected conclusion: I didn't know what shade I needed. The eyes I had known so well, so long, so dearly had slipped from my memory and, foolishly, I hadn't noticed until now.