Ruby Red Marionette

five | passive

//: Geneva to the side. 

I didn’t check what time it was when I received Charlie’s text, so I couldn’t actually know if I was late.

I didn’t really care, either.

It wasn’t a formal appointment. He said he needed me, and that could mean a number of things. None of the scenarios, however, involved dire situations. If he was in an emergency, I would be the last person he’d call, so there was no rush in my arrival.

I roamed around the area for a while, avoiding McCallie Avenue at all costs. I walked the streets, stepping over Simon’s invitation with my left foot and Charlie’s invitation with my right. As I went, looking at the people around me and how humans interacted with each other, thinking about the buildings and technology around me and how far we’ve come as a species, I began to think philosophically. Deeper. I started to think that maybe there was some kind of outer force involved here, some other party that was trying to tell me something. Not God - I wasn’t that naive - but just an energy. It was too coincidental that I’d come so close to dying in the past forty-eight hours and was still here to tell the story.

If anything, almost-dying just made living more interesting.

It reached three o’clock and I decided not to hurt poor Charlie’s feelings. I asked him where exactly he wanted to meet and he told me in front of a restaurant down McCallie. I hopped on a cab to get there, only to find that he wasn’t in front of the restaurant but instead in front of a flower shop next door, holding a brown paper bag in one hand and a bouquet of twelve roses in the other.

I forced a smile. “This is extravagant of you.”

He shrugged, squinting his eyes from the sun. “I only do extravagant things when I meet people like you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, taking the flowers from him. They were dark, a wine-burgundy color that made the gesture more sinister than romantic.

“Well, I have a habit of observing. Asking questions, not ever giving any insight into myself. Been that way for years. So,” He nodded ahead of us, motioning for us to walk, “I’ve grown to see people in one light. Black-and-white. But every once in a while -

“Someone like me comes along, someone who’s that rare drop of color in your sad, gray world?”

He looked at me with an ambiguous smile. “Yeah. That’s it.”

I strolled with him, holding my roses while he held whatever was in that brown bag. Walking through the streets with a man clearly ten years older than me drew attention by itself, let alone me carrying a bunch of flowers. Every few minutes, someone would look at me like I was a child in the hands of a kidnapper, like they were giving me an opportunity to whisper ‘help me’. The fact that I didn’t know where Charlie and I were going, or if what he meant by ‘I need you’ in his text message, made the possibilities of him kidnapping me very likely.

“Did you hear me?” He asked as we turned onto an empty one-way street. It was quiet here. The asphalt was cracked in almost every place it could be, the cars on the street looked like they hadn’t been moved in years, and some of the numbers on the houses didn’t add up. House number 105 68, 105 70, 105 72, and then 105 76. Things were missing.

“No, I’m sorry,” I said, still studying my surroundings. I memorized three license plates. “What did you say?”

“I asked you how you knew what I was going to say earlier.”

“Oh,” I nodded, now distracted from the scenery. “You aren’t charming, Charlie.”

He looked at me, almost making a full stop. “What?”