Location: Central
I told her that I'd see her today. I told her that maybe we'd hang out. Or it was implied in the phrase, "I'll see you tomorrow," but for the life of me, I can't find Femi.
"Did she tell you where she was going?" I ask, stuffing my hands in my pockets.
Elena shakes her head, bouncing Piper gingerly on her shoulder. "She never does. She just goes. She'll be back before dinner time, though. Just wait, if you want to see her."
"It's not even noon yet, El," I grumble. "That's like... six hours of waiting. A long time. And I told her that we'd hang out."
"Did you? Because she told me that it was just something about getting to see you today."
I shake my head, throwing up my hands. "Everything I say. Everything I say goes through like... ten translators. Does anyone keep anything that I tell them to themselves?"
She shrugs, and Piper burps. "Probably not. It's one of the perks of knowing people and actually talking. Get used to it."
I sigh, biting the inside of my cheek. "So do you have any idea of where she might have gone?"
For a moment, my sister-in-law doesn't say anything, thinking, burping Piper. She clicks her tongue. "I don't know. But she does seem to like to visit with the lady in the flower stall at the market, and she also likes to go see you. Have you looked at your place?"
"I've been at my place all morning," I groan. "Anywhere else?"
She shakes her head. "Nowhere else that I can think of. She doesn't tell me where she goes, most of the time."
"Do you ask?"
"Not really. She's twenty-three. She can handle her own whereabouts. I don't want to irritate her by making her feel like she's being monitored."
I sigh.
On one hand, it would be nice to have a good idea of where she disappeared to. On the other hand, I don't want her to feel like her privacy is being invaded upon, even if that would put my stupid, overactive mind at ease. So I don't say anything further to Elena, who already seems a bit upset by my anxious behavior.
"Thanks," I say, summoning a small smile. I give her a brief side hug and am gone in a manner that I've grown comfortable with. Simple words, get out, run. It's a nice way to do things. Maybe not the best thing to do, but it's easy. It's comfortable.
I'm running when I hear something that makes me stop. Or feel something. Or see something.
Unfortunately, it's all three at once.
Femi and I collide with painful strength.
I get up before she does, and head spinning, offer a shaky hand. "Are you alright?"
"Mostly," she gasps. "A little low on air..." She stops for a deep breath. "That's alright, though. Are you alright?"
"I think I fractured my skull on the pavement, but nothing serious," I say, chuckling. I can taste blood, but I don't mention it. I think I bit my tongue.
She blinks, frowning, a couple of fingers tipping my chin up. "Your nose is bleeding."
"Is it?" I ask, mustering a small grin. Blood drips onto the sidewalk from my nose, but I can't feel any pain. I can feel it on my face, warm and wet, but why is my nose bleeding?
"It is," she says, seeming concerned. "You might want to... I don't know. Hold it shut?"
I do, and after a moment the bleeding stops.
"You look like you've been in a fistfight," she says, handing me a small scrap of cloth. "Wipe your face."
"Bossy," I chuckle, but I do as she said anyway.
It's a remarkable amount of blood that comes away on the rag.
I glance over at her, tucking the rag into my pocket. I can still taste the blood, but at least it isn't running down my face anymore.
She's looking straight ahead. "Where were you going so fast?"
"To find you. You didn't come around. Where were you?"
She smiles a little, casting me a sideways smile. "To find you. You didn't come around, either."
I chuckle. "I'd say I've found you, now."
She nods, stepping over a crack in the sidewalk. "I'd say so, Mechanic. Why were you looking for me?"
"Why were you looking for me?"
"I asked first," she argues.
I grin. "Fine. I wanted to find you because I kind of implied that we'd hang out today."
"You did?"
"I'm the only one who takes 'I'll see you tomorrow' as an offer to hang out? Is that just me?"
She laughs, bumping shoulders with me. "It's totally just you. What, did you actually think that people read into things like that?"
I shrug. Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't. I did, but I'm not going to tell her that. After all, she'd rub it in. Maybe. "You aren't going to say why you were looking for me?"
She shakes her head. "No, I don't think so. You obviously don't care. You just care about people not reading into the depth of you words. Who knew that 'good morning' might mean 'will you marry me?'"
"You've discovered my secrets. Now you must die. You know too much." I bump shoulders with her, and she looks up from the sidewalk, a grin stretched across her face.
"You aren't really that hard to figure out."
"Lies," I mutter, grinning despite myself. "This kid knows nothing."
"Kid? You're joking. We're the same age."
"Mentally, I'm timeless. You have no knowledge of eternity, or of the universe. Sorry, my girl. I'm just too much."
"Yeah, full of too much baloney," she says, and sticks her tongue out. "I know just as much as you do. Just not about things like cars. What do you know about painting?"
"More than you know about cars," I laugh. "I painted that hummingbird, remember?"
She gives me a deadpan stare. "You butchered it."
"Aww," I sigh. "When I did it, I did it with you in mind." I'm trying not to care, to pass myself off as joking to the last morsel of daylight, but it's very hard. That hummingbird. It's a little bit of a sensitive subject.
"That makes it even worse!" She throws her hands in the air. "What am I going to do with it? What am I going to do with you?" She lifts her eyes to mine, and sighs. "You're mine whether I want you or not."
"You're stuck with me, darling," I say, smiling. "It's a shame that there isn't an adoption society for adults."
"Gosh. Adults. Where did time go?" She looks up again, brow furrowed.
I shrug. "Down the tube. Isn't that where time goes?"
"It sure seems like it." For a moment, she's silent, studying my face. "You know, the years might be in the pot, but they sure look good on you."
I smile. "Thanks. They've treated you alright, too." I reach over and take her braid between my fingers. Trying not to laugh, I pull it forward and tickle her nose with the end of it.
She laughs, batting my hand away from her.
The smile stays on my face. "You're too pretty, actually."
"'Too pretty?'" She chuckles. "What is that supposed to mean?"
I shrug, kicking a pebble into the gutter. "I don't know."
She watches me for a while more, then looks back to the sidewalk, shaking her head. "If we're going to play it like that, let's say that you're too pretty for your own good."
"I'm touched. Truly am."
She smiles, and my finger twitches with a want to trace the curve of her smiling cheek, to touch each freckle across the bridge of her nose, to cover the space of pale skin just beside her chapped, red lips.
And once I had done that, I would kiss her. And in the dream, she would kiss me back.
"Earth to muscle car. Hello, Paris." She waves a hand in front of my face, and I snap out of it. We stopped. We must have stopped walking, because neither of us are moving anymore, but the ground still seems to be spinning.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I say, gulping. I press a hand against my forehead. "Just give me a minute. Kind of dizzy."
She takes my arm. "How about you sit down. There you go. What's going on?"
"I'm sure it's nothing." I look up at her, as everything stops spinning.
She squats beside me, one hand on my shoulder, the other clutching her red braid. "You're okay?"
I nod, smiling. "I'm okay."
For a moment, I almost let myself fall into her, my head is spinning just that violently, and yes, my eyes do flicker over to her lips.
She taps a finger on my nose. "This isn't cool. Are you sure that you're okay?"
I nod. "I'm fine."
"Awfully pale for 'fine,'" she mumbles, steadying me. "Stop lying; what's going on? Does this happen a lot?"
"There's nothing going on," I mutter. It feels kind of like the world goes sideways, and I find myself somewhat nauseated. "But... my stomach doesn't feel that great."
"Oh my gosh, Paris, are you kidding me?" But she doesn't sound put out, she sounds scared. "Why don't you just lay down before you fall over..."
"But the sidewalk is probably gross..." I groan, but I'm unable to stop myself from going over when she begins to guide me to the ground.
"I should go get Matt."
"No, don't get Matt." I close my eyes. "I'm fine. Just give me a minute."
It's a bit longer than a minute before I feel it in myself to be good to stand up.
She holds onto my arm, concern written all over her pale face. "If you pass out, or die, or get sick, I'm telling your brother, and he is not going to be happy with you." Her voice quivers like she's going to cry, but there's nothing but solemnity in her patched eyes. Her hands are shaking.
"I'm not going to die," I say, smiling a little. The world is no longer spinning like a top. My head no longer feels as though I'm floating in a bottle of shaken-up soda.
"Are you good to keep walking, then?" she asks, her fingers digging into my arm.
"Of course," I assure her, taking a step forward. "But I never did ask, where are we going?"
"Around," she answers, shrugging lightly.
We walk for a while for without any more incidents or near blackouts. Finally, the sidewalk changes into time-worn cobblestone, and up ahead I see a small tree near a swing set.
"The park?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.
She smiles at me. "Why not? Don't you like swinging on swings?"
"I've never tried it before. Isn't it for little kids?"
She scoffs. "We can no longer be friends. Geez, Mechanic. Get with the program! Swings are fun to swing on. Even adults do it. Timeless ones, even." She steps away from me to climb into one of the swings. "See?" she asks, swinging. "It's fun! Try it!"
I approach them slowly, my knees still a little wobbly from earlier. "You know, I think I might have a low blood sugar."
"Maybe you do. Maybe that's what almost made you pass out."
"I haven't eaten since lunch yesterday." I think back. "And that was only half of your sandwich."
"Less than half," she corrects, kicking her feet out in front of her.
"Right," I agree, sitting down on the strap that makes up the seat of the swing. "So, how do you do this, again?"
She stops in her swing beside me and guides my hand onto the chain that holds the swing up. "First of all, it should be obvious that you have to hold on. Second, just push off."
We push off at the same time.
"When you're going forward, stick your legs out in front of you, and when you're going backward, bend your knees so that they're going back. It's that simple. And lean with it. That's important, too."
Within seconds, she's high up there, and I'm still trying to figure it out. And thinking. Mostly thinking, though. Swinging is simple.
"Did you call me a muscle car when I was dazed?" I ask, trying not to laugh as I look up at her.
"Maybe a little." She blinks quickly, lips pursed.
"That's hilarious."
She blushes and looks straight ahead, saying nothing.
"No, that's really funny," I say. "I need it on a t-shirt. 'I am a muscle car.'"
She doesn't reply. She swings her legs to propel her swing as I begin to gain some momentum myself.
"Did I embarrass you?"
"I'll get over it," she says, kicking her feet up to the sky.
We don't say anything to each other for a while, we just swing, and I find that I like the feeling. It feels like hearts beating too fast for comfort and a wild amount of excitement, but at the same time, it's not scary.
It's really nice, actually.
"I think your awkward is cute," I say at last. "In reply to what you said about my awkward yesterday, I think yours is cute."
"Thanks." She glances over at me. "Yours is cute, too."
It's been a good day.
I hold her hand more tightly as we hop over a muck-filled gutter into the empty street. "I'm glad I didn't pass out."
"Me too," she laughs, swinging our hands. "I'm glad that you didn't go flying off that swing, too. That wouldn't have been a whole lot of fun."
"No," I agree, daring to lift her hand to my lips.
She smiles for a moment, then looks away. "It's getting dark. Do you think we should go back to Matt's?"
I shrug. "I have several flashlights. I could walk you over later, if that's what you want. It's completely up to you."
She glances over at me and smiles a tiny bit. "We could go over just for a little bit. I have something I want to do."
"What?" I stumble a bit over a patch of uneven ground, and she keeps me from falling.
Once she regains her composure, she tilts her head to the side, thinking. "I have some painting that I want to do."
"What's that?"
"Painting," she says, but that doesn't help me.
"Painting with what?"
"Paint," she laughs. "Duh."
"Where did you get paint?"
"The lady with the flowers, Wreatha." She raises her eyes from the sidewalk to me, smiles a little, and drops them.
I look ahead. I won't ask how she got them, after all, people like Femi rarely make much logical sense from any angle, but I do wonder. I guess it doesn't matter, though. After all, what business of mine is it?
I repeat that last question to myself at least ten times.
"Do you think..." my companion asks, gaze locked on the ground passing under her feet, "...that I could paint you?"
"You have before. I don't mind. Sometimes I do wonder what else has you bored so much that you resort to painting pictures of me, though." I laugh lightly, breathing in the last warmth of the daylight. The sun has been gone from the sky for about five minutes now, hidden under layers of buildings and the edge of the world.
For a moment she's quiet. "No, I mean really. Paint you. Like you. Not a picture of you, on you."
"You want me to be your canvas?" The thought is an odd one. I mean... really? What?
She blushes. "You don't have to, of course, I just wondered because I've never gotten to do it before, and I've seen other people do it."
She decorates walls. A few years ago, she decorated my heart. She's decorated the lives of so many people already, and she still wants to decorate me. Maybe I should be flattered—maybe I am flattered, but it's hard to feel the pleasure at her flattery that I might feel otherwise. "Sure."
I can't help wondering how awkward this is going to be.
"So, um..." She looks up at me, her cheeks dusted a light pink and her lashes swooping low over them. "I was just going to make sure that was okay with you before I broke the paints out."
"Probably best of you to do that," I chuckle, not looking at her. But I know that she's still looking at me. And probably smiling, because she has succeeded in embarrassing me.
"Since you said yes, I need to decide what to paint. I think."
"Probably."
We walk the rest of the way in silence, but then we reach the street that I live on, and she stops.
"I'll paint your back, is that okay?"
"It's okay."
We step inside, and the smell of my musty quarters hits me like a ton of feathers. It's almost as suffocating, too.
"I think we should have a snack first, though," she says. "I'm starving."
I nod. "Me too."
"Tea?"
I smile. "Why not?"
She sets to making the tea, and I begin slapping together some peanut butter sandwiches, about six, to be exact, just in case.
"Looks like an awfully filling snack," she comments, smiling playfully.
"I'm a grown man. I can put away some sandwiches."
"Fine, fine," she snickers. Her hands shake a little as she pours the tea into two cups. They stop shaking when she hands one to me and takes a sandwich from the stack. "Thanks for making these. It made my job so much simpler."
I nod, looking around the dimly lit room. The only light is from a single light bulb, strung on a single wire from the ceiling. It reaches about two feet above my head.
That's the only light.
She smiles, eating the last bite of her sandwich as I finish the first half of my second. "Probably ought to start before the light's all gone."
I nod, peeling my shirt off.
"You can sit on the counter," she says, walking into my shop.
"Where are you going?" I ask, as I climb onto the counter like she instructed.
"Paints, Mechanic. I dropped them off here before I went back to the house to find you." She comes back in with her arms full of pots of paint. All kinds of colors. Several red. Some blues and greens and purples.
"You have your happy colors with you," I say, smiling.
She smiles back. "Turn around, will you?"
I do, and something touches my shoulder. Paint.
It has an odd feel, more like mud than anything, very little like color. Color doesn't feel like slime in my mind. It all feels so different. Red is like a shaggy carpet. Blue is the smooth surface of the porcelain mug in my hand. Purple is the soft, wilted feel of flower petals between my fingers.
And green. Green feels like the grass under my hands on the off chance that I want to feel what it's like for spring to come.
The cold, slimy feeling is spreading down my back, fingers of what I can internally visualize to be color seeping under my skin. Over my skin.
The paintbrush creates patterns, leaves, and comes back with a new color to overlap the old.
"Your raven," she says after a while, "it's too pretty to paint over."
"What have you done, then?"
The paintbrush moves a bit slower over an area just below my right shoulder.
"I, um, I painted around it. A background, you know? It's going to look amazing."
"I'm glad," I say, almost wryly.
"Don't worry," she whispers. "I'm nearly done."
So it continues for what feels like a long time, even though I know it to only be a small number of minutes.
Then she stops, and her footsteps announce that she's stepped back to inspect her work from a more perspective distance.
"You can get down, now."
I do, turning to face her.
She's smiling, and I can't help but smile back. "What are you smiling about?" I ask, crossing my arms in front of my chest, trying to look confident even though my heart is pounding like it feels trapped.
"You. You're not... I don't know. You're beautiful."
This is serious. My heart really wants out, and my lungs seem to be following common example. "Oh."
She purses her lips, looking down. "It's odd. Like, you used to be just cute, now it's a wonder that you aren't... taken, I guess."
"I could say the same for you."
"Maybe I just feel like I should stay my own, for the time being."
"Maybe I feel the same," I say, the darkness pulling at my tired mind. They say that it's starting to get lighter earlier in the day, staying light outside for longer, too.
I can blame this sudden tiredness on that.
"I don't want to belong to anyone," she whispers, looking around. "Never. I've heard it before, you know, 'You're mine,' and you don't want to hear it. It isn't a good thing."
"I'm sure it can be. It's like that with everything. Anything can be made to be associated with bad things. It's the associating with good things that makes them worth it, though."
She nods, dropping her gaze to the ground.
"You know, Femi, I have something to show you. Have you seen the stars here?"
She shakes her head.
"You have to see them," I say, stepping forward to catch her hand in mine.
Before she can argue, we're outside. I lead her around to the alley and pull down the ladder of the fire escape.
"Here, you go up first. Big step up," I say, helping her up.
But she doesn't need my help, really. It just makes me feel better.
"Go up the next ladder, too," I instruct, pulling myself onto the first level.
She climbs up, and kicks her legs through the railing so that her feet hang outside, twenty feet above the ground. She looks up. "Oh... they're beautiful."
"Aren't they?" I whisper, crossing my legs. The paint on my back is cold, but oddly enough, I'm not. "Look up there," I say, pointing to a particularly startling constellation. "That one, I think it's a painter. Do you see her easel?"
She nods. "I do. You know the stars?"
"I know what I've taught myself." I smile, even though I know that she isn't looking at me. It doesn't really matter, after all.
She grabs my hand. "And look at that one. It looks like a motorcycle."
"Where?"
"There," she says, pointing.
"Oh, I see it."
The night dissolves by hours in stardust and the smell of paint on bare skin.
It doesn't fade until I take her back.