When I look at the clock in Town Square, I�ve got forty-five minutes. So I buy an ice cream and dawdle my way back to the apartment, taking goofy pictures with ice cream on my nose. The air feels minty and new born, and I feel cold and fermented. Effervescent. I am a can of Coke.
Even with my dawdling, I am early, so I poke around the apartment for a bit. I take a shower and use his soap, and his bathrobe (which appears troublingly unused). I come out and I feel majestic and illegible, like hieroglyphics. He is standing in the living room, looking out the window and I decide to be cute and surprise him. I take a run and tackle him.
As we fall to the ground, his legs splayed, uncomfortably, my knee in his back, I consider the many other ways in which girls can be cute. I will remember them in the future.
He gets up slowly, and to his credit he does not complain, but lightly comments on my very pointy knees. I nod, gravely.
�Can I see your pictures?� He doesn�t look mad, but like maybe I ought to show him, even though he probably has a broken back. Especially because he�s got a broken back. I get the camera, and he grins.
Picture by picture, his face changes in tiny movements, like the stirring of a butterfly. He looks at me looking at him nervously, and his face turns into a stone carving of an interested fellow artist. Then he reaches the last one and looks at me, face filled with something that looks like pity and respect, mixed to a baffling extent. He says:
�Where did you take this one?� pointing to the water tower, and I surprise myself by crumpling into a ball and beginning to cry. He says things like, �Whoa, please, hey, calm down� and I realize, blindingly, that there is no difference between him and Jon.
This realization slides between my ribs like a lance, and I stop crying. The motion is as automatic and unfeeling as those mechanical fortune tellers you find in old musty shops and cheap Chinese places. At first he looks relieved, and then he catches a glimpse of my face and sees that he shouldn�t be. My face is bone and regenerated plastic bottles stretched into skin. I am a mannequin, one of those soft-feel ones that look far too human.
He looks at me for a long while, and I gather up my things. There aren�t many. And I�m going home.
I walk to the bus station, and I turn around halfway and there he is, following me. It�s not creepy; in fact, if it�s anything it�s sad. A bit of a boon, too, because when I get to the window I am five dollars short, so I go up to him shyly and ask to borrow. He says �sure� in a guttural voice and rummages in his pockets for four singles, two quarters, and assorted nickels, dimes and pennies. I hand them to the clerk as gracefully as I can, and I go over to the benches and sit. He hangs around the ticket window for a while, until it becomes apparent that I will not be talking to him, and then he waits five minutes more. I liked him; I think I could have grown to love him.
I know where he lives, and I kind of remember his name. The two are both written in a circle, nearly perfect, around my bellybutton in purple ink.
The bell rings for my bus, and I get up and step up the big, empty steps. No one comes this way anymore, I guess.
The bus slowly feeds on the ten or so people that mount its steps, until the doors swing closed. I look out my window, maybe a little wistfully, searching for him dashing alongside the bus, or just watching it pull away. The bus sweeps down the street and I don�t see his eyes tracking mine from below. I sigh, give him up for dead, and settle into my seat.
He is sitting next to me.