The man pushes his bicycle up the hill, his eyes looking to the front wheel and his breath entering and exiting his mouth steadily with the turning of the spokes. He plants each foot carefully, heavy with the end of another day as he nears his apartment by the park. A child sits alone on a swing at the playground, and a dog is barking frantically at a passing jogger. The man’s mailbox is stuffed with promotional coupons. He misses the days when he would open a mailbox and find letters from old friends and family, but no one posts letters anymore. The pile is left to sit there, to be feed for the snails.
In his small apartment the man sets down his bag at the door and leans his bicycle against the first wall. There is no one there to greet him. He stands at the entrance, surveying the short hallway blankly as his thoughts gather, trying to find purpose in the coming evening. A photograph of his brother hanging on the wall catches him as he walks past. He wonders if a year will ever come where he will wish him a happy birthday again. The man decides to wash his dishes before he must decide on something else. As he shifts through the pile in his sink, he looks out the kitchen window and notices the child he passed earlier as he walked home, still sitting on the swing at the playground. He sets the plates in his hand down and observes him in the distance, until worry for the boy begins to bother him.
The man approaches the ten-year-old boy on the swing calmly so as not to scare him. The boy hangs in the swing, gently swaying with the light movement of the wind and his body’s momentum, eyes cast down to the grass. Half an hour has passed since the man first saw him from his window. The park on the hill is occupied most days with families looking for a pleasant afternoon together, sheltered within a grove of tall green trees on one side while a view of the surrounding valley faces the other. The park is empty today. The shortening winter days cast a firm sentence over that place and most families will wait for spring before they return to idle away days together.
The man stops a meter away from the boy, who still looks down at the grass in front of him.
“Excuse me. Hey. Kid. Are you OK?”
The boy hangs in his swing listlessly, his breath steady, but without any indication that he has heard the man.
“Where are your parents? Son, can you hear me?”
Son? the man wonders. He does not feel old enough to refer to anyone in such a patronizing way, but he feels worried about the boy. He hunches down to meet the boy’s eyes.
“You’ve been here a long time now. Where’s your folks?”
The boy’s lips move silently, opening and closing, before coming to a rest. The man hesitates.
“Are you lost? It’s OK if you’re lost. I’ve been lost many times before. I still get lost most days if I don’t think about where it is I want to go.” The man is rambling now, but he finds the boy is making him nervous. “But the most important thing to do if you’re lost is to look for something that’s familiar. I don’t see anybody around though, and I’ve noticed you from my window. You’ve been here for quite a while now by yourself, haven’t you? How did you get here?”
The boy’s lips have begun to move again, silently. The only sounds on that hill now are the man’s voice and the slow creak of the swing under the boy’s weight. The man sits cross-legged on the grass in front of the boy, and says nothing.
“Well…I don’t really know what to do here, kid. I need to get you home. I’ve seen you and now I’m pretty sure you’re out here alone, and it would just be irresponsible of me to just turn around now and pretend that I never saw you. So let’s just hang out here for a little while, see if anyone—” The man stops speaking mid-sentence. He is focusing on the boy’s lips now, moving silently as before, then stopping, seemingly in mid-sentence. The man continues to speak to the boy about nothing in particular, and observes the boy’s lips, beginning to move once more in their silent manner. “Huh.” The man takes a cigarette from his breast pocket and puts it in his mouth without lighting it. He stares hard at the boy’s unfocused face, searching for some familiar thing to trigger his memory. He fixes his attention on the boy’s mouth and proceeds to make a series of unusual movements with his lips, as if he were a stage performer loosening up his face for a show. The boy’s face is still.
The man lights his cigarette and takes a long drag. “Hell, kid.” The boy silently echoes the man. The two remain sitting there for an hour, neither of them making a sound. The man smokes three cigarettes in that time. No one else approaches the park.
“Well look, I don’t know what to do here. I’m not gonna leave you here alone, so come on. You can hang out at my place until someone comes by.”
The man moves to leave and reaches casually for the boy’s hand. He leaves it hanging underneath the boy’s face, waiting for him to reach for it. He takes the child’s hand in his own when he realizes the boy will not respond to him. The boy looks up sharply at the man, and he sees the boy’s eyes clearly for the first time, focused directly on his own. The man releases the boy’s hand.
“Woah, sorry. Look I just don’t want to leave you here alone,” the man says and the boy’s lips echo. This time he can hear the boy’s voice, maybe. Or is he imagining it now? The boy’s eyes are locked to his now, and no matter what the man thinks or wills he can feel his head and his vision filling with the color of the boy’s eyes, gray and blue and cool and murky, until he feels that same murkiness stretch down his throat and into his lungs, and in every heartbeat he feels the boy’s eyes pulse through every one of his nerves, until the man has no desire to stay there a second longer. He turns to leave and walks to his apartment uninterrupted without looking back to the park, or the swing, or the boy.
He closes the door to the apartment sharply. A silence fills every empty space in the room. The haze that filled his body moments earlier vanishes slowly and the man feels released from a long-held sentence. Whatever uneasiness—or fear?— that he held over the past hour is a vacant memory and he is re-possessed by the sense of obligation which had driven him earlier. He picks up his phone and dials the local police station. Twenty minutes pass before a squad car arrives at the park. The man holds an un-sipped cup of tea at his window while he observes two police officers, a man and a woman, approach the boy. It is too far for any sound to reach the man’s ears. After two minutes the boy hops off his long-held swing and reaches for the female officer’s hand. The two walk straight for the squad car and the man loses sight of the boy as he enters the vehicle. The squad car drives away, and the man is left standing at his window, the silence in his room louder now than when he woke in the morning.
The man stares without focus toward the park, his tea still and untouched in his hand. Outside the day shifts into a hazy golden orange as the sun sinks lower behind the surrounding mountains. The line of parked cars along the winding road below reflect the sun’s dying brilliance like a string of burning incandescent jewels. From inside his apartment and behind the filthy grime of his kitchen window all the man sees is a gray sky and an empty playground.
The next day the man wakes slowly, fading into the morning. He opens his eyes, his body still. His ceiling looks different to him. Long moments pass in confusion until the pattern above him catches up to his memories. This is still his ceiling. His vision focuses on the details and, finally, the gray shades on the once cream-colored surface. His body jolts with fleeting urgency. His walls, his portraits, the neglected piles of clothes scattered on the floor, his hands—everything he sees has been sapped of its color.
He stands in the center of his room for five minutes, unmoving, his eyes reaching for every detail before him. Desperate resignation grips him, until he feels the absence of color in all his thoughts, and he moves to the kitchen slowly and prepares a cup of tea. A gray cup of tea. Two pieces of warm gray toast. Gray butter scraped across. All as if this is how he has always seen the world. A few sips of tea at the window, looking at the playground in the distance. A mother and her three children at the slide. He has always seen this gray slide outside his window. The hills covered in lush gray verdancy.
The man looks at the date on his phone. Thursday, he reads. The man showers and changes and collects his helmet and his bag and his brown bicycle—he thinks it’s supposed to be brown, though now he’s not quite sure—and stops in the hall. He looks at the photo. “Happy birthday,” he mutters, and exits into the gray Thursday morning outside.
It is late morning and the city is gripped by the creeping chill of the first winter month of the year. The man pedals past clusters of mothers and children wrapped in scarves and woolly hats, young women in black tights and boots, men striding along with a second coat over their business jackets. He stops at a traffic light on a narrow street behind three vehicles and looks up. The gray traffic light gives way to the gray traffic light and traffic resumes its movement forward. The man notes to himself to pay special care at intersections.
At this hour the majority of the city is shuttered inside offices and schools, leaving the streets free of activity. The man stops at the coffee cart near the record shop and buys a cup of black coffee. He sits on a bench that has been dipped in a vat of graffiti and stares absently at the school across the street as he sips. The yard is full of children at play. Swarms of students flow steadily down a slide and pockets of girls hopscotch across the pavement. Three boys are huddled in one corner silently conferring with themselves as the rest of the schoolyard ignores them.
The man bins the cup after drinking half its contents and enters the record shop. Two young women in ripped tights and oversized coats are thumbing through “classic rock” at a lazy pace. The store clerk hunches over his register scribbling into a thick notebook of sorts. The man nods at the clerk with the surety of someone who is meant to be there. The clerk is occupied with his ledger and ignores the man’s presence.
“Getting cold, isn’t it?” the man says out loud, as a breath more than a statement. The clerk’s pen continues to scratch at his page without acknowledgement. Radiohead drones out through the shop speakers, Yorke warbling into the ears of the shop’s denizens, I’m a reasonable man, get off my case.
The man inspects the alternative section, scanning through cases to see if the record shop has copies of albums he already owns. Relief settles over him as he comes across a copy of Turn on the Bright Lights. He looks for more obscure groups, knowing he won’t find them. The man stops, surprised to find an album he owns.
After years of waiting, nothing came.
It is not surprising that this album is currently in stock in this shop, but that, as he stares past the jewel case to the front booklet, he recognizes the coffee stain his brother left when he came to visit him in college. The corners of the front cover are worn in exactly the same spots. Only its color is missing, and he cannot remember what that was.
I was asleep in a hammock, I was dreaming that I was a web. I was a dreamcatcheadfhantinfinf…
The man’s head loosens itself away from the album. The song overhead dives into a deep pool and the lyrics float further away from his ears, until all the man can hear is a muffled buzz pulsing with a steady rhythm. He turns to look at the two women in the classic rock section. They seem engaged in a silent conversation, but as the overhead tune falls into an indiscernible haze, he focuses on the two girls’ mouths, their lips continuing the anthem silently in time, their eyes locked to each other…hanging from the window of a minivan. I’d say that I was all alone.
I’d say that I was all alone.
I’d say that I was all alone.
But I will never be born as a scorpion. The two girls nod their heads in time with the rhythm of the silent pulse drifting overhead while they continue to quietly mouth their secret serenade. The man smiles as he sees color in the two girls’ eyes. Blue, a deep murky blue, like the boy from the swing. “The same blue eyes,” he says, too quiet for anyone to hear. You’re gonna be OK come morning, find your legs and find your horns.
The record shop’s silence snaps into a chime which halts the inaudible tune’s murkiness and the silent duo’s crooning and the man’s thoughts of the boy from yesterday. A second chime interrupts. He pulls the phone from his pocket and reads the two incoming texts from Beth. Jason, you OK? Didn’t show up to work. Still having lunch?
“Ah hell.” The man looks up. The two girls are flipping through another stack of albums, lips still, one looking to the other to show her findings. He catches another glimpse of blue. He feels a great urge to say something to them, something important maybe. This could be the last time he ever sees these two girls for the rest of his life, and he suddenly never wants them to forget that they were together in this record shop on a cold Thursday morning. He knows he has only this moment. He puts the familiar album back into its place in the stack and walks out of the record store, hands tucked deeply into his jacket.
“Stay warm,” the clerk mumbles as he leaves.
The man arrives late to lunch and finds Beth at a small table in the corner with a book in hand.
“Heya.”
“Heya.” She smiles, and in that smile the man feels a redness expand in small integers across his chest. “You OK? Hell of a day to call in sick.”
“Yeah, wasn’t quite feeling right this morning.” He slides his bag underneath the chair and sits, leaning into the table to look at the sugar container. White sugar, he thinks. The man suddenly wishes for snow. “It sure is cold isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty chilly. I finally get to wear that scarf Rita made for me. It’s pretty comfortable. Here, feel it.” Beth reaches across the table with the end of her scarf lifted to the man’s face and gently scrubs the end over his nose. As she pulls the wool away he thinks to himself that it should be a red scarf.
“My nose feels more comfortable already,” the man says, smiling. He doesn’t tell her that he didn’t feel a thing. He looks down at his hands, moving slowly without aim across the table to feel the surface. He sits silently for a few seconds, looking at them, pressing hard. His skin waits patiently for the table’s touch. He does not feel it. “Hey, look I can’t stay long actually. I don’t think I’m going to go into work today. Or tomorrow. I’ll let Phil know.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“It’s nothing, I just…it’s nothing to worry about. I just really can’t seem to focus today. I think I need a break.” The waitress approaches the table with a notepad in hand.
“You folks ready to order?”
“I’ll get a coffee and the pasta please.” Beth and the waitress turn to look at the man and the man is focused on his pressing hands, his body leaning more and more into the table.
“Jason?”
The man looks up. “Uh, just a coffee. Thanks.”
The waitress looks to the man’s hands and the man removes them from the table, feeling like a child caught in an un-permitted act. The man turns his attention back to the white sugar. She walks away at a quick pace.
“Something’s bothering you.”
The man looks up to Beth’s hand, the fingers intertwined in the wool of her scarf, a soft trail leading up and up and around the thin line of her neck, a long stretch of skin that rises prominently from that scarf and holds the most honest face he has ever known. “Something was bothering me earlier,” he says, directly into the deepest part of her eyes, “but now that I’m looking at you I can’t really remember what it was.”
“Oh fuck off with that.” They both laugh. “Always with the sappy shit.”
“I can’t help what you do to me sometimes.” The waitress comes with a pot of coffee and the two sit quietly for a time. Beth lowers her face to the steaming cup as if she is listening to her coffee whisper secrets to her. He smiles as he watches her glasses fog at the cup’s rising heat. A few moments pass before he realizes the scarf looks red to him. “You know it really is lovely.”
Her eyes snap up over her foggy lenses as she hugs the wool to her chest. “Hey you had your chance. What was it you said to Rita again?”
“My neck is too manly for any scarf to contain.”
“Mm-hm.”
He sinks into his chair, into a quieter smile. “It just looks really nice on you.”
Her eyes disappear again behind her clouded glasses. “Any word from your brother?” The man looks down at the black pool in his cup, his lips tight. “We should go somewhere,” she says quickly. “I can ask for next Friday off, we can take the whole weekend and go a little south. Drive for a bit.”
“And come back.” The soft reddening wool now hangs around her shoulders with an aged lack of color.
“Of course ‘and come back’. We’ve got shit to do.”
“Yeah.”
Beth sits up. “Or we could keep driving. Not turn around, just keep driving until we run out of gas. I’ll have to ask someone to keep an eye on my fish tank for an indefinite amount of time, so we’d need to tell at least one person who is halfway responsible with fish.”
“No, of course we’d come back. There’s nowhere else to go anyway.” The man is gripping his coffee tightly. Beth reaches across and pulls his hands away from his cup and toward her.
“Talk to me Jason.”
The man looks everywhere now except directly at Beth. He wants to see the color of her eyes. If he looks up and does not see green looking back at him he knows he will feel the hope in him wither into a poison that will kill him. He needs to see the color of her eyes.
“Beth, I woke up this morning and I don’t know where I’m supposed to be. I don’t know where I’m going.” He is squeezing her hands hard now, hoping desperately to feel any warmth come through her skin and into his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be here right now.” The man tries to stand up but Beth holds on to his hands.
“Jason, no one knows where they’re going. OK? We’ve talked about this before. I don’t know where I’m going either. But wherever it is we’re not doing it alone, right? We need each other. That’s the only way anyone ever makes it through alright.”
“It’s different now. Something’s happened, I can’t see things right anymore. There was this thing at the park and now I can actually feel it. Like something’s started to eat away at my life and there’s no stopping it until it’s gone. It…feels heavy inside me.” He takes his hands away from hers and stands. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Look, I’m not…” He hangs, trying to find what it is he wants to say. “I just have to be alone for a bit.”
“You don’t have to leave.”
The man looks down at Beth, at that clean beauty with eyes that were green just yesterday, green that has gone missing and taken with it a part of what the man knew was as common as the waking of the morning. The only thing he wants in that moment is for her to reach across again with her scarf and rub his nose with it, and see her smile.
“I just need to walk it off. I’ll be OK. Promise.” He shoots Beth a quick smile and leaves the cafe. Beth buries her nose in her scarf as she continues to stare into the empty space the man had just occupied, wondering if she should follow him and make sure that he doesn’t do anything stupid and wondering if he knew that he left without paying for his coffee.
The man’s breath floats about his face in a steady pulse as he walks uphill toward his home. From the clearing just before the park the man spies the last bright remnants of the sun which now light the sky a sheer white, and the gray and the black which swarms its retreat, heralding the failure of the day. The leaves around him shiver at the threatening frost. Beads of still water are settling their weight upon each strand of tree, bush, and grass, slowly, and come the next morning the earth will be heavier with the tears of dark. As the man approaches the park, he sees a figure sitting still on one of the swings, alone.
The man leaves his bicycle aside on the grass and stops in front of the boy. “I thought I was never going to see you again.”
The boy looks up at the man with cold, blue eyes. Across his chest the man feels a heavy expansive breath filling up that cavity, expanding well beyond the reaches of flesh, bone, blood, breaking through the limits of his lungs and dribbling into his stomach, his neck, his head. The man steps behind the boy.
He cautiously puts his hands on the boy’s shoulders and pushes against the back of his cotton shirt. The swing moves easily under the minimal weight. The hinges on the swing creak with a cold groan, to and fro, sighing relief as if they’ve sat still for years, waiting for someone to come and bring movement to that young blue-eyed sentry. The man wants to speak to the boy and opens his mouth several times. No words come. Each attempt is preceded by an emotion that fills the man’s heart, an emotion trying to escape a long-held prison, emotions long over-gripped and over-worn. The man sighs long and keeps pushing.
The boy’s legs start kicking forward as he climbs higher with every swing. The boy laughs quietly once, and the man is ripped from his self-absorption and focuses on the back of the boy’s head as it flies away from him, and back. The man pushes harder, and the boy soars high. His laughter rolls into the air and fills the man’s ears. He is younger now, and hot under a summer sun in California on a flat playground, pushing his younger brother higher and higher and hearing his brother scream in delight. The man smiles. His movements are heavy. His lungs still roil with the burning of that thing that is now trapped inside him, still slowing him, still pressing onto the temples of his head, coating the inside of his throat like a sludge, his limbs mired and thick, making each push harder and harder and harder. But the boy keeps laughing, and his brother keeps laughing, and the smile on the man’s face comes easy.
“Just wanted a push, huh?”