Together, they walked out the glass doors of Carver on to the steaming concrete, which glittered in the early evening sun. He squinted and put on the sunglasses she’d bought for him. She nodded with approval.
“I told you they’d look good on you.” He turned around and glanced at his reflection in the glass.
“They’re too round. I look like Blind Pew.”
“Picky, picky,” she clucked. “Trust me. You look cool.” She kissed him. “Really cool.” He drew her close.
“You’re the best,” he said. She grinned and kissed him again. “Does this mean you’ll finally have dinner with me?”
“What are you talking about? We eat together all the time.”
“Cereal at midnight isn’t what I had in mind. I mean during regular hours with people around. Waiters, menus, Caesar salad — are you familiar with the concept?”
“Babe…” she groaned and pulled away. “I told you.”
“Yeah, you did. But sooner or later this needs to be real. Do you really want to keep skulking around like this forever?” She looked at him quizzically.
“First, you’re the only guy I’ve ever dated who uses the word ‘skulk.’”
“What kind of morons have you been with?”
“Second, my dad knows about you, so it doesn’t apply to me. You’re the one who won’t tell your parents.”
“The only reason you won’t have dinner with me is because you need to be home for Charlotte, and you’re not ready for me to meet her yet. It’s been almost six months, Ray. Are you really worried I’ll make such a bad impression?”
“Hey,” she laid her hand on his arm. “You know that’s not true.” She looked at him steadily, her lips forming fragments of words, but remaining silent. “I just—,” she stopped and shrugged. “Not yet.”
“Okay,” he said. He strode to the bike rack and she followed him. She watched him unlock his Rimshot and shoulder his backpack.
“You really should wear a helmet.” He smiled and kissed her. “Please don’t be mad,” she said softly.
“I’m not. See you tonight,” he said.
It was perfect outside. The warm June evening sun was on his back, punctuated by cooling stripes of shade from the buildings overhead. He turned and rode down a wide neighborhood street lined with impeccable old homes, genteel and contented beneath the sweeping boughs of maple trees. Well-dressed people glided their gorgeous bikes out of the cyclists lane and beautiful cars hummed by smoothly before arriving at home for the weekend. They rolled past their carefully tended landscaping and disappeared down their quiet driveways.
He could see the two of them living there, next door to doctors, professors, and lawyers. They belonged in a place like that. They both possessed the talent to do well, and she was even a few years ahead of him. If he could refrain from verbally abusing anyone else, he’d leap right past the others in no time. Before long, they could be earning enough to furnish a decent down payment.
He glanced at his watch and sighed. It would be at least four hours till she was free again. He lived for their nightly transformation, when they once again assumed the form of lovers and forgot there was anything but the two of them in the whole world. She floated in wearing mysterious raiment he never saw any other time — jeans, a t-shirt, a hoodie — and removed that magic golden wand from her hair, loosening the fragrant waves to her shoulders. He liked her best that way. When she was dressed like that, it was easiest to believe it was all real.
But when the clock struck two or three in the morning, the haze evaporated. She twisted her hair back up with the pin, covered herself with her coat, and vanished. Sometimes she allowed the enchantment to last longer, falling asleep in his arms, then racing to her car at 5:45, minutes before Charlotte was awake.
He felt like he already knew the kid. She was almost five, starting kindergarten in the fall. She had brown curls, a cute face, an obsession with a show called Goobaloo Gully, and was his sole hindrance to getting everything he wanted.
—
When she arrived that night, she brought a paper bag. Without taking off her jacket, she set the bag on the counter and opened it, revealing three plastic containers.
“Roast chicken with squash and rice pilaf,” she announced, as she partially popped the lids and set the containers in the microwave to reheat. He looked at the pin tightly coiled in her hair, waiting for her to pluck it out. She took a fork out of his kitchen drawer and handed it to him.
“You didn’t have to do this. I told you I wasn’t mad.”
“Can’t a girl cook dinner for her boyfriend once in a while?”
“You bring me food all the time, Ray. I’ve never eaten so well in my life.” It was true. Mom never used enough salt. Reagan came close to him and put her arms around his neck.
“But these aren’t leftovers. I made this especially for you.” He narrowed his eyes skeptically. “It’s true! You know how I feel about squash.” The microwave beeped and she removed the food with her fingertips. “Hot, hot, hot,” she winced as she placed it on the countertop. She took off the lid from the squash and slid it toward him. “That’s all you,” she said, wrinkling her nose. He grinned and took a bite. It was savory, sweet, and tender, with some kind of herb he couldn’t name.
“It’s awesome,” he said, meaning it. He offered her a forkful, but she waved it away.
“You enjoy that. I actually can’t stay.” She might as well have punched him in the stomach. He dropped the fork, suddenly finding all food repulsive.
“Is she sick again?” He didn’t have the presence of mind to disguise his irritation, and his question didn’t have the usual tint of concern. She looked startled. She peered at him coldly and folded her arms, and all of her goodwill instantly vaporized.
“No, she’s not,” she answered. He wasn’t used to being the cause of her irritation.
“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I really wanted to see you tonight, that’s all. Is there anything wrong?”
“No.” She started toward the door. “I have some things to take care of, that’s all.”
“Ray,” he took her by the arm and turned her toward him. “I didn’t mean it. But this happens all the time. And I hate it. There’s always something getting in the way.”
“You mean my daughter?” she demanded.
“Of course not,” he said quickly. “But you’ve confined our entire relationship to exist in four hour installments. We’re always interrupted before—”
“You’re still getting what you want, aren’t you? Any guy I’ve known would have been thrilled with this arrangement.” She pulled her jacket tighter and picked her purse up from the floor. He grasped her waist and held her tightly. She stiffened against him.
“That’s not what I meant.” He tightened his hold on her. “Stop, please. I’m sorry. That came out wrong. Just once, I want you to stay the whole night. I can’t help it. I want you with me all the time. You can’t blame me for that,” he said gently. She searched his face, and he felt her body soften in his arms. “I want this to be real.” Her eyes dropped to the zipper on her jacket.
“I wish it could be,” she said. He was surprised when she kissed him more tenderly than she ever had. She put her arms around him again and clung to him, but there was something sad in her, something desperate. He could feel it.
He walked her down to her car. The night was velvet, damp and warm. After she closed her door, she rolled down the window.
“Will you call me in the morning?” she asked, stroking his arm. He forced out a breath, trying to ignore the sensation that every particle of his being was about to burst into flame. He managed to nod. “But I won’t be able to come over.” He lied and said he understood.
After she drove away, he crumpled the paper bag and jammed it in the trash can, then tossed the food in the fridge and slammed the door. Just like that, his apartment was empty, without any trace of her.
He leaned against the counter, staring out the window. Maybe it was a mistake. He should have known that a kid would complicate things. She was never going to be entirely his, not as long as she was forced to give half of herself away before she could even give him a thought. More than half. He was getting the scraps of her. The leftovers, he thought bitterly.
Of course it was a mistake. His parents would say it was sinful, his brother would say it was stupid. Of course it was. He would never have been so foolish and reckless otherwise.
Magic didn’t last forever, and cruel, harsh reality was already looming. Even with his tenuous claim on her affections, if she were forced to choose, he knew she would make the right decision.
—
He sat up and blinked hard, trying to refresh his stale contacts, which he had forgotten to take out last night. He yawned and peered at his watch. 8:06 a.m. The face of the summer sun was hooded with gray clouds, and the air coming through the open window was heavy with the smell of rain.
He checked his watch again, then texted her.
>> hey, you.
He got up and poured a bowl of cereal. He ate it dry, standing at the kitchen counter and staring out the window, listening to the sounds of the street below, and inhaling the morning air streaming through the open window. The whole day stretched ahead of him in an expansive blank. He checked his phone and saw nothing from her. He resented these interruptions, which seemed to come in stretches of two to three days, wherein they texted all day but never spoke on the phone. They exchanged memes and gifs and bantered back and forth, but nothing came of it.
He could go for a bike ride, but he needed some coffee first. The breeze rustled the pages taped to his wall, and one came loose and floated to the ground. He trudged over to pick it up. He studied the figures on the paper. He had done his best to capture a lovelorn couple from a sci-fi novel he’d read, but he had strategically hidden the faces to avoid having to draw them. Rugen, galactic ranger from the wild outer planets, and his childhood sweetheart Lyra, a tragically lovely prophetess who was doomed to be arrested by the corrupt authorities.
He sighed and pressed the drawing back into place on the wall. Rugen had never been faced with an adorable four year-old who managed to remotely insinuate herself into his life at the most inauspicious times. The worst thing he ever dealt with was losing an eye to an alien javelin, and Lyra still chose to fly to the farthest reaches of space with him.
He stared at Lyra, with her face pressed against Rugen’s chest, and her hair flowing down to her waist. He had learned to compensate for his mediocrity by adding detail where he could. Lyra’s hair was loose, each strand a careful stroke of pencil, and studded with braids and flowers. In the book, her hair was midnight black. But as he looked at the drawing, he could see her lift her chin, revealing leaf green eyes and pink lips dotted with amber freckles. Her hair became tipped with sunlight, and shone red and gold. Rugen could only stare, rendered speechless.
Casper opened his backpack and took out a mechanical pencil. He yanked out a notebook, then reconsidered. He needed his good paper. He went to his bed, knelt, and reached for the box. Sitting on the top of the stack was his largest sketchbook. He took it out, revealing the books beneath. A journal. Scores of novels. A few volumes on apologetics. A systematic theology Dad had given him. At the bottom, he glimpsed it. A thousand thin leaves, edged with gold. He looked at it for a moment. His fingers grazed the cover. The touch of the softened leather was so familiar, it may as well have been his own skin. Clamped shut beneath the weight of everything else, it stared back at him, silent and reproachful. He blinked away.
He shoved the box back under the bed and took his sketchbook to the counter. He opened his phone and found a recent picture of her. He picked up his pencil and began, glancing up frequently to check his work. He sketched out the boundaries of her face, adding hatch marks at points of latitude to mark her eyes, nose, and lips. In the photo, her face was slightly turned, offering an angle of her silhouette.
As the image took shape on the paper, even he could recognize how he was capturing the mischievous pursing of her lips, the distinct slope of her nose and the shape of her nostrils, and the glint in her laughing eyes. He found himself smiling as he worked, content and unaware of anything but the scratch of his pencil and the tapping of the rain.
When his phone buzzed, he glanced up and realized he’d been occupied for over two hours. He sat back and considered his work. It wasn’t bad. Not at all. Perhaps because he had used a visual reference rather than going off his imagination. Perhaps. He had taken a few sketching classes in college to fulfill his humanities requirement, and they had always been forced to draw real things, dull things, like apples and conch shells. He could spit out a decent rendering of a bowl of fruit as well as the next guy, but he had hated the tedium of it. Yet her face presented a challenge beyond mere mimicry — it wasn’t enough to achieve the proper placement and symmetry of her features. To capture her radiance required far more than soulless accuracy.
He had imbued the drawing with more of her essence than even the photo contained. He had somehow caught it, like a handful of sunlight, and with an ardent, adoring hand, wove it into the lines on the paper till the whole thing seemed lit from within. He needed to show it to her, to present it as an offering, a token of his affection.
He picked up his phone to read her text. His face fell. It was not a text, but only a notification about a software update. He opened their thread and checked to see when he had sent his text. She could be sleeping, though it would be highly unusual. Typically, she was compelled to be up and about before the dawn at Charlotte’s behest. He wished he could know what she did when she was away from him. She had so shrouded her world from him, he almost believed she existed on another plane entirely when they were apart. A princess locked in a tower.
The rain had intensified outside, cascading down the window in ropes. He yawned and remembered he hadn’t had any coffee. He opened the freezer and took out the bag of bargain pre-ground stuff and shook a cup or so into the coffee maker. He got dressed while it brewed, then stood at the kitchen sink and slugged it back without ceremony or relish. He winced as the bitterness numbed his entire palate, then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. After he spit, he regarded himself in the mirror. He still looked skinny, and he probably needed a haircut, though Reagan had told him she liked his hair longer. In fact, Reagan had complimented virtually every aspect of his appearance at one time or another. He hadn’t previously viewed himself as anyone particularly striking, but she was slowly convincing him. She told him nice things with such conviction he felt it would be ungenerous to distrust her. Why would she lie about him having the body of a Nordic warrior? That his eyes were not merely brown, but warm and deep, like the center of a sunflower? He was actually approaching the point where he half-believed he was half-worthy of her.
He put on his rain slicker and secured the folded drawing in an interior pocket. With all the fearless rigor of a galactic ranger, he heaved his bike to his shoulder with heroic ease and raced downstairs into the rain.
—
She had never told him where she lived, but it took all of five minutes of cursory internet sleuthing to find her address. He was amazed to learn that she existed fifteen minutes from his apartment, scarcely two miles away, at 25 Turin Street. Perhaps it shouldn’t have amazed him since she had revealed that they did in fact occupy the same city, but to realize that all of her ethereality were truly confined to a fixed place in the physical realm did not fail to astonish him. 25 was a good whole number. Not some prime nonsense like 23 or 31.
Heedless of the rain in his face, he squinted ahead, occasionally glancing down at his phone to check the next turn. The route took him past the city center, then out to the artsy quarters he had admired before. As he passed street after street, the houses seemed to deteriorate slightly. When he reached Turin Street, he stopped. He peered up at the sign, checked his phone, then glanced down the street. It couldn’t be right.
Shabby and crowded, the houses seemed to have overgrown like weeds till they shouldered into one another like crooked teeth. The entire street was listless and gray, clinging to chipped paint, dangling gutters, weedy lawns, and rusted chain link fences. Number 25 was supposed to be three houses down on his right. He hesitated, but felt compelled to continue, urged on by a blend of horror and shameful curiosity. He slowly pedaled forward, suddenly wishing he had left his Rimshot locked up safely in his apartment. He had never considered his apartment to be a particularly welcoming spot, but it appeared the locus of warmth and comfort to him at that moment.
25 was jammed next to 27, on the right side of a duplex. The front porch was sagging, cluttered with boxes, columns of stacked newspapers, pink plastic toys, and other assorted junk. He saw her Civic in the driveway, and there were a few watery lights in windows. He heaved his bike up the front steps and stood at the front door. He raised his hand to knock, then waited. It wasn’t too late. He could still turn around and leave, and she would never know he had been there.
He strained his ear for noises, listening for a clue of what he might expect to find if he entered. The rain was hissing loudly around him, but all other sound was muffled by his hood. He shrugged it off. The blithe chirp of a child’s voice, then Reagan’s voice responding, lowered and weary. On the other side of the door, within feet of him. His heart surged with longing. He was finally going to tear off the veil.
He knocked. The sound was dampened by the noise of the rain, so he knocked again, pounding harder. He listened. He heard some rumbling on the other side, as if something heavy were being moved. The door opened.
She stared at him, her brow furrowed, her mouth hanging open.
“Hey, babe,” he said, stepping toward her and kissing her. Her lips were slack and her breath was strong with the tang of alcohol. She staggered back, not with surprise. She caught herself against the door jamb and covered her mouth.
“What are you doing here?” she asked with effort, her words blurry and confused.
“I — I wanted to see you. I missed you,” he shrugged, his face turning red. She looked at him vaguely, as if from a hundred miles away.
“Sorry,” she murmured, attempting to collect herself. “It’s sort of, um,” she glanced around, then closed the door behind her and joined him on the porch. She stumbled into a cardboard box, then weakly shoved it with her foot. “It’s kind of a mess around here right now,” she said. She seemed almost ready to topple over. He reached out to steady her. “Thanks,” she said, leaning on his arm, then sinking against his shoulder. “Sorry,” she said again.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” she shrugged with a smile which became a yawn. “Nothing really.”
“Is Charlotte okay?” Before she could answer, the door opened behind her. Before him, in the flesh. Her brown hair was unkempt, and her face was speckled with crumbs.
“Mommygrandpascallingyou,” she sang, her blue eyes staring through Casper’s skull. It seemed to him that all children possessed that unsettling ability. Reagan nodded without turning around.
“I’ll be right there,” she answered over her shoulder. “You should probably go,” she said to him, but continued to cling to his arm.
“Is it your dad? Is he okay?” he asked.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.” Her words were clumsy, her weak smile completely failing to reassure him.
“Can I come in?” She shook her head. “Ray—,”
“I don’t want you to see.”
“See what?” he asked. “Something’s wrong. Tell me.”
“It’ll go away in a couple days. It always does. You should go.” Her head was heavy on his shoulder.
“Do you really want me to?” She nodded against his arm, then lifted her head. Her lip was trembling. Her eyes were weary, and her face was heavy and blanched of all of its color. He felt he was gazing at a stranger. She suddenly kissed him, sloppy and desperate, clutching him with all of her effort. But she was weak. He pulled back and held her up, searching her face for some recognition. “What’s going on, Ray?” he demanded. She dropped her gaze to the muddy porch floor. “This isn’t you,” he pleaded, wondering if he gave her a good, hard shake, he might also shake loose the strange disguise she had assumed. He was stricken by a frightening thought, like a sharp pinch at the nape of his neck. He stared at the woman before him. Her vigilant poise and careful posture were now rendered besotted and heedless. Her vibrant spirit seemed completely dissipated, and her ardent, tender face appeared fleshy and blank.
“This isn’t you,” he insisted. She raised her head unevenly, and tried to meet his eyes, but the attempt was poor and pitiful.
“Come in,” she said softly.
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Katie Bertola 