I drove until the car coughed and coasted to a stop. I got thirty miles after the gas light blinked on, so I couldn’t complain. Good efficiency for an American car. Then I threw the door open and started running. Three years of cross country in high school kept me moving at a solid pace, breathing in rhythm with my steps. Boom-chakka-boom-chakka-boom.
College freshman, that’s me. In physics, English, multicultural studies, and love. At least, that’s what I thought. The love part. I thought I was in love. I’m definitely in English and unfortunately definitely in multicultural studies where we’re constantly talking about how tolerant we need to be of each other. Seems to me we should be spending less time talking about tolerance and more time on the streets putting tolerance to work, but I guess you can’t grade ‘nice.’ I’m big on respecting differences, but bigger on doing something about it.
Which is what put me on the streets that night when the stars went red, shed bloody tears, and fell from the sky. Blankets for homeless—residentially challenged, I suppose—and I did it every year when the temperature started diving near freezing. Mom and Dad started it with us kids when I was too young to know it wasn’t part of the holidays, something that went along with turkey and Christmas lights hot enough to burn your house down. Those old lights went away, but we stuck with the blankets, so when I went away to college, I took the tradition with me and that had me out in the cold that night. When I saw the stars, one lady got my last three blankets and I started walking.
I wasn’t sure where I was going, but it was close. I knew it. Like an itch was waiting for me, just ahead, just in front of my skull, and I had to go catch the itch so I could have something to scratch. Maybe I was the only one who saw the sky weeping that night. I was the only one looking up, at least that I could see. The people walking by had their eyes on the ground, their eyes trapped in the cracks and pits, but maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe I was the only one who could see. Maybe the stars were bleeding just for me. I started running.
She was standing in shadow next to one of those sculptures they put downtown to confuse you—a block of twisting metal that might be a flame and might be the end of the world. She was shorter than me by an inch or two, her figure hidden in a heavy winter coat that took on the color of dried blood in the street lights. Her back was to me, her head bare, her dark hair falling straight to her shoulders. Ah, I thought. I’m not the only one. She’s looking at the stars, too.
I stopped, twenty feet behind her and three words away. Words I knew I’d be saying, because I’d been waiting to say them every year since I’d heard what it was to fall in love. I never wanted to say them before, never found anyone who wasn’t like pale cream in a pale world, whitewash on a colorless society. I ached for something real and powerful, someone that would demand me. All of me. Someone that would call me into commitment like a leap from the towering buildings that huddled around me—around her. She was my crusade, I knew, and I still hadn’t seen her face.
“I lo—”
“Don’t,” she said, not turning, her eyes still on the heavens. “It’s not time yet.”
I swallowed, put the words away, put my hands in my pockets.
“What’s your name?” she asked. Her voice was quiet, alto, a voice like smoke
“Gabriel,” I said.
“Really,” she said. I could hear the smile in her words. “That’s funny.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She sighed, still staring at the stars, then turned. The shadows around her erupted into black wings and dark eyes, a murder of crows taking to the air with a chatter of wings, their voices strangely silent. I saw pale eyes and pale skin beneath the dark hair that swept around her doll-like face—young, no older than me, but much older. She was beautiful and beyond beautiful, of course, the way the edge of a knife is lovely, the way the teeth of a dog are graceful. Her eyes met mine and my hands were fists in my pockets, my mind casting around me for a weapon—any weapon—that I could take up to fight for her. The armies of Babylon were with me, the walls of Jerusalem before me, and Hell was waiting for the sound of her call to set it loose.
She looked away, the feeling faded and I staggered, hopping on one foot and jerking my hands out of my pockets to catch my balance. My heart was racing but I could see the city streets around me again, the drunken laughter of bar hoppers making its way to my ears. I almost ran right then, fled like the runner from Marathon, but without any message of victory. Run, I would shout, escape, hide away. She’s coming. The only woman I will ever love is coming.
Instead I looked at her shoulder, not quite daring to find her eyes again with mine, as I asked, “Is there anything I can do for you? You know, until it’s time. I mean, I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but this is really new for me, and I don’t know how to—I want to do something for you. Please.”
I could feel her eyes on me and I knew I wasn’t good enough for her. I was fake leather and polyester, when she needed silk. I scrunched up my face against the cold, cold she almost didn’t seem to feel.
“This is new for me, too, Gabriel,” she said finally, and for the first time she sounded as young as she looked. “You could take me to dinner. I still need to eat, I think.”
“Sure,” I said.
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