I
The sky was creaking in a curious fashion; pale and slimy, an oyster's inside, a curling up afternoon. The traffic was terrible—smooth runs and absurd punctuations—and the seats would jolt with each stop. Where metal clenched hardened rubber pieces of paper were lodged: shiny receipts, fading pink bus tickets and the paintwork twisting with the day's new graffiti. Dial this number for home repairs, a half-finished tic-tac-toe game with the X side winning. The fleeting afternoon: peeling wallpaper sky.
Leo sat at the very back, watching the bus sail and jerk through the roads, the still lazy streets, with his legs jiggling. A familiar sensation like a bubble formed in him somewhere underneath his skin and collarbones; disjointed fright and nervousness, an incomplete sort of vagueness about him. To still the simmering thoughts he pulled a receipt from Max's Hardware from the lacing and folded it up: first a boat, flat out, an aeroplane, creases smoothed, a pick-and-kiss.
II
They came to him in glimpses; or rather, he came upon them in glimpses. A jagged streak of brown hair against a cheek, a muffled giggle, the flash of a scar in the hazel light. She wanted him; that much was obvious: palms crossed with silver and eyes like a new autumn day. Leo supposed Jason wanted her as well—and shuffling the numbers, he was the odd one out.
He imagined fingers lacing across the damp of the wet grass—secret murmurs tucked into collarbones when he wasn't listening, preparing dinner perhaps; raw tofu like waterlogged cardboard crisping golden in the pan. Sputtering oil providing the perfect cover up for furtive glances and unspoken words in a language that he did not understand, that he was never welcome to learn.
III
She reached for the basil and he watched the light twinkle in her auburn bun, kept up by a chewed pencil. From the corner of the kitchen the smell of incense from the coil keeping the mosquitoes away. The briefcase strewn on the sofa told him that Mister was home as well. He had always been a small child and he shrank with the shadows, watching the puppet show on the wall across from him. Mister taking off his tie and leaning over for a kiss.
"We got a letter," this was her voice—the wok hissed and he smelled the sizzling pork, sunflower oil and soy sauce. "And I had a phone."
"What about?"
"It was from the school, so who do you think? Marvin didn't give this much trouble, didn't he?" The hulking shadow, an exaggeration created by the orange setting sun, poked the spatula into the air. For emphasis: punctuation, italics, text in bold. "And Priya, before him?"
"Priya was a charm," Mister agreed, "And no complaints about Marvin."
Leo fiddled with a bit of rattan splintering off the main frame of the easy chair. Two strips came off in his fist and he drew them together, watching them bend. This was nice, this of-a-little-God feeling, this small form of control.
"Irresponsible," the fat was really frying now, he could hear it loud and thick, "irreverent, can do nothing on time, apparently. Why we had to take in such a little devil, I ask you!"
"Kids, am I right?"
"Hands off the plate. You go call him for dinner once I'm done with this baby corn. I'm not in the mood to talk to him. You know Adeline was here when I got the call? That smug look of satisfaction," the woman mimicked Adeline's voice in a high pitch, "The boy giving you trouble, Louisa? I can't imagine, Priya always seemed so lovely. Don't take this the wrong way but you might be losing your touch."
"Not letting that old hag get to you?"
"Get to me!" The sound of the ceramic bowls being stacked on the counter and a snide laugh. Leo imagined her tucking it into her husband's pocket like a stray cigarette—teenagers rolling their eyes at a parent's party. Those same cold eyes trickling disappointment into her voice as she spoke to him over dinner.
His clothes had just been hung out to dry that afternoon and there was still the smell of the soap on them, they were still damp and cold when he drew them in and stuffed them into his duffel. There was a miniature Santa sitting on the mantelpiece as he shut the door behind him. It's gleaming grin more like a leer in the dim streetlights eking in through the window netting. Coward.
IV.
He loved the roads of New Orleans. Even without a holiday on it was a perpetual party. Being small for his age, he would get carded at bars and clubs so he preferred sitting on steps, on benches. Strings of fairy lights hanging from the branches and the mellow, deep scratch of jazz music and the sort of old comfortable laughter that signifies a good end to a long day. A string of glass beads—purple, Mardi Gras leftovers—curled in a nook between two buildings.
There was an odd notion in him, a shuddering of bones perhaps: I know this place, don't I? Some part of me, some time ago. Or someone else. He caught a mosquito mid-flight and it smacked between the tip of his finger and the cement wall. Its blood smeared on the grey suddenly made him queasy, the light gilt of contentment had dissolved.
Who do you know after all? Asked the imp on his shoulder. Who knows about you? The lights in the trees were menacing now, and he thought about the old demons that the wretched Tia Callida had told him about in his childhood; they had returned. They waited in the trees, lined up in neat kindergarten lines, very precise. The imp grinned and blushed.
Got you.
V
He ordered a paper cone of hot fries but they came out limp and greasy, the oil staining the wax paper. He ate them anyway. This was a small country road, an old elbow of a thing.
There was a girl sitting on the steel bench opposite him, her fingers flying over the screen of her phone, a bit of a grin glazing her cheeks. She was pretty, he supposed, dark hair to her shoulders in a shag and skin approaching translucency so that he could see the Russian rivers under the white of her inner wrists. A closer glance would have shown him the make-up caked underneath her eyes, over the bruised-moon rogues that circled them. Her red lips were cracking at the corners and mascara flakes dotted her eyelids. The white wrists could have been bone. She must have been ten years older, so she wasn't a girl anymore.
"You lost, love?" She shouted and he could hear the tightness in her voice. Had she been a machine he could figure out how to fix it. But humans were trickier. What could be set right with a good flick and a spanner fell short in the face of blood and flesh.
Had she been a girl he would have no problem responding. He had fallen in love with a hundred girls. He could fall in love with seven in the time it took to get from one station to the other. He fell in love with such speed and boyish assurance that the word love needed a new substitute. Sometimes the English language falls short and he would taste the Spanish on his tongue—mother tongue, father, brother, sister. But he was in tune enough to know that underneath the gloss of his first impression lay decay, he could smell it on her.
His mother had had black curls spilling over her shoulders, tucked underneath a grimy cap, smelling of clinical-floral concoctions that bore a plastic wrap header of "rose tea shampoo". What does rose tea taste like? Faded, he decided—it tasted faded and sweet, nothing like the hospital. This made him feel like a crack in the wall, that hairline leak on an ice-skittered pond.
VI
New Orleans, we meet again. Like magic, hidden fairy lights in a tree. And that was him, wasn't it? In front of present day him… no, wait, this was weird, so strange. Old-Him had a dunce's cap on and he said Clark Gable's name and saved the day. To his right, on Hazel's face, he saw a wistful smile like a passing cloud.
"Sammy was brilliant, wasn't he?" She would say to him later on, doing the dishes. The cloud would return, heavy and rain-filled, the sun hovering behind it, eclipsed for a moment.
"Yeah," So his great-great-however-many-greats-grandfather: the shining knight, saviour with a grin and half a laugh. Still a slice of someone's soft heart half a century later. Share a bit of your luck, will you? Share a bit of the glimmer that you have. I want to make someone smile like that too. I want to make someone smile after a memory, not a five-minutes-and-forgotten joke; something lasting.
VII
Later on he would remember the best girl that he had ever met, remember her because her memory was fleeting; he wanted to remember her so bad but like her namesake, each reverberation she made was even more faded than the last.
What colour were Echo's eyes? He wondered—were they colourless? The sort of steel, gunmetal grey of a winter's lake? Did they look like the wind? Even her name on his tongue wasn't anything specific. When you said "Echo" you could be referring to a hundred things.
But he would know exactly which of those hundred things would come to mind. It was alright, then, because he knew.
VIII
A hot day, a bake in your boots day. The wind is dry, tumbling over thistle and heather, and your mother's smile is warm. The scent of grease in the air, the whir of the engine in your eardrums, this primal call, this lullaby. Rose tea shampoo and over in the kitchen, the banana fritters laid out underneath the protective mesh to cool. The lantern-lamp swinging from the ceiling over the porch is creaking and the sky is flat today. Your mother's smile at half past seven with the clouds fading into darkness. Do you remember that?
Remember that you were loved once, that you were loved so much and so deeply that every other word to you would be an imposter, a betrayal of this creaking lamp and this grease stained evening. Every other time you are forgotten take it out like an old handkerchief—unfold it, breathe the stained flower scent in the creases. Every time you are discarded, every time you are on the street, huddling under the rain—I am here and you can find me. I am the flicker of the streetlamp and the one who chased the imp away. I am the laughter through a New Orleans bar window, I am the warmth inside at winter time. You've got my hair, my eyes, and my smile. I'm not worried—you will know. Wipe those eyes, my love, and remember.