Broken
One
It left with the snow that day, his indifference, and never came back. The rain was slate-gray, gunmetal-gray, the same shade of gray as the sky. Frosty, chilly, like sleet—but not quite. Inches above the ground, above rooftops, mist hovered: droplets leaping off the surfaces, splashing up, only to fall back down. Fat globules poured in spears and vertical chutes, and if you squinted and tilted your head you might have seen the individual raindrops as shafts of javelin. Goddess, are you so merciful that you couldn't send down a volley of real javelins? Punish the world for all it's worth. He sniffed and thought he detected the scent of wild rhododendrons somewhere within the rain, underneath the whiff of wet pavement.
The sound of downpour fascinated him: it gushed and roared, it pounded, it swept; but on closer scale, somewhere nearer, smaller, in a trickling undertone, the diminutive plicks and plocks of each raindrop were still audible. On porches, on windowsills, on puddles collected inside dips in the road, in spaces roof tiles once occupied. Above his head, it hammered with dull thuds, bouncing on his umbrella. Plickity-plickity-plick. Like bees banging on a windshield. When the heavens wept, its tears slithered everywhere.
"Boy, when it rains, it really does pour, doesn't it?" She stood under the striped yellow-and-white café awning. A grin stretched her mouth, a childish one; her cheeks bulged, like a chipmunk's. Nauseatingly cheerful: two-dimensional, almost. Strands of her hair, dry ones, curled up in wisps; the damp ones clung to her shirt, dark ribbons snaking round the yellowed fabric. On her sleeve a wet spot the shape of a diamond bloomed. The balls of her shoulders glistened. He considered shooing her away.
"You're going to catch a cold."
"I know. That's why I'm waiting for the rain to stop."
"Use an umbrella."
"I don't have one."
"Wait inside."
She laughed. "Are you trying to get rid of me?" The hem of her skirt was wet and she didn't even know it. She shifted her weight to one foot, and then to the other, hugging herself. The woman had no idea how to keep still.
"You're going to catch a cold," he said again.
"Cam, why don't you tell that to yourself? You're standing out there, and I'm safe under here."
He shrugged. If he ignored her long enough, she might take it as her cue to leave him alone. Thunder rumbled overhead, the kind that rolls from left to right, tumbling like an unfurled map, shrinking as it went. The clouds seemed to have thickened since he last looked up: cumulus, they were, wrinkled at the edges and plump in the middle. If clouds could talk, these ones would have said, Don't hold your breath, honey, we're not letting up. Ominous clouds, outlined black. Who needs silver linings, anyway?
"You know the gerbera seeds I bought ages ago?" she said. Still standing there, shifting her weight, catching raindrops on her palm. How persistent.
He nodded before he could stop himself; he hoped she didn't catch it. She did.
"They're in bloom now. Pretty things, aren't they?"
He shrugged again. One more and he would probably dislocate his shoulders. It wasn't that he found her irritating; if he had to be honest, she seemed like a nice person. The problem, then, lay in him. The thought made him smirk: It's not you, darling; it's me. I don't like the rain, and you're in it, therefore I don't like you.
"Aren't you cold out there?" Her head was tilted, her eyes squinting. Probably she had trouble seeing him clearly in the rain. She had to talk louder than normal, too, so her voice would carry over to where he stood; only she gauged their distance wrong and her voice sounded too loud to him, even with the deluge roaring all around them. "You could close up for the day, you know. Chances are nobody's out walking in this weather."
"You were."
"I'm an exception."
"Because you're not normal," he said under his breath.
Did she just stick her tongue out at him? "Heard that."
Devil's ears. Why couldn't she read his mind while she was at it? Depression might do her good; take away a hefty chunk of that waterproof sunniness and force-feed her the bleak realities of life.
She took a step closer. Now she stood at the edge of the awning. Her shoes were darkened by the puddles, her ankles splattered with mud and raindrop splashes. A waif left on someone's doorstep, whipped through puberty and plunked right in the middle of adulthood. There were times when he caught himself thinking that perhaps she wasn't done with childhood yet, that on cold nights she drew the blankets around her and wished that Mommy and Daddy were in the next room, sleeping.
"One more step and you're wet."
She lifted her shoulders and let them fall. "I know. It doesn't matter, you know, seeing I'm already half-drenched as it is."
Half-drenched his foot. Better half-drenched that fully drenched, but sense was one thing Lillian appeared to be lacking. If she didn't change out of her clothes anytime soon, she was liable to catch a cold. "Are you so stubborn that you'd risk getting sick just to annoy me?"
"I annoy you, Cam?"
This remark he chose to ignore. He turned his face heavenward and met the underside of his umbrella, discernible through the octopus-arm aluminum spokes, pockmarked by circular raindrops and rivulets trickling down the slope to the inverted-scallop edge. All on the other side of the membrane, all above, on the wet side, yet visible from below. It seemed symbolic, this translucence. Then again, everything seemed symbolic in the rain.
Heavenward. Why is there a heavenward but not a hellward? Or better yet, to complete the awkward family picture, a purgatoryward? This train of thought posed a problem: heavenward was up, hellward was down. Simple enough. But if purgatory does exist, where would it be? Certainly not in the clouds, where heaven curls up and naps, nor deep in the earth's belly, so close to the mouth of hell. In a mountaintop, perhaps, an overgrown courtyard, a ghost ship stranded at sea.
These kinds of thoughts would be his undoing.
A movement at the café window caught his attention. The rain made it hard to be sure, but he thought he saw a face there, long and angular, peering around the dusty floral curtains.
Of course. Howard. Who else would it be? Look at him, with his face pressed right up to the pane, his forehead and nose and palms and the pads of his fingers flattened to pale circles. Watching Cam and Lillian as if they were a play staged just for him, as if they were a private soap opera on a shoestring budget. He saw Cam looking and smiled; and the smile was bursting with implications. Cam hated implications more than he hated meddlesome folks. Oh, Howard, you big loveable oaf. Dear as a father, but nosy as hell.
Better get it over with, then. Cam walked over to Lillian. "Come on." He gave his umbrella a shake; raindrops flew off.
She was quiet, staring up at him. Her face was dewy, sheeny, covered by a thin film of moisture, denser around the forehead and nose; water droplets clung to her eyebrows but none on the lashes. But why would he look for droplets on her lashes? Such a romanticized thing to do—he blamed Howard again, with his cheap paperbacks left lying everywhere in the café. Take the rose-tinted glasses off and stare at the mud, at the garbage, at the heaps of filth that littered the world. Bitter, isn't it?
Lillian cleared her throat. Tiny thing, that woman; the same height as Laney. Oh, and now she'd gone still. Why stop your fidgeting, he thought, now that I can see you?
"Come on," he said again. "I don't have all day."
"Why?"
Howard's eyes were still on them. Cam knew it by instinct; he could see the grin in his mind, the carmine-painted Cheshire grin, widening and pushing up the fleshy milkmaid cheeks, teeth gleaming. A smile without a body, all eyes and mouth. Go on, it said, with ten fingers steepled underneath. What will you do next?
"Look. You have to get home, right?" She nodded. "Then I'll get you home."
She started fidgeting again. "You don't have to."
"Will you just get in here, please? Now."
Beggars can't be choosers. With a feeble glare she scurried over and pressed close to him, away from the rain dripping off the sides, keeping her elbows tucked in. She wasn't lying about being half-drenched, though. The tips of her hair were wet; they hung in clumps, limp and sodden, darker than the rest of the strands. The back of her skirt was soaked to the waist.
When she stepped under the penumbral dryness an invisible threshold was breached. A line was crossed, a border toed too deep, the gates pulled open. In an instant she was his friend, simply because they shared an umbrella too small for two, because the same ridged dome of periwinkle polyester hovered over their heads at the same time, because they were two shivering souls huddled from the rain, dividing the same scrap of waterless air between them. Who knew umbrellas could develop camaraderie? It had to be psychological.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice was close. Too close. "I owe you one."
He shrugged and felt his shoulder brush against hers. Now his sleeve was damp as well. Because hers was damp, so, too, was his: If you're cold, comrade, let me share your burden. In sickness and in health and all that. "You don't owe me anything," he said. "Come on."
They walked together with care, footsteps synchronized, avoiding puddles and miniature waterfalls pouring off the rooftops. All along he was aware of her right beside him, watching her feet, one of her hands clutching the umbrella stem. That was her elbow digging into his flank, and oh Goddess, his sleeve really was wet now: a lock of damp hair stuck to it.
What was the point of using an umbrella if he was going to get soaked all the same? He almost regretted his impulsive gallantry. Cam never liked the rain anyway—except when he was indoors.
"What made you so kind today?"
"Nosy people."
She peered up at him, one eyebrow raised. "I hope you're not referring to me."
"You're nosy, but no, I wasn't referring to you." She stepped on his foot, not altogether accidentally. It left a streak of mud on his shoe. He cleared his throat. "Howard was watching us back there."
"Ah."
"Don't ah me. You know what he was up to."
"Never said I didn't. Hey, watch it!" She gripped the umbrella stem and pulled it towards her; his left shoulder caught raindrops that soaked right through his shirt. "I'm drenched on this side. Why don't you let me hold the umbrella instead?"
"I'm taller."
"I can hold it high enough."
"I'm taller," he said again, brooking no argument. "And it's mine."
They reached her house half-sodden. His socks—his socks, by Goddess!—were moist and cold, squishy whenever he wriggled his toes. Disgusting thing. He hoped hers were just as damp, although he was never sure whether she wore socks or not. If she did, he hoped they were wet. If she didn't, he hoped her shoes were sloshing with rainwater.
"Thank you," she said, one hand on the doorknob. The smile she wore made her cheeks bulge. Chipmunk. The only thing missing was the oversized front teeth. "Without you, I wouldn't have made it home dry and in one piece."
He snorted in amusement. "I could do without the sarcasm, thanks."
"Really, though." She twisted the knob and pushed the door open. "I appreciate it. Thank you." And with that, she disappeared inside the house, leaving him standing in the rain, noticing for the first time how big his umbrella was without her.
a/n:
lol I have no idea what I'm doing.
