Everything belongs to S.M.
Some fucking pigeon flapped its wings in New York City, kicking up a whisper that became a breeze that became a gale that whipped its way across the ocean, fattening ripples into swells and rounding up rain clouds and scaring the living shit out of a few green yachtsmen before arriving, finally, with a big jolt in the port of Naples, Italy.
Left in its wake come morning: clean sidewalks, clear skies and surf crashing under the pier, all of it owing to a bird flitting about on the other side of the world. Or maybe it was one of those monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico, or a geisha girl who sneezed while putting on her foundation, or a flatulent Samoan guiding his skiff over the shallows. The point is big things-things as big as storms that turn Naples into Venice – start small.
I know a greater truth: that the seeming chaos of the small things is just a front. I know that, in fact, nothing comes by chance, that across-the-room smiles and flat tires and flight delays are never accidents. I know that my present — standing atop a castle wall, on top of the world, turning my eyes toward the big blue Mediterranean and smiling into the last of the wing-fired wind – is the endgame of my past, one long series of instants and moments strung together like beads. And I know that none of it was random.
Which means that all of it was part of a larger plan.
Which leaves you feeling deeply indebted to some fucking pigeon.
BPOV
Good Lord, is it hot! You'd never think some place as boring as Virginia could provide such a sweat-fest… but you'd be wrong. Somehow in my little corner of the world, we've abolished frivolous seasons like Spring and Fall. They're apparently unnecessary. The weather shifts from hot to cold so quickly that it often leaves me with whiplash. One week I'm clutching my backpack with shivering, white knuckles, braving the biting wind as best I can. The next week I'm digging my tank tops and shorts out of my trunk in the dank basement, silently pleading with God, Buddha, and Superman (or any other deity that might be listening) for my damn window unit to work.
A little breeze, that's all I ask. Perhaps that's too much.
I suppose it'd be easier to just carry the trunk up to my room and forgo the monotonous back and forth treks, but no matter how many times I try, I just can't keep my palms dry. There's no way in Heaven or Hell that I'd be able to lift the thing without blessed traction. I just took a shower half an hour ago and I'm already dripping sweat, mentally yearning for another.
How is it only June? How did that last bit of Junior year fly by so quickly? And where the hell was my nice, cool Spring?
At least I have a whole week to finish packing. I can't imagine trying to do this in haste – as if I'm not exhausted enough as it is from simply walking up stairs.
With a final load of summer clothes in hand, I make my last journey up the creaky basement steps, balancing my basket on my hip so that my free hand can reach the blinding pull-string light. The sudden loss of light and burning fibers in the bulb offer a brief relief from the heat and I amuse myself with the idea of being able to turn off the sun as easily.
Rose called about an hour ago saying she's all packed up and wondering when she could come over and help me. For the life of me, I can't figure out how she packed so quickly. She only started yesterday. She doesn't even pack light! The girl always packs way more than she'll ever need. Who in the hell goes for a semester abroad with a whole suitcase completely dedicated to shoes?
My best friend in the world, that's who.
My flop-flops echo down the long, dark hallway of my empty apartment, magnifying the cavernous expanse that I've become accustomed to. These huge brick Row Houses are a staple in historic Richmond. The large population and limited space have made long, narrow houses the norm. You'd be hard-pressed to find an apartment – or house for that matter – that wasn't this exact layout; one long, windowless hallway that runs the length of the house with all of the rooms on one side to accommodate the close quarters. I don't mind it too much though. My neighbors on both sides are coincidentally both elderly couples and I rarely see them. Noise isn't really an issue. I'm one of the lucky few.
I stop in the middle of the hall and fumble with the doorknob while trying not to drop my clothes. With a rough bump of the hip, the ancient wooden door gives way and finally allows me entrance. Shuffling my feet to feel for the hazardous piles of clothes on the floor, I finally make it to the bed and drop my basket… I've somehow missed the bed entirely though and the basket topples to the dusty wooden floor.
"Damnit!"
So much for packing clean clothes.
Still mumbling curses under my breath, I manage to rescue the last of my things and lay them out on my bed. My hands are already sweaty again.
Just before I'm about to sit down on my suitcase in a last ditch effort to close it, I hear the front door swing open with a mighty screech. If I ahdn't already known she'd be coming over, I'd be concerned. My neighborhood isn't known to be the absolute safest of places.
The clicking of heels that always accompanies my best friend resonates down the hall and slows in front of my door.
"Bells, you good?"
"Yeah Rose, I'm decent."
The door swings open to reveal my Rosalie, dressed in all of her stylish glory. Forget that it's sweltering outside, Rose has got on the tightest pair of jeans I've ever seen and a pair of fuck-me heels so high off the ground that they'd probably kill me should I ever become suicidal enough to attempt to walk in them.
"Really Rose? It's like a sauna today."
She smiles at me and shrugs. "Beauty is hard work, kiddo. But I do what I can. Besides, they make my ass look bangin'!" She grants me a little hip wiggle and a hearty laugh.
If I had any moisture left in my eyes, I'd roll them. But as it is, the air's already sucked me dry. I smile though and welcome her hug.
"Heaven forbid the men of Richmond see you in anything less than perfection."
She winks at me before walking over and flipping open the suitcase on my bed. She freezes for half a second and then turns to me with the most disbelieving look she's probably capable of.
"Really Bells? Your whole library? I'm sure there's at least a HANDFUL of books hidden somewhere in Vienna that you can read."
I duck my head and have the decency to look embarrassed. She knows how I am and I truly doubt she's all that surprised.
"You ready to take a break? I'm starving." She pats he flat stomach with her expertly manicured hands and stretches.
I quietly nod and grab my purse off my desk before following her back down the hallway to her waiting car outside.
Rose is a solid, confident driver, leaning back in the bucket seat of her red 1989 BMW E30 IS and driving one-fisted instead of being all scrunched up against the wheel with her hands at ten and two. She grew up around her mechanic father and older brother – needless to say, she knows her way around a car. She spent most of her childhood in his shop as the official shop mascot and soaked up any and all information she could. When he died a couple years ago from a heart attack, she picked up where he left off, helping out after class when she could.
She turns the A/C dial on full blast and turns to me in her seat. "Are you ready to have some fun?" she asks, and that seals the deal-not the question itself, but the accent. It could be anything and is, in fact, most things: Australian layered over southern England with a dash of northern Wales and a thin coating of southern belle poured on top. I've always thought mutt accents are the best of all. There are always stories behind them.
But first, food.
"I haven't had a thing all day," she says, and because it's already two in the afternoon, and because she's supermodel thin (she makes that bucket seat of hers look like a La-Z-Boy) you make it a priority. There's a new place downtown that she says serves a mean tofu steak burrito, which it makes up for by being on the way to the river. So she puts on some Iron Maiden, heads east on Broad Street, and flips open her phone because she can't remember exactly where this place is.
"Can you please give me the number for Swingers?" she says. Only it comes out more like, "Can you please give me tha numbah for Swingahs?" and the operator on the other end of the satellite transmission doesn't know from oogily-doogily what Rose is going on about.
"Swingahs. I need the numbah for Swingahs. In Richmond, Virginia."
Nope. Still not catching it.
"Swingahs."
Sorry.
"Oh, for the love of…" Rose turns down the music and turns up the Yankee, retrieving the accent that got her through college.
"Suh-wing-rrrs," she says.
That does the trick. Rose makes her way smartly through traffic to a parking spot downtown, and then to a booth in an air-conditioned restaurant – the finish of a relatively short series of instants and moments, just a couple more beads on the string.
Still, as she disappears behind a large plastic menu that could easily pass for an interstate map, I can't help but smile at her. After everything that's happened in her life, Rose could always find the beauty in simplicity. She was my role model. I was learning though… my wounds were just much fresher than hers. I'd need more practice.
Rose's mom loved her dad, but they were young, and young love hardly ever lasts. Paul and Olivia had two children, first Dean, then Rose… and then Olivia was called away by her other loves. She was a back-up dancer to some Australian band that even I've never heard of, which lent her a kind of trivial fame as well as a prodigious drug habit. Olivia left the family when Rose was four years old, and she left the living before Rose was eight.
Her mom's death pushed her through what she calls "a very sad childhood," clinging to the hem of her dad's wandering spirit. From her birthplace in Sydney, Rose was shuffled off to Cambridge, to Norfolk, to storm-lashed Anglesey – an island in the Irish Sea where she bided her time by picking up Welsh (Daw haul ar fryn, babe!) – until, when she was fifteen, she was told to pack her bags once more, this time for good. The family was headed for America, the land of promise and fresh starts.
But Rose didn't see it that way, at least not at first. She hated the constant uprooting, but there are always reasons, just as there are always signs. Not a voice booming down from the heavens or a bright flash of light in the sky, but whispers that, looking back on it now, stand out like cymbal crashes in a silent cathedral.
Paul found a job quickly enough as a grease monkey at a Porsche shop and I found Rose. Both were matches made in Heaven. Paul became fast friends with his boss as well as a trusted confidant and protégé. I found a best friend that let me be me, the dorky, awkward, clumsy girl that I am. When I fell short, she held me up. When she started slipping, I was a willing shoulder to cry on.
Growing up, Rose found comfort in the limelight that her blossoming beauty and charm that was afforded her. I found mine in the endless world of literature (…and Star Wars). She found herself doing all the stupid things that really happen in acting school. She pretended to be tree, pretended to walk on eggshells, pretended she was her favorite animal. And then, when she was sixteen, she popped into an audition for a jeans commercial, where she was told to pretend she was hailing a cab while bending over to pick up some imaginary shopping bags and sticking her ass into the air.
There were a lot of girls like her there, blonde, busty and beautiful. Carbon copies of the ideal. But Rose had an edge, a small thing really: She can whistle like a good goddamn, not like an old fart on his front porch putting his knife to a length of hickory, but like someone whose life depends on hailing that cab. So there was that, and the fact that the architecture of her ass is the envy of every girl in school, which won her the first paying gig of her life.
I'd asked her once why she never pursued an acting carrier after the commercial.
"I love being admired, Bells, but not for money. It was fun to do once, but I'd much rather grace the world with my presence for free than ask to be paid for it. It's like charity. Alms giving. I'm helping the world. Doing good for the betterment of mankind." She'd always laugh and change the subject, not wanting to linger too long on that particular topic.
Snapping out of my reverie, I look back over at Rose, looking out of the shop window with a simple smile brightening her face. "Isn't life weird?" she says, "Imagine… if anything in our lives had gone even slightly different, we wouldn't be here today, getting ready to fly to Europe next week."
"Rose, I doubt our pasts would have been able to stop us. We're pretty damn stubborn."
After a few beers and a couple tacos, we pay our bill and make our way out the door, back into the unforgiving sun.
"Belle Isle?"
"Yeah, sounds good. Class is finally out for the semester. I bet all the cute boys are out in full force!"
Belle Isle is a long, narrow, almost wild island in the middle of the James River. To one side is a series of small rapids and large flat rocks that are popular among the local college students for sun bathing and just hanging around on while enjoying a cool beer in the middle of the city. To the other side of the island is a long abandoned pump house that locals rumor to be haunted.
I laugh with Rose and readjust my purse. After grabbing a few towels out of her trunk, we meander south for a couple blocks and cut through a few cobblestone alleys to the river. It's still early enough in the summer that the river water is cold and my enflamed skins yearns for it.
We cross the footbridge and make our way down the island's nature trail to our favorite spot: secluded, sheltered from the flow of the rapids, and wondrously shady. In all honesty, it's a gift from God. A sanctuary in the middle of this hot, sticky, overcrowded Southern city.
Not having swimsuits, Rose and I strip down to our bra and panties and ease into the frigid water. Immediately I feel better. After sighing in unison and relaxing in silence for a couple minutes, Rose finally lifts her head from the boulder it's been laying on and lifts her hand to shield the sun from her squinting eyes.
"So, you gonna try to hook up with an unsuspecting, cute European boy?"
I laugh indulgently at her and close my eyes, for once enjoying the heat, now that I have to amazing contrast of the fresh river water. "Rose, you know the answer to that question already, so why even ask?" I know I sound defensive, but damnit, she should know better.
"Just hopeful I guess…"
I frown a bit but I know she can't see my expression. I know she's just being a concerned friend, but I really just need time on that front. Not enough time has passed. I'm not ready.
I can hear her sigh quietly and reach into her bag for her sunglasses.
"Anyway, I don't know if I've said it enough yet, but thanks for helping me get this scholarship. We both know my grades weren't going to be good enough to study German abroad. You really saved my ass, Bells. I owe you."
"Pfft. Like I'd really go without you." I smile at her and mouth a silent No problem, hun. This seems to satisfy her and stave off another 'Thank You' til later. She's always been much too hard on herself. Sure, my grammar was better, be she was better at speaking. I took my time, thought things out. She was more of a take-the-bull-by-the-horns kind of girl. We'd always complemented each other nicely that way. If it hadn't been a written examination, I would have been sunk. I just got lucky this time.
This time next week, we'd be on our separate planes (she patched together an odd network of connecting flights in an effort to save money… I had frequent flier miles out the wazoo so my tickets were free anyway) on our way to Vienna. I, for one, was not going to be sad to go.
After a few more minutes of silence, Rose sat back up and reached into her bag again. "You up for a little music? A little something to get us in the mood?"
I eyed her and let out a giggle. "Get us in the mood for what exactly?"
Rose clicked her tongue at me and rolled her eyes in faux-agitation. "Austria, Bella. Stop being a perv."
"Hey! I didn't say anything pervy. YOUR mind went there. Not mine."
"Pfft. Whatever." She pulled her iPod and its little speakers out of her bag and placed them high up on the boulder so that there wouldn't be a chance of it falling in. After some quick shuffling, she must have found what she wanted because she pressed play and turned to me with an expression that mirrored the cat that ate the canary.
Seconds later, I finally heard the tell-tale beat that signaled the beginning of one of my favorite songs. I smiled at Rose and laughed as she dipped her shades low and started singing in a very convincing Peter Fox impression. The rest of our conversation become nothing more than loud, intentionally off-key sing-a-longs and fits of laughter. It was the perfect song for a day like today and I was so looking forward to the semester ahead of us. This was going to be the time of our lives and I wouldn't want to share it with anyone else.
Song is "Fieber" by Peter Fox
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