Opposite days. Two opposite people. They shared a thing. A heart, a chest filled with gold. A heart of gold. Or something darker. It didn't matter. The bond, this connection, it remained still on the floor, between the rooms, where he slept and she slept. It linked them in ways they didn't enjoy. Untrustworthy. One day, it showed up. This bond that screwed them over.
She was resilient. He didn't fight. Love was a bit like falling through the ice. You had to stay calm. Don't panic. Don't panic! He told himself this, over and over. He thought of telling Dembe, telling Luli, that please watch out for me because I cannot do it for myself. Where had his mind gone? It was unclear. If he were to venture a guess he would say it had gone up the stairs at a brownstone mansion, let itself in through the door, gone up the creaking stairs, pausing to listen for the sleeping breaths, then continuing up, into the bedroom. His mind had lied down in the bed, blissful from the warmth of her.
His mind. But not his body. His body remained in the archaic rooms, the quiet floors. He was in despicable flats and dusty houses. He was without her.
She was at the office, in the box. The mailbox, postbox. She was inside. He was outside. Every now and then he joined her in the lifeless landscape. Her bedshaped body, the stubborn set of her shoulders, everything, it allured him. Eluding him. As well as her. She dodged him with the frown of someone who had looked forward to dodging a bullet. She ducked under his outstretched arm. Refusing to become involved, with him. If they were an item, she was intent on smashing it.
His mind was shattered. No other way to describe it.
Her mind was whole. It was an intently wound ball of yarn, an unending frizz. It bothered her. And she was about to slip up. There was a need to change her course. She tried to watch out for the holes in the ground but still ended up falling. There were potholes in the tarmac and she hit every single one.
He did look dangerous. She waited to be shot, she waited for a beam to be cut off and hit her in the head. His file was full of things that seemed improbable, and yet they'd happened. She wasn't about to fall for it. She refused to be caught in the web, in the quiet storm of his actions. Not one of those agents, deprived of real action that decided that they could turn this one around. That they could help this one criminal, that the speech about right and wrong would actually work, it would set them straight. And it would save them.
She wasn't like that.
This man. Dangerous. He was her paycheck. Her future in the agency had showed up neatly dressed in a three-piece suit. The devil was in the details. But this one time, it seemed the devil was on her doorstep, looking in.