Kim began humming.
She'd never hummed in her life. She'd whistle, sing or the occasional "dum-de-dum-dum" or "La-da-da-dee-da" to go along with the beat to whatever song she was listening to. But humming? She'd never hummed an actual tune.
The only humming she'd done was the monotone hum that belonged back in high school, when she and her best friend Gabrielle Finch would hum to annoy a teacher, any teacher, particularly substitutes. It would just be a very long, very flat, drawn out "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."
During a point in class when the whole room was quiet—whether during a study hall or a silent read, Kim would take a deep breath and keep that single note for as long as she could.
"Kimber-Leigh Addison," the teacher would reprimand. "Stop that!"
"Stop what?" Kim asked quickly and innocently as Gabrielle would pick up the hum.
"The humming."
"I don't hear a humming." At that, Gabrielle would stop.
The teacher would quiet down for a little bit, tug at their ear to make sure they were hearing correctly and then lay off. Kim would start again: "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."
"Kimber-Leigh," the stern reprimand came again. "If I hear that one more time…"
"I'm not doing it," whined Kim as Gabrielle started one more time. "I swear I'm not doing it!"
"I heard the hum come fro—Gabrielle Finch!"
"What?" Gabrielle asked, exasperated. Kim picked up the hum again.
"You're humming too."
"Am not."
"Kimber-Leigh!"
"What?" Kim asked again, passing the hum to her friend.
And this would continue until Kim and Gabrielle got bored with the game or they both received detention. Usually it was the latter.
But these days, Kim found herself humming as she mopped, scrubbed or swept Harbor Lights, to Waltz of the Flowers or Beethoven's Second or The Rose Adagio from Sleeping Beauty. All it took was a walk into Logan's office.
"Hey, Logan," she called as she entered the penthouse. "You chillin'?"
"In the office," Logan said, his voice muffled and his words slightly distorted.
Faintly, Kim could hear soft music. "What are we listening to today?" she asked, entering the office. "Mozart? Bach?"
"Nope," Logan replied, not taking his eyes of the computer screen. He turned up the volume a little on his stereo.
Kim listened closely. "It sounds like opera," she crinkled her nose.
"It is opera," Logan removed the pencil that had been clenched between his teeth. "It's French."
Oh, Kim thought. That's why he sounded weird. That damn pencil. Kim listened to the opera for awhile. It did sound French. "Who's singing?"
"Who, the primadonna?"
"The who?"
"The actress, I mean. Whenever there's an opera the female star is called the 'primadonna'."
"Oh. Yeah."
He cocked his head in thought and listened. "Laura Wisbauer"
"Oh." Kim had no idea who that was.
"It's Les Miserables; that means 'the miserable' in French. It's originally a dramatic play by Victor Hugo. He also wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
"Quasimodo," Kim nodded with feign understanding. She had no idea that The Hunchback of Notre Dame was a book. All she knew of was the animated Disney version.
"It was made into a stage musical, put on Broadway for many years. In 2008 it was made into an opera, completely in French. Little did they know what an omen it would prove to be. The Pulse hit a little bit after Les Mis debuted on Broadway. Too bad, too. Big names were involved. Laura Wisbauer, Stearns Matthews, Sacha Kazan…"
"Did you see it live?" asked Kim, who'd never been to a live production of anything outside of a school musical.
"Yeah, I did. But not willingly. I was dragged kicking and screaming. But at least I knew enough French to understand what was going on."
"You speak French?
"And Italian. Also a little Spanish and German to get by. My mother made me take French in school and stuck with it through college. I was on the French honor society, too."
There was a pause in dialogue as Laura Wisbauer's silken operatic voice filled the gap of silence:
"Sous la pluie le trottoir brille comme l'arget…toutes les lumiéres son brumeuses dans la riviére…"
"What's she saying?" Kim asked.
"'In the rain, the pavement shines like silver…all the lights are misty in the river'."
"That's pretty. Who is she singing to?"
Logan shrugged. "No one in particular. Eponine—the character Laura plays— loves this guy Marius—Stearns Matthews' character, who doesn't love her but instead loves this other girl Cosette, played by Sacha Kazan, who was somewhat of Eponine's adopted sister."
"Je l'aime mais tous les jours j'apprends. Toute ma vie que je seulement ai fait semblant…"
"'I love him but every day I'm learning. All my life I've only been pretending'," Logan translated quickly. "Listen to this last line."
"Je l'aime…je l'aime…je l'aime mais seulement sur mon propre," Laura Wisbauer sang, ending the operetta.
"'I love him but only on my own.'"
"How sad," Kim sighed.
"You're telling me. It's an awful feeling, isn't it?"
"What is?" Kim's heart skipped a beat..
"Loving someone who doesn't love you." Logan sat back in his office chair and shot Kim a painfully intimate look.
Kim thought back to childhood crushes and high school flings with certain boys who only became bigger boys. She'd never really loved them so much that it hurt. That was unknown territory for her. Not wanting to lose Logan's attention, she just nodded, "Yes, once."
"That's all it takes. Once. One person."
Using an analogy from an old movie, she blurted without thinking, "Penguins…penguins have one mate for it's entire existence. For the rest of its life."
Logan gave a light chuckle. "You know your Drew Barrymore."
Kim turned red. "I didn't think you knew that movie."
"It's one of the few I do know." Logan tipped back the chair as far as it would go and put his hands behind his head. He sighed, puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the air as if blowing up a balloon. "You wanna drink?"
Kim gave a tiny shrug. "Sure."
"Great. Hand me my wheelchair?"
Looking around the room, Kim frantically searched for the said chair. She brought it over to him and watched Logan ease himself out of his leather office chair and into the wheelchair.
"Oh don't look so shocked," he chastised her as he wheeled away.
"I'm sorry," Kim looked down for a second. "I didn't mean to stare."
"Never knew a paraplegic before?"
"No," she admitted. "Well, my grandma, before she died…she was in a wheelchair. She had really bad osteoporosis."
"I'm sorry to hear that. How long ago did she die?"
Kim wandered out of the office and into the kitchen. "Not long. About three years. They sent her body back to Spain after the funeral."
"Why wasn't she buried in America?" Logan handed Kim a cup of coffee.
Kim shrugged. "I guess she felt she'd always be a part of her in Spain. It was in her will that she was to be buried in Pamplona, her hometown. My grandfather died about eight years before she did and he too was sent there. Her parents and siblings were there. She had six children buried there too. She had a life there, I guess."
"I don't want to be buried with my parents," Logan declared.
"Why?"
"I'd rather be cremated and shot into outer space. That way I can spend eternity among the stars."
"That sounds romantic," Kim commented between sips. She cocked her head and twirled some stray strands of hair between her fingers. "I never thought about how I'd spend eternity. Probably in heaven with Kurt Cobain. Or reincarnated into the body of a dove."
"Why a dove?" Logan stared into the swirling brown liquid in his mug, yearning for a shot of bourbon.
"They're a symbol of peace. Plus they can fly. I can be among the stars too."
Logan smiled a tight-lipped smile.
"Do you ever visit your girlfriend?" Kim blurted before she could stop herself.
Logan flinched slightly. "Visit?"
"You know…her…grave? Sorry—dumb; dumb question."
"No…it's…no, I don't. I don't even visit my own parents," Logan sighed. "I thought, why bother? Why linger over the past?"
"Why do you have their pictures up then?"
"So I don't have to visit the graves," Logan replied matter-of-factly. "I'm sorry, that was rude…I'm just…the wound is still open, you know?"
"Yeah. I know," Kim reached over and squeezed his hand. "When my dad died, I didn't like to visit his grave either because it reminded me that he was gone. But it gets better over time. That's what my Aunt Daphne said. And it works. Time heals everything, she said."
"Was she right?"
Kim scoffed, "How should I know? I never listen to Aunt Daphne." Then she laughed and punched Logan lightly on the arm. "I have to get back to Harbor Lights. See ya later."