007 – Lessons from Rain

Ro threw out plans of how they would go about sneaking into the Antioch campus and tracking down Dr Smart. Zee half-heartedly listened, and kept trying to tell her that he saw no reason to speak with Dr Smart in person. Ro seemed to sense that he wasn't listening to her, and so, in turn, didn't listen to him. At least, on their way back to Yellow Springs, Ro did listen to one proposition.

'Let's do nothing until tomorrow, okay?'

She agreed with a frown and a nod of her head. They had done too much already, and squeezing more breaking and entering into a six-hour period had roots in ridiculousness. Just because they were fugitives already didn't mean they had to become as stupid as most criminals.

'Can we at least drive by the campus, find the building where his office is? That won't hurt anything.'

Too curious himself, Zee trundled the Audi through town, curving around its wide, tree-lined streets and eyeing all the brick campus buildings with caution and care. Ro used the computer to access the college's website, along with a map, which aided their unguided tour. They wound up on the outskirts of town, well beyond the limits of college campus. Large, ominous trees and a haggardly garden met Ro outside her rolled-down window.

'What is this place?'

Zee slowed down. With no cars behind them, and the road deserted, he could afford a stop. Behind a large iron fence falling to ruin and dripping with both dead and thriving greenery, a mansion in disrepair howled at them silently. To Zee, who was beginning to understand the feeling of all things, thought the house in a great amount of pain. Fashioned of brick and more ancient than most, it would take more than a couple of tornadoes and a straight-line wind to take it out. It would be there longer than Zee cared to think about, always just lingering at the threshold of total dilapidation. Ornery kids had long ago discoloured its exterior with spray paint. The windows were panels of rotting wood. There was a sizeable hole in one section of the roof, near the front. And a chimney had collapsed while another had been taken over by swallows.

'Looks like the kind of place Selig might've grown up in,' commented Ro. 'What's the sign say on the front door?'

Zee had already zoomed in to read it. 'The sign says: Humans Beware! Ghosts Ahead!'

Ro laughed, high-pitched and feminine. 'It's the local haunted house! I bet this place is a gas and a half at Halloween!'

A car suddenly came up behind them, and Zee moved ahead. Ro watched the house vanish around the curve. She settled back into the seat, the computer paid attention to again.

'I bet you Dr Smart's been to that house a few times,' Zee suddenly spoke.

'Why's that?'

'He's a scientist, Ro.'

'No, he's a professor.'

'But you know scientists, don't you?'

She pouted at him. 'I liked you better when you didn't practice all this—what's it called?—curricolocushion?'

'Circumlocution.'

'Yeah, what you said. Back then, you just said what you wanted to say. No filtering. No jiving it up with your fancy new collection of adverbs. Get on with it already, slagger.'

'Scientists like to have hobbies.'

She sniggered at this. 'If that's true, I'd love to know what Selig's was. Maybe he collected renegade Infiltration Units. What's Dr Smart's?' But it suddenly dawned on Ro what it was, without any further aid from Zee. Her eyes widened. 'You mean—he's a ghost hunter? A parapsychologist? No way!'

'That's what he talked about in his e-mails.'

'Killer shuai!' But her eyes wouldn't leave the computer screen. Zee, driving, couldn't see what she was up to. 'Hey, turn right up here. Then take the second left.'

'Why?'

'You'll see.'

About three miles later, he did see. It would've been impossible not to see. At the start of a narrow, badly paved road, the trees were thin and far apart, but grew exponentially thicker and thicker. The countryside was so quiet that he heard the unmistakable sounds of rushing water ahead. Then, suddenly, as if the trees couldn't grow any thicker, they parted to make room for a blocky, barn-like structure the colour of a robin's breast.

The car crawled to a halt. Zee stared.

'That's not something you see every day.'

'No, it isn't,' giggled Ro, delighted. She hopped from the car before Zee had a chance to turn off its engine. He soon joined her. They stood at one another's side, facing the canopied covered bridge.

Ro nodded at it, as though having some long-interred suffering finally reaching an end. 'First one, you know.'

'First one?' He couldn't take his eyes from it.

'First one we've ever actually seen with our own working eyes, I mean, not just in a picture. I've always wanted to see one. Haven't you? You hear so much about them. Especially when we're passing through Iowa. But, you know, Ohio seems to have a fair few itself. They restore them. I don't know who, exactly, just people. I don't think they have a Covered Bridge Restoration and Preservation Society or something, a local chapter of the Rotary or Lions club. No, just average people taking care of them, chipped in by the local historical societies. This one,' she scanned it again, 'belongs to the county, not Yellow Springs. It's on public land.'

Zee glared at her. In a purple and yellow plaid shirt, threadbare blue jean cut-offs, with plain white canvas trainers, and her sun-bleached hair in two braids behind her ears, she looked like a local talking of her habitat.

'Take a moment, Zee. Relax yourself. I think we're going to be alone here for a while.' She walked towards the bridge, pointing up as she went.

For the first time, he noticed the sun had gone, replaced by a large, unhappy blue-grey cloud. As if acting on cue, a roll of thunder came across the green hillsides and grumbled overhead, then diminished behind him. If the clouds had anything to say about it, the bridge would be tourist-free for at least the next fifteen minutes, judging by how quickly the storm seemed to be moving. Ro had already taken shelter beneath the bridge. He could hear her feet scraping along the wooden planks. She gazed at the walls like one observing fine paintings. The premiere drop of cool rain fell upon his forehead, and the wind rustled his coal hair and toyed with the hem of his shirt. Ro seemed greatly unfazed by the approaching weather. He watched her in awe and fascination. Some women, he'd noticed, were observed best from a distance. Ro had a lovely shape that was at its best perspective several feet away. But, even up close, she had unique qualities fit to smitten any man. Most notably were the sun freckles on the bridge of her nose. Only appearing at the break of spring, lasting until the middle of October, Zee thought he could stare at them for hours. And every day as spring came on and the sun grew nearer, every morning he could pick out the newly formed light brown spots. For six months out of the year, those freckles were his as much as Ro's.

The rain became torrential. Ro, realising Zee hadn't come inside, turned towards the car. Alarmed to see him standing there, as though the gap sprung in heaven brought nothing more than a charming morning mist, Ro dashed to the end of the bridge.

'What are you doing?' she scolded. 'If you rust up out there, I'm not going to ask one of the neighbours for an oil can! Get in here! Now!'

Moving did seem a good idea. Suppose someone happened to come by and wondered what he was doing in the rain? His hologram could take on the illusion of being wetted by falling droplets—the changes in the density of the air calculated this for him—but he knew his presence in the clashes of thunder, lighting, and rain would be enough to give any of adequate mind pause. He shuffled his feet ever forward, dipping into muddy holes already transformed to puddles. Finally reaching Ro, just under the overhang, he tilted forward so that his wet hair might drip on her. Ro pretended to ignore it. She was close enough to smell the changes in him from the rain. It blended harmoniously with the outline of his holomorphic disguise, bringing about the scent of gently warmed electronics, a brisk cologne of ozone and hot internal gears. The odour comforted. For a flash quick as the lightning across the emblazoned sky, she wondered what it would be like never to know that scent again, to live the rest of her life without it. But an inner conscious told her that living without Zee was an option, a choice she may have to make someday—just not that day—and never in the rain.

Ro tensed when he put his hands against the slope of her shoulders. His chin went to her forehead. She felt his dampness then, engulfed in the scents of it. Her own sense of self seemed to dribble away, disintegrated, as Zee crossed lines of her personal space without invitation. One of his hands wandered to the base of her neck, capturing her sprig of slowly unwinding hair, up to her scalp and finally down across her nose.

'Ro?'

She opened her eyes, awareness of his closeness living the contradictory line between frightening and enthralling. 'Yeah?'

'What does the rain smell like?'

'Clean,' she said, voice just next door to a whisper. 'Clear. Fresh. Like the ocean. Like morning. Like you smell right now.' Her eyes flickered across his dampened face, a mere inch from hers, down to his lips, then back to his eyes. 'You can't smell it?'

He shook his head and drew away. 'No . . . No, I can't. A slight change,' he explained, stepping back into the rain anew, 'but that is all.' With his palms up and arms stretched at his sides, he set back his head and winced into the drops.

'You're crazy.' She tried to make it sound scoffing, failing miserably. It sounded envious.

'Come on,' he beckoned, smiling. 'Come into the rain with me.'

'No.'

'Please?'

'No, you slagger. Rain is—is wet. And kind of cold. I never dance in the rain until June, at the earliest.'

'Petty excuses. You know I can keep you warm.'

He had his arm towards her, fingers twiddling a coax. Ro watched the rivulets of rain slip from his palm and die in the damp dirt road. She didn't want to be close to him again. The thought of it gave her shivers, leaving the feeling of a cool breeze wrapping around her body. She wouldn't go. Zee came back to her, and, for a fleeting moment Ro stood triumphant, thinking she'd won. Instead, he took her by the elbows, almost forcefully, and drew her to the falling sky. Resigned to becoming soaking wet, Ro stood there in front of him, ogling at his audacity, his assertiveness, and the peculiar, unfamiliar way he watched her. With her wrists held loosely by his hands, he closed the space between them. The top of her head, her shoulders, the back of her neck by now were soaked, and a sudden rush of wind finished off all parts of her that might have once been dry. Finally, Zee let go of her hands, and the only part of him that touched her was his cheek pushed against hers. She felt more wonderment now than fear. Zee had never done this before. He'd never wanted to be close to her. He'd never wanted to stand with her in the rain. He'd never wanted to know what rain smelled like.

'Now that you're wet,' he said, tilting so his speech caught in her ear, 'I know what the rain smells like. It changes you. It's the changes I know. In those differences lies the truth.' He leaned away, almost abruptly, and noticed her lips trembling, her shoulders twitching. 'You're shivering.'

'I'm—I'm cold. I told you,' she swallowed an attack of disabling nerves, 'the rain is cold. I think I'll go back in the car. It'll stop soon.'

'Your shivering?'

'No,' she didn't turn back to look at him, 'the rain.'

Once inside, Ro went immediately to the computer. As soon as she had the e-mail addressed, her fingers stiffened over the keyboard. What was she supposed to write? Glancing out the windscreen, she saw Zee now inside the bridge, meandering down it slowly. She remembered the musty scent of its insides, the dust grinding against the soles of her shoes—and the way his voice tickled and her body trembled.

What was Zee thinking? She hardly knew, could hardly guess. Rapidly, her fingers moved across the keys, typing out the first words that came to her head. She sent the message off without proofreading it. There was no time for editing, as the rain had lightened, the thunder had grown dim, and Zee approached the vehicle.