We were walking like not-so-long lost strangers through sort of familiar streets, as in, I knew these streets, the storefronts with blinking neon and where each public trashcan would be—but we were walking like we were lost or with absolutely no kind of destination, which was status-quo for me anyway.
I shifted the fishbowl to my other arm and Bella quickly linked her arm into my now free arm.
"Is that okay?" she asked, suddenly bashful.
"Yeah."
"Okay," she said, clearing her throat, "we start with the obvious."
"I have no idea what the obvious is."
"Kids," she said, shrugging a shoulder, and it was then I realized that while I was wandering aimlessly, Bella had been navigating us toward the park.
We stood on the sidewalk, my arms crossed over my chest and Bella's fingers in the chain-link fence, watching a little girl stand on top of the slide, backward, raising her arms.
"What's she doing?" I asked.
"Anything…being the queen," Bella said, staring at the kid, like she was demonstrating brain surgery.
"The queen of what?"
"Everything," Bella said. "When I was little, like, five? I used to like to stand on the highest point of anything anywhere. Our couch, the slide, or I'd stack boxes or milk crates, the kitchen table, chairs at school—whatever. I wanted to be the queen."
"What about now?"
Bella let out a dry, whisper of a laugh.
"Everything is shit," she said with a smile, staring at the kid. "When you're a kid, you don't know that, so you want to lord over everything, because everything is great. But I can't think of one thing I want to be the queen of."
The little girl smiled and shouted something in a shriek to the minions below her, and I noticed a couple of older kids to the far left, sitting on the top of a picnic table, smoking a bowl.
"There's something so refreshing about seeing someone little like that," Bella said, nodding to the little girl. "She has no idea how crappy things can be. About the world. As long as the sun is out and that slide is there, she knows the world is perfect. I miss that."
Then the kid on top of the slide looked directly at me and Bella, lifted her chubby little hand and flipped us the bird.
"Get outta here, pervert!" she shrieked, pointing right at me. "Pervert!"
"Are you talking to me?" I shouted back.
"Asshole!"
The kid couldn't have been older than six, the pot smokers started laughing and I let Bella lead me away.
"That was supposed to inspire hope?" I asked over her incessant laughter. "Kindergarteners are jaded and you can't even stop by a park without being a pervert anymore," I went on. "I swear, there's nothing good anywhere."
Bella kept on laughing, all the way until we turned the corner and the light of day had officially faded.
"Where were that brat's parents, anyway?" I went on.
"I think she can take care of herself just fine," Bella said, the burst into giggles again.
"Don't you see it?" I asked, pausing in my steps, and Bella turned to look at me, but kept walking, backward now.
"See what?"
"How terrible that was? How maybe it's not just me thinking everything is crappy, but that maybe everything is just crappy."
"Maybe."
"But you're laughing," I pointed out.
"Exactly. Most things will be what you make of them. I'd kill for some ice cream right now."
"What does that even mean?" I asked.
"It was pretty much a massive hint that you should take me out for ice cream."
"Not that—the most things will be what you make of them comment."
"Just…okay, yeah, the kid didn't have that child-like innocence or whatever. My intended point was lost…but it was funny. It was refreshing, so it was still something good that happened as a result, even if it wasn't the outcome I was going for. I still made it into something good."
She linked her arm through mine again and asked about how it was meeting Elvis Costello.
"When I was little, my mom had the record," she said, "the one with Alison on it."
"Mine did, too."
"Good. He was a genius, right?"
"Right."
"So, Edward Cullen, sing it. Alison."
"I can't even remember—are you fucking kidding me?" I asked, pausing in front of Crane's Cones, and the Out of Business sign glaring at us. "You can't even get an ice cream cone because of the crappy economy anymore."
And just like that, I was so fucking tired. My shoulders felt heavy, my head felt heavy and all I really felt like I could do was crawl into bed. It felt like being hit with a brick made of Ambien.
"You are always bitching," Bella said, rolling her eyes. "You are like the worlds biggest cry-baby."
"Look, this was nice. I'm going back to bed while I still have one. Can you get home or where ever you're going okay?"
Bella grabbed a hold of my sweater and turned, so she was in front of the Out of Business sign and I was in front of her. And then she started to sing. Loudly.
"Edward Cullllllen. I know this world is killing youuuuu."
"Are you Costello'ing me?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.
She smiled and went up on her tip-toes, leaning in to me, then whispered.
"But my aim is true."
With that, she kissed the tip of my nose and turned to go, leaving me standing there in front of a broke down ice cream shop with Costello lyrics stuck in my head.
xxxx
I stood at the door to my apartment, freezing cold and exhausted, digging through my pockets…again. Like I somehow missed the brass key-ring with thirty nine useless keys the first four times I searched.
I slumped face first into the door and let my forehead bounce off of it seven or eight times, until my eyes closed and all I could do was stand there and breathe.
"Need these?"
I rolled my forehead on the metal door and blinked at Bella, holding my keys out on one finger.
"Did you steal my keys?"
"And then I followed you."
"Why do you do this?" I asked, not moving to take the keys, rolling my head back to forward, the palms of my hands on the door now.
"Usually," Bella said, leaning against the dank yellowing wall, "when I took things, they were from a really good place that I couldn't let go of. All that stuff from your store? I just wanted reminders—well. To bring that place with me everywhere."
"My keys?"
"You're a good place. And I wanted to have to rescue you. And I wanted to see you some more."
"You do harm in order to do good."
"That's the way with most things. Will you let me in?"
"Will you steal?"
"If I love the place, I might."
"It's violating to do that, you know. It's not right. It's—"
"I know. But maybe if you say I can come back anytime, I won't steal," she grinned, then sighed. "No. I won't take anything. I actually don't steal anymore at all. Maybe just your heart."
"Bella, I'm really not…you're…looking for someone I'm not. I can't be decent for anyone right now—"
"You have no idea what I'm looking for," she said, then thrust the keys at me, so I let her in.
After she looked through everything in my bookshelf while I lay down on my side in the bed, Bella sat down with her legs folded underneath her and twisted her fingers together.
"People who love you should hold you when you're at your worst," she declared.
"What?"
"You said your girlfriend left you. And I can tell. There are gaps in everything here. It's like a life interrupted."
I supposed it was. When Tanya left, she took everything she contributed, there were gaps in the DVD rack, the bookshelf, one half of the dresser top was cluttered with my stuff, the other side completely bare.
"Just in case no one ever said it, that's how it should be. People shouldn't leave when you go downhill. They should stay and hold you."
"I'm like a dead weight right now. I wouldn't expect anyone to go down with me," I said, my scratchy chin rubbing my balled up knuckles when I spoke.
"I have this guy, or whatever," Bella said, her eyes floating to the ceiling. "And he is always like, trying to set me on the right path…and sometimes, it's really good. I mean, I've needed the guidance before or whatever. But he's always trying to like…fix me? Or he's saying how my flaws are these big, therapy-necessary things and if I change this or that, I'll be happy."
"Like what? Stealing?"
"I haven't stole anything in a long time," she huffed. "But that was one thing, yeah. And I did correct that. I mean just…Bella, you don't cry about that, that's not cry worthy. Or Bella, wouldn't you be happier with sheets on the bed? Or Bella, if you could forgive your mom for leaving you'd be happier…and maybe all of that is true, right?" she asked.
I shrugged the shoulder I wasn't laying on.
"But you know what he's never done?"
"What?" I asked.
"He's never just held on. He's never just thought…maybe she is happy. And last week, it occurred to me…these aren't flaws I have. These are just things he doesn't like. And it's like, everything about me. So. Maybe the best thing to do is once in awhile, let people be and just hold them up without trying to do anything but…be there."
"Yeah," I scratched out over this building lump in my throat, because what she said was so true, I was literally going to cry.
"I used to steal and wet the bed," Bella said with an odd laugh. "I did weird shit like that as a kid, and eventually, my mom left because of it. I know, now, it was just her being a crappy parent. A little kid can't drive a good mother away. I know that. But still," she took in a deep breath, shaking her head a little, "she said, Bella…if you keep this crap up, no one is going to want to be your friend. No one is going to want you at a slumber party if you pee on their sheets and take their stuff," Bella sang, quietly recalling her mother. "And then she said she couldn't take it. She didn't get why I was so….off. And she left. And up until then, I had no idea love and acceptance were conditional. And so I don't ever, ever do that."
I lifted my arm and she quickly flopped underneath it, still curled up.
"If you're fucked up," she whispered, in to the v-neck of my shirt, "it's okay to stay that way for awhile."
"Okay."
