I hear a hundred different voices when all I want to hear is yours.
What did you say to me?
How did I reply?
Can you say it again,
One more time?
# # #
The tavern was a lively place where people gathered. Couples on dates sat at small tables. Love-searching singles sat at the bar. A band played live music. The singer wore a red dress and silk gloves.
The florist's name was Rita. She had a mole by her mouth. Her hair fell in a single plait down her back. She was a couple years older than Eren and afraid of passing her prime. Flowers so easily passed their prime, she explained. They bloom, fresh with color, their petals so taut and new. It was a shame what time did. The florist sighed. She put her chin in her hands with her elbows on the table. They ordered another round of drinks.
The man playing the piano filled in the music's empty spaces with jazzy trills. The florist began snapping her fingers. Others snapped, too, knowing what to do. Eren snapped his fingers, following. The music moved the singer, slowly, from her wrists to her ankles. Then she told them all about the woes of lost love.
"She's good, isn't she?" the florist said. "She's famous around here. We call her Lady Velvet."
Couples rose from the tables. People at the bar watched the dancing couples for a while before ordering more drinks. Eren finished his. He drained a third. He ordered a fourth. The florist kept looking at him. He didn't know what it meant. Then Eren put his feet under him. His feet took him to the restroom. He knocked into a hatted man sitting at the bar and apologized.
Eren returned to the florist. An unfamiliar hatless man stood over her.
"Can I help you with something?"
The hatless man measured Eren up. "How come you don't dance with her? Can't you tell she wants to dance?"
Eren turned to the florist. "Do you want to dance?"
The florist angled away from Eren. She put her chin in her hands. "No."
"Look what you did. You made her upset," the hatless man said "Where'd you find this guy? Under a rock? Let me take you—"
Eren made himself taller. He said, "Leave." The man didn't leave. Eren looked down at him, curious about what he'd do. Eren watched the man's arms and hands. He felt a ticking in his own body as his blood rushed to various muscles, getting ready. The man didn't move. Then, without another word, he stumbled away, grabbing to tables and chairs to keep his feet under him.
Eren sat down in his seat. "I'm sorry."
"This is the worst date I've ever been on," the florist said.
"Do you want me to take you home?"
The florist put her face in her hands. "How could you say that?"
"I'm sorry. I don't know what you want me to do."
"Have you really been living under a rock? I shouldn't have to tell you."
Eren squeezed his seat next to the florist. He lifted her face from her hands. "Will you dance with me?"
"No."
"No?"
"Were you going to fight that man if he wasn't going to leave?"
"Probably."
"You would've knocked his teeth out?"
"Maybe."
"Don't ask it. Say it again, but tell me to this time."
"Dance with me," Eren said. Then he grabbed both her hands and pulled her to the dance floor.
The band was still playing their instruments; couples were still dancing. It was almost midnight. The singer in the red dress and opera gloves had stopped singing, taking a break. She leaned against the bar. Something clear and smooth filled her glass. She stirred the drink with a toothpick. She looked at the hatted man sitting at the end of the bar.
"You look like a man who's got something to hide," she said.
The man said nothing. His face was hidden by the hat.
"Want a drink?" Lady Velvet sucked a green olive off her toothpick, holding it between her teeth. She wrapped it in her tongue.
"I don't drink," the man said.
"A man who doesn't drink, alone at a bar. How do you survive?"
The band's music turned Eren and the florist in circles. Then Eren started to lose focus again. His attention wandered to the bar.
"It's rare for Lady Velvet to talk to anyone," the florist said. "Men too easily fall in love."
The music circled Eren and it circled the florist and he watched the bar, clutching the florist's back as the music circled them, him watching the bar more and more, turning his head as Lady Velvet brushed her hand across the hatted man and put a whisper to his ear. The florist touched Eren's face. She forced his eyes to hers.
"You're so distracted."
"Let's go on a walk."
Eren took the florist's hand and paid their tab and went out. The night was flat and dull. Eren looked over his shoulder. The hatted man moved out from under Lady Velvet's hand. He started to leave the bar too.
The cool air made the everything sharp and sobering. The florist tugged a shawl around her shoulders. She and Eren walked together. She snuggled into him to keep warm. Few people were out. Snuggled-up pairs floated by, quiet as dreams. There was no destination for anyone. No place in mind. Just walking, street after street. Every now and then the florist told a story about a shop or a shop-owner and Eren listened, looking back over his shoulder. His footfalls clapped, slowly.
"I like how warm you are," the florist said. Eren hugged her in closer; he figured it's what he was supposed to do. He felt her breath warming the fabric of his shirt, then cooling it again.
"Why do you keep looking behind us?"
Eren looked ahead. "Are you warm enough?"
"I could feel warmer." The florist stopped walking. Eren did too. The florist looked up at him. Her eyes indicated he needed to do something. He didn't know what, and he knew he wasn't allowed to ask what. He held her hands between their bodies and put his warmth in them.
The florist smiled.
"Lady Velvet thinks I'm a lost cause. When I show up at that tavern, she gets this look of pity in her eye. I never have any hope about the men I take. But maybe it'd be okay to settle with one of them. What do you think?"
"I don't think it's my decision to make."
The florist looked at Eren's eyes and Eren imagined he could see her future. She looked away, as if she could feel him mapping her out.
"Do you know what's past the walls?"
"Everybody knows," said the florist. "It was in the newspapers."
"It's not like what the newspapers say."
They began walking again and Eren told her about the ocean; about the vast deserts; about glaciers and volcanic islands. He told her about all the things she could never have imagined on her own. Everything was impossible and real — somewhere. She listened to each word, conceiving in her mind the places he described, adding color and heat and moisture and wind. When he was through telling her about the world, he stopped walking. It made her stop too.
"Outside this island are millions and millions of people. They all have different cultures and beliefs. Compared to that number, an individual's like a grain of sand with nowhere left to go. The world is so . . . disappointing." Eren turned to the florist. "In your mind, you've seen a future life for yourself. I don't think you should settle for anything less than the ideal you've envisioned."
The florist's voice became an aching sigh. "I want a man whose only purpose in life is to love me. I want him to love me that he can't feel anything other than his love for me."
"Is that what it means to be in love with somebody?"
"To me it is. Have you ever been in love?"
"I don't think I've understood it in the way that you mean." He looked away at a point of space and pulled at the night to piece together the elusive image of the dream that forever slipped his memory. "But there's somebody on my mind. And I think I'd like to meet them again."
"Meet them? You mean, you don't know them?"
"I did. I do. But . . ."
"Sounds complicated." The florist looked at Eren's face. "I didn't mean to get you down. How about we keep walking?" She linked her arm with his. They put their legs out and set them on the street.
The streetlights refracted off the sidewalk, the diffuse light little more than a glow. The florist draped her plaited hair over her shoulder. She stroked it in her hand like a feather.
Eren took the florist home.
When they arrived at the flower shop, the second-story lights were on. They paused outside the front door. A wind passed through the blue flowers again, making them whisper vaguely. Eren closed his eyes and put his bare feet in green grass and laid his body under the warm sun, the flowers rustling around him and the birds calling out to each other, everything sleepy and sad and familiar.
"You're listening to the flowers," the florist said. "I like that about you."
Eren opened his eyes. The florist smiled.
"I wish you hadn't let me take you out tonight," she told him. "Even though I hardly know anything about you, I know what you were thinking. And that's because I'm probably the only person on this island who can understand that way of thinking. It's similar to my own way of thinking."
Eren wondered if his way of thinking was similar to her way of thinking. He wasn't sure.
The florist turned. She started to go inside.
"My doctor says I'm in love," Eren said.
"You didn't know?"
"She says I'm in love with a woman who's far away."
"Oh." The florist used her keys to unlock the flower shop. She opened the door. "Well, I'm no doctor. I'm no patient, either. But it seems like there are too many voices around, telling you different stories. The flowers won't lie to you, though. You can trust them."
She entered and shut the door. Eren listened for movement inside. He heard nothing. A shadow passed behind the second-story window. A white curtain fluttered. Then the flower shop's lights went out, and Eren walked back up the street, the way he'd come.
Another set of footsteps approached. Eren waited. Mikasa caught up and walked beside him. She still wore her hat and muffler, and she didn't seem restless or tired or anything. And Eren didn't know how to feel about that.
"Do you think you'll go out on a date again?"
"No," Eren said.
"You don't want to?"
Eren looked at her. He knew he was feeling something, and it bothered him Mikasa didn't seem restless or anything. "What about you?" he said.
Mikasa stared at the street.
"What if losing my memory wasn't a mistake?"
They stopped. Mikasa was still staring at the street. Eren took her by the elbow. "Look at me," he said, "and tell me it wasn't a mistake."
Mikasa was silent. He moved closer.
"You can't believe that. You can't believe it wasn't a mistake. You don't want me to forget you. Right?"
Then Mikasa looked Eren in the eyes and when he saw her eyes, he released her elbow and moved away.
"If the world had been different," she said, "you could have always been this 'Eren.'"
Eren asked what that meant.
"Kind. You could've been kind."
"Who was I?" Eren tried to think back. Pain wracked his head. He gripped it and gritted his teeth. "Please, tell me."
Mikasa removed her hat. She took the scarf in her hand and held it. "You were cruel," she said, "because of how kind you are."
A noise hurtled down the street. They turned their heads to it. Around the corner was Lady Velvet. She wore a fleece coat, and her heels struck the ground a handful of times before a man stepped in her way, seeming to come from nothing, and blocked her from view. Then there was a shout, and then there was crying.
Mikasa seized Eren's shoulder. She spun him. Lady Velvet's eyes enlarged and turned white, and the man tugged the knife back out of her. With the knife in his hand, he fled and shadows took him from sight. His running feet faded. Slowly, Lady Velvet fell. It took a long time. Then she lied still with her face flat in the dirt.
Before Eren could move, a blackness overtook his vision. Mikasa tied the scarf around him in a blindfold.
"Don't look," she said.
"Did he kill her?"
"Yes."
Eren picked at the scarf. Mikasa caught his hand. He moved his hand against hers. She squeezed. Then he stopped moving.
A small circle of people crowded over Lady Velvet. Their voices didn't seem real, just cries from a story someone had told Eren a long time ago.
Eren felt Mikasa's free hand on his chest. "Allow your heart to stay clean," she said.
Eren let his arms down. He didn't try to see anymore.
He heard Mikasa go away. Her feet grew quieter with distance. He didn't need to see to know she'd picked up Lady Velvet from the street. Eren was a bodiless observer then, watching Mikasa from behind somehow, without any sight at all. In Mikasa's arms, Lady Velvet was limp, her head tossed back. Then Mikasa carried the dead woman forward into a soft light and they both subsided into it, like melting into warm sand.
Eren opened his mouth to channel in more breath. He waited in this dark place for Mikasa to come get him. He seemed to wait a half hour, never moving. He was afraid of losing track of himself. He listened. He searched for any trace of the familiar whispers from the flower shop. There was nothing. He was alone. Then Mikasa's hands found him and pulled back the blindfold. He could see again, and Mikasa's face was very close to his. He could see through her eyes like water.
The odor of broken flesh stained her.
"Let's go home," she said.