I awoke the next evening to the red glow of the setting sun through the horizontal blinds; I had slept through the entire day. Brandy was already awake. The rain had stopped sometime while we slept. Through the door of the bathroom I heard the water pouring down, cascading off her body to the floor of the small shower. I lay there in the fading light listening to the sounds of approaching evening outside, people heading home, rustling bags from wherever they had been shopping, cars idling at red lights, waiting in traffic. A horn blared, a high-pitched staccato note, and an engine revved, pulling a car through the intersection and away from my window.
As the streetlights came on one by one, a cool wind blew, rustling out the last few remaining droplets of rain that had collected on the leaves of the tree outside my window. From the bathroom a loud, flat sound signaled to me that Brandy had dropped the soap. I checked the time, and realized that she had been in the shower for at least twenty minutes now. I got up, pulled a pair of shorts on and crept over to the bathroom door, listening carefully to the sounds from inside. Nothing but the steady pour of the shower. I knocked on the door.
“Brandy?” I said. “Are you in there?” Nothing but the water.
I opened the door slowly. A burst of steam evacuated over my head. I stepped into the humid bathroom. The orange and blue curtain was drawn. As I stepped towards it a small sound, a small moan, like the sad, dying gasp of a trumpet, reached my ears.
“Brandy?” I said again. “What’s wrong?” Again, no answer, just another soft moan and a gasp.
I walked up to the shower and pulled the curtain aside. Brandy was standing there facing me, her dark red hair, almost black from wetness, hung in slow waves down her back. The water poured down her face, down her trembling, naked body into the drain. Her hands covered most of her face; her eyes were red and irritated.
I reached into the shower and turned the water off. Brandy didn’t move, just stood there, shaking and crying. I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her. I led her out to my bed and sat holding her quivering body. She stopped crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her. She sniffled and turned her head to look me in the eyes. She blinked slowly and sniffled again.
“I have to go,” she said.
“To work?” I said.
“No, I have to leave.”
“Why?”
“Just before my father died, he bought me a bike. The thing lasted for years. I rode it until I was too big for it. And then I took it with me wherever we moved. But the traveling was too much for it. It started to fall apart. I eventually had to throw…it…away.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But what does that have to do with us?”
“Because,” she paused to sniffle. “I can’t stand this.” She pulled herself into my shoulder. I held her, rubbed her back. “I was standing in the shower and just thinking to myself about all of the stuff that I’ve lost – toys and books and people and…things. It all disappears, no matter how hard I try to hold on, everything breaks, everything dies.”
“That’s what happens,” I said.
“I can’t take it.”
“You kind of have to. It’s not very fair, but you have to.”
She pushed away from me, tearing herself from my grip. “I can’t watch you die, I’m not going to.” The sun had set; my apartment had faded into darkness. “I’m not going to,” she said again.
She stood up, dried herself off, and got dressed in the dark. I sat silent on the unmade bed, listening to her move around the room, finding her clothes. She put on her pants, her bra, her shows. She grabbed her jacket and bag and headed for the door. I cut her off.
“I’m not going to let you leave,” I said. I grabbed her arms. I felt like I was in a Film Noire detective story.
She shrugged out of my grip. “Dammit, I’m going to leave whether your let me or not.”
“Please,” I said, “Just talk to me about this.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t explain it any better than I already have.”
I stepped towards her. “What if I promised not to die before you?”
She leaned forward and kissed me gently on the lips. “Goodbye,” she said into my ear. She slid around me, opened the door slowly and walked out into the hall. I spun around and caught the door before it closed.
“Brandy,” I said. She stopped but didn’t turn. “No good story should end with one of the main characters just leaving, especially a love interest,” I said, quoting my college fiction professor. “You can’t just go,” I said softer.
She turned her head to look at me. Her reddish curls bounced with the motion. “So maybe your life isn’t a good story,” she said, and walked out of the building.
I slammed the door and began looking for my clothes. I found a shirt, but I couldn’t find my shoes. I turned on my desk lamp, filling the room with warm yellow light. Brandy’s wet towel was on the floor where she had dropped it as she got dressed, my shoes concealed beneath it. I put them on and ran out into the street.
I caught a glimpse of her under a streetlight, about a block east. I wanted to call to her, to make her turn around, but there were people in the street, so I began to walk. In my haste to catch her, I had only thrown on a t-shirt. The people I walked past were clad in heavy coats, their hands either tucked deeply into their pockets or in gloves. From the looks I received, I assumed it was cold, but I didn’t feel it.
Brandy walked the four blocks out of downtown without looking around, her head down, eyes focused on the ground. When she would pass under a streetlight, I would catch a flash of her red hair. She walked straight down Main Street to a small cemetery. From her bag she produced a flashlight and clicked it on, sending a column of light into the night sky. She redirected it into the graveyard.
I followed the bouncing beam of light, dancing through the uneven rows of headstones. The sliver of the waning crescent moon that hung low in the sky was of little help. I found a path, but kept losing it. My thin shoes were soaked. Eventually the beam stopped, focused on one headstone. I made my way over to it. Creeping up behind Brandy, I read the carving on the gravestone. Singer, d. 1848.
“This is my father’s grave,” Brandy said, from near the origin of the light.
“It can’t be,” I said. “This guy died over 150 years ago.”
“Perception versus misconception,” she said in a solemn voice. “Do you know why we didn’t put the year he was born? Because the engraver wouldn’t put 1037-1848 as a life span.”
“You’re telling me your father was over 800 years old?”
“Time isn’t constant. It moves slower for some people than others. Father was just over 81 when he died. My mother only lived to 72.”
About 720 years, I thought as I stared at the gravestone, wondering if she was insane. She had told me some weird things before, and they had seemed believable. I found myself unwillingly believing her again.
“So how old are you?” I said.
“I’m 26,” she said. “I was born in 1740.”
“So you’re really 260 years old.”
“In your definition of years, yes.”
“This just doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “What happened?”
She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Are you a vampire or something?”
She turned to face me. “I already told you. I don’t know why. It just is. There’s no explaining it. One year to me is like ten to you. That’s all I know. I’ve lived through revolutions and war after war after war.”
“And the whole time we’ve been seeing each other…”
“Has been about a day and a half to me,” she said.
“You’re insane,” I said. “You’re just gone, out there.” I turned to leave. I kicked a headstone and fell to the wet grass. Brandy helped me up, the flashlight’s beam playing over her father’s tombstone. As she let go of my arm, a drop of water splashed on my hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She turned the light on me, reached out and grabbed my hand. Kissing my fingers softly, she clicked the light off and placed it in my hand. In the sudden darkness I was blind.
“Keep it. I know my way through here by heart. Goodbye.” I heard her turn to leave.
“I love you,” I said. She stopped.
“No you don’t,” she said. “You think I’m insane. You…” she broke off. “I never should have told you. Maybe…maybe time moves faster for you, and you really do love me. But I can’t take that chance. I don’t want you to love me.”
“Because you don’t want to love me,” I said.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t finish my thoughts.”
We stood facing each other, seeing more as our eyes adjusted to the near pitch-black night. The only sounds were the wind through a grove of trees in the distance, and the occasional car.
“Where are you going?” I said finally.
“Barcelona? I dunno. Away.”
And with that she turned away from me and faded off into the night.
I stood there as the silver sliver of moon rose into the night sky. I looked out toward the street. No sign of her. My eyes slowly adjusted more to the light. She was gone. I looked around, but she was nowhere to be seen among the low grey markers.
* * *
Tonight I wait for her. Even though I know she won’t be coming back, I sit up here on this dark roof, my back pressing against this cold brick retaining wall, watching the stars meander through their dark path. That bright one there is the North Star. The far edge of the cup of The Big Dipper points to it. Those three in a row to the east are Orion’s Belt. I never could make out the rest of Orion, that great mythical hunter, especially when the sky is full of other stars.
The light from those stars is millions of years old. It left the surface of those stars long before even small mammals roamed the earth. Some of those stars have already died, but we won’t know for thousands of years. It’s the illusion of time.
The moon is gone; it has finished its cycle and is beginning a new one simultaneously. It’s time to start over.
___
(Read more about this short story here.)
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