Night of Cake & Puppets (9 page)

Two
AM
text to Karou:
*yawn stretch* Long day. Think I’ll turn in now.

Four seconds later:
THAT’S NOT EVEN FUNNY

—Not even a little?

—TELL ME SOMETHING GOOD RIGHT NOW

—Let’s see. Something good. *taps pencil against lip* Okay: ghost peacock

—???

—Used my 2nd-to-last scuppy to make peacock tracks appear in the snow.

—…of course. Um. Who wouldn’t…?

—And when Mik saw them, fireworks exploded in his brain. And then he kissed me.

—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!kissing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I start to type a response, but I haven’t gotten more than a couple of words in before the phone rings – as well it should, because this totally merits a phone call. I answer before the first ring is even finished. ‘So I’m totally going to make heart-shaped rock collections cool,’ I say. ‘Don’t doubt that I can do it.’

There’s a pause, and then this voice that is not Karou’s says, ‘That’s uncanny, because I was just thinking of starting a blog that’s all photos of my hands making heart shapes around different stuff. Like dog noses and funny graffiti.’ And the voice that is not Karou’s is Mik’s, and for a second I’m paralyzed, my brain kicking into damage-assessment mode, but I pretty much immediately realize that I’m lucky. Very lucky. There were a million more embarrassing things I might have said, and anyway:
Mik called me.
‘And balloons stuck in trees,’ he says. ‘And ducklings in bathtubs.’

‘And clouds shaped like handguns,’ I contribute.

‘
Yes
. And lewd root vegetables.’

‘And kids on leashes. And really bad clown makeup.’

And it’s like we talk on the phone in the middle of every night, it’s that easy, and by the end of the call we’re half-serious about the heart-hands blog, and, in spite of my efforts to hijack it in a misanthropic direction, it’s a sweet idea, and Mik presses on undaunted with things like ‘baby feet’ and ‘surprised ostriches,’ and I’m so
glad
.

‘I should let you sleep,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to say good night.’

‘Good night,’ I say, sleepy, and happy with this layer-cake happiness that goes from bone-deep contentment – luxurious and almost lazy, like a hot bath – to fizzing, sparkler-in-the-heart-hole happiness that’s waking up new parts of my brain and teaching them dance steps.

Mik says, ‘And I wanted to make sure you didn’t think, um, that I…hesitated…before because I didn’t want to kiss you.’

‘No,’ I say, though I did think that – or fear it – for a few minutes in the rowboat. I get it now, though, and there’s not a molecule in me that thinks that kiss was forced or reluctant or lukewarm. The kiss. The kiss spoke for itself. It erased all doubt. ‘It’s okay. It couldn’t be orchestrated. It had to just happen.’

‘I’m glad it did,’ he says.

‘Me, too.’

‘Do you think…maybe it can happen again tomorrow? With dinner? No, I can’t wait that long. Lunch? No. Breakfast?’

Oh, I guess so.
I’m radiating lighthouse beams in my bedroom. ‘Yes please.’

And we make plans and say good-bye, and I hang up. A few call-interrupts came while we were talking, and I didn’t check them then but I see now that they were Karou, a voice mail and a string of texts, the last of which reads:

—Whyyyyyyyy are you torturing meeeeeeeee?

—Sorry! Sorry! Mik called.

And it hits me again.
Mik called me.
This is now a thing that happens. And kissing. Kissing is going to be a regular part of my life now. I just see it, with this rare kind of clarity. It’s an open horizon before us, as far as the eye can see: no angst and no games, just mutual delight. So simple, but so rich. Like chocolate. Not a gold-dusted truffle or a foofy pastry tower teetering on a crystal platter, but a plain, honest bar of the best chocolate in the world.

And I type a little more to Karou, and her happiness on my behalf practically wells out of the phone, but it’s so late, and I really just want to lie on my bed and replay the night in my head, so I sign off with a promise to call her in the morning, and then I lie there remembering.

The sensation of falling, as Mik leaned down. His eyes were so near, and his lips, and I didn’t know which to look at, his lips or his eyes, and then…I just. Eyes, up close. I’ve never. His eyes are blue, and blue eyes up close are a celestial phenomenon: nebulas as seen through telescopes, the light of unnamed stars diffused through dusts and elements and endlessness. Layers of light. Blue eyes are starlight. I never knew. His lashes fluttered shut before mine; I know because I have a strobe-quick memory of his eyelashes dusted with perfect lace-pattern snowflakes – and then darkness as my eyes closed, too, and all my awareness poured out into my other senses.

Touch. The softness of lips.

At first, okay, there wasn’t so much softness as frozen-faced numbness, but really it just made me that much more aware of our breath, because our breath was warm and every second that our lips moved near and against each other in this feather-light way, I could
feel
more. It was like something coming into focus. I couldn’t say at what point I could feel fully, just that we got there. We got there slowly and exquisitely, our breath touching more than our actual lips, so that each small brush of contact was wrapped in longing for the next, and I learned this: The eye’s perception of texture is pale compared to the lips’, and I didn’t know what velvety was until I knew it with my lips.

Oh, kissing. Oh, violin boy.

I’m not sure how long it was. I couldn’t begin to guess. Somewhere between two minutes and twenty, and while it never stopped being
sweet
, it did, toward the end, start hinting at the mysterious connectivity of nerves, little rivers of fire that zither through your entire body awakening sleeper cells of feeling, each one adding another dimension to this mysterious inner landscape that is so much bigger than it seems, possibly infinitely, unknowably bigger. And reflexology no longer seems like hokum to me, because if a light touch at the nape of my neck can do
that
to my knees, then, where the human body is concerned…anything might be possible.

My knees were what finally called time-out on the kiss, because they started to tremble and Mik thought I was shivering, but I totally wasn’t, and the way we looked at each other after the kiss was breathless and a little bit startled – oh
hi
– and unself-consciously happy, and dazzled, and thoroughly, deeply, mutually ensorcelled.

So, you know, that was nice.

My phone again, just as I’m drifting off to sleep. A text. It’s Karou:
Have to know. If ghost peacock was 2nd-to-last scuppy, what did you do with the LAST?

And my hand goes to it – no longer hidden in a coat pocket but hanging from a long silver chain around my neck: a singular red bead. I didn’t need it. Well, I didn’t need any of them, but I’m glad I had them, because they inspired me to create this night – right up to the point when the night took over, with Mik’s help, and started to create itself. Which is what one always hopes will happen: for life to take over and be bigger and more marvelous than what we can dream up on our own.

Life doesn’t need magic to be magical.

(But a little bit sure doesn’t hurt.)

It’s nice knowing I have this one last scuppy if I ever need to whip up some peacock footprints – literal or figurative – but maybe I’ll just end up keeping it as a souvenir. Who knows?
Saving it for a rainy day
, I text back to Karou, and I cup the bead in my hand and smile as I drift toward sleep, wondering what my rainy days are going to look like now. As good as my snowy ones, I think.

I’m going to need a bigger umbrella.

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