True Heroes (57 page)

              “Love and life?”

              “You need one to have the other.”

              “Yeah, but the look on your face is bold, like you’d be willing to die for one.”

              “I’d be willing to die for both.”

              “You want to die?”

              “No, that’s my urge for self-punishment you’re seeing now.”

              “Well, if you have life and love, you have to have death then?”

              “No, see,” he entwined their fingers, “having life and love as a conjoined entity presupposes that you have someone to give love to in life. Maybe that’s what I want most in a girl.”

              “Tell me; I want to know.”

              “A girl who believes in it so strongly that if she saw me standing on a cliff ten, fifty feet away about to fall, she would run up from behind me and reach out and catch me and yank me back up with nothing more than her will for us to keep living and loving. That’s what something like this can do. It can look death in the eye and smile with two hands tangled as the couple walks away towards the widening sunrise.”  

              The group rejoined them again before Alice could crawl into the truth of his statement. Everyone quickly walked to the truck; Alice created separation between her and Caleb as she hopped into the cab and Caleb into the back. ‘That’s how grateful she is for your chivalric exposition.’

              ‘That was an anvil. She’ll say something about it later.’

              Power paused in a response. ‘She’s mumbling about it now.’

              ‘What’s she saying?’

              ‘Just listen through me.’

              ‘Just tell me.’

              ‘She’s complimenting her own ability to stay calm. I can feel her skin horripilating. It radiates as I when we are pushing at the limits of our physical realms. Her tiny lips are fluttering as fast as her mind can produce the ability. What you said touched her. She can’t seem to grasp the complete infinitude of what you proposed, but she seems certain that she won’t stop until she knows what it feels like to have that kind of love.’

              They ran over a shallow pothole.

              ‘Why did you tell me that?’

              ‘You asked.’

              ‘I’ve asked you a hundred times to shut up or to cooperate and you never do.’

              ‘My investment with this girl is the same as yours. You won’t listen to me with fate on the line. I need her to show you how useless this idea is.’

              ‘See, that doesn’t ring true either. You feel how I feel for her, so you know that I like her. If you were really trying to destroy my will, you’d be pushing me towards someone else. Something else is driving you.’

              ‘Preposterous.’

              ‘It’s fine to care about her.’

              ‘I don’t. She is a babysitter I’ve hired for three months. Nothing but an intern into the ultimate destructive office in the land.’

              ‘I don’t buy that.’

              Keys suddenly jangled in his face. “Drive to orientation with Joy.”

              He gently tried to tug them from her hand, but her grip was resolute. “I’ll be careful with it. And I might even bring it back in one piece.”

              “I’ll let you borrow it if you do two things.”

              “Just two? I’m good for at least four.”

              “Just two for now. Deal?”

              “Let’s hear them.”

              “You have to come back and talk to me tonight until I fall asleep.”

              Caleb held up one finger.

              “And you have to stay in the morning.”

              He didn’t bring up the second finger but reset his expression into a casually serious pose. “Where else would I go?”

              “To be alone, to be anywhere else, to do the smart thing and run away. Anything’s a possibility, but the way that you talk and the way that you act have me really, really, really not wanting you to do the smart thing, or even the second smartest thing. Right now, I want you to be stupid and stay with me and not leave at least until tomorrow afternoon.”

              Caleb smiled at her while snatching the keys and jumping out of the truck bed. “If anything’s possible, then it’s possible that I’m not doing anything stupid at all.”

              He hopped into the old truck seat, noticing Joy to his right, and smiled in the driver’s side mirror to a twirling and smiling Alice. The truck groggily started under a heavy injection of gas by Caleb’s foot. “So, do you know where this place is?”

              “Yeah go south on the highway,” she said while pressing her fingertip flat against the front windshield. “You’re not really going to work in that are you?”

              He tore off the wings and shoved them in the small crevice behind the driver’s seat. “The all-black will have to do. I’ll tell them I’m a cat-burglar during the day.”

              “That’ll be a good reason to get a job, because you’re wearing the black during the day and don’t fit in.”

              ‘Bucket of wit that one.’

              “Are you looking forward to this?”

              “I don’t know. I do like sitting around doing nothing and all. That’s why group is so fun. Just sit there and pretend to listen to everyone else’s problems, then make up some problems for one-on-one time. I wish we got paid for it.”

              “You don’t share anything real there?”

              She turned and lost her smile as she stared at the side of Caleb’s face. “Do you?”

              Caleb turned to glance at her momentarily before turning off the exit as she pointed. “I pretty much shared my whole life story the other day.”

              “I really thought you made that up. I’m not Alice; I’m no good telling lies and truth.”

              “What is your talent?”

              “Take a left at the light. So, you like Alice?”

              ‘Touchy subject. Do keep pushing.’

              ‘No, it’s obviously not an open forum.’ “Yeah we like talking to each other.”

              They pulled into a parking lot and between the allotted lines beneath a streetlamp. As he exited and stared through the pavement, Joy flashed to his side and said loudly, “I like talking to you.”

              His eyes snapped back and his brain attached to what she had said. ‘You really could have her legs around you in a janitor’s closet by the end of the night if you tried hard enough.’

              ‘Wow, you’re goals are…sad.’ “Good, I’m glad you do.”

              “Do you remember where we go,” she asked as two men nodded their coffees from behind thick glass windows. ‘They can’t be security.’

              ‘Why do you say that?’

              ‘I could outrun them without a drop of you in my blood.’

              ‘And if you were stationary, I’d tear them apart. Either way works.’

              “No, but I assume we follow the yellow-brick road here.” His finger traced the air along a yellow line on the grey floor, but stopped when a man in an orange vest speedily walked towards them. “Or we wait for this guy to tell us.”

              “Caleb?” ‘He’s pointing his phone at us like a gun.’

              “That’s me.”

              “You follow me, we’ll get you set up, and throw you right out into it. Joy?”

              ‘Rather overweight man for how fast he walks wouldn’t you say?’

              ‘Is he not allowed to have muscle in his body?’

              ‘The mustache is rather fifties of him too.’

              ‘Are you the fashion police? You realize you’re not being mean right now, just bitchy right?’

              ‘I’ve been up for days. I’m quite literally on auto-pilot.’

              ‘It’s good to know that you’re some kind of pseudo-person. Feel free to leave the rest of the night to me.’

              ‘Perhaps I will.’

              “Here,” the portly man said while shoving a small cubby basket full of machinery and supplies into his arms. “Real simple. Turn the gun on, read the display, scan the appropriate bar code, take the right amount of items, ship the box. Brain surgery. Get to it, call if you have questions.”

              ‘What a life….’

-
         
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              Noticing the light from the cracked door, Caleb carefully pushed it open to reveal a more organized apartment. Alice was curled in her chair, dressed in loose sweatpants that barely clung to her narrow waist and a white top that hid everything beneath her black bra, reading something from a manila folder within her huge chair. She held it up as Caleb took off his shoes and continued to scan the room. ‘Some boxes are missing.’

              “Is it okay if I read this? It’s nothing new, just interesting to read it like this. The other boxes are in my room by the way. The room’s less cluttered that way. How was work?”

              “Lovely, and yeah you can read it. There are some new, more fun things in there.”

              “You’re lying.”

              Caleb sat down on the couch cushion closest to her. “About?”

              “Work. Your face lied about work then went to neutral when you talked about this thing.”

              “Sorry that was sarcasm. It was boring and pointless; like preschool for a high school kid.”

              “Sarcasm is always hard for me to decode. They’re complicated lies. I’m not good at those.”

              He smiled at her while letting his hand drop on the rest. “Well, you will get plenty of practice between me and my blue friend.”

              She closed the folder and smiled. “You look exhausted.”

              “I haven’t slept for a while. I’m getting good at functioning though.”

              She stood up and moved over to the couch with a blanket over her head. Caleb reached over and slowly pulled it off, mussing her hair greatly and covering her eyes with the thickness of her brown forest. ‘It feels so wrong to not see those eyes.’ As she smiled and chuckled delightfully, he pushed her hair into its proper order again, allowing his hand to drag across her cheek.

              She mumbled quickly again. “Why did he do that?”

              “Because your eyes are far too beautiful to not be seen.”

              She smiled shyly and took the blanket in their combined hands. Hers pushed against his to drag the heavy comforter across Caleb’s body until the side of her right cheek was directly in front of his lips. Her eyes closed as he breathed warmly across her skin. His hand let hers balance on the couch while the other softly queried under the depths of her hair, both relaxed and steady as his lips barely braved the canonic half-inch to her warm shell. Stars died, the sun rose, a tree lost the final crusted leaf of spring’s bloom, all before the soft kiss finally relinquished and the two separated.             

              She recoiled from his hands and face, but looked back to him without distaste or disgust. Her lips didn’t mumble and her eyes didn’t seem to know what detail to focus on first. Caleb made no move towards her or smiles to influence her. He sat back. ‘She’s deciding everything now.’

              Her body flopped back to the couch as her arms raveled around his and her eyes continued to stare forward. “I’ve never had anybody kiss my cheek before. Kiss me period. My parents did a few times, but it didn’t feel like that. It didn’t last like that. They never…I loved that.”

              She looked up to him suddenly—‘Could her face conform any more symmetrically to my shoulder?’ “I’m glad you loved it.”

              Caleb let his head fall back, feeling some relief, but feeling more the pounds of fatigue lower his lids. He felt her warm breath and raised smile as he slipped over the edge of exhaustion, her physical imprint dated unto his last imagined image.

-
         
                            -                            -             

              Caleb was drowning in a sea of people. His senses snatched at the thin details he was allowed: suits and dresses surrounded him between a wooden basketball floor and low hanging hoops that garnished hanging boas and streamers across the rainbow. His hand twitched at his side, and was suddenly flexed with a drink glass hanging between two fingers. The air was buzzing; men of the room wore their penguin suits with cummerbund belts across each slightly obtrusive stomach while the women all showed V’s of skin and gloves of white, silver, grey, and wore diamond shimmers that crossed their slender necks. He could barely move through the congestion, and yet he stuck out sorely with a missing tie and unbuttoned, disheveled jacket. The low light of the room did nothing to stammer his observation of the sea of humanity that smothered any avenue of travel.