All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 110

110

Misty kept hold of his hand and led him through the common, the Brewer Fountain keeping watch over the Park Street Church.

“They used to hang pirates from the Great Elm,” she said over her shoulder.

“Doesn’t sound so great, Mist.” He followed her, soon enough lost in the noise of Chinatown, the smells and lights and bustle.

Down a side street opposite the park they sat on upturned crates and drank warm sake from wooden cups, her cheeks a little flushed as she ran her fingers over the swell of his knuckles.

She took the flat cap from his head and placed it on her own, grinning up at him, her eyes still too much. She looked different, but he was not sure how, still everything most were not, but maybe it was being out of Monta Clare; she seemed worldly, if possible even less attainable.

“You still look like it’s 1975,” she said.

He took in her bleached jeans and silk shirt, heels and light makeup.

“But you got muscles,” she poked at his arm.

“I work on a boat.”

She lit up. “A pirate ship?”

“We pillage the Casco Bay for lobster.”

Misty laughed, a sound that took him all the way back.

Beside them neon signs spun. A basement beauty salon beneath a grated fire escape, the trash piled in the thickening glow of streetlamps.

They skirted Grace, the reason he had left, her parents and the drag of everything they had shared, and for a few blissful moments they were two

young people getting to know the shiniest parts of each other in a city that blazed without limitation.

As they drank she became a little louder, a little more impassioned when she told him about her course, her lectures and professors.

“I mean, people like my father voted for him because he knows I’ll never struggle to find work. He wants that layer of insulation to grow thicker. You should have seen his face when I told him I was tending bar, that I wanted to earn my own money. Like you did when you left school.

The New Right isn’t all that new, Patch. I mean, he’s pulled us out of recession by plunging us into debt. Trickle-down economics only works if there’s true translation, right?”

He sipped his sake and hoped and prayed she did not expect some kind of reply.

“Did that sound smart? I got it from a book,” she said.

“You’re at Harvard, Mist. Not sure you need to dumb it down, not even for me.”

While they could still walk, she led him through a string of streets and pointed out sights.

He tugged her back to a Bay Village busker who warmed the night with her guitar and the soul in her voice.

The city slowed for them, and he reached out and placed a hand on her lower back.

He took her other hand, and they stood facing each other.

“I thought you didn’t dance?” she said and stepped close. The busker smiled and sang as she felt the earth move in her hands.

Misty took the deepest breath like she was preparing to drown but wanted to stay conscious throughout.

Together they moved, and she pressed her cheek to his chest. “You

didn’t just break my heart.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You chose her over me.”

“Everyone will choose you. Everyone.”

“But not you.”

He leaned down and pressed his head to hers.

“Look at us out here, Patch. In the world.”

Above them stars shone like it was written.

And around them people stopped and watched because the music was beautiful, or maybe because they knew the two kids dancing together were torn from some kind of tragic history book.

He lifted her gently, her hands wrapped around his neck as he slowly spun her. In the distance he heard sirens and wondered if this is how they would end.

“I don’t know how to forget you,” she whispered it, right into his ear, her words tunneling into his brain and forging their own place in him, to call on in case there were moments of doubt, moments of weakness that told him he might be good, beneath it all, what he had done and what he would do, he might just be good enough.

“You close your eyes, Mist. And when you open them again I’ll be gone. And you’ll live this…this fucking wondrous life. You’ll go to your classes and talk to other kids who’ve got shit to say, who’ve got opinions and ideas. Soon enough you’ll forget my face, and the sound of my voice.

Because you’ll realize I never had much to say. Not really.”

She shook her head fiercely.

He hated it when she cried.

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