All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 50

50

“You’re sick,” Grace said.

He’d known it for a while, maybe hours or days. His skin was slick again, and though she said that his head and body burned, he could do nothing but shiver and huddle himself against the mattress. He tried not to show it, to talk without his teeth knocking together, his chest shuddering, his breath coming up short no matter how hard he tried to focus. The nausea was overwhelming.

“The ice rink. Rockefeller Center,” she said.

“Is it night?” he said.

“Yes. And it’s snowing. And we’re the only two people in the whole of

New York City. And we’re full.”

“Full?”

“We’ve been to Barbetta.”

Sometimes she spoke of places he wondered if she had made up because they sounded right, or if in truth her world was a galaxy to his grain of sand.

“We’ve eaten so much pasta we can barely breathe. You’re wearing a white shirt and there’s a spot of sauce, but it’s on your blind side so you don’t even know.”

He frowned at that, and she seemed to sense it because she laughed.

“I’d lean forward and wipe it for you. I’d spit on my napkin and give it

a scrub.”

“And then they’d ask us to leave.”

She laughed again and the sound was sweet. “I’d tell them they were in the presence of a pirate, and they should watch their step or he’d slice them with his sword.”

“Cutlass.”

“Fucken cutlass then.”

He liked it when she cursed. It sounded wrong. Like a nun or a teacher cursing.

He coughed and tasted blood but did not tell her because there were more important things to say. “I was lost before.”

“You’re still lost, Patch.”

“Two people are less lost than one.”

“Have you considered writing poetry?”

“I can skate,” he offered.

“I do not believe that. The one eye…you must fall constantly.”

“I never really left Monta Clare much. I don’t know where we are now, but it’ll be the furthest I ever traveled.”

“You need to see things. There’s a wider world. Trust me and I’ll show

it to you.”

“I trust you.”

“Well then close your eye so I can paint you away.”

He found a city he had never visited before. He saw ice and snow fall like ash from a white fire. Buildings so tall they leaned toward him.

Refracted lights and glass and steel and steam rising from grates. She painted it all with her words, and he could feel the smoldering of that energy as it smoked from Wall Street and dazzled on Broadway. Voices and

engines, the rustle of newspapers.

And music.

“Patch,” she said it quiet. “You hear that?”

“It’s real?”

She helped him to his feet.

The pain was too much.

“What do we do?”

He felt her looking at him, and he knew. There was nothing they could do. There was never anything they could do.

“We’re on the ice,” she said, focused. “We’re on the ice and there’s so many stars that we can’t help but look up. We stop in the center and we lie

on our backs.”

“This song,” he said, as he finally let himself hear it.

“You reckon that’s where we are?”

“Where?”

“The dark end of the street.”

He leaned a little, and she took his weight and pulled him close till his chin rested on the top of her head and she spoke words directly to his heart.

He did not know darkness could be so beautiful. He did not know that inside his chest one of his ribs had punctured his lung. That air was leaking into the pleural cavity.

Or that his spleen had ruptured, and slowly, internally, he was bleeding to death. “You ever danced with a girl before, Patch?”

She turned. He followed. And slowly they moved.

“We could dance on the ice, and people would see,” she whispered.

“I don’t like to be stared at.”

“Well, then you picked the wrong girl to dance with.”

For that one perfect moment they were almost nothing more than two teenagers falling in love.

“They’re gonna find us,” she said softly.

When the music softened and all they heard was the faintest crackle of the record, she tilted her head up and his lips found hers.

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