M. Scott Cameron
Shadows in the Rain
She handles 07.08.00 (fight w/N.), turns it over without thinking. A few brown dribbles escape her notice and speckle her shoe. She reads the cup four more times and makes a fist. It flattens, cracks, and splits in that way that only polystyrene products can. He is on his feet. Hey, he says. Hey. She turns, her eyes flaring as she walks to the sink. What do you do now, she says. Looks like Wednesday never happened. She shreds the pieces of 07.08.00 (fight w/N.) over the bulging trash bag in the kitchen corner. She is right, of course. By the rules of the game (as yet unwritten), the day didn’t happen if there isn’t a cup there to record it. He watches her mind wander as she fingertips the tomato stain on his sleeping shirt. S. has been smelling her for years. He can’t get enough. He inhales her as he walks his fingers up her forearms. No, he says. No. Guess it didn’t. Through his city, the way they used to on Sunday afternoons. The memory of rain. Their hands touch sometimes as they walk; she lets him take hers for a few blocks. For many years they have been them. They became them very naturally when he had first waited for her after an engineering class. We should talk, she had said before he could say it. Yes, he had replied. And they did, for a while. Now they are lonely. N. tries to get conversation going again. She wants to talk like normal people, she says. He turns to watch her again, but now there is a more appealing subject: an attractive first-year accountant late for her meeting to patch things up with a client. Her name is Ana Song, and her life is almost over.
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Saxifrage