The kid has your eyes,
darling – I mean it.
They’re the ones you
kept in a pickle jar on the dresser beside our bed. She’s cradling them to
their chest – still in their container, thank goodness –the way you’d hold a
newborn. It’s strange, isn’t it? One man’s forgotten keepsake really can become
another’s treasure.
Why is there a kid in
our apartment? It’s not ours, I can tell you that. Secret children only exist
in my writings; real me wants nothing to do with them. The child came up in the
lift at midnight, soaked to the bone by the storm. I let her in and went to get
her a towel. She must have come across the jar while I was in the bathroom.
It’s weird, isn’t it?
A stranger has more familiarity with the nooks and crannies of our home than I
do. The existence of that Mason jar had been cropped out of my mind space long
ago, probably to make room for the half-a-manuscript I have piling up in the
living room. I don’t stop the kid, opting instead to gaze into the pickled eyes
with the same grotesque wonder as she.
The jar thumps against
the coffee table as she sets it down. Wordlessly, she gets up and goes about
making tea. My mouth opens, wanting to say something, but my throat declines
the offer. Only the sound of drawers opening and closing disrupt the one
o’clock vacuum. The kid doesn’t use a stool as she pours hot water from the
kettle. With only her arm extending above the countertop, she tips half a mug
of the steaming liquid into a cup. I should stop her. I find myself glued in
place.
There’s been some sort
of breeze passing through me since I opened the door: one that I can’t call a
chill. It’s something temperature-less, something distorting the outline of my
being the way holograms shiver in sci-fi films. You never liked that, I
remember. There’s not much of a point in being able to see through a TV screen.
When I look up I find
the kid has made a cup for me as well. It’s sitting on the coffee table, next
to your eye jar. Otherwise it’s almost as if she hasn’t seen me. She sits cross
legged on the other end of the table, back turned as she gazes out at the
skyline. Once again, I feel an urgent need to speak – only to choke on
nothingness and fall back into silence.
It’s nice like this,
surprisingly. She doesn’t move as I clear the papers around her, as I put them
away by the open door of my study. I sit down to sip at my tea. Was the carpet
always this comfy? I note a few changes in the window view since I last saw it:
the blinking streetlights, the vanished forest, the skyscrapers that have
suddenly sprouted. We sit there, taking in the post-storm city as it resets
itself in the dark.
Dawn comes. My eyes
are wide open. The girl gets up to leave, placing her mug next to the jar on
the table. Like a robot, I rise with her, fingers undoing the lock. It clatters
when it falls to the ground. I haven’t the strength to pick it up.
I think the sound has
startled her. For an instant she turns her head and tilts it sideways, almost
as if she’s scrutinizing me, considering me, recognizing me – but she does not.
Her footsteps echo in the corridor, and I wait until the sound dies down utterly
before I slam the door shut. I sink down into the carpet, head in my hands.
You know what? She
really does have your eyes.
Thank you again.
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