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<br><br><center>*It’s a painting hanging in a dark museum
And sometimes you go and look at it close up*
–Guillaume Apollinaire</center>

<br><br>It’s crazy. 

I’ve fallen in love with a homeless girl who lives under a bridge and thinks she can fly.

This is over the top even for me.

Even when I was handcuffed to the bottle like Darko Vanic, I was never so far out of it that I’d hold nightly conversations with my refrigerator, or convince myself that a girl could turn into a dark mist and disappear.

Maybe Kristen, my literary agent, is right—I might be in way over my head.

 

<br><br>I head over to the local Tim Horton’s coffee shop to sort out my thoughts.

Believe it or not, I’m shaking inside and it’s not delirium tremens, and I’m not suffering from hallucinations.

I sit sipping a steaming coffee staring out at the rain when I hear a familiar voice behind me.

“Hey Schroeder—where’s your piano?”

<br><br>I turn and spot her at the counter buying a coffee. I smile and she comes over and sits down on the red stool beside me. There’s rain jewels sparkling in her hair and I want to put my arm around her, but stifle the urge.

“Do I still look adorable?” I grin.

She musses my hair. “Yeah, now you do. You look like a little kid.”

“Great—just great! What every man wants to hear.”

“Little boy innocence with grown-man looks? That’s a combination that’s hard to resist.”

<br><br>I still want to hug her, but just reach out and pat her hand. She gives me the brightest smile and it warms me more than wine.

She unzips her jacket. “So, what brings you out on a night like this?”

“I was worried about you, Skye.”

“Yeah, why’s that?” She’s got this defensive tone in her voice.

<br><br> “I hear you don’t have any place to stay—that you sleep out under a bridge. Is that true?”

“Have you been talking to Darko? That sounds like the kind of stuff he says.”

I nod. “I did talk to him, but I’m asking you. Is it true?”

She looks away, stares out the window at the rain—at golden lines threading through the streetlights.

<br><br> “Rain knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,” she whispers.

“Macbeth?” I ask, surprised.

She sips at her coffee. “Yeah—he’s talking about sleep, but rain always makes me think of that.”

<br><br> “It must be hard to sleep out in the rain.”

“Not really,” she sighs, “I’ve always been an outsider. I told you I went to private school and got my Masters in Literature, but didn’t tell you why.”

“Okay, I’ll bite—why?”

“Did it to please my parents. You see, I was a replacement child. Born nine months after my sister died and always trying to measure up and take her place—which, of course, I could never do.”

“I’m sorry, Skye.”

<br><br> “Stayed on the periphery, and then one day it occurs to me—why not stay out there permanently? And so I did, and here I am.”

“That’s a hard a burden for anyone to bear.”

She nods and gazes out at the night. “I’m just so tired, Maine. Just want to go to sleep.”

<br><br>She leans against me. By instinct, my arm naturally curls about her waist. She lays her head on my shoulder and closes her eyes.

“I’m glad I met you,” she murmurs, “I feel so peaceful by your side.”

And then, she’s gone—dissolved into a dark mist.

I try to process what I’ve just experienced, but have no explanation.

Somehow, she simply rarefied and vanished before my eyes.

 

<br><br>It’s been weeks now, but I keep revisiting her—in my thoughts and in that place, but she’s not there—at least, physically—if she ever was.

I search for Darko, but he’s also disappeared—vanished without a trace.

I spend hours walking the streets asking around the neighborhood, but only one old woman seems to recall anything—says the girl’s story reminds her of an incident back in the forties that made The Toronto Star’s front page.

<br><br>I check it out in the archives and sure enough, Skye is there. Well, her name wasn’t Skye back then—it was Cecily Hampton Hay. She leapt from the Bloor Street viaduct after a sordid life of booze and wasting her inheritance.

She squandered her wealth the article said, and fell in with gangsters including one shadowy figure named Drake Vane who owned a bar where Cecily drank her life away.

I’m still trying to make sense of why this happened and why Skye chose me, but I suppose I’ll never really know for sure.

<br><br>Maybe she felt a kinship with someone like her, someone dispossessed, and suffering in the shadows.

Or then again, maybe she needed someone to help her bear her pain—someone who wouldn’t reject her.

I was her Schroeder trying to play blues for her on a toy piano—and she could lean on me for a while, but there weren’t enough keys, and the black ones weren’t real—only painted on.

 

<br><br><center>*Love’s anguish tightens your throat
As if you were never to be loved again.
If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery.
You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer.
You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles;
The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life.
It’s a painting hanging in a dark museum
And sometimes you go and look at it close up*
–Guillaume Apollinaire</center>




<br><br><center>© 2017, John J Geddes. All rights reserved</center>

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