Bye, Bye, Summer Time

[Mick (DELETED 2915)]

"Will you sit down already," he laughed.

"I like to move," she said.

And move, she did. Her bare feet were soundless across the floor, but it didn't keep her active presence from being noticeable in more than one way. Her clothes weren't as quiet, and neither were her jerky movements to pull up all of her hair in an uneven bun.

Mick didn't slow enough to straighten it after, even.

"Do you want--" Tiffany started, but Hamlet's hand quickly flung over her mouth so that his laugh rang louder than before.

"You're going to walk a ******* hole in our home," he told her.

"An easy fix, especially with your new job," she answered. Her eyes cut across the pair in front of her as she turned around to face the other direction. Like a dog at the end of her chain, she walked back the way she came, but finally walked herself at the end of the cabin's limit to the set of windows staring out at the thick wilderness.

She set her hands on the window sill's edge and folded her fingers under to grip it.

"Oh what," he exclaimed. "Now you're mad that I'm a family man with a regular job?! McKenna, I just got it so I could buy you things," he told her. Satisfied that Tiffany wasn't going to speak out of turn again, he took his hand off of her mouth and watched out of the corner of his eyes as she sunk back completely into the sofa.

Her nostrils flared only to be met by the cool sting of air clinging to the window's glass in front of her face. It licked at her her fingertips, her wrists, the swell of her breasts, her chin, her nose, her lips, and every part of her that hovered close enough.

For someone that typically loved that time of year -- when all of the leaves slowly decayed in a beautiful array of colors -- even the moving branches in the trees annoyed her when they were caught by the wind.

And yet, a small part of her knew that the trees never asked to be in the wind's way.

"I'm sure," she finally mumbled. The cold came in against her tongue when it was exposed.

"Do you hate me," he asked, rolling his head over the back of the sofa. Even though she didn't and hadn't turned to look at him, he still smiled, expectant that she eventually would.

"No one can hate you," she said, still in her lowered voice. When she turned her head to find him -- and Tiffany -- behind her, her chin brushed against the height of her shoulder until it settled there.

Mick stared at the two of them on the couch, settled more or less exactly as she'd seen them for the last two hours. The girl was so obedient, she didn't once have to go to the restroom in that time, and with his laptop sitting only so far away from him and within reach, she couldn't imagine why he'd need to get up, either.

She thought to say more when she glanced at the computer's back cover. A hundred things worked their daggerish ways through her mind, and yet she tightened her lips against them all and looked back out at the window.

The wind made its noise in the cracks of their cabin, it forced its way against the trees until they moved like puppets on a string, and yet she didn't imagine herself that vulnerable to it.

But everything eventually succumbed to it in one way or another.

[Mick (DELETED 2915)]

The two story row-house stood elbow-to-elbow between the other replica homes on either side of it. Every light was on, illuminating a smile in the windows on the first and second floor. The window in the front door made up the front teeth of it. A happy home, and the curtains were pulled to reveal all behind it.

The woman inside looked like someone Jeff could love.

Her healthy black hair — full of curls — sat on top of her head, freeing her activity for every time she moved. It was all the time. She didn’t stop at all. Mick had stood there long enough for the cold to start breeding in through her clothes, and the woman had yet to sit down. Even in the bathroom on the top floor, she busied herself back and forth. She only paused at the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror, looked back down at the counter, and then turned to moved something before she returned to the cabinet between the toilet and the shower.

Her figure was full. Her hips were attractively wide; built for birthing children. The proof of that screamed out upstairs, desperately young and dependent.

She left the light on in the bathroom when she walked out, disappeared, and then reappeared across the hallway in the small second bedroom. The baby she picked up from its crib was bald, and its delicate skin nearly matched the color of the raw umber its room was decorated in.

The man stayed on the first floor. He sat crammed at his little desk — much smaller than Jeff’s — in the main room and paid more attention to whatever sat between himself and the computer screen. He looked out of place to her there. That spot in the living room used to be a television set on top of an old refurbished 1970’s bed stand, not fit for a work space. There was no first anniversary picture of her on the wall next to it, no familiar arrangement of furniture behind it.

Jeff would have never have allowed all of his folders and binders to be just anywhere.

In place of his old office was a terribly small storage room. Even the light was on in there. Instead of books, unopened boxes sat on the shelves. She wondered if there was one with her old things. Most of the possessions that used to be in their rightful places now sat in the bottom of a closet in a cabin away from the city. They collected dust over the year that she and Hamlet were gone.

But maybe.

Maybe there was something Jeff carelessly left behind.

No.

Jeff would never leave anything behind. Jeff wasn’t careless.

Every drop of blood would’ve been cleaned up. No one had seen any evidence of a crime scene; a violent domestic dispute. And every touch of her in the house had been erased. The color of the walls weren’t even her own. Her time and effort spent with roller in hand and plastic underfoot had been primed over and coated with a mellow yellow, a tame orange. Spice, flavor, and life chased away the deep maroons that used to be.

Even the railings of the stoop looked new and not rusted.

He stood up from his desk and flicked out the light in the kitchen. His computer screen looked brighter in the dim light of the living room. He stopped at the storage room and that room went dark too.

At the front door, his fingers checked over locks and bolts, and he noticed her across the street before he turned off the stoop light outside. She didn’t know his name, she didn’t know where he came from, and she didn’t know what he did for a living. There was no pulse of recognition between their eyes when they met, and there never would be.

He glanced to turn off the light of the living room and when he looked back out, she was gone.