He lay on the bed, jeans and a tee shirt, arms folded behind his back. This had been her room growing up, and it still carried a bit of childhood in it. A study in neatness, he noticed. Everything in its place.
Whatcha doing? she came from around the corner and filled the doorway...her hair still damp from her shower. I'm not going to dry it she added, pulling on the wet ends...it's too damn hot. Are you okay with ugly hair?
He let out a bit of something like a laugh...It's not ugly hair. You look good with it wet.
No...I don't. I think I don't. She turned and he heard her pad down the hallway. He slowly pulled himself up, a little reluctant to part from a place where she had laid down a hundred times...maybe a million...left her imprints. Embedded in a bedframe in a room in the house where she slept under Texas skies and Texas stars. He felt not like he could fit, but that he could perhaps enjoin.
She was putting on make up and fussing over herself in the yellow light of the bathroom...the heat in the air was oppressive.
Why do you keep the windows open? Why not turn on the air? he asked...his hands in his back pockets, leaning against the wall adjacent to the bathroom. She was a few feet away, eyes in a mirror. She didn't turn.
Because then I wouldn't be able to hear the storm.
He nodded...knowing she couldn't see it. Left it alone...somewhere .38 Special was imploring him "to hold on loosely, but don't let go"...the radio would play a song and then the Broadcast Warning would come on, a robotic voice describing Severe Weather. He noticed the day had become less yellow, and more gray. Almost brown.
You have a unique beauty he whispered, as he watched her elbows, her one leg and a side of her face that he could see in the doorway. He knew she wouldn't hear him. She poked her head around the door, her eyes were made up and she was putting on something for her cheeks. One was done, the other still waiting.
Did you say something?
No...did you hear anything?
I don't know. Maybe it was the radio.
She had a unique beauty for sure. A lonely one that she alone possessed. He sometimes had to help her find it, like a china mask that she had to put on. She always wore it but sometimes he had to remind her it was on. A delicate fragile beauty. Frail as frost. And when he cupped her face in his hands and did nothing but stare unblinkingly at her, she knew she was at her most vulnerable but infinitely her most beautiful. In those fine moments when he was her mirror and she was crystalline. She was legendary. Her body, her legs, her anywhere with the exception of her eyes didn't really matter. Like opening a church door and only seeing candles brilliant and bright she neither cared nor concerned with anything except the hot warm light he shined on her in the confines of that space. Shared. Brief. Silent. She didn't need any words to make her feel exceptional. She could see it. Sense it. Believe it. Sure the eyes of a stranger, if caught, might be a respite and an acknowledgment as she passed by. But it was so superficial that it washed right off of her. Emerging from a shower she went back into her quiet concerns. She slipped into her body like old clothes. But as she painted and applied she kept coming back to a slight feverish moment when they were alone, together, and his quiet study of her. His gaze was a burning curiosity, a portrait painter's eye. She remembered all she could remember were his eyes and nothing else. Not even if it was light or dark.
She had come out of the bathroom and was staring at him, his back to her as he watched the weather through a window.
It's fixing to storm. Her voice was small.
He turned, and against the light of the bathroom she was an outline. Come here. She walked towards him and when she was close he stepped forward to pull her into him. Her wet hair grazed his cheek and she smelled of a shampoo. He could feel the cool of her hair on his neck. He kissed her hair.
What will we do if we lose electricity? He asked...realizing the boring nature of his question. He just wanted her to talk, or say something. Or just do nothing. Either way he was free to look at her, wet hair, done-up eyes, smooth rouge and undone lips. He wanted to press his upon them, but he stood there and let her slip from his arms.
We won't. It's just a thunderstorm.
Ah. Well. And with that the strobe popped and within seconds an avalanche crash enveloped them as thunder roiled the house and pushed the air into a heady wind. She had jumped just a little, and in that flashbulb he had seen her dark eyes widen. He reached out to her again.
You don't need to protect me he heard her whisper almost into his shoulder. The wind was picking up and the house filtered the air through the hallway...it was cool and blue.
I'm not protecting you...I'm protecting me.
From what. Another bulb. Another crash. It sounded like it hit a tree and if that tree was jam-packed with explosives it could not have been any louder. And the fresh rush of rain started, and you could hear it in sheets.
From you leaving.
The yard had gone gray in the steel wool of an afternoon thunderstorm. The blinking bits of lightning were now in some syncopation with the thunder...a chaotic and disturbed daylight and the afternoon demolished in bits and pieces as the air scurried to hide from the clamor.
In the hallway, lit up almost in black and white, they stood...he held her in a swaying motion...the radio still on, playing a barely discernible song...she had her arms around him like a slow dance. He listened to the outside and he listened to her inside, her heart against him in a tiny thunder while outside the Texas sky hurled and screamed like some lost lover searching through a woods, a name hurtled again and again to a world that would never respond.
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