Nowhere, Notime

The snow was in the air. I watched it sway. It went back and forth. I wished it was on the ground. I had the bottle dangling between my index finger and thumb which were sweaty. I imagined and reimagined it dropping and the nerves firing up my palm, but I didn’t let it fall.

Then the snow was on the ground and I was back at the church from last time. It had two white spires.

“I could build that.”

I nodded, “I know you could.”

She followed me as I tried to walk away. The snow was on the ground and heavy in the air. It swirled in a bellowing, white gust down the alleyway I rushed down to get away. There was use in trying to see, there was just white.

“Go away,” I yelled over my shoulder and realized her hand was in mine and we were walking calmly. She held the bottle and took a sip. Her hair swept around covering her face – I was in it too.

I pulled my head out of her hair. She put the bottle down on the table and slapped the cards in the middle. She was drunk and Percy giggled because she called us ‘suckers’ when she took the pile. “Suckers” she said again. “He’s cold and wouldn’t take the bottle when I offered it. He won’t look at me”, she said to Percy. “He’s so cold, so dismissive.” “Oh yeah?” I said, “Percy. Guess what Estelle said. She told me she was reincarnated only to come back and be with me. That I made her promise to come back to me as I was dying,” I said, “and she did it even though she knew she was on her last life and it was time to move on.” “You suck,” she said later, “that was personal.” I said some things. “—but you don’t get it, I was so vulnerable to share that with you. You suck.”

We both hate that Corin. I turned to where she’d been walking with me but she wasn’t there. I couldn’t find the bottle. Couldn’t really even see, there was so much fine snow. “Estelle?” I said quietly.

“Yes?” her voice was rough. Had I never heard her voice unfiltered?

“Estelle?” I repeated.

“Yes?”

It wasn’t a girl, it was a very tall, lean, shirtless man pacing back and forth in flip-flops and shorts. His skin was leathery. I’d seen him before, destroying the bikes with ritualistic discipline.

“Yes? Yes. Yes?” he was saying.

“You’re not Estelle.”

“Who is Estelle?”

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” He moved his bare arms. He was hypnotizing.

“Where is your shirt?”

“Where is yours?”

I looked down and realized I also had no shirt. I was wearing flip-flops I had never seen before, and his feet – directly in front of mine – had my adidas on. I looked up and he was wearing my shirt.

“Dad!” came a girl’s voice. Was this Estelle?

But, as she separated from the white that swirled around us, I could see it was the girl Sal had called an angel. She came runnig down the street like one of those mechanical aluminum toys where the wife chases the husband out of one door and then disappears into another door at the end of the track.

“Mare,” the man smiled so large, and he put his hands up to his chest and walked towards her. I walked after them like a stray dog and turned around just hoping a little.