Orange & Amber
This story was originally published in The Link, Autumn Equinox 2012 edition and subsequently published in They Have to Take You In, a collection of short stories edited by Ursula Pflug (2016).
It's still dark when I crawl from behind the rusting dumpster. One shoulder brushes the cracking metal, my thin coat snags and rips. I toss my makeshift bed of cardboard aside and dig in a coat pocket for a cigarette stub.
Tiqueel Avenue is bustling with activity and colour, even at this godless hour. People walk the streets in thigh-high boots; sparkling, feathered boas; Goodwill clothing torn and stretched in avant-guard fashion. Cars drift by, some stopping, most not. Bubbles of exaggerated laughter burst.
I wander down the street, taking my time. Groups of night people send good natured cat-calls my way. Although I'm a mess in a bulky, hooded sweatshirt, cracked leather jacket and sun bleached jeans, I play along, cat-walking like a model as I slide off my coat one arm at a time. At the corner, I drop it in a garbage can.
By the end of Tiqueel, I'm trying to remember which shelter serves hot coffee at whatever time it happens to be, and which dumpster I can visit for some eatable day-olds.
But now I notice that the city is draining. The worst is when I start to see it in the faces—something about grey faces; it's seeing death imprinted on life, a constant reminder of our extremely limited human warranty.
It's gotta be time to leave this place.
Leaving means hitchhiking and hitchhiking means easy spare change or, more often, a meal with the ride. Not to mention some fresh scenery.
I wander to the bay, into junkie territory. The large, deep-set doorways hold thin, pinched faces. Bodies crouched, huddled together like wild animals. Except their animal-eyes are dead. Here, all is shades of grey. A girl sprawls in a doorway. She hums to herself, a warbling tune that weaves in and out, up and down. She stares into the sky. Her face was once very beautiful, but now her large eyes and full lips are narrow, her cheeks and forehead pocked. I wonder if her eyes used to be shining, blue sky or maybe rich, brown earth. Secret tears close my throat.
At once, I feel the grey, taste it, its bitterness fills my nose. It slips under my fingernails and crawls up my spine. I dash to a store front and peer into my reflection in the dark glass. The yellow-orange street light washes me; I taste biting tangerine as I lick the corner of my mouth. Hands press the glass, feeling for life in the jaundiced image. Seeing is believing. Overwhelming relief washes through me. Yellow tangerine. I am not grey yet.
Strips of traffic talk to me, telling of places and people and when to stick out my thumb. I walk along the shoulder. It is never a long wait.
"Where you heading?" It's the inevitable question. They all have to ask.
I lie. "Out West, to meet up with my friend, she got me a job out there." And to the next, "To see my mother, she's very sick." But never: "Nowhere." Because it translates to: "I'm a lost and helpless runaway." Which means cops and social workers and all that bullshit.
The further west I get, the brighter the world becomes. It comes in technicolour when I can see the Pacific. I stop. After a week's travel, I'm sixty dollars richer and stuffed full of fast food. Now it's past dinner, because the day is turning golden, but I'm not hungry. I crack a full pack of smokes and sit against a pale beige wall at a busy intersection downtown. My old coffee cup soon overflows with small change, its squeaky smell mingling with that of copper. I sit, smoke, and taste the world rushing by.
Bounding down the street like so much raging fuchsia, he is loud and demanding. He takes up too much space with flailing arms and legs, causing a moving pocket in the sidewalks of people. Following behind is a crowd of fashionable teens in fashionable colours. They burst into drunken laughter at Fuchsia's antics. Whatever, I think.
Fushia beams golden as he passes by, but then, in another flailing move, his quarters and dimes come rolling back my way. They run down the sidewalk, fleeing their unstable owner. He stops, doubling back and bobbing for his renegade silvers.
Haloed by the glaring purplish-red, his orange and amber ringlets bounce in the street light. His skin is dusk and his cheeks flush crimson. Sailor's delight. Our eyes meet. Steel blue irises and I catch the smell of water straight from the spring. Rows of brand-name shoes line up behind him.
"Well, I guess you can have it," he says, purple waves erupt from his skin making wakes in the air around us. "I mean you didn't jump me for it or anything." Behind him, trendy laughter bubbles up again.
Our eyes don't part as he drops the change in my cup.
"Come on," a lime-tinted crony calls.
He leaves in a flurry of arms and legs; a seizure-esque move to get back to his feet. This elicits a blushing giggle from a rosy girl amidst his faded rainbow of followers. He turns, walking backwards as he departs, his slanting grin emanating a curious green. He's looking to see how impressed I must be. Whatever, I think. I hope it's written across my face. But maybe he's just wondering what I'm doing out here. After all, he's not that much older than I.
There's something about drug dealers and docks. It's too bad, because now all docks are grey to me, no matter where I go. I score, shoot, and wander back into the emptying downtown. Groups of clubbers stumble away from three a.m. last calls.
And there he is, looking a little frayed around the edges. But how could I miss that flashing fuchsia, that orange and amber mop. I turn, walking away.
"Hey!" he calls, "Hey, hey!" His voice is screaming hot pink. I turn, wondering who he's yelling at. He's run-stumbling towards me.
"What do you want?" I mean to say, but it comes out as: "Piss off."
"Listen, I'm a volunteer for this program for the homeless."
I'm fascinated by the bloody webs in his eyes. Looking at them, I can smell the rain forest beneath the stench of booze. "I'm not homeless, I'm choosing to experience a housing-optional lifestyle," I inform him.
"Uh, OK." He sags a little, his fuchsia browns around the edges.
I start to walk.
"Well don't you want to hear about it?" I'm sure that's what he meant to say, but all I heard was "Dun-sha wanna herb it?"
"Alright." I continue walking, forcing him to hop-stumble along. "I'll herb it."
I pull a smoke from my dwindling supply, and then offer him the pack. He takes one and borrows my lighter, probably too drunk to notice he's bumming from a so-labelled homeless.
He passes the lighter back. "First, you get a calendar."
"I steal a calendar? I fail to see how that's productive. Then I can count the days I'm homeless with it?"
"No, no, no. Just let me finish, please? The first calendar is free—you get it from the program. Then you sell that free calendar to someone for five dollars. Next, you buy two calendars for five dollars and then you sell both them. Them both. Both of them." He shakes his head, sending out a spray of red bolts and nearly falling.
I catch his elbow and steady him. Then stare at my stained hands. Orange and amber remains on my fingers and palm where we touched.
"What is it?" He peers into my hands, leaning over and starting to tilt again.
"Nothing." I snap shut my hands. "What were you saying then, about the calendars?"
"Right... so you can either buy four more sand sell all of them, or buy two more and keep the five dollars from the other two, buy some food or something, and it just keeps going from there." He makes a rolling motion with his hands. The tip of his smoke brushes his wrist. Little bits of light dance to the ground, and I am mesmerized by the sound of the colours swirling; they fall to the primal beat of a drum far off in time and space.
He touches a tentative finger to my shoulder. Snapping out of it, I answer, "I don't want to generalize here, I mean I can't speak for every homeless person, but let's just say I'm no entrepreneur."
He's sagging beige even more now. I'm glad I held back and didn't say exactly what I thought, which involved a couple of schemers with a lack morals and some very cheap paper. He's too bright to be one of them; and must be only a naive volunteer.
"Come back to my place, get cleaned up. You need a shower." He is recovering, beige flickering in tones of amethyst.
"Yeah, I'm sure your parents will be thrilled to meet such an up and coming youth as myself." I pull at my mock suspenders.
"They don't have to meet you." He looks at his feet, blushing scarlet. "My room's in the basement, it's got a separate entrance and a shower." He smiles and shrugs, causing wakes of salmon pink in the air.
I laugh, but of course I'm going. Because Fuchsia's no serial killer. Serial killers have charisma and tempers; they have egos that don't do well under scrutiny or cutting, smart ass remarks. Besides, when opportunity knocks, yeah, you answer.
Charity never felt so good. Standing under the steaming shower, I could linger too long. But the sun would soon rise; I'm tired and need to find a good dumpster and some cardboard. Wrapping in a towel, I step out of the shower to find my clothes are gone. In their place is a squarely folded stack. A white Polo shirt. Its textured weave slides over my clean skin. And clean, dark pants woven of smooth, cool nylon.
I walk out of the bathroom holding the baggy pants bunched around my waist. His is a mostly unfinished basement with two sectioned-off rooms, the bathroom and the bedroom, and the remainder, a big, open space. Milk crates have been placed around plywood suspended over bricks. A washer and dryer are set into a wall. Metal pipes race around the open ceiling. He's not out here. All of the walls are unpainted drywall. How can they just leave it—dust-grey? I worry.
His room is cluttered. I sit on the bed, which sloshes; the deep blue sheet starts to suck me under. Panicking, I haul myself out and end up on the floor on hands and knees. There, I sit and look around. Books, clothes, posters, a guitar, a dirty cup and plate—things piled everywhere.
On a stand in front of me are many framed pictures. He smiles with iron clad teeth from a large school photo. Serial killers have ego, I think, staring at his picture in his room. Still, I’m not convinced. I remove the photo from its frame and pocket the picture, leave its emptiness face down. He can look in the mirror if he forgets.
"Hey." He appears in the doorway.
"Where are my clothes?" I snap.
He crumples brown. "They're in the laundry, OK?"
"Won't that wake up your parents?" I start to panic, standing, pushing past him for the exit.
"Relax, Dad'll sleep through anything and Mom's at work."
This is good. Mom's are the ones who'll try to pinch you. Dads, most of the time, they don't know what to do. They'll buy any bullshit line to let you go be your way. Easy.
He steps toward me. "Come, sit." He speaks with a dramatic sweep of arm and a bow toward the makeshift table and crates. "Join me in my parlour." Wears a faint, ruby grin.
I peer into his bronze and cherry face. White teeth. Perfect rows. Steely eyes avert as he sits. I wonder if he's really that metallic brown and glaring white, or if it's just another mask, like his constant performance. I'm still holding up the pants and begin a slow circuit around this open, emptiness. Family pictures are tacked to raw walls. Mother, father, son. A happy family, behind gloss.
He hunkers over his dresser and when he lifts his head. White powder dusts his nose.
"I wondered how your drunk ass was still awake."
"Don't get all high and mighty on me, now."
"At least you've dimmed down, I couldn't handle much more fuchsia." I laugh.
There is no questioning in his eyes as they meet mine. His look is sweet sage, the full flavour of knowing. He bends over the dresser again, ringlets swaying to the somewhere song of a mourning dove.
I sit. It makes me smaller and the walls begin to close in. How can you live in such a little space? Surrounded. I am suffocating. Eyes everywhere. "I have to go."
"Your clothes are still in the washer." He nods at the large, machine. Bleach white and sloshing, it fills the basement with the scent of synthetic lemon.
"Don't care." I strip the Polo off as I cross to the washer, leaving it on the floor behind me. I lift the lid and the churning stops. My clothes are drowning. His hand reaches past me and closes it. The churning begins again.
His hands are mint-cold on my naked arms.
He falls asleep holding me but I can’t rest in the sloshing, ever-sinking bed. I peel his arms off, then curl up beside the cool, hard machines.
I wake to sing-song humming and sizzling bacon. My stomach protests, lurching and nauseous. My head aches.
I need away.
The sing-song brightens louder, beaming yellow. A door opens and the yellow floats down the stairs. And then it shatters in a hard edged voice. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"Um," I put on my best accent. "Laz night, I comb homb really late, I think thiz iz thee place I board at?"
"Right." A sigh. "Come up and have some breakfast, after we can sort things out." The light dissolves back up the stairs.
I pull my clothes from the dryer. My jeans are still damp, but that's technology for you. He peeks out of his room, wary of the yellow light.
"I have to go. Yellow is upstairs and probably calling the cops right now."
He crosses the room and kisses me. It is a prism. Colours everywhere. A breath of mountain air.
"I have to go."
The world has never been so bright. That night, we spoke in neons, and other, burning colours which have no names, but can be heard, tasted and held. We breathed in smooth stone, crushed velvet, sand paper. The sounds were tangy, sweet, and melting hot.
I'll never go back. Some lines can only be crossed once. Worlds may touch worlds. May even overlap, but co-exist, they cannot.
But one day, at a shelter, I'll tear down a poster for some calendar-selling bullshit, and smile.
The streets aren't deadly cold yet, but they're close. A telltale wind whips a whisper of what winter is capable of. I stop, holding my clipboard in my teeth so I can zip my coat. It's hard to believe I used to live out here. The only thing keeping me almost-warm is the thought of a steaming shower back at my apartment. "I'm going to stretch my legs," I tell Manny, "won't be gone more than five."
I set my clipboard down and grab a less-than-steaming cup of coffee from the table. Manny and I volunteer for a charity which offers free transitional housing and Living Skills classes. We haven't had much of a turnout today, even with coffee and oatmeal. Damn them for not letting us set up at night. Too dangerous, they say. Whatever, I think.
I glance at my watch. Shit. I've been away too long. Manny will be in a panic. I cut through an ally to get back faster. I'm rushing, picturing Manny chewing off all his nails. Pray he’s not calling the cops or some shit.
I trip.
Fuchsia is there to help me up.
I know it's him behind the years, the grime. He stares from steel eyes. Their blue has gone. But grey doesn't scare me like it used to. I know I can fight it now.
"You, you look just the same, you know," he says.
"So I've been told. Not sure that's a compliment, though. Come on, I got a truckload of coffee... well, no, I guess it's a vanload."
A faint aura of fuchsia flashes as he smiles.
Grey doesn’t scare me like it used to.