Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [120]
When we’d formally met every contributing artist, when we’d exhausted every room and every topic, we took the one remaining tray of cheese and fruit and carried the picnic to the front stoop to sit and eat. Only a few people remained, idling in conversation before their cars. I sat on one end of the steps, facing the lot. He sat leaning against the wall of the building, facing me, his long legs spread lanky behind my back and folded ankle over ankle. He’d made an effort with his clothes: all black, though two very different shades between shirt and slacks, and the cuffs of his pant legs were still dirty and flecked with something white.
“I haven’t asked about Zoë,” he said.
“She’s Zoë. She’s taking things day by day.”
I told him about the wig heads and the long nights. He expressed sympathy, appropriate and kind.
The gallery lights went off behind us, a warning that this night had to end.
“We’ve missed you,” I said. Gathering all my courage, I added, “I’ve missed you.”
I met his eyes, tried to communicate there what I didn’t know how to put into words.
He set the platter we’d emptied aside, brushed his hands clean, then scooted himself over to sit right next to me.
“Eleven hours,” he said. “You came eleven hours to see some art that might not have been very good and you haven’t yelled at me or tried to hit me, so I’m assuming you don’t hate me.”
I assured him that what I felt for him was the furthest thing from hatred. I wanted to tell him how every day I’d thought of him to the point of distraction, but I interrupted myself, lost track of what I was supposed to say, and ended up asking him if he’d ever thought of me.
“See that barn up there?” He asked.
I nodded.
“It’s been mostly renovated, turned into studios, critique space. A little kitchen. But there’s still a loft that you have to get up to by ladder. And you can lay there on your back and look out the window at the clouds or the stars or the rain. I used to go there when I couldn’t think anymore, when I got frustrated. I went to try and figure out some problem. I always ended up thinking of you.”
He sat close enough that our arms touched, and at the slight brush of skin on skin I knew I had no reason to doubt.
“I would think about the first time I saw you,” he said.
“At the poetry reading,” I said.
“Well, then,” he agreed, encouraged by the specificity of my memory. “But I saw you before you saw me—outside actually, when you were getting out of your car. You got your scarf stuck in your car door. You nearly took your own head off walking towards the building.”
I laughed because I was embarrassed and because it was funny and because I was drugged with a kind of happiness I hadn’t allowed myself to expect.
“Your hair was so bright,” he said. “Practically orange in the sunlight. You stood out from across the entire lawn. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
He thought a moment, said carefully,“I can’t go back to Copenhagen, Amy. That was always temporary.”
“I know.” I reached for his hand. “Who says we have to go back?”
He smiled, and in his smile I saw a hundred futures, altogether bright as our field of glowing lights.
EPILOGUE
I found an ending for my story.
Linda Pendigrass takes her box of rejections to the kitchen table. To her left is the phone book. To the right, twenty-eight envelopes and twenty-eight stamps. Into each envelope she stuffs an old rejection letter, adding a form letter of her own: