"Do you remember not being broken?" Kir's scrunched face makes it difficult to take her seriously. That one fact is constant, her face crumbling from the weight of questions she's unsure I'll answer. Everything around the question is clear, but there are voids where the answers hide. Disdain piles up, but the banter must go on.
"Kir, you'll need to fix that before you become licensed. Most people don't want to talk to a prune. You make it sound like I'm crippled. Then again, you say I'm broken, so I guess that is what I am."
Her tension recedes, curdling into a mixture of sarcastic grin and curiosity. "Don't pull that crap with me, Jack, you know I'm allergic to b.s." Mocking a grin back, I feign compliance, but an eyelid sags under the pressure of her middle finger, and I concede. Avoiding it won't fly any more than scrambling for some platitude. A sigh flutters free, wriggling about to buy moments.
"Ok, ok. The difference?” I need something-- something we'll both understand. A lamppost hums over a thin cement foot-bridge ahead. Eureka is almost too good. “That light over there, what do you see?" My finger extends out to the lonesome thing-- trying its best to bathe everything in a warm glow.
Kir gives it a glance and starts the bulldozer, "A light, duh. Thanks for a pop quiz of the ordinary, Professor. Next time, can we cover an in-depth study of steps?" It's crass, but true. More disdain stacks the wrinkles on. Explaining this case to the ever-snarky, princess of melodramatic psychology might just get weary, but a soldier need trudge on.
We stop just outside of the glow, and I waggle my conductor's rod. "Good, so we can continue. You see the street light: normal, common.” What do I see? Is it more than that? Less? “I see--”
Is it right to even say? “The light that flows from the light is scattered, shards that somehow manage to strike free from the glass. I sometimes wonder if they are coming to me for help, perhaps asylum. More than that, when I look up at the bulb, a prism enshrines it. Every light is a seraph, ordained by rainbow to ward off the night. It's always like that, fucking rainbows as far as the eye can see; I'm drowning in a sea of 'em." I turn my eyes away from the sight down to hers, playing catch. This was the soft pitch. Is it enough?
Our eyes lock for a moment. Did it work? Wrinkles cloud below her bangs. “That's beautiful, I didn't know you see that.”
"Except it isn't beautiful. It's ordinary. What I see every day, what I walk past to get to the store, or my car, or another pointless, dreary meeting. Sure, now and then I'm capable of looking past its constant existence to see beauty, and for those brief instances I'm allowed to be someone. But that is not the norm. I'm no one. When I look at it, even now, all I see is a sickening reminder of what I am. If I'm allowed to feel anything at all, it's a primal need to be free from the truth." She shifts her stance, sliding her arms across her chest. Discomfort oozes around her as she avoids resting on the bridge railing. Ignorance would have solved both our problems now, but curiosity kills. That's what we are—violently curious. It's still there, desire pressed in her entrancing gaze, robbing those emerald eyes of any softness.
"So," Can't look at her, "since we're playing the sharing game, I was wondering if I get to ask you a question?"
Kir raises a hand in a mock expression to signal that she might tell the truth, if it serves a purpose. "You can ask me 'a' question, doesn't mean I won't plead the fifth or tell you to bury it. You remember the foundation of these dalliances was to provide me with all the perks of a certifiable test subject with zero of the nasty tasks of actually having to visit a funny farm. Admittedly, you've never been foolish enough to get that rubber stamp and clean white jacket, but I think you'd give any Napoleon a run for their money."
“So what does that make you? A free-range farmer for the insane?” The other side of the foot-bridge draws near, and just beyond the neon 'open' sign of the parlor that was once Infinitea flickers. Not wanting to waste time, the question pours out, "So why don't you use your full name, Kirstin?" Wind catches the words and drag them across each bar of the railing. The bite of sour emotions reflect off her face, a ban building up behind pallid features. She would sometimes do that with offending words, beheading the gorgon before the semantics petrify. But it never came.
"How'd you find out?”
"I stopped by your dorm a while back and couldn't find your name on the roster, it was the closest one to it." A leaf careened over the edge of the bridge toward the sucking pools below.
"So you're following me? Maybe I should rethink your title as "test subject". Maybe "lab rat" would be more fitting; the department might borrow me a cattle prod to put you in your place." A deadpan blizzard whirls about her, obscuring any chance of telling the temper underneath.
"I'm not following you like that. I just thought we could have a chat like normal people do. Off-the-books, none of this hidden-agenda analysis. It's not like I pulled any teeth to get the info either. It's printed on the board to get buzzed in." Batten down the hatches, here comes the storm. Her face fissures, a wisp of white shining through soft, rosy lips.
A sigh slides out, "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling official transcripts. The dorm just took my name off them for the board, didn't even contact me about it." She raises a finger, jabbing it with the precision of a foil. "So how do you plan to use this information, Jack? Blackmail? Favors? Or will you just sprinkle it around in order to watch me squirm?"
"Blackmail is such a dirty word, Kir. And anyways, you do plenty of squirming without my help." The deadpan returns in triumph, wiping clean her sweet smile.
"I just wanted to know why you don't use your full name for anything? It's not like you push off the truth?” Leaves rustle, adding a natural drum-roll to the moment. “If you don't want to say, I can't make you.”
“You are, Jack. Curiosity is too dubious a master to let anything lie for long.” Neon lights us both in its sick glow. She looks different, doesn't she. Can't put my finger on it though.
“It's just not enough, Kir, ya know? Sharing one way is just as lonely as not speaking at all.”
“It's snowing.”
She stares off into the sky, trying her best to hide the fact that I can see tears welling up. The snow doesn't matter, it's just water robbed of warmth. Can't let that be us. It drifts down, cherub feathers to mark some fleeting existence. That's just like angels—so removed from the moment that they can't see the emotion of those standing right in front of them.
“I'm cold, Kir.”
“Liar.” A quick prod to the ribs jolts everything back to life. “Let's go inside. I feel like getting some tea.”
“Off the record? I don't expect you to answer my question any other way.”
“Off the record then. Music crackles through the speakers attached to the nearby streetlamps, a soothing lullaby as day beds down.