lucy in the sky

“I saw you.”

“I… it’s not like I was avoiding you anyway.”

“Why would you avoid me?”

I am told I have a throaty voice, but then I heard Bugs Bunny and he talks (he doesn’t talk of course, he was voiced by a man called Mel Blanc until he died in 1989) a mix of ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘the Bronx’ which are dialects that people speak in New York. Then I decided to call my voice as ‘Brooklyn and the Bronx without the accent’ though I know that is incorrect, because I know that people are allowed to do incorrect things sometimes, like lying or cheating or leaving other people. But it’s only as long as it’s once in a while.

“So…”, she scratched her nose and shifted on her seat. “I see you have changed.”

“Yes”, I said. “I took to wearing shirts and I go without a belt because I get rashes around my hips. But then my pants slide down and the elastic on my underwear shows and I let my shirt out because I don’t like my underwear being seen.”

She laughed. I like how she looks when she laughs, her eyes reduce to creases but her pupils show, magnified by drops of tears. But I don’t like her laughing because I don’t like people laughing, because laughter to me is always one sided. And then she took a cigarette, clicked her lighter two times because it failed to light up at the first and she lit her cigarette with it. She took a puff on it and turned away to blow the smoke out. And then she looked at me.

“Heck”, she said. “I almost forgot…” and she made to throw the cigarette away.

“It’s alright, I don’t mind.”

And that was a white lie because I do mind smoking in real, but I didn’t mind other people doing it because I know it’s part of their system and that my repulsion would only be the same as that of a vegetarian towards someone like me who eats meat and feels good about it because it tastes good.

She looked at me for a half a minute, cigarette still in her hand – the longest she did in the twelve I’ve been with her. And then she smiled, and I smiled too and it didn’t bother me much. I like smiles.

“Did you know that it takes 8 minutes and 19 seconds for light from the sun to reach the earth?”

“Jo”, she said, her smile subsiding. “Do you still think I care about those things?”

“I know you don’t”, I said. “You’ve told me that twice – three times if you count this one too.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

I looked up at the sky because I didn’t want to look at her face because she looked angry. And I know that skies are more interesting to look at because there are things happening as you see them, like stars dying out or new stars being created, only that you can’t see those. And I didn’t answer her question.

“Scientists say that the Sun would die in 15 Billion years”, I said. “And before that it would swell and engulf the earth or boil its water away. And that means the earth would die before the Sun and that the world would go a lot before it. And that means there is no forever.”

She leaned forward and rocked on her seat repetitively and then she placed her face on her fist and looked what people call as ‘distant’. And then she spread her fingers out to cover her face and she shook for a while, like when someone laughs or shivers in the cold. And then she stopped shaking and looked up at me and her face was wet with tears and dirty with marks from her eyeliner. And then she looked away and looked down and asked me if she could leave. And I told her I had to go too.

“Oh…”, she said pointedly, past a sniffle and a check on her handbag. “Who is it this time? Andromeda?” she threw her bag over her shoulder. “Or Bellatrix?”

“No”, I said. “It’s Lucy.”