remember when i moved in you;

[wingborne]

Kiley packed her lunch, three quarters, her plastic soccer trophies, and her stuffed dog into her pink plastic Barbie suitcase, and ran away from home. She sneaked away during the afternoon snack time, and put her favorite stuffed doll in her place. The doll’s name was Jennifer, and she had pretty red hair and black bead eyes and a stitched up smile that stretched from ear to ear. While the preschool teacher passed out green apple juice boxes, she walked out the front door, past the white fence, and down the hot California streets.

The Greyhound bus for Florida would leave at three.

She had a set, unhappy face as she plodded down the street to sit in front at the bus station, the paper ticket sitting warmly in her pocket. She occasionally touched it, to ensure its existence, and then squinted into the sun to find the lumbering train. Only a few people walked pass the station, stray wanderers who had a vapid, lost look to their eyes as they stumbled around, clutching their tickets to remember their names. Kiley watched without interest, and sat like a solid rock on her bench, kicking her new black heels together occasionally.

At around noon, a man lumbered to sit next to her. He wasn’t a Dangerous Man, like her mother already told her. She could tell because his eyes were made from stars. He sat beside her in silence for a while, regarding the laminated timetable with mourning as he unwrapped his McDouble and chewed on it loudly, specks of meat landing on his wrinkled gray beard, crawling with bugs and dreams.

“How can you see?” she asked.

It took a moment for him to answer. He first swallowed the bite of hamburger, and then slowly craned his head downwards, as if he had not noticed the little girl before. He moved slowly, carefully, as if he was built from stone. Though his face was tanned brown and wrinkled, his eye sockets were pitch black, holes without end. Through the darkness, as if at the end of a tunnel, the two stars twinkled shadily, blinking in and out through a fog, occasionally rolling too far into his eye and disappearing for a moment. It hurt her eyes to stare at them, so Kiely turned her attention back to her shiny black shoes.

“I can see,” the man finally pronounced, mournfully, opening his wrinkled mouth through the ratty beard to show chipped yellow teeth. “I can see everything.”

“But your eyes are different.”

“Ah,” the man said. “Ah, ah, ah.” He said it as if Kiley had said something very profound. He stuck his hand into his dirty brown jacket that smelled like urine, and settled back into the bench. The stars in his eyes rolled right and then the left, as the sun dazzled down to the old bus station.

“I exchanged my eyes for stars,” he said. “Now the stars are my eyes.” He chuckled, an unpleasant raspy sound.

Kiley was a wise girl, and pondered upon this information practically. A man with stars for eyes was not very impressive, she felt. And he smelled very badly, so this was extremely unimpressive. But since her mother told her to be nice, she patiently continued to sit next to him and twiddled with her sticky fingers.

“I used to own a house.” The man stroked his beard, combing out the lice badly, as his fingers were twigs that twisted and turned. “I used to own the biggest business in the world. Snuffly Toilet Paper. We sold toilet paper to every country. I even journeyed to Antarctica, and we set up a very big factory in the snow, and it was very successful.”

“That’s very big,” Kiley said politely. She didn’t want to tell the old man that Antarctica was actually an imaginary land, because he seemed very dedicated.

“We had a jingle,” the old man said. He hummed a few off-key tunes to a song that Kiley had never heard, but had always heard, in every radio static, every television show, every time a bird chirps and every time a car rumbled through gravel.

“I had a wife and a child.” The man stroked his beard again, and when he opened his mouth, a maggot crawled from his dry lips and buried its white body deep within the gray strokes. “My child, her name was Apricot. My wife did not need a name. But we were happy together, because I was rich, and I had a big house that was bigger than this entire world. And my toilet paper factory was very successful.”

He stopped mid-stroke of his beard, his wrinkled face contorting with anger, suddenly, drawing back his thin lips across his colored gums. “But there was a man!”

A man. Kiley remembered her father. He would probably be at work, buried in his papers, and he would forget to return home, like he always would. It wasn’t bad, because he liked his work, and his work liked him. She sometimes could remember what he looked like, a shadow. She wondered if the old man’s mysterious figure was like that, too. A shadow.

“They said he didn’t exist. But I knew his names. John B. Motlers. Oh, he was a clever one. He introduced himself to me in one meeting, said he loved my work, my toilet paper was brilliant.” His strokes of the beard increased, agitated, angered. The stars rolled around frantically now, blinking in and out, intensely flaring.

“What was he like?” Kiley asked.

“Like?” The old man barked out a short laugh, ending in a harsh cough. “He was like every idiot who walked into my office. Slick hair, friendly face. Fleshy on the jowls, ugly purpling tie, he was a new one who had just entered the business. And his suit, yes, a fresh-pressed suit from a rip-off company, a warehouse, that’s the type of man he was. But he came into my office and shook my hand and congratulated me for my work. And I was an idiot and I thought that was his honest intention.”

He sounded like a shadow to Kiley.

“I had an office,” the old man said, mournfully now, staring at the laminated time table once more and touching the directions to Waywood with a trembling finger. “It faced the sun, so I didn’t see it at the time. The sun was setting, so it caught in my eye. I couldn’t see it. The sun was in my eyes.”

“See what?”

“He wanted to exchange four quarters for a dollar.” He tapped his fingers across the time table in the order, patiently, a four-beat drum. “First was an eagle, and that was normal. Second was a tree, and that was normal. Third was an apricot, and that was terrible. And the fourth was the moon.” His last tap lingered and echoed even after he had fallen sullenly silent.

“You mean the back of the quarters?”

The old man ignored her, rocking slowly to himself. “Then he left. I never saw him again, but I had four quarters and no dollar, see? No dollar. I was a fool!” And at this violent proclamation, he struck the bench angrily with his twig fingers, and the bark chipped off and fell onto the dirty blue-and-white tile floor. Kiley drew back her shiny black shoes in fear.

“I thought I had the entire world, and I did. Soon after, soon after, my wife gave birth. To my daughter, Apricot. And I lost a quarter. Don’t you see? Can’t you see?” The old man turned his star eyes on her once more, and they flared angrily as they attempted to light across from millions of miles and yards and inches. Kiley’s eyes hurt from gazing too long into the brightness, so she only turned her head away. She didn’t like talking to this man, she thought. He was a very unpleasant man, and even if he wasn’t Dangerous, she would have liked to sit alone. She would sit alone on the bus, though. Only people were allowed on the buses, she was sure, and he wasn’t a person. Not by far.

“She was beautiful,” he moaned. “She was born fuzzy, with peach hair, and her eyes were green, green like leaves. Did you know her? Have you seen her? She’s beautiful, my child was beautiful.” He grasped Kiley’s hand for a moment, and then released it. Sap clung to her fingers as she tried to wipe it off on her green dress. But he had fallen sullenly quiet again, and reached into his pocket to take out another hamburger, a Double Cheeseburger, which was too big to fit into his mouth without teeth, so he tore pieces of it and fed it to himself.

“My wife was a tree,” he said. “I didn’t see it before, but she was a tree, and an apricot sprung from her branches. See? I couldn’t see it. I was a fool. I thought she was my wife, and she would always stand by me, in all the meetings, all the parties, all the black-and-white-and-blue dress-ups that I would wear a tuxedo and stand around like I was important.”

He reflected for a moment.

“I was important.”

“That’s two quarters.” Kiley was counting. “The tree and the apricot.”

“I lost two.” He coughed raspily. “I didn’t see it at the time, but I had lost two. But then, then, the eagle came, and that was terrible. Can’t you see? You can’t see, but the eagle came and rested in my tree and ate my apricot. And then I had one. Can’t you see? I had a throne built from toilet paper alone, but then the world decided it didn’t need to wipe its ass anymore, can’t you see? So the eagle came and took them all away.”

He opened his hand, and a single quarter sat where the hamburger had been before. Kiley did not question it much, and she glanced down at the quarter with interest.

“Is it the moon?”

“The eagle came and took everything away,” he said. “So I had one left. The moon. I thought, I could get everything back.”

He reflected calmly on the last quarter for a moment. “So I put the quarter in the sky, but I stared too long at the stars while I was trying. I heard the man laugh from behind me, he was laughing. But I stared into the stars and the stars stared back at me, and when I next looked, my eyes were the stars and my stars were the eyes.” He touched his face emptily, plunging a twig into his eye socket and wiggling it around emptily, and extracted his finger again solemnly. He stared onto the hot summer road, his grim look of despair proclaimed by the shadows that fell across the wrinkles of his face.

It seemed to be the end of the story, so Kiley stared into the sun until she saw a little Greyhound bus rumbling from the far end of the street. She picked up her Barbie suitcase and walked away quietly, because it wouldn’t have been very nice to say good-bye. Instead, she stood at the edge of the station, and watched as the bus rumbled towards. A large gasp of exhume rolled in front of her face, and she coughed slightly until the door opened with a creak and then a slam.

She shoved her suitcase forward first, and then handed her ticket over to the bus driver. He barely looked at her ticket before tearing off the stub, passing the remains back into her hands. The bus was nearly empty, except for a young woman sitting in the back, staring out the window in an idealistic trance. Kiley sat in the middle, near the window, and put her suitcase into the seat next to hers. They would be feeding Jennifer her animal crackers now, and petting Jennifer’s hair before setting her to play with the other children, and her mother would drive in the rumbling 2x4 and pick her up and ask her about her day without listening, and they would have dinner.

The bus started abruptly, halting almost at once before it managed to creak forward, crawling at an agonizing pace. She swung her legs, watching her black shiny shoes crash against each other, and then turned to watch the bus pull out from the station, leaving the corpse sitting on the bench.