Free Shaking out the Dead by K M Cholewa Page A

we’re doomed?”
    She nodded, soberly. Then she reached out and fingered a chain link that led down to a leather strap seat. She eyed the swing up and down, considering taking it for a spin. Paris watched her ringless hand, a hand older than her face. When their eyes met, she smiled, as though at an inside joke that had passed between them. Paris felt the kiss pressing at the seams of the moment, a gift apart from them, bigger than they, but theirs to deliver into the world. Paris reached to the side of her face. He leaned in, and their lips touched for only a second, but it was a second that included a Mississippi.
    When they pulled gently apart, Tatum dropped her head, staring down at the seat of the swing. Paris could look only at her, his heart banging in his chest, the word ‘yes’ understood by him for the first time. ‘Yes’ not as an answer, but as a fact. Yes . It surrounded them, suffused them. But he could already see Tatum backing away from it, pretending it was make-believe, a game the wise don’t play.
    But she had it inside-out. He was certain.
    When she spoke, it was with caution. Each word selected carefully.
    â€œParis,” she said, “we’re friends. You like me as a friend. That’s why you kissed me. But if we were to keep on kissing, tonight and then tomorrow, it would become different. I’d become your girlfriend. All the reasons you wanted to kiss me would go away. People want different things from friends than from girlfriends.”
    A small pendant earring caught a ray of park light and sparkled. Her eyes were green as a forest.
    â€œI know,” she went on, sounding more nervous, “that you’re thinking we could be more than friends. But for me, there is no such thing. There is no ‘more than’. This is as good as I get. As your girlfriend, I would seem like less, not more. I like that you like me. I don’t want to disappoint you. Love doesn’t cure us of who we are.”
    Paris trusted her, so how could he call her wrong?
    Her truth swam past him as he stood there in his own. His truth was different from the one she had spoken. His truth was yes , but his mind couldn’t shuffle the feeling into anything solid or articulate. He only knew the summer cool air and the intimate space of the swing. He followed the kiss and not her words, not his own thoughts. His lips and skin had not served as a barrier. The kiss was sinking into his waters, floating heavily down into the quietest and darkest place, lodging itself in his sands.
    Tatum turned away, looking toward the dark lawn and the distant sidewalk. She opened her mouth about to say more but was interrupted. A sudden loud ticking surrounded them. The sprinkler system kicking in. They didn’t run. Arcs of spray shot up from the grass surrounding them, spigots jerking in circles and whipping sheets of water across the clean-cut lawn. Paris and Tatum ducked but were safe, out of reach on the woodchips.
    Tatum stepped toward Paris but turned profile, grabbing the swing’s chains. She sat down on the leather seat and backed it up until she was positioned to push off. She smiled at him weakly. It was a request. Paris thought she was requesting his love but not the risk of losing it.
    â€œI know other stuff about Einstein, too,” she said.
    â€œTell me.”

    î‘
    Paris passed through both the park and the memory. He walked toward the duplex in the autumn chill through the northside neighborhoods of the aspiring working class and the liberal professionals. The houses weren’t grand, but they were beloved. Matted, raked leaves sat like black puddles on the dark lawns. These leaves were the last round, the round that might not make it into the Dumpsters and compost piles but would sit quiet under the snow until raked up in the spring with ice still clinging to their soggy brownness. The grass beneath would rise greener than the rest.
    He walked the blocks,