1 Only the Morning After

I saw them on a workday morning. Tulips could not have been more red. I don't remember what she was wearing - some blur of whitish gray, I think a loose button down of sorts - but she had on the reddest lipstick, and they shone like a fire truck even in the obsidian gleam of dawn. Her lips flashed my eyes, and in that instance, I saw nothing else. She turned a corner with an easy gait and, with only a shadow of her hair thrown in the wind, disappeared through the brick facades of the alley.

That weekend, I saw them again at a furniture store. Or rather, I reminisced them there. Maybe gas fireplaces do really work. Did I turn the stove off? Red satin cushions on a beige sofa caught my eyes, and among murkier thoughts, one slowly surfaced: I've seen these before. Like a bubble growing slowly through molten magma, a tangent off the past pipped into awareness what I actually had seen. Drawn, and somehow warmer, I bought a pair of the reds. My sofa is gray.

Perhaps my thoughts were more wishful than murky. She came true to life that night as did they, the unmistakable ruby lips that seemed out of place in a grocery store until they were next to strawberries. She dropped a carton of them at checkout, and I picked it up from their splattered juices to hand back across the lane. Thank you, she said, her dainty fingertips leaving it out. Piles grew at the ends of both of our lanes. Can I give you a hand with those, I asked, facing her. Her eyes looked up, and I thought her lips did too. Thanks, but I'm just around the corner. And with enough bags shuffled, we left the registers at the same time like the two strangers we were. Turning left, I bade her good night. Good night, she replied, a corner of her mouth crescent and her steps heading right.

It was days later that she walked into the bar. I almost missed her, in a fitted suit with a coat over her forearm - her lips were nude, and had it not been the vaguely familiar sheen in her hair, she might not have caught my eye. Unsure, I watched as she greeted the bartender. Smiles exchanged, she left her coat and headed for the restroom, and in that walk, I recognized the girl I had seen. Then, she was reading the Journal with a glass in hand, and as she sipped what undulated in gold beneath incandescent bulbs, so curled my lips. I went back to my reading, glancing her way after each article and chuckling at myself. Delays do tantalize. I got up when she turned a page.

I said hi, and her eyes remembered. She was drinking Laphroaig. I asked if I could get her another, and she obliged. We talked - her eyes like onyx, quiet and insolent, the scent of her skin growing sweeter as we drew nearer - and as we quieted from laughing about one of many we had heartily, heatedly discussed, she got up to go. I asked her to see me at the bar again the next day. She smiled faintly, and after a pause said, Maybe I'd like that.

She didn't come. Or at least I don't think she did. I sat at the bar reading the Journal and, after three glasses of what started as Doublewood but ended with Lagavulin, called it a night. Only so much Scotch floods a lone glass pleasantly.

I didn't see her for awhile, but when strawberries were no longer in season, I saw her again. Same bar, same paper, same walk. She caught my eyes, and not seeing alarm in hers, I asked, Laphroaig? Eyebrow raised, she laughed and replied, How about Caribbean Cask? By the time the bar was closing and our eyes were warm, we had talked about our favorite authors and going skating that weekend. I should get going, she said. I offered to walk her home. Thanks, she replied and said, I'm a few blocks up.

The door clanged behind us, shutting us out to the cold. Our feet sank into footprints on the snow-laden street. We walked, heads dipped low in collars and voices muffled, yet her words ringing clear through the puffs of her breath and her dark eyes outshining the city. When she blew on her hand, I took it. She didn't pull away. "That's your thenar eminence," I said, turning toward her. "What?" she asked.

"The part of your hand where your thumb meets the palm. That's your thenar eminence," I said, rubbing it gently to warmth.

She looked at me, her eyes brim with a smile. "How - or why - do you know that?"

"Eh, I know bits and pieces of lots of things."

And she chuckled, breathing little sprays of laughter into the night sky. We walked, a pair of our hands in her pocket.

We were passing my apartment when I asked:

Can I get your opinion on something?

Yeah?

I bought new cushions a while ago - they reminded me of you.

Her eyes laughed at me as she looked up but her lips only carried a faint smirk.

Okay.

She walked into the elevator and tapped her heels, shaking off icy remnants of the street. I followed suit, and she laughed, the corners of her eyes folding. The elevator dinged as I pulled out my keys. I unlocked my door, and she followed me in.

Shielded from snowy gusts, she melted slowly into my sofa, reaching for a cushion.

It's nice, she said, palming it softly.

My thumb reached instead for her lips, more velvet than satin. She pulled ever faintly on my forearm, and my hands cradled the silkiness of her face, warmth rising to its chilled surface, and I soon became intoxicated by the scent of her skin, her hair, her neck. Storms thundered, then subsided, black swatches of sweat sewing fast onto my sofa, reds smudging redder - and fading drops of tulips blossomed on the collars of my shirt, their petals making their way onto my bed.

Will you stay, I whispered, inhaling her in. She said nothing; I only saw her eyelids cover their glimmering orbs, the last eyes of Argos. The city bade farewell to three crescent moons that night, two reflecting each other and only one outside my window.

It was still gray when I awoke to see her put on her lipstick. Ruby red against stark alabaster. I made a comment. You weren't wearing that last night.

She laughed, that sparkly laughter. And said, smiling: I only wear it the morning after.