Every few feet, another man sold them: important-looking folders in red, green, blue. The men held them open, displaying a certificate with SAMPLE and an eagle shield across it.
“Let’s get some,” I said, tugging at my father’s hand. “Let’s buy them for ours.”
My father, hurrying so we wouldn’t be late, shook his head and kept on toward the doors of the auditorium. “We don’t need fake leather folders,” he said. “We’re going to be real citizens.”
It was an unexpected deal, so different than all the rest of them.
“You really want to buy?” she asked. “Because I can draw up a contract right away.”
As she said it, she felt the weighty possibility of the blank paper in the printer, the pen in his back pocket, the checkbook certain to be resting in his briefcase.
She’d said no already, then doubled back on her word, placing her feet the wrong way in her own footprints. There was no good explanation. It was just the way the rain misted her face, the way the light glistened on the path, the way the trees above swayed back and forth, sighing high above her.
There is nothing wrong with black night, she said. Nothing wrong with the way it wraps like silk, nothing wrong with its soft shadows.
He swallowed some of the air and pondered this. He reached a hand out into the ink. He swirled the hand about until she caught hold of it.
Why reach out into it, she said, when you can just be here with me, as if we were invisible to the rest of them?
He let his arm fall. That was enough of an answer until dawn.
He was like a letter blowing across her doorstep, the wind taking him before she’d had time to read beyond the salutation. She spent days inside, waiting for the wind to blow in the opposite direction, all the while imagining what might have been on that page: I want to take you dancing. Your eyes are like stars. No matter how far I go, I will return. She knew somewhere deep down that none of it could ever be, but it was all so fantastic, it would not release her heart.
“I am partial to rosé,” Cupid said, as he sat down for lunch. “Particularly on a day such as this.”
I served him spinach salad, thinking a little iron would make his afternoon more productive.
“Now,” he said, spreading the napkin over his lap. “Exactly what is it you’re looking for?”
I looked over at where he’d piled his bow and arrow on the floor, and smiled. I knew exactly how to answer.
The puzzle pieces make sense: ones with straight edges over here, the ones with the trees on them over there, the ones with glimpses of blue lake in this pile. I can organize, categorize, slide them around, note which ones have the right tab for the right slot. The picture unfolds, spreading across the table. This skill, however, never quite translates to what happens out in the world. There, things don’t fit the way I would like them to. There, there are so few straight edges and so many strangely-shaped pieces bearing unfamiliar imagery.
100 Proof 