Memory House

December 19, 8:54 PM

“Stars. The only thing I liked about it was the stars.”
“But not even the ocean?”
“It was loud at night. And the wind was so damn cold, I never wanted to go outside.
“Well, the house then? God, what a mansion.”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“Too big?”
“Nevermind.”
“What about the sunsets?”
“No.”
“Just stars?”
“Just the stars and,” I pause. “Well just the stars.”
“Why?”
“I never see so many back home.”
“You’ve seen stars like that before.”
“Yea, overseas. But these just look like…something imagined.”
“…like the sirens”
“Well, they weren’t in the sky dammit.”
“But they weren’t real.” Michael counters.
“No… but the stars were …” and I stop to listen, like I did before.


One

The house rose over the Grecian horizon mimicking one of those ancient gods with a strange name. It laughed across the landscape, bullying the other homes into hiding, boasting its flair with extra-extra large windows and a polished chimney. Well chimneys, for there were two, sprouting like horns from the arrogant god, sending my premonitions for happiness hiding behind the hills with the other houses. Those houses that actually fit naturally into the seaside.
I stared at the chimneys. I stared as the driver tossed my half empty bags from the trunk to my feet and I continued to stare as he pulled away, the car leaving a chalky skirt of dust to surround me. Coughing in the dirt, I was able to drag myself away from the house’s impressive visage. I picked up the two suitcases that were laying sideways on the ground and, along with a friendly hello of the seaside wind, slowly approached the mansion.
By the time I reached the door, I had maneuvered my hands around to dig for the key that had been buried among others in the black hole of my purse. My loose coat and scarf tangled themselves tightly around me, and my face tingled with the cold. I finally found the key that fit the front door’s gold lock and inserted it with shaking hands. A warm wave brushed over me as I walked inside and gasped at my surroundings. The inside matched the out for splendor and uniqueness. Very old wooden pillars were painted to correspond with the newer entry floor, and sharp sunlight reflected across the chandelier that hung next to the staircase. I carried my bags across the entry, and slowly approached the twisting stairs. The age of the stairs sung back as I slowly mounted, nervously introducing each foot to every step. As I met the last stair before the second floor, the downstairs door slammed and I turned to glance down at the other new entrants.
A younger man and a grayed one bustled across the tile, carefully mumbling to each other, purposefully drawing my ears to curiosity. The older man suddenly stopped, now almost directly below me, bringing the first to halt along with him. The older whispered to the younger, and together they slowly turned their heads up towards me and smiled.
“Hello, Miss,” the young man shouted. “Nice to have you stop in.” I smiled shyly in return.
“How do you like your house?” The older man now spoke. “I hope it’s big enough for you!” And the old man chuckled to himself, the warm and steady laughter that I remembered so well.
“It’s big, thanks.” I let my bags drop and began to descend.
“Jim Mosley,” the young man shouted with a wave and another hello. He was taller than I would have thought, tall and dark, and well…it was too hard to tell from the stairs if he was handsome. His long legs, however, seemed impressive even from my distance above.
“Nice to meet you Jim!” I called back, now halfway down.
“How’re you doing?” The old man continued to shout, even as I drew closer.
“Better, Will. What about you?” Two steps from the bottom.
“I’m good. I’m fine.” I carefully approached the old man to offer an embrace.
“Missed you, Will.”
“You too shorty.” After a moment, we pulled away, and I searched for the sparkling eyes that always hid above his cheekbones, under the large, protruding eyebrows, behind those simple glasses. Nudged deep into his face, his eyes were small, small and shy. If stared hard enough, I could find a large sparkle that came from those eyes, and that sparkle illuminated the room.
“How was the flight?” Will politely asked.
“Long. Boring. Fine.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t drive the whole way here, I’ve never trusted my self on these European streets.”
Will chuckled, his large beach ball-esque stomach bouncing along with his head. That deep chuckle I remembered from a long time ago, from when I first saw this pleasurable man.
I drifted out of my memories as I heard the younger man, tall Jim, ascending the stairs I had just left, obviously in hot pursuit of my luggage. I turned, following him, and politely declined his courteous offer of transporting the bags the rest of the way to my room.
“It’s only a short…”
“But you’re the honored guest, Miss Katherine.” Jim’s shape was fierce, even in this casual conversation it commanded attention.
“If you are going to call me a guest in my own house, I’ll…”
“I won’t be nice forever,” Jim warned, an exasperated last attempt to move my bags the next few yards. Before either of us had surrendered, Will’s obtrusive shadow snuck behind us, and lifted the luggage across the hall.
“Will!” Jim and I shouted together.
He answered in motion, moving farther from us with my bags. “Well, since you two couldn’t agree, I’m making an executive decision.” We followed him down the second floor hallway, unable to snatch the bags from his large, chubby hands. We finally stopped at the last room on the hallway, and Will turned to face us as he pushed the door open with his back. Following him in, we slowly entered a brightly lit bedroom. A frilly bedspread ruffled as the wind seeped in from an open window on the balcony, and the delicate, sea blue curtains shivered as in welcome. Glancing out the windows, the restless sea and its cliffs decorated the horizon. And then I almost gasped I glanced toward the ceiling with it’s magnificent height and decorative wooden beams.
“Will had the linens done up by one of your neighbors. Julia-Something, I think her name is.” Jim smiled.
“Will, this is gorgeous.”
“Welcome to your new home, Kat.” He set down the bags and patted me on the shoulder. “By the way, I meant to ask…”
“What?”
“How was the flight?” He blinked, once, twice; it wasn’t a wink. I shot an unprepared glance to Jim. It wasn’t a joke. Swallowing the gulp of reality that was clogging my throat, I forced myself to answer.
“Long, and boring. It was fine.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t drive the whole way here, I’ve never trusted my self on these European streets.” He chuckled again, just as he had the first time, and I playfully smiled along. At least you remember me still, I thought. At least you remember Kat.


The two men left me minutes later, and I was able to unpack silently. Casually crossing my legs, I positioned myself on the ground, facing my small bags.
I shivered quietly; the wind from the open window had brought the room temperature down to an uncomfortable level. I stood back up to close it, and then quickly returned to the anxious bags, waiting across my new bedroom floor. As I reached for the first, I realized that my hands still trembled. I drew them back, thinking maybe I should ask Will about the heat. If I was to sleep here tonight, I didn’t want to try to bundle from the cold. I almost rose again until I realized that I was postponing my simple task as much as possible. Shaking my hands, trying to forget the thoughts that would follow the memories that came with my belongings, I bravely decided to begin again, and I put the temperature issues away for the moment. I shook the other trifles away from my face as I efficiently pulled back my hair into a low ponytail, and then quickly dug out most of my clothes that I had brought. They made a meager pile. I lifted a final sweatshirt out of my suitcase, and then suddenly saw the uniform that I had tried to leave behind. I didn’t want to see this, and it was what I had subconsciously been avoiding. Or Consciously?
I remembered packing back in the city, back in the States, and thinking about this uniform, and regretting the life I had made with it.
The life that went along so well with my costume was over now, past the dreams of trying to rewind. I had been checked, marked, and passed on by everything I thought I lived for. Strength, for once, had failed me and my judgment. My only choice had been to regret and to recess. My new friend, remorse, had even come along for the ride. All the rules that I had known, every step that had pounded securities through the skin, had slipped away. So I would too. The pieces of fabric that represented a world I suddenly feared, lay wrinkled in my hands. I could have burned it.
But instead, I had folded it with the others, and put them all in the storage pile next to the picture frames and plaques that weren’t discardable. I had wanted to get rid of them too…but there might be a day when I could come back. So it was just a goodbye for now; I wouldn’t see them for a while. But as I rose from the floor, my legs now throbbing from having fallen asleep during the moments they were crossed I wondered why the parts and memories inside me were still screaming. Walking back to the bed in my robe, I thought of the shower I might take, the things I might eat, and the clothes I might wear, just to live a little more than a shivering, wounded, woman would want to. I didn’t want to. But I could take the uniform with me. So I did.
And now it sat in front of me, staring straight back wondering why I had taken it along for the ride.

TWO WEEKS AGO
“Separation, right… They still call it that?” Michael’s sentences fell in between the churning his mouth was doing to the fries that we were sharing on the greasy plate in front of us.
I nodded in a half-hearted response to his question.
“Well,” he chewed, then paused, “at least you’ll have some down time,” he chewed, “you know…”
Picking up a single fry, I swirled it around the plate, letting it pickup up the cooking oils and salts that coated the bottom. Dunked in the ketchup, I slowly brought the limp, lonely fry to my mouth. I paused before I let it down the gloomy tunnel of my mouth. With a passing order of hamburgers and onion rings, the sweaty diner smells suddenly coated my nostrils and trickled down to my taste buds. I didn’t want this food.
The silence was too long for him, so Michael grabbed another mouthful to shove down his throat.
“But Kat…seriously…what are you going to do?” He said as he chomped his way through the current load.
I let my own fry fall directly onto the table, allowing what diner dirt that hadn’t already reached it, cover the fry now. It was another dying soldier, another I wouldn’t cry for. Looking up, I realized my wordless responses weren’t enough to satisfy Michael. He was waiting for an answer.
“It’s called separation…but it’s not forever. I’m just getting away from the service for now, until I feel like I should go back.” I kept staring at the fry as I spoke to him.
“Until what?”
“What’s until what?”
“How long, Kat. I want to know how long. If you’re just going to sit in a corner in your little apartment and… well I don’t know, but if you’re planning on staying there for the next few months, God, I guess years, Kat, I don’t want to see you wither away with nothing to do all by yourself.” He had stopped grabbing the fries, but the plate was also getting close to empty.
“I’m not falling into depression; look at me!”
“I’m not saying you will. But Kat, look. You’ve got to live.” We sat, not looking at each other, barley moving. Michael finally brought his hand to the plate that we shared, and paused before his chubby fingers scooped up the last of the fries.
“You want these?” he asked.
I shook my head. His hand quickly captured the rest of the appetizer, and he shoved the last of the fries into his mouth. He seemed to be chewing for a long time when I finally decided to speak again.
“I’m going to Greece.” I murmured. My voice had barley carried far enough for Michael to hear me over the clatters of the nearby diner kitchen, but the message was understood. He stopped chewing quickly; I could see half chewed pieces of fried potato speckling his lower lip.
“Youmph Nmph…” his next words came out. I waited for the chewing to start again, and he finally managed, “You’re not,” for the second time around.
“I’m leaving next week.” I said slowly, when I was sure that all of the food had been swallowed.
“Next week? Next week! Kat, where did this come from? I mean, you just get back from the funeral and you’re ready to hop on a plane to another freaking continent to visit a man who’s mental condition, well, I don’t know…and the house, you’ve never seen it… I mean, this is what you call healing?”
“Hey. He’s practically my dad. I need to do something, and he needs help-“
“You need help.” Michael began to wipe his hands across the front of his shirt. “I mean, not, not, mentally... I mean, maybe, emotionally.”
“Michael, Michael, listen. It will be okay. I’m sure Will will be happy to see me…”
“If he remembers you.”
“…and I’ll have a chance to find a good, permanent situation for him.”
“He doesn’t know you’re coming does he?”
I didn’t respond as I looked down.
Michael followed my eyes to the lonely fry that I had left to perish on the table.
“I told him,” I whispered. “I called him. But I don’t know if he remembers.” I lifted my hand to swat at a humming insect below my eyes.
“You need to talk to the nurse.”
I looked up. “Who? Mosby, Mosey…”
“Mr. Mosley. Call him. You’ll need to be good friends with him by next week. You need to know what you are getting yourself into. You need to be sure that you’re ready. ”
I nodded my head silently, and Michael reached across the table to pick up the remaining fry, my fry, the one that was wallowing alone directly on the table. Michael smiled, and lifted the fry to his mouth.
“Call him, Kat.” He said, chewing. “And have fun in Greece.”


TWO

Before the sun began to sink, the younger man, Mr. Mosley, knocked on the open door of my new bedroom. I glanced up, examining his face for the first time. Short cropped, native hair made the rest of his face look truly Greek, and a large nose suggested the mood of an aloof European. He was shorter than me, shorter than the average man, but he held his head straight, forward and direct, with a posture that, even with my military stance, made feel like the smaller one.
“Want me to show you around?” he asked politely, his head cocked up. I nodded, and ungracefully lifted myself from the floor.
Boring boring something about will and Alzheimer’s and the house and the sirens and food, basically putting will to bed and eating? Gosh there is a lot of freaking food in this book.


Tnot two
“You should quit, know,” Will advised. I had I pulled the new pack from my purse.
“It’s only for when I’m stressed, don’t worry.”
“And how much do you stress?”
“Most of the time, never. Nowadays,” I sighed, “from time to time.”
“How often is time to time?”
“Well,” I smiled “whenever time allows”
“Just get out of the house for me, will you?”
“What?”
“When you’re smoking… I don’t want the house to smell.” He turned away.
“Oh, right. No problem.” The strangest feeling of disappointment passed from him to me in a brief moment, but I was out of the house by the time it made any real impression. I smiled at him in spite of the twinge that twisted around my ears; it reminded me of Will’s former smoky-self. I remembered his visits from childhood, the musty and tobacco stench that ripped my mother’s perfumes to the ground. Now I think the only cigarette smell that stayed with Will was the one that I recreated from childhood, when I tried to remember the nights before life had changed.
I shook off my shoes at the end of the wooden walkway, and I continued to towards the water. My muddled brown hair splattered around my face, falling out of a half-hearted ponytail. The November breeze was at first satisfying, and as I drew closer to the waves, I let my toes swirl around in the cliff top’s dirt. Before I could be satisfied by the setting, the breeze became uncomfortably cold. I folded my arms around me, cigarette still in my mouth.
I glanced again to the ocean. No matter my careless attitude, I still couldn’t find any affection for this place. Not even in being so alone, with the wonderful…winds and waves. I tried to gaze longingly; I tried to lose myself in the natural rhythm of the natural wonder. It didn’t work. Something about Port Bors was nagging into my veins, tempting me to turn my skin inside out to make a disgusting, inhuman costume for me to hide in. But I couldn’t begin to understand why. The shore was still too deceiving.
While attempting to enjoy the scenery that afternoon, I noticed Julia Rimba for the first time. She must have been playing a part in the charade as well. But then, weren’t we all?
Shuffling, almost as aimlessly as I, she made easy eye contact when our paths crossed at an approachable distance. I nodded a hello to the woman, and we continued in our own directions. So it was for days.

I had already heard of Julia Rimba’s kitchen before I even saw the woman. The ex-wife of a champion chef, Julia was rumored to have ‘out-cooked’ her husband many times during their Odyssey of a two-year marriage. That was before the man left Julia for an extensive American culture study…led by a smashing blond college student. American culture study? Yea right, Will had said. Whatever the case, it didn’t seem block the inspiration for the food.
Will raved constantly about the meals Julia would bring on birthdays, and wedding days, and funeral days, and rainy days, taking the role of the caterer on any occasion, even the days after holidays, when no one was hungry. But no one ever had to approach Julia to ask for any or the recipe for right type of sea-style savoring . Julia came to them. Two knocks, quiet and fast, signaled the woman’s appearance…and she was always welcomed in, and always stayed. Or at least that’s what Will said. Just for fun, he said, she knew the town and brought them the food. Julia’s kitchen was also rumored to have every exotic ingredient in Europe, and whatever you couldn’t find in the market, you borrowed from Julia. Of course, asking Julia never really helped at all; soon she would be asking what you were making, how you got the recipe, and then come up with a better way to fix it herself. Or at least that’s what Will said.

We crossed paths for about a week, one of us on a smoke break and the other just meandering, sometimes both, sometimes neither. The fifth or sixth day, she stopped in front of me, as I was sitting, back to the ocean, bundled on the top step of the stairs that led to the path wrapping around our cliff.
“You’re the pilot.” In almost and almost perfect American accent, it would be hard to distinguish the native Italian without her history.
“Yes. Well, yes.” I tilted my head and drew my legs further away from the stairs. I decided to offer more. “I’m Kat… Kat Hart.” My insides began to spin. Why had I given my maiden name?
“Kat…Kat .” She began to walk closer towards me, a wobbly gait that was stronger than her apparent innocence. “Julia. That’s me.” She tossed her cigarette to the ground and stuck out her hand awkwardly, looking past my fingers. Did she notice the emptiness of my left hand? Cold everyone notice that I had taken off the ring? We shook, somehow equalizing the pain that we had in common.
“Do you live there?” I gestured at the shack that teetered next to the shack that seemed to be balancing in the wind behind her. Another wrinkle crossed over her already grimaced face as confirmation to my question. “It looks nice,” I mumbled with politeness.
“You don’t fool me, Kat. You’re living in the damn castle.” Taken aback, I was unsure of whether to be offended or laugh at her comment. I hadn’t had anyone talk to me like that since the air force. Since Joseph was alive. Fortunately, her childish giggle escaped about two seconds before mine did. “Ya… Everybody knows it,” she laughed. “We know you’re the only one who could afford a place like that.”
“We?”
“Well, um… the town I mean.” She reached for another cigarette from her jean pocket. “Smoke?”
“No…well, only when I’m stressed.”
“Well you should quit…it’ll kill ya Kat.” She directed another grimace towards me as I laughed. Her wrinkled brow broke and she smiled.
“You like it here?” I boldly asked, knowing that an answer I would get from my new acquaintance would be as good as any in the town.
“You like the hard questions don’t you? Or you are trying to be polite on you first week here?”
“I’m trying.”
“Aren’t we all…”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Maybe I’ll tell you…the one thing I like about this place.” She paused, as if she was listening to something distant.
“Well?”
“And maybe I won’t.”
“Thanks a lot… Julia”
“No problem, Kat.” Her tone was becoming increasingly short, but she made no expression of frustration.
“Well, Julia, no matter how much you have tried to discourage me, I must say that you have been the friendliest thing I’ve met in town.”
“Oh damn. I was hoping you would never talk to me again. Want me to show you around tomorrow?”
“Around as in, the little four mile stretch of beach and the rotting shops up the road?”
“Know what, Kat?
“What?”
“You’re gonna hate this place just as much as I do.” She smiled again, and then began to giggle, the strange Greek eyes bouncing with her laugh. As she started to wander away, I realized the conversation was obviously over. The town was still just as horrible as I had thought when I first arrived, but I smiled in spite of myself. I had finally found something interesting in Port Bors.

Julia and I walked in the cold up and back down the stretch of beach for the next days, whenever the moment felt good. There would be days with bursting sunlight and postcard perfect winds, trickling over the seaside trees just enough, but we wouldn’t want to walk. There would be days with bristling precipitation and poisoned postcard winds, bending the scene’s tree sideways, and we would continue our conversations. She smiled with always just one corner of her mouth, fooling her way to my companionship. And some days, she wasn’t there. With no one but my self to share cigarettes, those days I would grab a jacket, and meander all alone on the damn coast. Like that first October Monday

THREE
Monday, October 2, 4:01 PM
Travel guides, landscaped puzzles, vacationing stories, they all misrepresented the real taste of Port Bors. I had wanted to find myself here; even pretend I was a part of a home video for yoga. The self-searching I wanted to do here was so typically beach fit, that before I arrived, I never for a moment questioned the fact that I wouldn’t be satisfied by the waves and winds. But the busy streets and the shores of home seemed more comforting from where I was sitting now. It wasn’t a doubt; I knew that I didn’t like it here. And it seemed now I was stuck, chained to the shores of this disgusting town to do my unsanitary soul-searching.
Maybe I was reading too much into my situation, I told myself. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as my inclinations made it seem. Maybe I would grow to like it here. And maybe I would grow older. I turned from the house and imagined the years when my hair would turn that murky gray the sky displayed now. But the fear that set in with the idea of getting older, reminded me of the same fear that had brought me here. I remembered how, often in the air force, when I would convince myself of my invincibility, my eternal youth. Kat, the never-aging wonder. I had dreamed that I would still be flying high alive at twenty, thirty, forty, sixty, on to seventy and those years after that. But of course, no one would know I was really that old.
Standing on the ground, every perfect pebble that hid beneath my shoes, beneath my feet, seemed to be keeping the anger squeezed in, the leaks of remorse halfway patched. Everything that I wanted to get rid of was still inside me. The ocean loomed, and looking back towards the house, its blue shutters clashed with the graying sky. I could not find a direction that wasn’t screaming for me to return home, a position that didn’t remind me of why I was here.
I spun myself around, arms stretched out, head back, swinging barbarically as I could while indulging on my fantasy of invincibility. Of course I couldn’t believe it any longer, but I continued to spin as the wind picked up and my vision started to blur. I spun, houses, rocks, ocean, boat, houses, rocks, water… For the first time these months alone, I fell to the ground unintentionally. The colors, zooming as my planes would, the sky, spinning like my…toes, oh! They were spinning too! The whole world around my rugged body in the dirt mingled in a dizzy motion. But now I was in the rocks, still cruelly keeping the fears in by plugging up the pores still pressing to the ground. But they weren’t fears, they were fuming regrets, that were almost to fearful to have been reality. Mondays like this haunted me, as they had since Joseph died.

TWO WEEKS AGOMonday, oh shit, the service. I lit another cigarette; the funeral was today. And the damn reception, and the parade, and all the other pomp and circumstance that came with a dead man.
Monday, 9:37, I had an hour. Then to the limo, then to the church, then to the gravesite, then to the hotel, then back to home if they ever let me go. Six months ago I thought I could cope with the grief. Six months later, still hounded by sympathies and flowers, I wasn’t free.
I bought brand new, snazzy black stockings for the memorial service.. Black stockings? I had never worn black stockings before in my life. And then they had crumpled on the floor because I ripped wrapper off so hard. Crumpled black pantyhose on the floor of my dirty apartment at 9:39 am, Monday, service day. I took the cigarette out of my mouth and crouched on the ground to pick them up. The cigarette fell from my hands and onto the stockings. Perfect. Dirty, burning, black pantyhose on my nasty apartment floor at 9:39 am, Monday, service day. Was I even supposed to be wearing black stockings? Was the rule really all black? At least I had the dress.
Stomping on the smoldering pile as I walked across the room, I threw open the door to my closet, knowing that if I hadn’t remembered to dry clean the black dress, I would probably stay home sick, or wear a jumpsuit to the gathering. Unfortunately, the dress was there, adding immensely to my already vivid wardrobe of grays and blues up and down the closet. The uniforms also bordered the dress, hanging next to a gray pantsuit. Both of ours. I sighed and slipped off my robe and switched over to the dress, knowing that today set the precedent for a reign of bleak days.
The crumpled pantyhose were still on my floor at 10:32 am, Monday, service day, as I left the apartment to wait for the limo downstairs. Before I closed the door, I turned around again. Were you really supposed to wear all black? What did the normal girls wear? I reentered the apartment and bent down to grab the black pantyhose. The burn was only on one leg, and it didn’t look too trashy, did it? I quickly rolled them on, and then readjusted my heels. All good, all in black.
I could see the limo coming from down the street at 10:38 am, Monday, service day. I crossed the mini-lobby of my apartment and stood outside in the wind as the limo parked for me. What a spectacle I was in for. The driver stepped out, and shuffled his fat feet around to my side of the car.
“Good morning, Lt. Darnell,” he said, opening the door.
“Thank you sir,” I replied, thinking he probably noticed the ripped pantyhose.

I pulled my dirt-speckled legs to the rest of my body after the spinning had stopped. My moments alone were getting much longer as the days went on, even as I had begun to worry about Will. His symptoms of old age guilted me into staying closer to the house, but I still extended my evenings alone. They were my moments, even when the entire stay was supposed to be my moments.
More gray-haired clouds moved in as the sun’s angle with the sea grew smaller and smaller. The horizon of beach houses began a lightshow, and I sat in the sand with my back now to the setting sun. Arbitrarily, one house, and then two houses at a time would add their porch lights to the coming darkness. One house, one house, two houses…until Jim turned on our lights. Jerked out of my pouting position on the sand by reality, I rose and began to walk back to the house.
By the time I was about a two hundred meters from the property, I could barely see the rocks that artistically spilt our acre. I turned to look at the waves once more, hoping to receive some sort of assurance from the water that, yes, the days would get better than this. I never should have looked.
It was then that I saw the body, balancing on its weak feet, teetering with the pushes and shoves of the wind. My first impulse was to turn away, for my safety, for my own good. But the man wasn’t drunk; his body seemed barely alive. I still had time to run before it saw me. Suddenly, the ragged mythical stature of its clothes, the curve of its arms all tugged at my eyes. As it approached, barely standing, I stayed in place, daring to ask for a glimpse of its eyes. I remember inching my way up to the barefooted mystery. I remember an impulse ignited by my own distorted fantasies that drew me towards the body. I had wanted something like this. Damn how much I had wanted it.
Ten meters from disaster, I saw the body’s hair reflected in the setting purples of the light. Black curls, but short, messy. The body’s face suddenly replied to my stare, glancing back at my curiosity, but I still couldn’t see its eyes. Before I could examine the shadowed visage, the wind brought a harsh blow…the body teetered along, and suddenly collapsed to the ground. I gasped.
Now it was my turn to advance. Hurrying towards the body, four meters now, my hands trembled from the cold. Three meters, my hands trembled from the fear. Two, and I still could have closed my eyes and turned around. One, and there were the eyes, still open, stabbing the dark with a simple stare, a piercing the victim.

The love-red blood pooling around him, still pouring from his side, was the only color I remember after I bent down in the dirt beside his wounded body. His eyes were open, but he was still unconscious. My rattling bones probably made up for the gruesome silence that played in the five seconds I had to compose myself. I called for reason; it came faster than expected.
A few moments later the CPR wasn’t working; I couldn’t revive him. I bent down, trying to drag him by the arms, but my adrenaline-powered strength still barely got the body to a few meters. Reason, reason, think Kat! Somehow all of my crisis talent from the military had dissolved in my one week in Port Bors.
But now, I needed people, I needed help. So I screamed. Shouting what probably sounded something like “HELP-HELP!-SOMEONE-THERE’S A-HELP! DAMN IT- SOMEONE-HELP!” No answer came for the next minute. My fingers pulsed, freezing with the blood stinging to the tips. I tried to wipe it off in rugged motions across my pants, and then my nose started to run. Should I shout again? Rationality was beginning to flee again as miraculously I saw the lanky figure of Julia meandering up the cliffs towards us.
I rose, turning away from the body, and began to scream louder than I had before, for some reason just to Julia. As she saw me, concern and then confusion spread across her uncertain form as she hurried, frantically running towards me. Every second beating with new irrationalities, I yelled hysterical orders before she could even see the man.
“Julia! There’s a man! Help me, no! Bring something to… never mind! Call an ambulance, or…or… a doctor!” But then I remembered the closest help was sixty kilometers away. Julia stuttered an inaudible response to my frantic screams and passed by me to the man, lying silently on the ground and the only silence at the scene.
Ignoring my instructions, Julia bent down next to the body, gently examining the wound. The wind picked up, and I dug my bloody fingers into my pockets.
“You’re out early,” Julia muttered, her gaze still strung to the man’s wound.
“You…you know him?” I stammered as I crouched down beside her.
“No, I mean, I was talking to you…” she quickly returned. “Look,” she whispered, “stay here, and when I come back, go back to the house, call the hospital, and tell them I’m coming.” Her voice was stern with prickling adamancy. I must have looked concerned, so she continued, “Stay with him and keep pressure on his side where the cut is. I’m going to get my car.” She stood, almost floating with her placid air. I stared at her, unable to understand how, when my breaths were coming so quickly, she could keep this bored divorcee ready for another cigarette please attitude.
As Julia disappeared into the coming dark, I could not manage to turn back to the body of the fallen man. Mystery and danger had both come with the staggering arrival of this man on a cliff in Port Bors. Questions would have to hang, adrenaline would have to return… What had happened as the sun set on a Monday like this?
A minute passed, or what could have been twenty seconds, and a younger man, a Marcos, I thought, shuffled up to the scene of distress. The kid looked tired, deep breaths stopped his speech for a few seconds, but he had obviously heard about the trouble. I stood, ready to ask him for more help when he came closer with a dramatically forced look of concern across his face.
“What’s wrong?” He squinted in the dusk, looking at me with quizzical eyes as if I were the wounded mass that lay beside me. “I saw Julia…Um, she says…some, help?” His sputtering breaths and half sufficient English annoyed me, even in the shivering dark.
“Just look!” I shouted, my bottle of mixed-vegetable emotions splattering across this dumfounded teen. Frustrated, cold, afraid, I still tried to suppress the thrill that was inching up as more moments passed. The Marcos now shivered as well, still staring at me in his own fright. Looking down, I could see my own bloody fingers and dirt-sprayed legs shivering in the dark. I was probably just as shocking as the man beside me.
Taking a step aside, I quickly pointed to the man. My new mysterious man. As the Marcos boy saw the body, he stepped back in shock from the sprawled out form.
“Oh! No!” He had winced at the already drying blood that decorated the man’s tattered white shirt. I bent down to examine the wound again. “Did you… did he…” The Marcos kid stumbled across his words, even more bewildered than I at the situation. The blood wasn’t stopping. I rubbed my palms together for warmth and then pushed my fingers near the cut again. Whatever the man had done, the wound was deep. I needed a bandage, a tourniquet…something. Suddenly, I glanced up. The Marcos kid’s blank eyes had not followed my thoughts. “You…you okay?” he stammered.
Ignoring the question, I suddenly heard a breath other than my own. The man was still alive. A sudden cough, and then he fell back into silence.
Blood…coating my fingers, made me hesitate to take a pulse. Blood…still pouring from his side, frightened me. I looked up at the Marcos, staring at his white t-shirt.
“Take off your shirt.” I commanded.
“What?”
“Give me the damn shirt or go and get some more help! We have to stop the bleeding!” I had no patience for this dumfounded, blood-scared teenager. Intimidated by my tone, he awkwardly pulled off the t-shirt and threw it at me. Folding it up, I pressed the cloth into the wounded man’s abdomen. Five seconds, and the blood didn’t go through. More seconds with me pressing harder and the body began to breath. So did I.
More seconds, and I heard the chattering of the Marcos boy. “It is better?” he whispered. “You, your husband better?” My eyes darted from feature to feature on the man, only barely picking up the other words.
“Yes,” one side of my head answered out loud. “Well, no…No! He’s not my husband…Do you know who he is?”
The shirtless man shook his head in the rhythm of his shivering.
“What’s you’re name?” I continued.
“Nicko.”
“Nicko, thank you. Thank you so much.”
“I, I go home now?”
“Yes,” I sighed. “You can go home.” He turned to run back in the direction he had come, but after a step, I called to him. “Nicko!”
He turned back, eyes wide.
“Are you sure you don’t recognize him?” We both stared down at the almost lifeless body.
“No. He is not from this town. Just like you.” Then he ran.