Liam had not seen the low-budget film in years and, honestly, had probably never watched it all the way through in one sitting. The movie was incontrovertibly bad, and he was not sure what he sought by showing it. Necessarily he sat on the couch to share the view of the thirteen-inch television screen with his visitor, and it was only with the change of logistics that he realized the agenda behind such rituals. Silence was reasonable at this juncture, though the degree of body warmth radiating through the seat cushions was not anticipated.
The prominent artifacts of his life remained a distraction: A thirty year-old aluminum Christmas tree was particularly pathetic, as well as an open popup book on the coffee table displaying a caboose filled with dusty candy canes: The sugary treats were so old that their yellowed plastic wrappers had fused to their partially liquefied contents.
“Aren’t Martians supposed to be green?” she wondered aloud at the screen.
He apologized, “They were green at one time, like my fake trees.”
“What color are they now?”
Liam thought her question peculiar, but he knew from his time as an art instructor that people who were not artists often do not have an intimate relationship with colors that falls into cracks. “I would say their present color matches your eyes. Hazel.”
“My eyes are green,” she corrected, “but you’re sitting far away.”
Her valuation of their proximity perplexed him: He could not be closer to her unless he sat in her lap.
Eva smiled with slow deliberation and reached into the neck of her sweater. An oval piece of cloisonné made of gypsum and colored glass was produced, which dangled from a spate of other charms. The image depicted a snowy nephrite landscape under a night sky.
She leaned in without device. The wintery alabaster was placed in his hand where her close breath caressed his fingers. The object was imagined to melt and spill down the chain, and then to puddle in the hollow of her collarbone like warm milk in a kitten’s saucer.
Liam was suddenly air himself: disembodied and in danger of dispersing. He squeezed the curio, believing it her hand, and as if he were about to hoist her out of a cavern. “Where is the scene?” he murmured.
“Somewhere between here and the North Pole.”
This question produced no answer. “I made this,” she explained, “in a jewelry class, when I was not naked and parading around in front of other students.”
“The snowy pines remind me of my flocked Christmas tree in the bedroom,” he remarked.
This reference to the ugliest tree in the house, covered with powered wool that was still falling off decades after its application, was unfortunate—not simply because of the frowzy decoration but by his pointing out where it was. He did not intend an invitation to see it, although this was implied in their intimacy.
There was little mystery in Liam’s paracosm, though this is what he aimed at by surrounding himself with decrepit holiday decorations. He glanced again at the probable wedding band on Eva’s finger, and wondered why the thought of a husband—never mind the dog—was as far out of her mind as it was, contrarily, grounded in his. Did she have expectations in allowing herself to be physically close to him? Would one only come to her if he acted on his expectation? Was he capable of forming a rational expectation about another human being?
“It’s beautiful,” he mumbled belatedly, and with more than the necklace in mind.
“Was the angel for me?” she asked sweetly.
The question caught him short—a paralysis in his larynx briefly invaded his body.
“The angel in the yard… Did you put it there for me?”
He swallowed hard, loud enough to echo off the wall across from the shared sofa. It was difficult to tell if she waited on an answer, or if her stare was another question. There was something tragic and hopeful in her eyes (where he could bear to probe them).
In his wavering to save her, she tipped away, allowing the chill to wedge itself between their bodies. The jewelry was tucked back into the camisole, which exposed a bruise on her breastbone; she noticed his noticing.
The room went dark. The icy pigment of the windows was brought indoors. Eva rose from the cushions—out of the snare in which she had willingly placed herself. Liam stood up too and gauged the wind strength against the panes. “A circuit tripped,” he concluded.
Shadows suddenly crowded the young woman, yet she clearly hid among them, too; the leash in her pocket tinkled in a fidget.
“I’ll reset the breaker,” he told her, and lurched toward the basement door. He wanted to tarry her leaving by adding, “Maybe your dog is hiding down there.”
Liam peered down the cellar steps, and felt wind in his veins that he no longer detected on his skin; he hurriedly descended. Fingers skittered over a roll of switches in the fuse box—one was out of position. With the reset, light’s reappearance in the doorsill above aided his ascent, yet he found only the front door bumping the bookrack sleigh in an empty room.
Before arresting the hemorrhage, a glance was thrown down the dark road from the porch. He listened for her boots in gravel… the jangle of her metal leash…
The wind succeeded in chasing any echo into the dale.
The host turned back into the painfully familiar setting. Everything in Christmas Town was, at once, false. All was a mask he never understood to be a mask: a stage of props that never quite added up to a coherent play. His life to that moment seemed a lie—or at least an unraveling truth. He crept to the mantelpiece where he first spotted her and searched for evidence he was not hallucinating: A layer of dust on a snow globe was disturbed; previously clumped plastic flakes under its transparent dome were similarly redistributed.
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