ARRvol34 master reduced - Flipbook - Page 57
Hurricane
Erica Tendall
Her shoes had carried her back home, once again. She vowed to
be more determined this time. She just needed a reason to stay.
And she met him at the blood bank. They sat opposite one another
- her skirt was short and pulled in a taut line across the tops of her
thighs. As the bags filled, he wondered how the viscosities of their
blood could look so different, and then he concentrated on the dark
space between her thighs, a small scar on her knee, and on down to
her ankles, which tapered into impossibly white slippers. So white,
despite the way it had been storming outside. He shifted. She was
at the same time noticing the contrast of his large, pale, free hand
against a black drawstring bag in his lap. The object concealed inside the bag had a peculiar shape to it, and his surprisingly delicate
fingers secured its contours, like it was his courage. He looked up.
The tiny dark veins visible under the translucent skin beneath his
eyes made her shift in her seat too.
“O negative,” she guessed.
“You’re good,” he said.
They left together. She touched him first, lightly on one of those
hands, and it was to stop him from opening his umbrella.
“I like to feel it when it actually comes down with some effort,” she
said, her face pointed to the sky. They walked against the weather along the wet sidewalks with raindrops drumming their heads.
When it let up, she saw wavering reflections of themselves together
in puddles as the street lights began to come on in the Sunset. The
rain washed away the smell of piss at the corner of 9th and Irving,
replacing it with the distinct and fleeting smell of crawling, moist
earth, living just beneath the concrete and petroleum casing that
was the city.
“My buddy’s working tonight,” he said, cocking his head toward a
neon sign shaped like a martini glass, its light beckoning insistently.
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