Crossovers, Socrates Lewis Stories Book Two
Table of Contents
Author’s Note v
Chapter 1 – Miss You, Miley 1
Chapter 2 – The Hallway Too? 8
Chapter 3 – A Damn Nice Illusion 13
Chapter 4 – Math Hates Me 20
Chapter 5 – Your Addled Imagination 24
Chapter 6 – Does She Have Blue Eyes? 28
Chapter 7 – She Hooked You 35
Chapter 8 – I’m…Something Else 43
Chapter 9 – Bit of a Romantic 50
Chapter 10 – I Needed His Name 58
Chapter 11 – Very Much Like a Hooker 63
Chapter 12 – She Isn’t a Philosopher 73
Chapter 13 – There. Feel Safer? 77
Chapter 14 – Jesus. Your Answers… 85
Chapter 15 – You Want to Pretend 89
Chapter 16 – Disguising Himself in Light 97
Chapter 17 – Something to Dream About 103
Chapter 18 – Where You Saw Her Die 107
Chapter 19 – You Rested Enough, Mr. Lewis! 113
Chapter 20 – Both…Of Them 120
Chapter 21 – Kiss a Goddamn Bus 125
Chapter 22 – Charging in with an Axe 129
Chapter 23 – I Look Sexy as Hell 133
Chapter 24 – She Pointed at Socrates 136
Chapter 25 – The Hellish Purple Ice Broke 140
Chapter 26 – I Should Just Laugh? 146
Chapter 27 – I Still Don’t Know 152
Chapter 28 – Not Always Somebody’s Fault 154
Chapter 29 – Starting It All Over 157
Author’s Note
I don’t believe that Mara (still not her real name) had intentionally meant to mislead me about the timing of manuscripts produced by Socrates Lewis. So, I’ll accept as truth her claim that she only wished, that second time that we’d met on a frozen Central Park bench, to keep his sequel manuscript locked away so as to make a free-standing publication out of his first manuscript.
Otherwise, she told me, Miley wouldn’t get what one might call “just about the lead role” as she deserved.
As I learned from Mara just after Crosswinds was published, that whole endeavor of Socrates doing some investigative work on the “curious story” assignment that she’d given him hadn’t yet happened. The focus of his life got pulled into something much juicier, a narrative worthy of its own book of storytelling truth fleshed out with storytelling make believe.
Unlike the first manuscript from Socrates, for this one, he didn’t provide a clear title. So, that’s on me. I hope he likes it.
As I did for his first manuscript, I sought to weave all of his factual recollections for that momentous day, not long after he saw Miley die, with amusing characterizations and intriguing plot points.
Mara, for one, wasn’t completely amused by my fabrications of her off-color office escapades. But she grinned when she told me that, so perhaps it served as some kind of suggestion for her. Fiction can do that, you know: make something up (in our minds or in print), then we realize that we kind of like it, then we go make it happen.
Or try, at least.
Anyway, I’ve been told that Socrates will get busy with that investigation soon. Or he might have already trudged through that, whiskey-free like Mara wanted, or whiskey-imbibed, which I’d prefer for him. He seems to do his best work when the gears and mechanisms of his mind are oiled just right.
But it’s also possible that he hasn’t given that project the slightest consideration. He might be too ensnared in a trap too delightful to pass up. We shall see.
Here, then, is the story of a day in the life of Socrates Lewis, in the form of a novel and with the title Crossovers.
He would recommend a persistent sampling of whiskey, of whatever brand, to accompany the turning of every page.
In fact, he told me so.
And I’d never dream of debating with an ancient philosopher.
~ Edward Allen Karr
Chapter 1 – Miss You, Miley
He rubbed at his right eye, then his left. He blinked them both a few times. Still half asleep, he couldn’t fight the satisfied smile that began a gradual arrival at seeing the white shoestring tracing a straight line down his reflected face, evenly dividing his forehead, along his nose, then halving his growing smile before keeping the sides of his chin neatly separated.
“God, what a relief.”
Still holding his own steady gaze in the mirror above his dresser, he pointed to himself and said, “God. Not Jesus. It’s only fair.”
He allowed his eyes to trace down along the string until he saw the sparkling engagement ring knotted at the bottom. It spun slowly first one way, then changed directions. Each facet of the single stone caught a bit of the morning light coming through his bedroom window, sending him quick flashes as if poking him, telling him to get fully awake.
Socrates Lewis realized that he was counting those flashes, tallying the totals for each direction of the ring’s spinning, before laughing softly and trying to ignore those tiny glints also bouncing off of the whiskey bottle and an empty glass.
After stopping himself abruptly, he turned enough to see the small window above his nightstand.
“Huh.”
He grabbed a sock off of a pile on the dresser top, walked over, and gave a half-hearted effort at smearing around at all of the smudges that he’d never noticed through the days of rain and gloom that had threatened to never end.
Leaning, he looked out at the staggered walls of brick which sheltered neighbors that he’d never met, though some of them had proven their existence from time to time by staring back at him, sometimes even waving.
Others had sent him more creative gestures across the alley.
Up above the cornices of some, crumbling parapets of others, and the various vent stacks and chimneys of all, an unfamiliar flaring in the sky signaled an actual sunrise occurring, though Socrates knew that he would never see even a smidgen of it from his room.
He snapped to attention at the alarm clock close to his face proclaiming that it was 8:00 am and gave it a quick thump, convincing it to quiet down. Before moving his hand away, he grabbed the worn hardcover book lying next to it and held it up.
“Socrates.”
Opening it to where a bookmark jutted out from the top, shiny and smooth and bragging about its relative youth compared to the book, he read the quote that had spoken to him all through the night: “Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.”
The book got snapped shut, and he jerked the marker out and tossed it aside. After glaring at the cover for a moment, he dropped it with a thump.
Then, he nudged it around until it was in some sort of balanced alignment with the clock, then scoffed at the sight of it.
“God, if her beauty was a tyranny . . .”
Done with Socrates, the real one, he grabbed the window with both hands and slid it up, causing the curtains to immediately begin a fluttery dance from the warm breezes that he’d invited inside.
A quick couple of steps got him to again face the mirror and string and ring. He turned quickly toward the window, confirmed that the light winds were hitting him, buffeting him, trying to make him lean to his left like he had for so long.
But one eye looked back at him from each side of the white string.
“God, I really am done with that? No more leaning?”
Not waiting for an answer, he grabbed at the three pieces of tape holding the shoestring to the top middle of the mirror’s frame, and he gave them a yank.
While pulling the tape from the string, he studied the residue still tacky and splotchy on the smooth wood. He hurried to finish scraping tape from the string, affixed the sticky pieces to the edge of the dresser, then reached for the muck left behind. But he stopped short, winced at the sight of it, then let his hand retreat.
“No. That’s fine. Just like that.”
Holding the string high enough to get the ring swinging near his eyes, Socrates laughed once, said, “Why not?” and fashioned it into a necklace, which he promptly dropped down over his head.
Clutching the ring with his left hand, he poured a full glass with his right, then held it up to toast his reflection.
“Miss you, Miley.”
A feeble knocking was almost lost in Mara’s dragging open one drawer after another as she engaged in an intensive search. She paused her efforts in time to be sure that the last knock was actually a knock.
“Come in.”
The door to her small but orderly office where she acted as editor of the philosophy magazine, for which Socrates Lewis occasionally contributed, swung in slowly, and a young man with unruly black hair leaned into the opening, his eyes big.
“Martin, didn’t I already tell you to come in?”
He grinned and said, “Not exactly. You told someone to come in. You didn’t know it was me.”
“I’m plagued by deep thinkers.”
He kept grinning.
“Get your ass in here, will you? Jesus. I mean, um, gee whiz.”
He stepped inside and coughed once, disguising his smile as he entered Mara’s office.
“I, uh, know what you mean. That ‘gee whiz’ thing.”
“Just forget that you ever read that piece by Socrates. I only wanted you to give it a quick read-through for a final check.”
“We’re really not publishing it, Mara?”
“No, we sure aren’t. It’s getting bloated out into a book of some sort titled Crosswinds. Let’s just not mention it again, alright? I’d like to maintain some distance from that.”
“Okay. Um, I just wanted to remind you that we’re a little light on content for the next issue.”
Her crossed arms lay on the desk as she leaned forward, holding his gaze.
“See? It all falls on me. Not much more than five years out of college, and the weight of the world is crushing my life into a soupy puddle already.”
“It’s, uh, it’s kind of just a magazine that—”
“Oh, I know. I’m just reminding you of my superiority, that’s all.”
She leaned back in her seat, crossed her legs, and began an exam of her manicure. She wore painted-on jeans and sneakers, and her wavy brown hair lay strategically scattered on the shoulders of her tight sweater.
“Go ahead and give Socrates a buzz. I gave him an assignment the last time I saw him. Kind of an investigative piece. See where he’s at.”
“Call him?” he said, kicking at the floor with his eyes lowered. “He, um, he’s always drunk.”
“It does seem that way. But he’s really—Martin, look at me.”
He stopped toeing the area rug and looked back up at her.
“He’s not always drunk. I suspect he sleeps through the night, which should flush some of his toxic wastes out.”
Martin grinned and said, “Much better. He starts the day sober? That’s what you mean?”
“Yes. I bet the drinking beats the sunrise, though.”
She watched his eyes follow her legs as she crossed them the other way.
“You want me to call him, is that it, Martin?”
“Well, you’re the getting-crushed editor, and you know him better, and—”
“Fine. Close the door.”
He turned the knob and quietly shut it before letting the mechanism turn.
Before he could release it, she said, “Lock it.”
He smiled and did as she’d instructed before turning toward her.
“You should be grateful that I’m providing you such a clear method for, um, rising up in this organization.”
“I am, Mara. Thanks,” he said, then continued while starting to take a step. “Each time we—”
“Stop.”
He stopped.
“Verbal thanks won’t get you far. Actions, Martin. Vigorous, tireless actions.”
He smiled even as he started watching her kicking her crossed leg rhythmically, the laces bouncing, making him stare.
“You start with the shoes while I see if our excellent writer slash alcoholic slash wannabe philosopher has accomplished anything yet.”
She picked up the phone, then stopped to say, “No,” when she saw Martin begin the few steps needed to tend to her footwear.
“You know better than that,” she said, shaking her head.
He grinned and dropped to his hands and knees.
“You like degrading me,” he said.
“You like it more.”
With the blank sheet pinched by both hands, held up from its comfortable home—wound snugly around the platen in his typewriter—Socrates scoffed and let it drop.
While letting a deep breath seep out, he gave his glass another pour, capped the bottle, and pushed it across the table toward two identical tall plastic containers containing birdseed.
Tapping the bottle with his fingernails, he studied their levels and saw that the one on the left was slightly higher. He reached for it, stopped short, and wrapped his hand around the drink glass instead.
“Maddening. Shit like that.”
He tipped the glass up for a couple of quick swallows, then traded it for some sheets of handwritten notes. Dragging a pointing finger left to right along most of the lines, he finished the first sheet and tipped it toward him to scan the second.
“This is nonsense. So what if there’s some people out there that don’t trust science?”
Looking again at the first sheet, he said, “God, I just can’t stop talking to myself. Except when I’m drinking.”
He laughed once, snatched up his glass, and was about to pour some between his lips when his cell phone rang and buzzed and rattled on the tabletop.
“God, what now?”
He held it up, saw that it was Mara calling, then completed the drink without any further delay.
He cleared his throat, then tapped the phone.
“God, Mara, it’s only Wednesday. Don’t I have until the end of the week?”
After a pause, he heard her giggle, then she said, “Oh, yeah, for that research thing. Sure.”
Another pause. Another giggle.
“That’s more of a long-term project. We still need you to write up something for the upcoming issue, Socrates.”
“I could, but—”
He stopped at the sound of another giggle, and he heard Mara, muffled, say, “I want you to do it. I have to watch my nails.”
Then, in a normal voice, she said, “But, what?”
“Um, is everything okay there?”
“It will be. I’m just, um, giving staff their assignments.”
“Uh, yeah. Right.”
“Just part of my job. Look, we’re a little lean for the upcoming mag. Try to slap something together, alright?”
“Slap?”
“Just write something. Then, get going on that research, Mr. Ancient Philosopher.”
“I’m not really ancient, and I’m not so sure I want to be an investigator, Mara. That sounds like—”
“Look, I read that last thing you wrote. All about Jesus. Way more about that Miley girl, though.”
“Well, yeah, Miley was—”
“A hooker.”
“Uh, she was more than that.”
“Sure. Well, she did some research, too, didn’t she? You owe it to her. Carry on that tradition, so to speak. Just give it a shot.”
He heard a male voice in the background whisper, “That buckle is—”
Even the slap sounded muffled, then Mara whispered, “Hey! I’m on the phone!”
He held the phone away at the sound of Mara giggling for several seconds, then it went silent.
“Huh. Weird.”
Holding up the glass to finish it, he paused long enough to give the waiting empty piece of paper a strong flick.
Then, he reached for the seed container on the right and began pouring some into the right pocket of his long, dark trench coat, which was folded neatly over the back of the only other chair at the table.
Chapter 2 – The Hallway Too?
Socrates stood in the open doorway to his apartment, looking back inside and checking that the pieces of his life that he’d put in some kind of order were indeed in order. Some areas were organized, but others were intentionally left as they’d happened.
A last glance at the kitchen table made him smile: the seed container on the right held more than its twin.
“Maddening,” he said, then he adjusted his fedora and pulled the door closed behind him.
Then, rigor mortis got him.
His eyes became welded to the splattering of red, orange, and yellow shapes that seemed to be weaving under and over each other, evading his gaze. The background, if there was one—he’d never been able to focus past the dastardly pattern—kept itself hidden, offering up the nightmare challenge to him while lurking behind, claiming some kind of deniability.
“God, there’s more of you each time.”
Still holding the knob in one hand and the scribbled notes in the other, he placed his right foot as close to the middle of the hallway as he could.
He held his breath and looked to his right, then to his left, toward the stairway. Then, again to the right, all the while never taking his sights off of the carpet.
And the red shapes.
And the orange and yellow ones.
How many? he asked himself. How many to the right?
He forced himself to look to the end, which wasn’t too far. A painting hanging on that wall dared him to look at it, but he didn’t. He couldn’t.
He was counting.
The second time gave him a different number than the first time.
The third time was the same as the first.
He winced, closing his eyes, and forced himself to breathe.
Again, he counted from below that colorful artwork to that one step that he’d planted in the hall’s middle. He tallied them up two more times and got the same number for all three surveys.
A deep sigh was his only reward as he looked down, let go of the doorknob, and slowly took a step with his left. Left to right and back again he looked, knowing that it had to be quick.
Because once he’d started to walk, there could be no more hesitation. He could be erratic and sloppy until he got to the balcony, but not beyond that.
Over that second-floor railing, the cavernous lobby waited, well-lit, saturated with every possible color, and likely brimming with eyes, all focused on him.
Watching his every step.
Studying. Scrutinizing. Keeping score.
There was sure to be a pair of little girl eyes—Wendy. And a bright green pair for that cat of hers that she’d named Rae Cat.
He counted twice, got the same number, and breathed easier.
While swinging his right leg forward, he raced his eyes side to side, always conscious of keeping a steady, relaxed gait.
The two counts matched again, just in time, and he stepped with his right, knowing that when he placed that step, he’d be on display for every curious eye below, especially the ones that seemed to continually inhabit that burgundy couch.
The numbers didn’t match, and there was no time for a third count. There could be no delay, so he choked back that failure and took the next step.
And the red, orange, and yellow globs tormented him, rolling away from his study of them, diving beneath each other, laughing at his inability to count them even once.
But he had to keep going. Onward, toward the stairs.
His heart pounded, taunting him to count its beats, too, and he held the notes flat in front of his face, blocking the carpeting to finish the walk to the stairs.
He held the rail, standing at the top, and allowed himself the time to calm from that new ordeal which had never plagued him before.
“God, that was ugly. Now, the hallway too?”
Before contemplating the carpet runners on all of the steps, the ones with pale purple circles of varying sizes, all lodged into a darker purple background, he blew out a single, deep breath and looked toward the couch.
At the sight of Wendy and Rae, he smiled and shook his head, and the girl’s smile made it easy to forget his hallway fiasco.
But his eyes got anchored to the light purple circles on each and every step all the way down to the lobby floor. He’d never cared about them on the journey downward.
Only traveling up. That’s how it had always been.
With a sharp grunt, he forced his eyes back to Wendy and waved rigidly, like a mechanized mockup of himself, as he bumped his hand along the railing and descended.
At the bottom, shoes safe on the clean tile floor, with no pressing need to count circles, calculate their areas, then sum those areas up on each side of each step placement, a heavy sigh rasped out slowly.
Then, with a smile of relief and the promise of the good company of Wendy and her cat, he began the short walk to the burgundy couch. On the way, he glanced up at all of the bright lights suspended from the high ceiling with chains.
Socrates fought to keep from smiling as he pointed at Wendy, who made no such effort. She giggled and kicked her legs as they mostly stuck straight out from the couch, keeping the long laces of her sneakers snapping. From the lights above, her orange sweatshirt seemed all the brighter.
“I know you,” he said, pointing at her and prompting her to cover her smile with one hand.
He looked at the black cat lying pressed up against her, pointed, and said, “You? Oh, I guess I’m starting to know you.”
“Hi, Mr. Lewis. I know you too! So does Rae Cat.”
Standing near, holding his notes in one hand, wearing his long coat and fedora, Socrates shook his head at them and said, “You both should know me by now. Because I always pass through here to . . .”
He paused and waited with his head tipped to one side.
“Feed the birds!”
He patted his side pockets, which bulged out slightly.
“Correct. No bird seed for you, though.”
“Uh-uh. Not for me. Not for Rae either.”
“Say, is she still eating from two bowls?”
Wendy petted the cat and rubbed her ears, but Rae only stared up at Socrates.
“No, Mr. Lewis. We ran out of her old food. She just has new food now.”
“Oh. Well, I hope she’s happy with it.”
Wendy shrugged and said, “I think she is.”
“You don’t know?”
Wendy shook her head and said, “She didn’t say so.”
“Oh. No, I don’t suppose she will. Hey, Wendy, don’t you ever go to school?”
She nodded and said, “Yeah.”
She pointed up at the balcony and said, “At home.”
“Oh, I see. You’re homeschooled. Are you learning a lot?”
She shrugged and said, “I guess.”
“What are you studying? What subjects?”
She shrugged again and said, “All kinds of stuff.”
When Wendy looked down at the cat and started scratching around between her ears, Socrates took a moment to enjoy all of the colors present in the lobby: the wallpaper, the artwork, the furnishings, and even the attractive tiles of the floor.
“Okay, well, the birds are waiting.”
She looked up and said, “How do you know?”
He stared at the pair of big eyes looking back at him.
“Uh, I guess I don’t. I do believe they are, though.”
“I bet they are too.”
He tipped his hat to her, turned, and walked toward the door, where he paused before opening it to study his reflection.
He saw that he was standing straight up, which brought a smile, then he looked through the glass at a cheery, colorful city shaking off the last of the night’s shadows.
Chapter 3 – A Damn Nice Illusion
“They’re funny. They don’t hardly move anymore.”
The wheels of the food cart that the man was pushing, his hands in unraveling gloves without fingers, were getting in their last squeals as he coasted it to a stop.
A few more squeals would have prompted the pigeon community to take to the air instead of just bobbing their heads and looking annoyed.
“I don’t know,” said Socrates, pointing at the birds, “but maybe they’d like hotdogs for a change.”
“I always do,” said the man as he came to a stop, his hands still on the push bar. “I sometimes eat up most of my profits.”
“Oh. An easy thing to do—probably unavoidable.”
While steam seeped out through cracks around vat lids in several locations, the vendor fussed with his weathered dark blue top hat and leaned to stare at the pigeons who’d halted their pecking at seed to stare up at him.
“Here, this’ll help,” Socrates said, then scooped the last of the birdseed out of his pockets and scattered it farther out, away from cart wheels that would soon need to resume the journey.
He and his regular breakfast chef watched as the birds leisurely pecked around, then engaged in some slow, almost sarcastically slow, waddling out of the cart’s path.
“Yeah, birds,” said the man, “no hurry. It’s still early.”
“They do like their seed.”
“Wouldn’t do much for me,” said the man. “Seed, I mean.”
“Because it’s all the same color?”
The man stared for a second, then laughed, tipping his head and tall hat back for a second.
“What? No. What kind of lame idea is that?”
“Oh, I just know someone very special that told me that. What’s your reason?”
“Easy. It’d all get stuck in my teeth.”
Standing close to Socrates and beside his steamy cargo, the man held a giant smile for him to study, revealing a consistent absence of every other tooth, top and bottom.
“Um . . . that—”
“That’s a joke! Don’t bother me any if you was to laugh.”
Socrates laughed but only for a second or two.
“That’s not from—”
“No, it’s not from the hot dogs. I should have been eating them for every meal. Like you.”
Still watching the birds, Socrates said, “It’s only for breakfast.”
“I appreciate your business. And that sunshine—should be a nice day.”
He’d just generated a short grinding out of the wheels from his two-handed leaning on it, then Socrates said, “Hey, look at that.”
He looked.
Pointing away from the bench, past the train tracks at the barren rubble that had replaced warehouses that had been torn down long before, Socrates said, “That sign. When did that get put up?”
“You got some good eyes on you, mister. I believe just today. Looks like it’s finally about to change into something different over there.”
“Huh. That should brighten the city even more. You notice all the colors in everything today?”
He looked around, reaching up under his hat to scratch lazily, then back at Socrates.
“Yeah. Like usual. Speaking of usual, you want your usual?”
“No, sir. I’d like two of the jumbos today.”
“You got it. The usual fixings too?”
“Hell, double everything. I’m celebrating.”
He said, “What?” while fishing around, setting up his order.
“Sunshine, for one. Enough with the damn rain. And any day I can cut back on talking to myself, that’s a good day.”
Still looking into his vats, chasing hotdogs around with tongs like it was some sort of carnival game, the man in the top hat said, “Ha. I talk to myself all the time.”
Socrates leaned, trying to catch the man’s eye, but he was too focused on the meal prep.
“I’ve never heard you talking to yourself.”
He stopped, a hot dog snagged and steaming and dripping in the cool air.
Staring at Socrates, he said, “I, uh, I just did.”
“I’m sitting up straight,” he said to the pigeons milling around near his feet.
He took another bite of a jumbo hotdog and said, with a full mouth, “Imagine if you all flew crooked, huh? That would annoy the hell out of you.”
He looked to his left, saw the blue of the top hat tipping with each step as the vendor steered his cart to the next park over, one reliably crowded.
The feathers of some of the birds got puffed around as a stiffer breeze from Socrates’s right hit all of them.
“Huh. The wind.”
He stood and gazed out at the wasteland beyond the tracks, letting the cool air buffet him from the right.
A check down to the right, then down to the left, confirmed that he wasn’t leaning in any noticeable amount.
“Good,” he told the birds, none of whom seemed interested.
Then, he quickly turned to look toward the right and saw a figure approaching, dressed all in black. The baggy clothing kept itself animated from the wind, and the fedora needed the constant help of one hand to keep it in place up top.
As the pedestrian drew nearer, Socrates turned his eyes back to the birds and his breakfast. He held one up for the next bite and stopped before chomping down on it when the walker took a seat to his right.
He looked over quickly and saw only the back of a black suit jacket, oddly lumpy around the shoulders, so he shuffled to the left from his seat in the middle.
The hotdog forgotten, he raised up a cup of coffee and almost spilled it when the individual spun around and rested against the bench’s back, facing the tracks like he. He gave a glance to his right, but the hat brim was tipped, the head leaning enough to keep secret their identity.
He looked forward and lowered the cup, then set it on the bench between them. From an inside pocket, he brought out a thin flask, pried off the coffee lid, and poured some into it. The bottle, capped again, got stowed away, and he snapped the lid back in place.
Then, he froze at the sight of a graceful left hand, wearing a few modest rings, as it reached for his cup.
He knew that his head was shaking as the hand lifted the cup, hid it behind the hat’s brim until the head and hat and cup all tipped back once, then set it back down.
And the sunshine’s warmth fizzled and faded as a chill hiked up and down his spine when a soft, feminine, familiar voice said, “Ah, that’s good. Best way to start a day.”
He stared, trembling, as the mysterious visitor leaned back, letting the hat brim float up lazily, revealing first lips that were already smiling, then a nose, then eyes that smiled, too, as a heavy shiver rattled him around in his coat.
“Miley!”
She turned to face him, bending her left arm up to rest on the back, and did nothing but smile at him, looking from his eyes to his silent, quivering lips, then back to his eyes.
Then, with both hands, she lifted her hair up out of the jacket and fluffed it all over her back.
“Sure looks like it, huh?”
“You’re here? You’re really here again? How could—”
“Ooh,” she said, curling her lips into a tight circle. “Such a scary mystery!”
“Yeah! I mean, no, you’re not scary. You’re just—”
Nodding, she said, “I’m not Miley. Scary, maybe, but not Miley.”
“I, um, I—” he mumbled while reaching in for the bottle, but she easily stopped him with just a touch.
“Figure it out, Mr. Socrates. I’ll give you a second.”
His eyes marched up and down and all around every feature of her smiling face. There could be no doubt that it was Miley’s face.
She gave him more than a second.
But his only progress was to begin shaking his head.
“No? Okay, let me help. There’s this thing called twins. Ever hear of that?”
He found her eyes, which could have been Miley’s eyes, and decided to stay with that.
“You’re not Miley?”
She held out a hand, and he stared at it for a second before taking it. And he felt the softness and warmth of it before again looking into her eyes.
She gave his hand a relaxed shake and said, “I’m Aspin. Recognize the clothes?”
She tried to get her hand from his, and he didn’t want to let it go.
“That bar?” he said. “That was you?”
“Yeah. I try—oops, ‘tried’—to keep an eye on her. That girl was always courting some kind of calamity.”
“That was . . .”
Aspin squinted at the sight of his eyes traveling all over her face as his lips fumbled around, beginning so many different words that couldn’t fight their way out. Especially with his breath locked in tight.
She scoffed, giving him a quick chill because even that could have come from Miley, then said, “Don’t start thinking I’m a hooker, too, Mr. Socrates.”
He settled on her eyes again, seeing that they might have been even more blue than Miley’s.
“I, uh, that doesn’t matter. You’re . . . you’re really not—”
“No, I’m really not. I’ll tell you what, though. I can shut my trap right now and not say another word. Then, you can believe I’m whoever the hell you want me to be.”
He’d been watching every tiniest detail of her lips while she spoke. He lingered there until he was sure that she’d finished, then looked up into her eyes, which clearly showed that she was waiting for some kind of response.
“No. Uh, no, don’t stop talking.”
“That could be a damn nice illusion. You sure?”
He tipped his head to study her features better, not even aware that his lips had some intention of forming a word or two.
Looking into her eyes again, he said, “No. No, Aspin. I want you to talk. You’ll still look like—”
“Aspin?”
He let out one semi-hysterical laugh and said, “Yeah. Yeah, you look like Aspin.”
“Damn right.”
She reached into a pocket, then threw some seed out for the birds.
They’d only begun finding the seeds, staggering and jabbing beaks around, before she kicked out one leg, her black boot coming close to the flock, and they scattered into the sky with a chorus of unhappy warbling.
Aspin watched them winging themselves away from seeds and hostile boots, but Socrates only watched her face. She’d seen enough of their antics and turned to him, then leaned her head to one side, tipping the wide brim.
“I’ll admit it,” she said. “I like the way you’re looking at me. My sister really was something, wasn’t she?”
“Oh my, yeah. You, uh, you look so much—”
“What’s my name?”
After a second, he said, “Aspin?”
“You’re not sure? Say it again.”
“Aspin.”
“Better,” she said, grinning. “One more time?”
He laughed and said, “Aspin. You’re Aspin. But goddamn it, you sure could be Miley.”
When she dug around in a different coat pocket, he watched her hand until she held out a small paper. He looked up to see that she’d been waiting for him.
“Yeah, I sure as hell could. Here.”
He took the paper.
“Call me. Let’s meet sometime.”
She stood and locked her hands on her hips.
“That’s Aspin’s number.”
He unfolded it, didn’t even try to focus on it, then looked back up.
“Or, the offer’s still good: I can shut the hell up.”
She smiled, turned and walked only two steps before stopping and giving him just a profile view.
And a chill.
“That way, it’ll be Miley’s number.”