She dreamed of dying indoors.
The winter whipped at her bare legs, her body seizing against the wind’s audible moan. She stopped walking, straightening her knees and knocking them together. She shook, everywhere, but where was there to go? The fast food restaurant, the laundromat? It was all so temporary. Everywhere would close soon.
She thought of her house. It’s light was never on.
He dreamed of playing in Broadway.
Not like one of those actors, prancing around the stage. He always described them as prancing. No, he wanted to play for Broadway, give their lavish moments some sound. His sound, though, rivalled only the whistle of the caustic night air, and he sat up against the parking garage door, playing a sad melody on frayed violin strings. His eyes were closed, his mouth ajar and frowning, his body slouching to the side, but he kept his instrument up. His shoulder was the only thing about him that didn’t slouch.
Her shoe scuffed the cement, the sole flopping up to meet the rest. The man opened his eye. The instrument stopped.
“Little girl,” he said. “Hey, little girl, what are you doing out so late?”
“I’m trying to die,” she said.
“Nonsense.” He smiled. His teeth were yellow, too yellow for his young age. “Nonsense, you’re too young to want to die. You haven’t even shook death’s hand yet, come over here.”
She stood. Her knees knocked violently, her hands bunched in small fists. “No,” she said on the waves of quick, silently breaths, noticeable only by the clouds they exuded. Her mouth was open, her tongue dry to the wind.
“Come on, you’ll freeze.”
“I want to die.”
“Sit down, sit down.”
When she sat down, it was on the flat slab of cardboard he too rested on, a dusty, grimy piece of filth. It was warmer than the sidewalk, though. She eagerly hugged her knees, bringing it into her school sweater, furthering her black leather cap over her head. The man didn’t go through such extremes; he fastened his coat, said nothing, and kept playing. The sweet melody was lulling, like the coming of spring.
“Hey, hey, are you okay?”
A man was prodding her in the side with the toe of his shoe. She looked up at him. His face was silhouetted by the orange of the sun. She moved to the brush of leather on her skin, a coat laid over her frame. She blinked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
She met Dustin again on the shore of Lake Mendota, where the city kissed the water with jaded sidewalk dappled with grass.
“It’s kinda like me,” he said, violin on his shoulder, looking out over the water. “It could be a beautiful path, but it’s instead ugly and overgrown.”
“You still have time.” She shoved a piece of bread into her mouth, pulling her leather cap up to let her short hair ruffle in the coming wind. “You just have to get off your ass.”
“Easy for you to say,” Dustin said. “You’re just a kid.”
“I’m 11,” she murmured. “Not 6.”
They watched a sailboat wrestle with the sunset. Dustin brought his instrument to his chin and began playing a sailor melody, something salty. She almost choked laughing. He abruptly stopped.
“Don’t kill yourself, Arbor,” he told her.
“I’m not, I won’t.”
On the first day of spring he had a bloody face. She met him at their usual place, an alley behind the fast food restaurant, near to where they first met. The girl had waited there for an hour, eating scraps of food her mom threw to her for lunch. She was ready to leave when he showed up. He was spitting and cussing and stumbling. She reached out a hand but the wind seemed to pull it back.
He loitered next to her against the wall, digging under his nails. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her leather coat.
“It’s a lot less cold now,” he said.
She nodded.
He dug into his pockets, throwing lint onto the ground, paper from receipts and straws. He pulled out a syringe. She nodded.
She nodded she nodded she nodded.
On the second day of spring she showed up with a bruise on her cheek. She shoved her hands in her pockets and spit on the ground as she rounded the corner. He rushed to meet her, grazing her cheek.
“Shit, what happened.”
She shook her head.
“She just bought a lot today,” she whispered, wiping her eye and spitting again, harder. “She did it all today.”
He stroked her cheek again. She winced.
“Here, we can go to the pharmacy. I’ll buy you some stuff.”
She kicked the dirt.
“It’s a temporary solution,” she muttered. “Fuck it.”
“Want me to play you a song?”
She paused. She nodded.
They both sat down by the dumpster. He fumbled through his pockets, taking care of his business, wrapping the snapped rubber band around his arm. Then he played. He played and laughed and she laughed while she cried.
“What was her name.”
The weather had gotten considerably warmer as they sat by the waterside, shoes and socks lined side-by-side and toes in the water. The breeze was sweet. His voice was low.
“Kayla,” he said. “We were married for a year. She divorced me, took all my stuff, killed me. One thing led to another.”
She nodded. One thing always led to another.
“I got a job,” he announced.
“That’s good news.” She kicked at the water, smiling.
“Maybe I can adopt you,” he suggested. “Get you away from that mother of yours, those boys on the street.”
“I can handle myself against Cayden.”
“Still, Arb, how great would that be? I have a steady income, it could happen.”
She smiled. She continued to smile that she laughed a little, looking down and back up to the sailboats that painted themselves bright on the ocean. Her face hurt after a moment.
“We could live in New York,” she suggested.
“We could live in New York,” he said.
When he lost his job the next month, she did not speak much about it. They went to their usual place, talking about their days. He’d always be clasping the purse of his last harvest, the ID it held, flipping it in his hands, watching it carefully. She always told him it was weird. He never responded.
Summer passed in a whisper, like the drops she wiped from windshields as she worked to make a few dollars, walking down East Washington Street with a squeegee and a sign. That was how it was. She’d go work during the day, and come to him during the night to chat. And at the end of every day, she’d pass him a few dollars.
At first be objected.
Soon he started taking it silently.
She dreamed of dying in New York.
He never got a job again.
Dustin played his violin as people passed on the street, the girl jumbling a tin can for change beside him. They said nothing; she only rubbed her weary eyes, him his purple arm and the strings of his instrument enough people passed. Night grew quickly. She left him the change and went home.
He never got a job. He never moved up? Why was he doing that? Didn’t he care about her? Didn’t he love her?
“I love you,” the man said. His voice was soft like the autumn wind. Arbor wiped her nose. She nodded.
School came and she visited him less. It wasn’t that she was attending classes, but more like she was hanging out with other people, seeing Cayden more. She was working herself out. For every bruise she got she gave a bruise to another poor sap who wanted to hold on to his lunch money a little longer. For every free second she had, she used this money, went to taekwondo classes. She learned how to flick a penny. She learned about her gift. She learned how to flick a penny with her gift. Autumn did not fall, but rose. She was doing better. She was making a thing of herself.
The haunting violin sang through the winter breeze, the strings hoarse and off-melody. Each glide across the instrument brought a din of agony. Far gone were the days of melody upon those strings. He looked up at her with yellow eyes, at the bare-legged, twelve year-old girl in the school sweater. He smiled, scratching his white, scraggled skin, bringing a hand along the orange vest he wore, one that seemed too small on even his frail body.
“Sit down.”
She sat down.
The wind blew a moan, whipping through the empty night street. They said nothing. He didn’t play. The coins inside his cup rattled emptily along with each long gust, until finally blowing over and rolling into the street.
His hand came to her leg. She said nothing. He stroked her skin, gliding his fingers further up her thigh, heavy, long movements moving across her, chilling her like the wind couldn’t. And she sat there. Sat there until his fingers got too close, until his movements got too violent, foiling her skirt as he sought underneath. She gingerly placed a hand on his. He paused. Slowly, he moved his fingers away, and began to weep. Hard, bitter tears came to him as he placed his face in his knees, hugging his shins and crying, crying, crying.
“I want to die,” he said through the inhales, the tears.
She nodded.
Arbor sat there as he stopped crying, as he slowly raised his black, feeble arms, and started playing his violin. The sound, it was dreadful, the lumbering warcry of winter, but she managed to drift off. It managed to take her.
“Hey. Sweetheart, hey.”
A policeman was crouched in front of her. He seemed relieved that she’d woken up, a small crowd having formed around them. She looked slowly to her right. He was gone.
“Hey, are you okay? It’s freezing out here! Why are you sleeping out here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You took off your vest, too. You could catch hypothermia, come here, we’ll drive you home.”
Vest. Arbor looked down on her lap, and sure enough, the orange vest was laid across it. She opened her mouth, but nothing came from it, only a small breath that blossomed in the cold. She grasped it in her hands, and looked up at the officer.
“Okay,” she said.
