Puddles, Mirrors
By Katie Nickas
I search the streets for memories, plodding along in early morning when the colors are wet into wet. Industry has left rainbows in puddles of water. The puddles have a face. Standing over them, I make out eyes, noses, and chins—boys I kissed when they were no more than silhouettes against a backdrop of innocence. Grainy images of mom and dad that I thought were erased years ago.
I remember when time existed to ponder such things—before time became an obstacle, and the determination to avoid its passage a sure-footed madness that crept in to be revealed one day as the here and now.
Today is that day. Here is where I find him, thinking he’s one of those stick-legged birds with iridescent, black feathers that can be seen along the coast hanging with seagulls and terns. He peers at me sideways, his eyes like coins or washers someone left on the railroad tracks.
It’s when I get closer that I notice he’s human.
“What’s a pretty lady like you doing out here?” he asks. “Come home with me. A lady shouldn’t walk in the rain.”
There is no rain. Without looking up, I know the sky’s blue and fluffed with clouds that also remind me of others. This has been going on since I was little. People thought I was lost at the grocery store when I wandered away from mom’s cart to look at the bottles of shampoo or wine, imagining them sitting on a sunny windowsill.
He cranes his neck forward, telling me I have a nice face.
“I sense class,” his voice chimes. “Would you like to come to my studio for a photo shoot?”
Go, my instincts say. Run home and get the pepper spray mom kept in her pantry for years and gave to you after the last election. Slip it into your purse. Don’t come back to this place. Every instinct that lies coiled up inside, waiting to spring forth as a reminder that I’m not tied down like the trees and buildings and houses, says to run.
But it isn’t every day someone compliments my face, and there’s something about how he stands there with the camera around his neck looking sad and artistic that tells me it’s safe.
The studio is in his apartment—a dingy, pastel box slung below new brownstones and townhouses. The wardrobe is sexy: red nylon sashays, black-netted bodices, and giant hoop skirts made of crinoline. I strike a hundred different poses, feeling Victorian and wrong.
“Que bella, mon ami,” he says, clinging to the camera, though it trembles in his hand like jelly. “You are a rare bird who defies every category.”
“You speak French?” I ask, knowing there won’t be an answer. Instead, the shutter clicks like claws on a hard floor. My neck turns, and I hear the pop of sinews and tendons—all the parts of me that seem in perpetual conflict. For a long time, I’ve wanted to crawl out of my body, yet he explores it like it’s the place to be, taking small bites of lip, elbow, and collarbone without ever touching me. In the flux of light and dark, he undresses me slowly, lowering my zipper from across the room and pulling the dress down my waist to bury his mouth in my breasts and belly. I’m right here, he murmurs into the curve where my leg joins my hip.
Later, I’ll look at the pictures and see mountains and deserts, thinking I’ve gone on permanent vacation. Visions of chaparral-choked canyons and blue-blooded moons, where lynxes peer out from beneath boulders, will fill my head. All will be shifting and seismic, my body a landscape of tectonic plates colliding, old pieces being swapped for new ones, and everything in harmony.
I dig my toes into the pink sand and watch the images emerge from the dots of toner. We lie on the rug in the living room, holding the sheets up to the ceiling fan to dry. It could go on like this forever, I think. When I forget myself, he’ll remind me. He’ll remind me not to forget.
But soon, the session is over, and the room turns spare and empty. He’s back to being a scavenger, a stranger in his own home.
Outside, it’s quiet, except for the crunch of gravel beneath our feet and leaves skittering down the sidewalk. He reaches over the gate and hands me the portfolio.
“On me,” he says. “Come back any time.”
Beyond the terrace’s shadows, the sky is a high, blue dome. I walk the mile alone, wishing it would pour.
THE END