would have run out with his friend at first opportunity.”
“What?”
“I’d have thought talking to me again might be painful.”
“It was a tough time for everyone, Rosa.”
Rosa squinted at him, thinking hard about something she wanted to say.
“Why didn’t you come to Helen’s funeral?” she asked him.
Victor’s memory was a rush of dark moments, of constant, hollow-sounding sympathy.
“It wasn’t for me,” he said. “Her family didn’t know me. I had no business being there.”
“You were her boyfriend, Victor,” Rosa gasped at him. “Of course you had reason to be there.”
When Victor didn’t respond, she said, “You never saw her at all, those last few months.”
“She went home to be in the hospital, Rosa. I couldn’t afford the bus ticket, not to mention the plane fare.”
The memory of his last moments with Helen stirred at the back of his brain.
“Still bringing back ghosts?” he said.
He sighed. “You want the story? Before she left, she told me she’d be back. We agreed she’d get better. How stupid was that?”
Rosa reached over, hugged him hard.
“You were all she talked to me about, Victor.”
He pushed her away. “Don’t give me that psychic crap.”
She was affronted for a moment, until she saw his eyes.
“I went to visit her, Victor. While she was in the hospital.”
“She wanted to write to you,” Rosa said. “But it was difficult for her. I wish I could say there was no pain, but you’re not the kind of person that a lie like that would help.”
In a dark corner of the room, Victor watched Daphne’s white shape turn in slow circles as she settled into her blanketed box.
Rosa started cleaning up stray glasses from the room.
“What’s up with that new girl, Morgan? She’s cute.”
“It’s not like that,” Victor said.
Rosa glanced at him over her shoulder. She seemed to be pretending not to have heard him when she continued. “I think I understand what she sees in you. I admit, you’re a bit more of a stick than when I first met you, but you’re still very funny. I bet most scientists aren’t very funny.”
“I don’t want another thing, Rosa. I’m happy with my work.”
It occurred to him to wonder where Morgan was. Rosa caught his confused look. “Looking for her? You know she left, right?”
He stood, then realized he didn’t know what to do.
Rosa handed him his coat, conjured almost out of the ether.
“I have to go.” It felt almost like a question on his lips.
Rosa dabbed her eyes on her sleeve. When she finally looked at him, they seemed a dimmer, cooler blue. At that moment, he wanted to be nothing more than a master of the comforting word, but his mind was uncomfortable and blank.
“Maybe I’ll see you again, Rosa.”
“Maybe.”
He walked to the door.
“Victor,” Rosa said. “That Schrödinger guy was right. Maybe you should get a cat.”
Outside, Victor hunched forward into the gloom, wrapping his coat tight about him to ward off the touch of the night’s chill. The sidewalk glowed in blue-white pools under the light of the streetlamps, the brief sparks of raindrops showing in the dark spaces between them. He headed back towards the subway station. For a moment at the edge of the now closed donut shop, he could almost smell Helen’s perfume, something clean and vanilla. The quiet ringing of the rain on metal somewhere reminded him of her musical laugh, of her voice when she would sing. He remembered looking into her bold green eyes as she sang, seeing her raise an eyebrow of challenge at the love she must have felt in his look.
He reached the subway and descended the stone stairs, feeling the walls rise up and cut him off from the world, from memory, and surround him with icy white tile and the smell of metal and dirt.
The platform was empty and quiet, a cocoon tunnel he stumbled through. A slow, steady wind brushed past his left arm, and he glanced backwards towards the tunnel mouth, expecting to see train headlights in the distance, but all he saw was emptiness, all he heard was the slow moan of the wind.
He turned back and was startled by a figure leaning against the wall in the darkness in front of him. His eyes adjusted to the gloom. It was Morgan. Was she waiting for him?
“I guess,” he said, “Do I owe you an apology of some kind?”
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said. Her voice was breathy and gruff. Victor couldn’t tell if she was angry, surprised, or something else.
“I don’t want you to be angry,” he said. “I was trying to let you know how I feel.”
Morgan seemed lost in thought, her eyes lost to him in the dark of platform.
“Like the daisy from the café in New Orleans,” she said.
He felt his heart stumble in his chest. “What?”
“The porch,” she said. “It was covered in flowers. She thought they were so beautiful.”
She looked off to one side, as if she were lost in a memory.
“Rosa must have told you.” It came out in a grumble.
Her head shook slowly. “No, I can see it. This lovely yellow flower. You ran it over my…her face, while you were walking back.”
She ran her hand over her face, as if reliving the moment.
“I can’t believe—“ he started, angry. “You weren’t there.”
Morgan reached out for him, grabbed his hand with icy cold fingers. The chill was electric, spread tingling up his arm to his elbow before he snatched his hand away.
Morgan looked him directly in the eyes. She pressed close to him as he retreated to the edge of the platform. He felt the palpable cold curl around him softly, saw her breath crystallize between them, a layer of fog. There was the smell of vanilla again, this time sharp and chill, overwhelming his senses.
“She came to me because you would listen. Because I could explain in a way you could understand.”
Her eyes went wide again, her mouth dropped open and her breath was thready and ecstatic.
“Oh, Victor, it’s gorgeous. Everything. Everything! You can’t imagine it.”
Her eyes juddered as if she were dreaming.
“She’s s-sorry, Victor. She’s sorry here.” She stepped forward, pressed into him. “But in many places, you are so happy.”
“Please understand,” she whispered in desperation. “It’s so hard. It’s hard to feel you like this, here. But I came back to say I’m sorry here.”
Victor looked into Morgan’s eyes, through a thick haze, fear and pain and sorrow washing like waves over his anger. Her eyes were full of motes of light, like stars. Many places…many worlds, he thought. In some, perhaps they’d never even met. In others one or the other might not exist. Here, they’d had moments, just moments. Everything was just moments, just a breath when compared against infinities.
She nodded, and pressed into him. He closed his eyes, rocked her gently against him.
“Victor?” It was Rosa’s voice now, waking him from a dream. She was there, in front of him, holding Morgan, slumped against her, asleep.
“Come help Morgan and I sit down,” Rosa said.
He struggled against the cold ache in his muscles, over to the platform stairs.
“I guess that wasn’t your mother,” Rosa said to Morgan, who stirred slightly in her sleep.
“What?” Victor asked.
Rosa laughed at him. “I almost feel good saying this to a scientist, but…it’s hard to explain.”
She looked down at Morgan. Victor turned his head, embarrassed.
“She’s okay?” he asked.
“Yes. She’s better now.” Rosa’s eyes were playful.
“Helen told you about New Orleans, before she died.”
“What?”
“Morgan knew about the trip, the time Helen and I slipped off to New Orleans.”
; “She never told me about it.”
“It can’t be real,” he said.
“What if it is?” Rosa asked.
“I need to know she’s gone, Rosa.” It was almost a plea.
Rosa started to answer, then seemed to reconsider. “It depends as much on you, as on her.”
She pressed Morgan’s hands between hers. “So cold,” she said. “They’re drawn by loneliness.”
He rubbed his hands, shivering. “It can’t be real.”
“You felt it, didn’t you?” Rosa grabbed his hand. “I touched it, Victor, as it left her.”
Victor felt the cold tingle start in his fingers, again. He jerked his hand back.
She smiled a smug, funny smile. “I know, you’ll never believe. But I also know you have the courtesy to just shut up. Because Helen loved you for that.”
Victor rubbed his hand, numb with cold.
“If it helps, Victor…in some ways, you’re as much a ghost to her as she is to you.”
He felt a stunning sadness settle on him, at the enormous weight of loneliness in all of possibility.
Morgan stirred slightly against him, waking up. “Victor?”
“Take Morgan home, Victor.” Rosa stood up. “She needs you, here.”
“How do I explain all this?”
Rosa shook her head. “It’s too big for her to remember.”
Rosa gave him a quick hug, and started walking up the stairs.
She paused. “Be here, Victor. I think Helen would prefer the smug, scientific Victor to the lonely one,” she told him.
He nodded.
“I’m here,” he said to Morgan.
And the train rumbled into the station, swirling galaxies of dark dust before it like so many memories.
###
About the author:
Keith Gapinski is a new, independent author in the process of figuring out who he is as a writer. He’s interested in fantasy, science fiction, and fantastic realism. He lives with his wife and three cats in