The Fading (20 page)

He was thinking more about the music than his purpose here when he stepped back up into the kitchen, walked no more than three
steps and felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle hotly as if someone had blown a creeping kiss on him. He turned to
his left and saw Julie standing in the corner pantry that had been closed on his first pass. She was staring right at him
and his heart boomed thunderously before he remembered she could not see him. He knew immediately it was her because she hadn’t
changed at all. She was the same rail-thin waif with straight jet-black hair and pale doll skin he had seen five years ago
and so often in his memory ever since.

He was frozen with a fear greater than that in finding Bryan Simms on the floor, and he dared not speak.

Backed all the way into the dark pantry, a cardboard can of oats and two bags of tortilla chips on the shelf above her head,
Julie was swaying to the music, hands in the air painting with colors only she could see. She wore dark jeans, black sneakers
and a thin, camisole-type shirt under her blue denim jacket, but she did not appear the least bit cold. She closed her eyes,
lost in the song, and her hands dropped to her sides. It was a lonely dance, private, and a pang of guilt for observing her
without permission coursed up from his stomach into his throat.

When the song ended, Julie’s mouth pulled into a frown and she squeezed her eyes tight, as if she were trying to reclaim something
that had been stolen from her. Then she opened them and stared at him, through him and into the vacant kitchen with childish
wonder. Her lips moved but no words came out. Her eyes were solid black but briefly shiny with fleeting starlight reflected
from sun to moon to snow off the window over the sink, or perhaps from another source, inside her.

She was on something. He did not have experience with drugs or people on drugs beyond what he had gathered from TV, but he
knew she was not really here, even less so than he was. He reminded himself she had been this way before he arrived, and that
she didn’t appear to be suffering, in pain, or scared, so maybe it was no big deal. Probably she was hallucinating, on mushrooms
or LSD or ecstasy, which would also explain the others out back, not drinking but awake and talking in the freezing cold of
five a.m.

Julie looked happy, even if it was an artificially generated happiness.

But now that he was here, staring at her, standing less than eight feet from her, he had no idea what to do and in truth gave
his next actions no thought at all. He began to move closer, step by tentative step, the better to see her small narrow nose
with its rounded tip, the high wide corners of her white cheeks, the full thickness of her black eyebrows, the sweeping fall
of her night hair, the thin peach-toned lips he had come so close to kissing once, before his cruel erasure took him away
and sent her screaming for help. He was close enough now to catch the sweet herbal tang of her natural perfume, sweat and
flowers, the moist peat smoke of her party-soaked clothes, and behind her the dry dust and pasta whiff of the pantry where
she had taken shelter. He was three steps away, two, and then towering over her while she watched the psychedelic film playing
behind her eyelids, and she lifted her chin just so.

Noel stopped, his heart tolling like newly formed bell of wet clay.

Julie’s eyes came to rest in direct line with his own. If he were solid-state they would be staring into each other, and he
could swear, despite his condition, that she really was seeing him and that she was glad for his arrival. What does a blind
woman sense when someone enters her sphere, changing the air, breaking the clean surface of her placid aura? Julie closed
her eyes again but did not lower her chin. Her bottom lip was
moist, and an eternity later fell open with a searching tremor.

‘It’s you,’ she whispered.

Or maybe she said nothing at all.

Noel leaned down and touched his lips to hers, soft as cooling ash settling on torched remains, touching without will, without
pressure, but tasting through molecules of breath her sweet wine palate and something stronger with the grainy darkness of
dissolved dark chocolate.

Julie pressed to him, the wet corner of her mouth taking his lower lip in, then her tongue, alive and hot-slick against his
own, accepting, allowing him to fall into the spell, forgetting what he was doing while simultaneously being here doing nothing
else. He cracked his eyes to peek, still kissing her, and hers stayed closed. Was it abstract for her in a way it was not
for him, because he was not altogether here and could not be real to her? Or was it that she wasn’t here with him, but lost
in her chemical high? And if so, was this so wrong, or perfectly right? Fearing not, he began to pull away, but she stayed
with him, raising from her toes to keep the connection, and he rode the slide of her lips, edge of teeth, the cold spot of
her chin nudging his, and he wanted more than anything to wrap his arms around her, protect her and be protected by her, keep
her safe here or anywhere else she would go with him, forever.

And as swiftly as it had began she broke away, lowering and rearing back slowly, a dizzy child stepping down
from a parked ferris wheel. She doesn’t know what but knows something is not right. Oh God, she was going to panic again.
She was coming out of her daze now and seeing nothing where there should have been a stranger, her boyfriend, anyone but no
one.

‘Are you an angel?’ she said, her eyes tracing but missing him.

‘Is that what you want?’

‘I remember you,’ she said with some relief.

‘I remember you, too.’

‘How did you find me?’

‘A ghost showed me the way.’

She smiled wider, if that were possible.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Do you need anything?’

‘I want to go home.’ Her initial playfulness dimmed. ‘I’m afraid to try.’

‘Isn’t this your home?’

She closed her eyes as a bad memory strolled behind them. ‘Not any more.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I moved. I don’t even like it here. I don’t know why I keep coming back, but I do.’ Her expression drooped and he thought
she was about to cry.

‘It’s okay. We don’t have to stay. Do you have a car?’ When she didn’t answer, he added, ‘How did you get here?’

‘Don’t know.’ She leaned toward him as if about to fall, then corrected herself. ‘I’m so tired. How am I going to get home?’

‘I can walk with you,’ Noel said. ‘If you want me to.’

‘I thought angels could fly.’ She spoke this seriously, then laughed.

Maybe she didn’t know who he was. Maybe she was so stoned she didn’t know angels from boys, Noel Shaker from the Quaker Oats
man smiling down at the both of them. In which case he shouldn’t have kissed her. A violation. It always would be in some
way.

‘I can’t fly, but I’ll get you home safe. Do you have a jacket?’

Julie looked down and tugged at her denim. ‘This is a jacket.’

‘No, it’s freezing out. Here.’ He removed the heavy green parka his dad had given him and swirled it around her back, pulling
it over her shoulders. She could not see it yet, but she felt its weight, his body warmth captured in its layers.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said, and shivered. The parka emerged from the bubble as she was reaching for the lapels. She closed the
layers around her, folding herself in. ‘Wow, that’s so fucking cool. How did you do that?’

‘Angel trick. Don’t overthink it. Let’s get you out of here, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you want to try and tell me which way to go?’

‘I’m scared,’ she said.

‘I won’t hurt you. Take my hand.’ He offered it to her.

Julie groped for it, bumped his forearm, clutched it, down, down, until she found his hand. Fingers intertwined, she held
him tight.

‘There you are,’ she said.

‘There you are,’ he echoed.

Two squeezes, like a pulse. ‘Don’t let go. Promise you won’t let go?’

‘I promise,’ Noel said, and led Julie from the Funhouse, into the night now turned to dawn.

Half an hour or so later they reached Julie’s apartment, a ground-floor two-bedroom unit in a three-story stucco building
on 30th Street near Arapahoe. The sun was not up yet, but the sky was changing by slow degrees. The walk seemed to have re-energized
her if not restored the full array of her sober perceptions. She knew this was home, but couldn’t stop commenting on the ozone
layer, which had obviously dropped from the atmosphere to swim around their ankles as they walked. The brass numerals on her
apartment door looked ‘like gold licorice, don’t you think?’ She’d been making harmless, oddball observations most of the
way back, though physically she displayed no signs of inebriation.

And there was the slightly insane fact that she had not questioned his identity or his condition since their conversation
in the pantry. She was either chalking the entire situation up to whatever drug she had ingested or actually believed – like
a three-year-old believes in Santa Claus – in angels. Angels who talked, walked, could manifest articles of warm clothing,
and spoke like a random twenty-year-old guy.

Noel was too cold to be amazed at any of this. Having given her his parka and walked here in a flannel shirt and jeans, his
ears felt made of glass and his teeth were literally clicking against each other, at least when he wasn’t grinding his jaw
with frustration that this endless night (now morning) was still happening.

Julie searched his coat for her keys until he reminded her it was probably in the denim coat underneath, but she didn’t find
it there either. Fortunately the knob was unlocked.

‘Ssshhh,’ Julie warned. ‘Don’t wake Marna.’

‘Who’s Marna?’

‘My roommate. She’s a total psycho but she’s really nice.’

‘Good to know.’

Julie tiptoed into the apartment, towing him by the hand. Noel followed her through the living room, past Marna’s closed bedroom
door, to the back of the apartment where a kitchen and bathroom sat adjacent to her bedroom. She released him and went to
the fridge. She found a half-peeled roll of Nestlé Tollhouse Cookie Dough, scraped the stale end off with a knife, cut a hunk
like she was paring a sausage and with the edge of the blade fed a puck of the dough into her small mouth, devouring it with
the mechanical thrift of a rabbit working through a carrot. She cut another wedge and did it again. The third she offered
to him without turning around.

‘No thanks,’ he said.

She repaired the cookie dough to the shelf and came
back with a carton of milk. Sniffed the top, then swigged heartily, wiping a bead of milk from her chin.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘Let’s go!’

She caught a wad of his shirt and dragged him into her bedroom, shutting the door behind him. She had a bed with a brass spindle
frame, the thick mattress dressed with a pink fitted flannel sheet and only one cover – a thick goose-down duvet wrapped in
more pilled pink flannel. Julie kicked off her shoes, peeled out of the jackets and launched herself in. She held the duvet
up and looked to wherever he might be.

‘Hurry, before all the cold gets in!’

Noel bumbled forward and slipped in beside her as the clam closed around them. She shivered and wiggled up against him, side
by side. He didn’t know what to say, and she didn’t say anything for so long, he thought she was falling asleep. The heavy
down had settled over their heads and the room was dark enough that almost no light reached through the duvet. The pocket
around them warmed with their breath and slowly returning cold-body heat.

‘He’s still here,’ Julie whispered, stifling laughter.

‘Who?’

‘You.’ She elbowed him in the ribs. ‘Is this, like, happening?’

Noel sighed. ‘Julie.’

‘What?’

‘How messed up are you?’

‘Pretty messed up.’ More laughter.

‘But you know who I am, right?’

‘Of course.’

After a moment he said, ‘Who am I?’

‘Noel. My mom said you were looking for me, like, a month ago.’

He understood this to be hyperbole. ‘But you can’t see me, right? You know what my deal is now?’

‘A change comes over me,’ she said, impersonating him at age fourteen.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s real,’ she said. ‘You tried to tell me before, but I didn’t believe you.’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought I was losing my mind.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Back then. Tonight I was just tripping.’

‘Are you still?’

‘I’m not screaming my head off, so yeah, I’d say so.’

‘What did you take?’

‘Half a hit of ’cid. And some X. Just two. Wait, no, three.’

‘Julie …’

‘But I’m not, like, seeing things now. I’m coming out of it.’

‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m trying not to think too much about that. Are you?’

‘I’m glad I found you.’

‘Do you think when it wears off I’ll be able to see you again?’

She pulled his shirt, rolling him on his side so that his
arm draped across her stomach, the underside of his elbow soft against her hip.

He said, ‘If you can, it won’t be because of the drugs.’

‘How long have you been this way? This time around.’

‘Two, almost three days.’

She digested this. ‘That is so messed up. But I knew it was true. When we were younger. Or, I did and I didn’t. I couldn’t
believe it, but nothing else made sense. And then my mom …’

‘I’m sorry, Julie. I always will be.’

‘I know. It was an accident.’

‘I shouldn’t have been there. I shouldn’t be here.’

She ignored that. ‘My point is, I remembered the things you told me, and it all fit. And then tonight it was like the past
replayed, only I was okay with it, I could feel you there and my mind jumped back, remembering the sensation, only this time
I wasn’t scared. I thought maybe I was having a flashback or something, so I was like, okay, roll with this. And then you
kissed me, and I knew it wasn’t the drugs.’ She paused, squirming next to him. ‘Part of me still believes when I wake up,
you won’t be here. You’ll be gone, because this can’t be real, right? I mean, it just can-
not
be real.’