bARTknows

"Where are you? " I turn again, spinning in the frozen road.
"I'm over here by—"
"Where?"
"I'm over here—"
"—by the car next to—"
"No by the light post, up the street." Her laughter reverberates in the phone and across the icy intersection. I stop spinning and laugh. Orange shadows spill across the snow in burnt hues. Two cars pass splashing slushy ice and I cross the road.

Her beauty is elegant, simple, with a strong hint of sharp witted intelligence. "How are you," she asks with a smirk. Her blue eyes dance between a button nose kissed with freckles. I can see she is amused with my uncertain icy shuffle.

"Oh my God. What a night."
"Let's get inside...Really, hold your breath in the lobby. It smells like dead armpits rubbed in vomit chips." Her priceless humor is a valid warning.
"Good lord!"
"I warned you," she says with a coy grin.

It's half past ten. There are at least five brown doors around us. None of them appear numbered at first glance. I could pick one and be lost in another world. She choses the second from the left and we take the stairs to her apartment. I feel a strange tenderness in my heart. I didn't want to go to the dinner that kept me away all evening. I wanted to be here with her; to talk. I'm fascinated by something I can't place. Something about her hides below the surface; behind her lovely blue eyes and alabaster skin—something there is pulling at me. I want one evening of conversation to begin understanding this mystery. Earlier today, I wanted that to be my evening.

"So, this is my home, welcome, welcome," she says with a smile as the door swings to reveal the hardwood floors of her apartment. Inside, it is dark. You can sense the history here. Whispers of conversation float past my ears, just distant enough to be inaudible. She leads us through the door on the corner of her kitchen. She turns to me mouthing my room silently. My mind swims in first impressions as I search my surroundings for clues that offer insights into her character.

In her room, I stare quietly at the window by the purple wall. My gaze travels through the warm glowing violet air to the window pane. She moves gracefully onto the mattress just behind me and wraps her soft arm around my waist. Very slowly, the window transforms into a liquid shell. The glass swirls with a soft mix of phosphorescent colors. Green and yellow bands dance with shades of violet in the window pane bubbling outward. The electric fires in the streetlights outside her window dance to the soft rhythm of music reverberating in the air around us.

My eyes wander past the mesmerizing glimmer, where two frozen tennis courts at the hotel across the street reflect white light on the walls above. I trace the shimmering sheet of unadulterated ice pressing the net low with its weight. The curves appear as fading neon stripes in my mind. Her neck bends and she brings her cheek to rest in the nape of my upper back. Instantly a thawing warmth spreads over my shoulders shrouding my arms like warm silk. The tingling wave travels to the tips of my fingers, where it beads and drips on the glass as if I were hanging above the translucent canvas. The first blazing drop touches the swirling glass shell with a muted pop and the glass melts away.

Fine filaments flow from my fingertips through the window to the lamps. The lights burst in brilliant orange as flames dance inside them like tiny bodies, launching rays of fire into the surrounding space. Ice slides from the branches outside her window. Each falling sheet splashes into a river flooding the roadway underneath us. She sighs warmly behind me, breathing a fresh wave of heat onto my skin. I move my hand to her arm without breaking my concentration on the world outside. Cars drift through the intersection like logs in a snowy river. I look up to see the entire sky glowing brightly with the color of a million embers. It's so beautiful that I close my eyes.

"What are you thinking about?" She asks. I return from my dream. The glass on the window is solid, frozen and unfamiliar. Yet, outside something strikes my attention. A tree is growing from the top of the lamp post. It is without snow, clean, and is some species of fir from the looks of it. Rather than vertically from the top, this tree grows at a ninety degree angle to the post. Without roots or a sense of direction, it appears to defy gravity unlike any tree I've ever seen.

I smile, puzzled, and I say, "There's a tree growing out of a lamp post outside your window. Do you see it?" We get up and walk slowly to the window for a closer look.

It's surely a tree, a Christmas tree it seems, wedged between the stop light and the pedestrian crossing signal. Two people are walking below, and we open the window to confirm we are not deceived. I yell down, pointing to the tree in the post, "Hey, you, down there! Yeah, hey, can you tell what that is in the street light?"

The two strangers look up, then one replies, "Yeah, um, wow. Definitely a Christmas tree."

"One more thing—the snow—there on the bushes—is it frozen solid? Is it ice? Toss some up?" She and I both laugh at my bizarre demands and moreso the strangers kicking the ice loose on the bushes below. One of the people throws a piece up to her third floor window and right into my hand. "Ooo—cold!," I shout, dropping the ice into the bushes below.

Laughing, my fingers are tingling with returning warmth. I lose my step and fall back on her bed, which is covered with a sheet the color of cinnamon. The sheet is covered with millions of tiny lint pills from hundred of washes making the bed the most comfortable place in the world right now. There are several layers of sheets like this one, all pulling me toward the stillness of slumber, the boundary of my dreams. I think of how they must cocoon her through miles of solace when she sleeps.

I still haven't answered her question honestly. What was I thinking about?

She slides into place next to me. Her head comes to rest on my shoulder. For the next hour, the music fills the gaps in our solemn conversational histories. We voyage through our past lives. Listening intently, lost in her words, my gaze travels slowly through the violet air to her eyes. Phosphorescent bands of green, yellow, and the softest blue-violet reflect the radiance of the amber light streaming through her window. Inside them, I see us both surrounded by millions of glowing embers. I close my eyes and listen deeply. Her words spin in textures of translucent color. A pause. Through the silence, I tell her she is beautiful.