The Song of David (13 page)

“It’s a man date, right Henry? Men go to the barber. Not the salon.”

Henry tapped his fingertips together nervously and wouldn’t look right or left.

“Kite flying is an official sport in Thailand!” Henry blurted.

Amelie bit her lip but stepped back from the passenger door.

“Bye, Millie. I’ll bring him back. Don’t worry,” I called.

She nodded and tried to smile, and I pulled away from the curb. Henry’s tapping became a cadence. Clack clack. Click click. It sounded like the rhythm Millie made with her stick when she walked.

“Henry?”

No response. Just clicking, all the way to the barbershop.

I pulled up to Leroy’s shop and put my truck in park. I jumped out and came around to Henry’s door. Henry made no move to disembark.

“Henry? Do you want to do this?”

Henry looked pointedly at my shaggy locks and clicked his fingers.

“I need a haircut, Henry. So do you. We’re men. We can do this.”

“Ben Askren, Roger Federer, Shaun White, Troy Polamalu, David Beckham, Triple H.”

“Triple H?” I started to laugh. Henry was listing athletes with long hair. “You’re getting desperate, Henry.”

“Larry Fitzgerald? Tim Lincecum?”

“Tim Lincecum, huh? He plays for the Giants, doesn’t he? Your favorite team, right?”

Henry didn’t respond.

“Ah, shit. What the hell. I didn’t want to cut my hair anyway. I kind of think your sister likes it.”

The clicking slowed.

“You wanna go buy a kite? I hear it’s an official sport in Thailand,” I said.

Henry smiled the smallest ghost of a smile and nodded once.

WE WENT TO Toys R Us for the kites. They have the best selection of fun stuff, and we weren’t messing around. Henry took his time considering and settled on a kite with LeBron James on it. I bought the only red one I could find, which was an Elmo kite, the happy red monster staring out at me, his furry face in the shape of a diamond. Henry thought it was hilarious, which made it even better.

“I like red!” I told him, laughing because he was laughing. “We should get Millie one too. What do you think she would pick?” I felt stupid immediately. I was constantly forgetting that she couldn’t see and wouldn’t care what it looked like.

But Henry didn’t seem to think it was a stupid question and considered the kites all over again. He pulled a shimmery, bright pink one from a shelf and handed it to me.

“Referees in the National Rugby League wear pink jerseys,” he said seriously.

“Okay, I don’t know what the National Rugby League has to do with Millie. But good choice.”

When we arrived back at the house, an hour after we left, Henry scooped up all of the kites and was out of my truck before I put it into park. He ran up the walk like he was five instead of fifteen, barreling through the door, while I followed him at a slower pace.

By the time I made it into the kitchen, Millie was running her hands over Henry’s head with a furrowed brow. I lifted one of her hands and placed it against the back of my neck where my hair fell over my collar.

“You were right,” I said simply. “We’re too attached to our hair.”

The furrow lifted but she didn’t drop her hand. She curled her fingers against my scalp and tugged a little, testing its length, and I did my best not to start purring. Henry didn’t. He dropped his head to her shoulder and closed his eyes, completely tamed.

“Don’t fall asleep Henry. We have some kites to fly.”

Millie threw back her head and laughed, her hands dropping to her sides.

“Oh, you didn’t miss that not-so-subtle suggestion, huh?” she snickered.

“Nope. I got it loud and clear. We got you a pink one. Henry picked it out.”

“He knows me well. Pink’s my favorite color.”

“Oh yeah? Why?”

“Because it has a smell. It has a flavor. Every time I taste something pink I can remember the color. It floods my memory for a second before I lose it again.”

“Huh. I thought you were going to say it’s because you love rugby.”

“Ah, the pink jerseys?” Millie asked.

“Henry needs to get out more,” I answered, laughing.

“Let’s go!” Henry shouted, running for the door, as if taking my advice to heart.

The street was tree-lined, the front yard too small, and the traffic a little too steady to give us an open place to put our kites in the air. We piled back into my truck, Millie in the middle, straddling the gear shift, and Henry sitting by the door, practically bouncing with enthusiasm.

Moses hates my bench seat. He says it’s irritating not to have an arm rest. But Mo isn’t the smartest man, sometimes. I was never more grateful for the bench seat than I was at that moment with Millie pressed up against my side, my right tricep brushing against her breasts every time I shifted. She smelled like fruit. Strawberries or watermelon. She smelled . . . pink. The thought made me smile. She felt pink too. Pink and soft and sweet. Damn. I decided then and there that pink was my favorite color too.

I drove to Liberty Park, just south of downtown, and within minutes, Henry had his kite out and was urging LeBron James into the air.

“He’s done this before,” I said in surprise.

“Not in forever. I can’t remember the last time, actually,” Millie replied. “Is he doing it?”

“Listen,” I said. “Can you hear it?” I listened with her, straining for a sound that would connect her to the visual. Then the kite dipped, caught the wind again, and lifted, making a soft, wop wop in the air, like laundry on a clothes line, flapping in the breeze.

“I hear it!”

“That’s Henry’s kite. He’s a natural.”

“Will you help me get mine in the air? I could take off running, but that might be dangerous. I don’t want to run head first into the pond. There is a pond, isn’t there?”

“Just run away from the sound of the ducks.”

Before long I had our kites airborne, and LeBron James, Elmo, and Millie’s bright pink triangle were dipping and darting, enlivening the pale afternoon sky.

“Give it some slack, Millie!” I hollered as her kite veered downward, tethered too close to the ground. “Let it fly!”

Millie squealed, panicked, but immediately followed my instructions, and her kite corrected itself, catching a draft and soaring higher.

“I can feel it climbing!” she shouted, ebullient. Henry wasn’t the only one who was a natural. He was running back and forth, the kite streaming behind him, his hair falling in his eyes, his cheeks ruddy in the tepid February sunshine.

“If you could go anywhere, just holding onto the tail of that kite, where would it be?” I asked Millie, my eyes on the sky, thinking about the places I’d been. “Or is traveling kind of a scary thought?”

“No. It’s not scary. Just unrealistic. There are lots of places I’d like to go even though I wouldn’t be able to see them. I could still press my hands against the walls and soak them in. Buildings soak up history, you know. Rocks do too. Anything that’s been around a while.” Amelie paused as if waiting for me to snicker or argue. But my best friend can see dead people. I have no doubt that there is a lot we don’t understand. And I can accept that. It’s easier than trying to figure it all out.

“It’s true!” Millie added, even though I hadn’t argued at all. “My mom took me and Henry to the Alamo in San Antonio when I was thirteen. Apparently there are signs all around the Alamo that say ‘Don’t touch the building,’ and it’s cordoned off by rope so you can’t do anything but look. Which is pretty unfair if you ask me. I look with my hands! So my mom got special permission. She was always finding a way to help me experience as much as I could, even if it meant finding someone to let us break the rules. I stood right next to the Alamo and laid my hands and face on the walls and just listened.”

“And what did you hear?” I asked.

“I didn’t hear anything. But I felt something. It’s hard to describe. But it felt like a vibration, almost. The way your legs feel when you’re waiting for a train to go by. That sensation . . . you know what I mean?”

“I know exactly,” I said.

“Whenever we traveled, my mom would make sure we stayed in hotels that had some history. In San Antonio, there’s a hotel called the Fairmount. Built in 1906. We walked in that place and I felt like I was on the Titanic. I felt my way all over that hotel. Remember how you said that the world was more beautiful, once upon a time?”

“Yeah.” I’d felt stupid when I said it, but now I was glad I had.

“It’s so true. There’s still original furniture in the Fairmount, and the whole place just feels . . . ripe.” She laughed at her word choice. “Ripe is the only word that fits. Like it’s bursting at the seams with history and time and energy. There’s so much beneath the surface, but
no one
can see it. Not just me. No one. And because no one else can see it either, it makes me feel privileged that at least I can feel it.”

“I know that hotel. They relocated it in 1985. Actually picked the hotel up and moved it down the street. My grandma was one of those rich old ladies who was big on preserving the historical sites. A lot of the wealthy families are. She was on the committee to save it. That was before I was born, but there was a big gala at the Fairmount to mark its one hundred year anniversary that we all attended. It’s a cool place.”

“I loved it.” Millie sighed. “Where else have you been?”

“I’ve been all over the world. I’ve seen more in twenty-six years than most people see in a lifetime. A lot more.”

“Did your parents take you?” she asked.

“No.”

She waited for me to elaborate, and I weighed what I should share. It wasn’t a happy story. But I realized, much to my astonishment, that I wanted to tell her.

“I had never thought about traveling. It wasn’t even my dream. I didn’t really have any dreams. At eighteen, I was a lost, rich kid with no idea who I was or how to navigate the rest of my life.”

Millie didn’t respond. Considering she couldn’t give a guy eye-contact, she was the best listener I’d ever met. She reminded me a little of Moses, the way she just soaked it all in and didn’t miss anything. The difference was, Moses didn’t hang on my every word. Millie did. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I didn’t want her hanging on the wrong ones, hanging her hopes on something I hadn’t meant, and holding me accountable for everything that came out of my mouth. I spoke the truth with a layer of bullshit thrown in for entertainment value. It was the Texas in me, part of the charm. But I couldn’t be that way with Millie. I had to say what I meant, always. I didn’t know how I knew it to be true. But it was. And I felt the responsibility in my gut.

“When I was sixteen, my sister, Molly, disappeared. She was kind of a party-girl. Same as I was. We were wild. But we were close. And we always looked out for each other. She was a couple years older than I was, but I was the man, you know? She up and disappeared on the Fourth of July and we didn’t know what happened to her. Not for two years. And I blamed myself. I looked for her, but I couldn’t find her. So I drowned my frustration with alcohol. Dad kept a well-stocked bar in the house, and I helped myself often. But by the time I was eighteen years old, the alcohol couldn’t touch the itch beneath my skin or the restlessness in my blood. I’d lost my sister and I was strangely jealous that she couldn’t be found.” I considered how far to go, and ended up leaving a bunch of stuff out, not because I was ashamed, but because it was just too damn heavy for kite flying.

“And then I met Moses. Moses had nothing, but Moses knew everything. He painted away his pain. That was how he coped. And he let me hang around. He let me in. He helped me see. Neither of us had anywhere to go. But I had money. My parents were relieved to see me leave. They were tired. Grief-stricken. And they handed me a credit card and washed their hands of me.”

“And you just went to Europe?” Her voice awe-struck.

“We went everywhere. We were barely legal. Kids, really. But he could paint. I could bullshit my way out of almost anything, so he painted his way across the world and I made sure people bought his stuff instead of throwing us in jail for vandalism. He wanted to see all the famous art. The Louvre, the Sistine Chapel, the architecture, the Wall of China. That was his dream. So that’s what we did. And when I couldn’t talk us out of trouble, we fought our way out of trouble. That was my goal, see. I wanted to get in a fist fight with someone from every country. I got my ass kicked by a big Swede. He now works at my gym, and I make it my mission to kick his ass every day.”

Millie’s laughter pealed out like a song, and I examined my words to make sure I’d told the truth at every turn. Satisfied that my account had been spot-on, I relaxed and laughed with her.

“Axel?” She ventured a guess as to the Swede’s identity.

“Axel,” I confirmed. “I met Andy in Ireland and Paulo in Brazil. When I opened the gym I tracked them all down and asked them to come work with me.”

“So you collected people and Moses collected art?”

“Something like that.”

“How long did you travel?”

“We kept traveling until we found ourselves.”

“What does that mean?”

“Moses told me once that you can’t escape yourself. You can run, hide, or die. But wherever you go, there you’ll be. I was pretty empty for a long time. It took a while to figure out what fills me up.”