“This is not me.”

Caroline waded through the park, fighting the wind that roughed her from one side to the other. It flecked her lips, upsetting her to run the tongue across the bridge of each lip, and so she avoided doing so. The lips dried, like flowers tied in a bunch on the porch of Aunt Wendy’s house. Aunt Wendy had craved dried flowers, so much so that when the cancer finally granted her mercy, she was laid to rest with bundles and bundles of dried flowers, as fragrant as the soil that covered her coffin. Each of the solemn guests had been given a clutch of dried flowers and they lined up to let the bundle drop from their hands, coming to rest on her Aunt’s coffin. Silence. The flowers made no sound, recalled Caroline. She had let her flowers drift. Just the slightest rustle, like raked leaves in the distance. Autumn had passed.

Caroline sat on the park’s stone bench and thought again of those dried flowers. She thought about ointment, which at that moment she would cherish. She put a chill finger to her lips and feeling the scales there, began rummaging through her handbag, certain she had ointment. But, there was none. Never again would there be a...

“Drugstore. I must go to the drugstore.”

She said these words aloud to herself, sitting on the granite bench, unaware that nearby someone was watching and listening. As far as Caroline was concerned she was alone, had been now for a long time since Aunt Wendy passed away, had been since Colin moved to Paris, had been since her roommate Angela agreed to marry Matt for his cologne and left unpaid bills, had been since she and Charlie broke it off. She’d been alone for a while and when you get used to hearing yourself say “I” again rather than “us,” you don’t worry about who might be nearby to listen to your personal conversations. You just talk as if there was no one else around.

A bus passed on the street outside the gates to the park and Caroline knew one more bus would pass before the one she wanted, the one that would take her to her corner block apartment. She had time. Time but no ointment. She resisted the urge to scrape her dead lips clean.

“This is our bench. From here we watch the world go by. We’re balancing at the tip of the earth.”

Charlie cackled and put his arm around Caroline. Caroline liked the arm and the words, but not the cackle. Everything that came from Charlie came with a price. Even a kiss from him, a rough peck on the lips, would remind Caroline of how much he smoked those deep south cigarettes, how much he drank during the day, even though he never seemed to be drunk. Charlie just drank. Whiskey. Rye. Whisky and rye together. He was no martini. Good looking, older than her, Charlie had features you wanted to touch, touch late at night when he was sleeping, usually snoring too, the day’s nicotine and alcohol loosening the charcoal flap at the back of his throat. Caroline could never sleep so she would touch Charlie, touch his face and ears, feel the heat. Charlie had skin like leather, the kind you polish with cream cleaner. Sometimes when she gave Charlie a bath on his birthday, his one birthday wish, Caroline would feel like a horse trainer, polishing leather saddles. He was handsome and that too had a price, for Charlie was bald, balding he joked, and that turned Caroline off. Her father had been bald and he was dead. Somehow she interpreted baldness as death. A lethal mix. That’s as far as she got.

“We’re on top of the world, sweets.”

He was a gambler, if there was still such things today. No high roller with wads of bills, low buttoned shirts and chain. Just a gambler who made money playing the odds, taking a chance. There was more to his life than that-a job, a car, some credit cards that he paid when Caroline wasn’t around, but that didn’t matter to her. A gambler was what Caroline saw and since she recognized herself as none of that, she liked having Charlie in her life. If not from within, then from without. A small saying of her own that she kept in her notebooks, along with a few others. She didn’t have many original verses of her own, but when she did, she wrote them down.

And there was fire, the fire that made Charlie so warm, so warm that as she sat on the stone bench now, cold, lips peeling, she wished he was really there to put a broad arm around her and hold her as she waited for the bus. She’d even like a smoky kiss. Somehow, she could even deal with that. It would taste like home.

“A kiss and then I'll be home,” she said aloud and the boy behind her, watching from behind the tree, heard her. Levi thought about kissing her. How would she react? She’d run. That’s what she would do.

The second bus rumbled past and Caroline prepared herself to walk back down the hill to the road. She looked over the darkening city, looked at the cars that passed and their headlights, the people that walked with purpose past the park on their way home. Some talked together as they walked. She could not hear what they were saying, only that they were talking, talking as if nothing else in the world mattered. It made Caroline sad. Talking had lost all meaning for her. Now it was simply a way to order a sandwich, to pay for dry cleaning, to ask for ointment at the drugstore. She desired to talk more, to share herself. Holding all her thoughts exhausted her.

But the bus was coming. Perhaps there will be a seat next to Charlie or Colin will be there, home from Paris. Without the words, Caroline abandoned her post at the top of the world to catch the long ride home.

Levi watched her go from behind the tree. He was spying on her and though he didn’t know a thing about Caroline except that she wouldn’t mind being kissed, he found the whole espionage experience to be exciting.

“Hey!”

It was Mike. Mike coming over the hill and towards Levi. It was growing dark out but Levi could still make out the hunched shoulders of his friend.

“Hey, yourself.”

Levi turned to see if Caroline had heard them but she was down by the street, far enough away to be unconcerned. Levi watched as a bus groaned to a stop, opened its doors and let Caroline on. He saw her legs, firm legs, through the slit in her coat. The legs parted as she stepped up and Levi wished that he had been bold enough to come out from his hiding spot and sit with her. Maybe she would have let him kiss her. Maybe.
Snap. She was gone. The bus, the kiss, gone.

“What are you doing?”

Mike brushed passed him and went right to their bench, sitting on his half, his usual side and dug around in the front pocket of his denim jacket for a lighter. He already had the cigarettes out.

“I was spying on this lady. She was sitting on the bench talking to herself.”

“What was she saying?”

“I don’t know. Nothing really. She said something about being kissed.”

“Maybe she wanted you.”

“You think?”

“No, I don’t think.”

Mike was right. Caroline didn’t want him. She went away on the bus. It was never meant to happen.

“Was she cute?”

“Huh?”

“Was she cute? Would you do her?”

“Yeah. Fine legs.”

“Do you ever think about doing it with someone you don’t know? Like just grabbing them and having sex.” Mike had his lighter out now. It was a beautiful lighter. Gold treacle and a mysterious insignia that the two of them had tried many times to decipher. Levi sat down next to him on the stone bench and helped himself to a cigarette. He’d heard the story of the lighter repeatedly, how the grandfather had given it to him, but he still didn’t believe Mike. Asleep at his grandparent’s house, Mike awoke in the hush of night to find his grandfather perched on the bed, watching his son’s boy sleep. That part Levi could believe. It was spooky, but he could believe it. He shifted his weight on the bench. The cold stone bled through his jeans, sending his lower half numb.

“You mean, like rape?”

“I guess that’s what it would be.”

Mike took a large drag on his smoke and looked down over the park, zooming in on a streetlight far away. “I think about it sometimes. I don’t know if I would do it, but I think about it. Is that nuts?”

Mike’s grandfather had sparked the lighter the moment his grandson opened his eyes. The flame illuminated the old face of the man and sections of the room, orange flicker on the sheets and crumbling wallpaper and for that moment, Mike told Levi, he was sure gramps was going to torch the room and let them burn. But he didn’t. He let the flame glow as he spoke to Mike.

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of girls I'd like to do it with. I think a lot about doing it with them, y’know?”

“Sure. I know.”

“Your father’s a jerkass.”

Jerkass was not a word Mike ever used, nor did he let Levi use it. It gave his story credibility. Only his grandfather had said it.

“Your daddy’s a jerkass and he’s never going to tell you, so I will. He’s a goddamn moron.”

“Gramps, what are...”

“Shhhh!”

Mike’s grandfather leaned in close, pepsodent and urinal puck close. Someone was dreaming.

“I love you. I want you to have this. Don’t you ever tell him that I gave it to you or I'll cut your young throat.”

Out went the flame and Mike felt the lighter, warm and drained, placed on his chest. The bedroom door opened and closed in darkness and Mike was alone once again in the room. Left to sleep. Left to wonder why his father was such a jerkass.

The lighter flicked again and Levi saw his best friend’s face as Mike had seen his grandfather’s face, a half moon behind a flame. He lit another cigarette. Mike’s grandfather was dead now. He died in an Austrian hospital.

“I think about it a lot too. Man, we got to get a woman.”

Levi leaned back on the stone bench and looked up at the sky. There were no stars and he knew that no matter how hard he looked he would not see any. The city lights dimmed them to nonexistence. He would love to see stars right now. He’d like to see anything other than the things he saw everyday. Mike had told him that sometimes you could pretend the headlights of the passing cars were stars, shooting blazes that kept coming and going. Levi had tried it, tried to envision orbit and though it seemed to inspire Mike, it did little for Levi. They were car headlights and the more he saw, the less he wanted to see. That was the only problem with their bench. The real stars vanished.

“We’re crazy man. We shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff.”

Levi thought once more about Caroline, her parted coat, and then let her go. She would be off the bus by now, home with her boyfriend or husband. She’d be with someone else now.

“We really are crazy. Hey...”

Mike looked at Levi, made sure he was looking back. Their eyes locked. Mike and Levi had been coming to their bench to smoke and talk since they’d detonated a test tube with a Bunsen burner in chemistry class. Suspended, the two had spent a solitary day in the park on the bench, getting to know each other. Mike taught Levi how to blow smoke rings.

“I didn’t mean any of that stuff. I was just thinking out loud.”

“It’s cool.”

And it was cool. Their eyes remained locked and Levi could feel the outside world questioning his masculinity, whether locking eyes with his best male friend was a good idea. He and Mike understood what it meant. It meant absolutely nothing. And then it meant absolutely everything.

“Got to go.” Mike twisted his last cigarette into the flat stone and then as if thinking better of it, gently wiped the black ash from the slate and let it drift into the night breeze. He stood up. “Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” concurred Levi and then Mike left, retreating over the hill, the way he had come. Levi remained to watch a few more of the shooting stars, struggling to find the perspective Mike unpeeled, trying hard to see real stars in the cars, and for a brief moment, with his eyes squinted shut, he thought he saw space- sky and stars twinkling bright. He stood and walked away from the street, preferring to keep that as his final image.

There is a story to the bench as there is a story to everything. Cut from granite harvested in the north of Ontario, the slabs had been brought down by train to the city and unloaded by students the mason had hired to bring the granite to his shop. Hot, sweating, on a long summer day, the boys had pulled the granite from the train only to have it drop and a small piece of the rock come sailing off and land on the tracks under the train. The boys had been embarrassed, a failure of their education and strength, but the mason had not minded. He saw the collision as recognition of the granite’s arrival in the city and now it had the tattoo to prove it. When the train pulled out of the station, the mason had jumped down onto the tracks and retrieved the fragment, putting it in his pocket. As he drove home, his truck loaded, he could feel the chip biting into his leg, jabbing the thigh and he daydreamed more about the granite in the back of his truck how it would feel, the smoothness, the bite he would take out of it himself to form the shape of the bench. It was just play. Bites for bites. The bench would have itself known. And there would always remain a piece of granite that was not the bench, that was now just a chip off the bench. That, the mason would keep in his shop to remind himself of the north, of the quarry, purity where the city’s outstretched arms never reached. Sanctuary.

The favour was for Eleanor Roget, one of the city’s most unknown and respected ladies. Waiting to join her husband who had gone on ahead only a few short months before, the idea had come to her. Barry’s death had struck Eleanor square in the heart, torn veins to spoiling derricks, and life had not seemed the same anymore. From the derricks flowed her blood and spirit and it was five months after Barry had been scattered from the top of the hill in the park, a private ceremony attended by only Eleanor herself, that she too found herself in bed, sullen, waiting for whatever it was that came when the shapes in her eyes faded.

The waiting was endless and it scared Eleanor, scared her enough to make her realize how afraid she was now that Barry was gone. She knew not what anticipated her arrival and closing her eyes to imagine it, sneaking glimpses of nothing, only made her more nervous and so she spent much of her last days awake, awake at three in the morning and all alone. Left alone to think. Left to retreat, to go over what had become her life. Her nurse slept soundly.

It was during one of these long evenings that Eleanor was struck with the idea for the bench. Clutching pen and paper placed nearby for reasons only understood now, Eleanor composed a letter to the mason, the only mason she had ever known.

Donald,
The park. Take this letter to the park and sit up on the hill. You know where I am talking about, the place where Barry and I always went. When you are seated there, open this letter once again and read on. I have a favour to ask.

Having known your family for a great many years and yourself since you were a small boy, I feel with a great deal of confidence, that I can ask you for a favour, one last favour in the face of God.

I am not well, Donald, as you know. I appreciated your visit a few weeks ago and I am sorry you could not stay longer, but as you know my nurse is strict and takes orders from no one but herself. She is not one I will miss when I am gone.

The doctor will give you all sorts of answers if you ask him what is wrong with me, why I'm fading away. But he doesn’t give the one answer, the right answer, and that is my broken heart. A broken heart has delivered me to where I lie now.

I know Barry meant a great deal to you, Donald. You two were more like brothers than business partners. Barry means everything to me and spending my life with him is a great joy, one I am unwilling to give up. Perhaps that is why I have deteriorated so quickly, in a rush to catch up and continue sharing with my soul mate whatever it is we have left to share. I say soul mate, because I mean it. Barry was precisely that. Don’t ask me how I know for I cannot explain it to you. I only just know, as did he, and as I'm sure you know that brothers and sisters sometimes find each other outside of their families.

Donald, I am not at peace now and I wish to be. I wish to be at peace with myself and my life. And the only way I know to get there now is to ask of you this favour. You’re a business man, Donald, but your also a mason, a fine one, and it is to you I turn to ask that you bring your talent into the real world.

Barry and I used to sit here on this hill for hours, our folding chairs with us, just talking, sometimes just being quiet and listening. People think the city can be so ugly, but from this hill it is not. It is a glorious spot. Look about. You can see the entire city from here and I ask you, how do you feel, to overlook all and see all- for a moment pretend you are God and be proud of what you have helped create.

Barry rests under you. That’s where I spread his ashes and this is where Sophie will spread mine too. You’re on that hill, Donald. You sit up there for a bit when you get this letter. Look about. Listen.

Now go to your home and hold your beautiful wife. Get on the phone and call Roger Findlay at the quarry in Kirkland and ask him to send you his finest piece of granite. I have spoken to him all about this. He will know what to do.

Make me a bench, Donald. Use your hands to make for Barry and I a bench where others can sit and discover the same things Barry and I found in the world, see the earth from a different perspective. That is what I want. You can do it for me.

I have just put my pen down and telephoned Walter Grunion. He was not happy about being awoken at four a.m, but at his age, he needs a few surprises. He’ll take care of everything. You just tell him when you're finished our stone bench, and he will have it moved to the hill. There will be no questions, no ceremony. Just let it appear one day and let it be from then on. It will speak for itself.

You are a good man, Donald. I love you as I do a son. I know you will do as I ask of you, without hesitation. That is the kind of man you are. I like to think you learned it from Barry. Allow me to hang onto that belief.

God bless, Donald. My heart is broken and will not be mended in this life. Build for us, for all, another heart... a heart of stone.
Eleanor

And so the mason did just that.

“Wake up, Carl.”

Badge number 1356. The constable had spent the last four years of his life waking Carl up each morning, each morning trudging up the hill to the bench and rousing Carl, Carl who defied description. He wasn’t homeless. Carl had an apartment, tiny but livable, on the east side of the city. He wasn’t a drunk or an addict for his veins and nose were clean and though he smelled occasionally of malt, there was nothing about Carl that suggested he was intoxicated, except that he chose to sleep on the stone bench in the park rather than his own bed. The constable had no real issue with it. Initially, he’d troubled over it. He and Carl had not been the friends they were now. The constable had even run Carl in once, made him spend the day in jail. It was a sore spot the constable didn’t like thinking about, those days, a long time ago. He should never have done half the stuff he did then and he should never had run Carl in. Carl didn’t hold it against him. Carl always took the morning to talk with his friend the constable. He never brought the jail incident up. It made the constable feel like a heel.

“C’mon Carl. Time to sit up.”

That was the deal. The constable let Carl sleep on the stone bench each night, on the condition that when he woke him in the morning, Carl would rise and shine. He could stay as long as he wanted, but no sleeping. Those were the only rules in the game.

“Morning, constable.” Carl woke like a light switch and sat up awkwardly in his layers of clothes he wore to keep warm throughout the night.

“Any stars last night, Carl?”

“No, no stars.”

“The moon was full.”

“Not quite. Tonight’s the night.”

The constable sat on the bench next to Carl and surveyed the city he served, waking in the shadows of the dawn sun. He was in no hurry to get moving. Behind his eyes, the constable could feel the fatigue, pulling on his face and sinus cavities, forming the ache, a dull ache that only deep sleep would cure. The constable found it hard to sleep these nights. Insomnia. He awoke often during the night and with no one to talk to, would lie in his bed, the covers tossed down to cool his anxious skin, and listen to the silence of his house, listen to the silence of the city sleeping at night. He wished he could be that silent, could sleep so enraptured. Last night was the third night in the cycle of waking and listening and the constable felt he was going mad. He had considered walking up the street, walking up the hill in the park and waking Carl earlier than he normally would, chewing the rag with him in the darkness. Anything to stop reminding himself he was not sleeping. The flooding ache persisted.

“You don’t look so good, constable.” Carl reached under the granite and pulled his shoes out. A man of dignity, he refused to sleep with his shoes on.

“Not sleeping, Carl. I can’t seem to sleep at night.”

“You bothered by something?” Carl tied his loafers with a double knot. The constable watched him do it, amused. He watched Carl do this every morning and it made him think of his young nephew, clumsily tying his shoes and doing a double knot to make sure they didn’t come undone. There was something refreshingly childish about Carl.

The constable thought about the question. Was something bothering him? A buzz of static came from his radio and out of habit, he transferred his attention to the radio, listening for a call, but there was none. Just more static and then silence. Was he bothered?

“’Cause, if it’s somethin’ that’s bothering you, you best take care of it. Sleep has no mercy on the uncertain.” Carl clapped his tied shoes together as if to test them and then stretched his arms above his head. The constable caught a whiff of Carl’s unwashed body. If there was one thing that made people think Carl was homeless, it was that he rarely washed. The constable had told this to Carl, but he paid little attention. Tight loafers were more important.

“No, nothing’s bothering me.” But that wasn’t entirely true. There was something bothering the constable, had been for some time. The root of the insomnia lurked beneath the constable’s skin, in a place he knew little about, like muscles you never knew you had until you worked them. There was something bothering him and it pasted itself to him like the dull ache behind his eyes.

“I never used to be able to sleep, myself,” mumbled Carl. “Couldn’t get a wink. Drove me to eating. I'd eat all night, sit in a diner and just eat because I couldn’t sleep. It was a poor substitute.”

The constable thought about his substitute, which was to listen, listen to his house creak and the blissful sleep of the city. He was listening. Listening for what? It struck the constable, sitting next to a smelly Carl, that he was listening, waking and listening not to his house or city, but to himself, listening to that place somewhere in his body, the organ he couldn't seem to scratch that was telling him what was wrong. He was listening to himself.

“You should try sleeping in the nude. That worked for me for awhile. Sleeping naked makes you feel reborn.”

The constable barely heard Carl. He was lost, all alone on the hill, on the bench, looking over the city and for a brief moment, very briefly, he heard a voice calling to him. At first he thought it was his radio, but touching the black dials he absently turned the speaker off. It was not the radio. It was just a voice. It spoke of nothing. It was gone.

“Why don’t you try my bed here, constable?” Carl looked over at his friend and saw he was far away. He waited.

“Hmm?”

“You sleep here, tonight. Give it a try. It worked for me. I gave up eating at night when the diner closed and I wandered up here. I remember my surprise finding this bench, because I'd sat on this hill before but I never recollect seeing any bench. This magnificent slab of rock just appeared.”

The constable had to agree. The park had been a starting line for his morning rounds since he began to walk the beat. There had never been a bench on the hill when he was first assigned. Then there had been the bench and Carl, the complete package. How things change and become ordinary so quickly.

“Where will you sleep?” The constable decided without hesitation he would try that night sleeping on the bench. He was only concerned as to where Carl would be, for if he knew Carl was put out, he would still not be able to sleep.

“Oh, at home. I've done it before. It ain’t like my bench here, but I can still get a good night’s wink.” Carl smiled and gave the constable a wink. The constable knew it was going to be alright.

“Thanks, Carl. It means a lot. I might just try it.”

The constable turned the volume back up on his radio and took his service cap from his head. He gave his hair a brush back with his fingers and then replaced the cap. It was a routine of his.

It was routine that was bothering him, that and something more begging to be uncovered. It was a starting place. The fact that nothing bothered him bothered the constable. His heart was still beating, but for what reason either than he put food in his mouth to give his body strength to keep going. Going... going. For what?

His radio sizzled with the dispatchers voice. The constable awoke from his thoughts as if in a dream and wondered where he had just been.

“Was I sleeping just then, Carl?”

“No. Unless you sleep with your eyes open.”

“Were you watching me?”

“Intently.”

The radio crackled more, longer this time and the constable heard his badge being called. He rose out of habit and adjusted his belt. He wondered if his shoes were tight enough.

“Duty calls, Carl.”

“Evil never sleeps. You have a good night’s rest tonight, constable. You deserve it.”

The constable put his hand on Carl’s shoulder. He said nothing. Carl smiled.

“My turn to wake you, tomorrow, constable.”

The constable liked the idea. He hurried down the hill. The call was urgent, but he stopped at the bottom and turned to his friend.

“I'm sorry I ran you in when we first met, Carl. It was a mistake.” The constable continued on towards his squad car. Carl tapped his tight shoes and left his unmade bed to others.

The others came. From the street they walked through the park gate, slowly, hand in hand. Ashlin was surprised by the hand in hers, found it warm, for Miles rarely liked to show affection in public. When they had first gone out, Ashlin and Miles had held hands much more, done much more. There had been the night behind Richard Wallin’s parent’s cottage, the night they had made love standing up, pumping like underused pistons. Granted, they had been tripping on mushrooms, wild mushrooms, something Ashlin had told herself she would never do again after summer camp ten years ago. But, the mushrooms had been there and she took some, took them with Miles and grimaced as she swallowed the fungal shrapnel. Then smiles, and they waited, went swimming in the black lake while they waited, and when things finally hit, Ashlin wanted out of the lake and she cowered on the dock, watching Miles swim, waiting for the images she had seen that summer ten years ago, images she never wanted to face up to again, waited for them to come and secrete her away. I'm leaving.

Zero came and Miles was next to her, dripping the cold lake on her toes, and he took her hand, took her away from the party all around them and led her into the woods, hand in hand, leaning her against the cottage. She slipped away, saw childhood toys other than the woods and the cottage, felt pain in her throat and then Miles was naked and in her, his hands on her ass, holding her up. She went.

A lot of memories from a warm hand, but Ashlin played the association gamely and felt some regret. They had been in love then, really in love and now she wasn’t so sure. Miles had changed. The hands were distant, the mind was too and she thought at times, that they had completed their time on earth together. Earth’s rhythms wait for no one.

She gripped his hand tightly and hoped Miles would squeeze back but he didn’t. They crossed the path and began to climb the hill to their bench, where they had sat when Miles father had died and he had cried in her shoulder, the only time she had ever seen a man cry.

They had come here after they first made love, at Ashlin’s house when her parents were out curling. They had come here when the plastics plant burned, watched coal smoke turn the day to midnight. They had come here when nothing was happening. Nothing at all.

And now was one of those times. The bench was their spot to be. They had their own sides, Ashlin on the left and Miles on the right, his leg dangling off the corner. When they had both smoked, they would pull out the Marlboros and chain smoke them down, but they’d quit now and instead their hands went to their pockets as let their eyes wander, over the city, over the edges of the horizon, trying to catch glimpses of the earth as it rolled over to reveal its belly.

Ashlin was unsure why things in her life came together like they did. It was a rare occurrence, her life seemingly random and chaotic, but there were moments when the pieces of her life fit together like the tiny snaps of Duplo she played with as a girl, and she had the impression that there was a method to the madness after all, perhaps a larger picture was being created before her eyes. At other times she believed, if there is a larger picture, it must be one ugly piece of art.

But here she was on their bench, with Miles, and again the Duplo was fitting together. The dream last night, while she slept alone, had been terrifying, sending her into a panic attack of endless shivering. She had pulled the covers around herself in a ball, trying to stay warm, trying to delete the dream, trying to stop remembering. The fit went on for what seemed like hours and Ashlin was sure she would have to find the courage to get up and call for an ambulance. The bed throbbed and she could hear the pine floor stammering. Eventually, it would cease.

The shivering stopped and Ashlin was left only with the dream. Unable to sleep, sweat no shivers, she pushed the duvet off her body, pulled her nightie off and lay cooling naked on the bed. There was the dream.

And the bench. Their bench was part of the dream. Miles was smoking and Ashlin took the cigarette from his hand with her lips, pulled the smoke in. It tasted like syrup and she savoured the sweet smoke in her mouth as well as her lungs, hanging there. She realized they had quit smoking and a flood of guilt filled her body, scrambling the creamy sweetness. The taste became too much for Ashlin to hold. Her lungs ached. Opening her mouth, she tried to push the smoke out but found herself without the strength to do so. Her chest muscles would not respond, her lungs would not answer, only ached more and pleaded for fresh air. Ashlin realized then that she was going to pass out. She could feel it coming and she was very much aware of it. Miles turned to face her, his face greying and Ashlin knew from his reaction that it was all bad, very bad indeed. She tried once more to let the smoke out, anything out. It remained, tight, coursing, sweet.

She waited to pass out, waited to awake from what was surely a dream, but blackness eluded her. She could see it coming, the fringes of her mind beginning to trickle ink and entangle with the colours of her eyes, but it never filled, only diluted. She remained conscious. The pain was unbearable and she wanted to scream out the hot ache, but that would not come either. Blackness unwilling to come to her, she tried to bring herself to it, banging her herself on the head, banging with her fists, trying to draw blood, draw peace, bring to herself what she surely deserved in this situation.

And then Miles held her hands. Gently, he grasped them and gently he put them by her side. He kissed her, lightly on the cheek and no longer was Miles a man, but a boy, the boy she saw in his parent’s photo albums a boy, fascinated, carefree.

Her arms at her side and more ink diluting the light, she found now that she didn’t want to pass out, not just yet. Miles was a man, a very old man, not so fascinated, but calm and steady. He watched her intently and she saw the wrinkles in his face, saw how deep they were and wondered how things so obvious formed so subtly. The old man took her hand in his and she saw the liver spots and brittle nails, and under that the hand of Miles, the hand that she knew as Miles.

And then she saw heart and bone and other flashes too quick for her eyes to decipher yet they seemed to leave impressions on her own heart, understood. Miles was a teenager, as she had first known him, wild, cocky, angry. He was a man, thirty- five, forty, without grey hair, balding in the front, anxious, in love, confused, tired.

She was tired. Her body was tired. Wind blew from under the hill and the bench was ice. Ashlin shivered. Miles was who he was and his face no longer registered fear. He turned from her and looked from their bench at the city below, unconcerned that she could pass out.

“All ours,” he said.

And then she fainted.

Ashlin looked over the city now and questioned if it was all theirs, wondered how the dream would have ended had she not passed out and returned to her bed. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out, feeling the cool air slip between her teeth, glad that she could control the force of her breath, glad it came at all.

Miles took her hand again. He wasn’t himself and for a moment she was certain she was in love with a boy, but instead the man turned to her and left his place on the bench for a spot before her on one knee.

“I want you to marry me.”

Snap.

“No.”

The old man let the answer echo in his ears. He said nothing, patient, waiting for it all to make sense.

“No.” Ashlin said it again, to be sure it was the right answer. No. No. “Never leave me, you understand? Don’t you ever leave me alone and I promise to do the same. I swear on it.”

Miles nodded. “Alright. I promise.”

Ashlin let herself fall before him and she hugged the man inside, kissed the eyelids of the boy, held the face of the old man, letting her fingers dip into the wrinkles. She held him. “I love you. I love you for asking. I just do.”

“But...” Miles tried to get the words out but Ashlin was too quick with her hand over his mouth. She shook her head.

“Hold it,” she whispered. “Try holding it.”

Miles let the words subside. He looked at Ashlin and the two of them stood together, her hand still across his mouth and they took their places on their bench, overlooking the city. Ashlin let her hand drop into his. They watched. They listened.

They did not pass out.