If

by Nina G. Jones

  All the energy that tingled on my skin and guided my body had condensed into the path between our gazes, and we both looked away as quickly as our eyes met. I ducked, looking for a distraction in another record. I pulled out Tom Waits, went right to “Please Call Me, Baby,” and started dancing again.

  Ash went back to his own work and I went back to mine. We did this for I don’t know how long, because time vanishes when you’re dancing.

  “I’m done,” he finally said, stepping back from the easel. His face, hands and shirt were covered with a rainbow of pastels and paints.

  I made a point not to peek, and though I had no way of knowing, I just knew it was going to be good. But Ash didn’t seem pleased.

  I walked over and gasped when I saw the work. It was me, but it was a variation of me, exploding with color, in motion, my hair turning into something else otherworldly, wrapping me in endless color.

  “This is beautiful,” I said. My face had no scar. If he could see the way I dance in my dreams, this would be it. “I didn’t realize you were painting me.”

  “It’s shit,” he said.

  I was in utter disbelief. I didn’t know his gift was this extraordinary. He had just slapped this together and it was exquisite.

  “This is amazing. How can you say that?” I asked.

  “The details, the lines, they aren’t precise enough. I can’t always keep my hand steady enough. And I’m holding back. It’s not the same.”

  “The same? As what?”

  “Bird, when I see you, dancing to that music,” he paused, and the popping of the needle left on the finished record filled his pause. “When I see you dance, I see you in iridescent blues, pale ribbons of greens, indigos, and pinks. Swirls of orange and gold like a sunset trailing your movements. Flecks of silver that sparkle like the moon reflecting on a dark ocean flicker around you.”

  Though his words were poetic and mesmerizing, I didn’t know what to do with them. He uttered them like what he was saying was as plain as day. So I just stood still, blank, letting him express his frustration.

  “And this,” he pointed to the painting with the end of the brush, “is not the same,” he said. “It’s not as beautiful or dynamic.”

  I understood he meant beautiful in the artistic sense, but was he just calling me beautiful?

  “But you could practice.”

  “No, it’s not that I can’t, it’s that I won’t.”

  Ash’s hat had fallen off completely, and his wild hair was streaked throughout with paint. He shook his head, snapping himself out of being lost in his own frustration.

  When he looked at me, he chuckled quietly, seeing my confusion. “You must think I’m nuts. Sorry, I get a little lost in my head when I paint. It’s why I don’t anymore.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with getting lost in your head. That’s why we all do what we do in art.”

  He cleared his throat. “Have you ever heard of synesthesia?”

  “Synesthesia? I don’t think so, but it sounds familiar.”

  “Probably because it rhymes with anesthesia.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “It’s when your senses overlap. You can see sounds, or taste words. I have polymodal synesthesia, which means I have a bunch of those going on at once.”

  “Wait, you see sound?”

  “That’s one modal”—he threw up air quotes around the word—“yeah.”

  “That’s incredible. What do you see?”

  “It depends. Music is different from, say, a fire truck blaring. Monotonous sounds, like white noise, I don’t see those. And emotions make me see color sometimes, and feel things on my skin and fingertips, and sometimes I taste emotions or words or even touch. I have a really extreme case. Most people have one or two modals, I have more than a couple.”

  I glanced at the painting and pointed. “So do you see that?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Pretty much, but like I said, it’s not quite right. What I see is way more beautiful.”

  He casually threw that world out at me again, and its implication triggered a pleasant fluttering in my stomach. He wasn’t saying it to ingratiate or make me feel better. He was saying it because to him, it was a matter of fact.

  “That’s amazing. Does it bother you? To have all that going on at once?”

  “Does the color blue bother you? Does the breeze bother your skin? I’ve never known anything else. It doesn’t bother me. It can be distracting. Occasionally it’s tiring. But certain environments can be that way for anyone. Even a normal person can only tolerate a rock concert for so long, even if they love rock. I used to love it. It’s a lot weaker now anyway. Creating art used to help me decompress when it was stronger.”

  Just then there was a knock on my door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and I made my way over to peep through the peephole. Trevor.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?” I asked, throwing open the door and giving him a hug.

  “Jordan asked me to pick you up. I’ve been trying to call and give you a heads up. I left a voicemail.” I hadn’t even heard my phone ring.

  “What time is it?”

  “Almost six.”

  “Oh my god! Shit. I have to get ready.”

  Trevor glanced up at Ash. “Hey Ash!”

  “Hey,” Ash said.

  Then I put two and two together: Jordan wanted Trevor to check up on me. Ash ripped the painting off the easel and rolled it up despite it still being wet. “I’ll go.”

  “You don’t need to run, you can still hang out with Trevor.”

  “No, I should go.”

  “You can keep the stuff here. Come by whenever you want to paint. You might need to give me a heads up though.”

  He nodded, and began to walk out. “Wait,” he said. “I have a phone now.” It was refreshing and cute the way he referred to it like some artifact.

  He pulled out a small black flip phone, and if I didn’t know anything else about him, in his paint covered hair, jeans, and stubble, I would think he was a hipster with an ironic phone.

  We exchanged numbers.

  I walked him to the door. “I’d like to create with you again,” I said. “And I don’t think you’re nuts. I think you’re brilliant.”

  He pulled his hat over his eyes and tugged it back to get his hair out of his face. “Thank you,” he said. And just then is when I noticed he had trimmed his beard since I saw him earlier that day. He turned and walked away.

  ASH

  Walking down that hallway after whatever the hell that was with Bird, I felt alive, giddy. I didn’t let her see that, but it stirred things in me that I had worked hard to keep contained.

  Most people’s souls hide inside of their minds and bodies, but Bird is inside out. Her dancing, with the sweeping transparent ribbons of color that followed, was the embodiment of a divine gift. Her dancing was the closest I could get to heaven without dying.

  When she danced to “Oh Darling,” the colors around her intensified, her halo of lavender deepening to a royal purple. Clear angular shapes, like exotic crystals, birthed and died in a glorious explosion like fireworks in my field of vision. The heat she often caused traveled from my shoulders down to my fingers as it often did, but this time it also traveled down my torso and crept down into my groin and it was beyond heaven, it was ecstasy. At that moment, I understood the sensations Bernini sculpted and Caravaggio painted.

  There was a reason I kept to myself, isolated, away from those I cared about. Feeling good was dangerous. I needed to be flat, I needed to keep the colors, sensations and tastes as bland as possible. I hated the meds because they stole and dulled everything about who I was. But I had no choice: the meds were a necessary evil to keep my illness from rearing its head.

  When Bird was pushing me to paint, she thought I was scared of failing, but I had already failed. I was afraid of getting good again.

  She didn’t know it, but this past year, Bird gave me something to look forward to. While the rest o
f the world had dimmed, she shone as if nothing had changed for me. I could only imagine what she would look like if I stopped taking the drugs—and that was a dangerously tempting thought. Watching her, seeing her laugh, feeling it on my fingertips, reminded me of my old self. The good parts. That was the problem with my illness, it always started out feeling good, but almost never ended that way.

  The meds weren’t enough. They didn’t change what happened or what I could become. They dulled the inevitable, they delayed the inevitable, but they could not stop the inevitable.

  Bird was tempting a live wire and she didn’t know it. She stood there, her finger on the switch, without even knowing how close she had come every time we met. She was tempting me . . . she was triggering me . . . and I didn’t want to do this to her. I didn’t want anyone else to have the same fate as my sister, Sarah.

  Bringing Bird into my life didn’t fit the plan. It went against all the sacrifices I made. I left my art, my soul, behind.

  Maybe it wasn’t a switch, maybe it was a dimmer, and she was turning the knob ever so slowly, so that I couldn’t even tell that it was turning, and then the light would be blinding and it would be too late.

  BIRD

  I WENT TO both performances of Jordan’s show, and both were gorgeous. In true Jordan fashion, it was not your average Christmas show. Somehow, given a small budget, he turned it into high art. The story of the Nativity I had seen what felt like hundreds of times had a become a revelation through movement. I wasn’t alone in this feeling. The show even got some good coverage in the LA Times. For a local theatre production, it gained some pretty good buzz. In addition to both showings, I also partook in the subsequent celebrations. With an early wakeup on Monday, I decided to hang at home alone on Sunday evening, while Jordan had spent the night at Trevor’s.

  I used the downtime to do some cleaning. The one benefit of a studio apartment was that cleaning was a breeze. The easel stood exactly where Ash left it, and I smiled at the speckles of paint on the floor beneath it. I had a hunch it would be a while before I would see him again. As skillful as his creation was, he seemed more upset than happy that I had pushed him to paint. Since that day, I had been so busy, I didn’t have much of a chance to think about what he told me about his synesthesia. So finally, after I lit some candles to top off my newly freshened apartment, I sat with my laptop and did some research.

  Honestly, the phenomenon sounded so unbelievable I wanted to make sure it was really a thing.

  Well, it was a thing. And Ash’s version, the intensity with which he described it, and the various combinations, was extremely unique.

  I began to envy him a little. Most of us had our five senses, each limited to their respective lanes—eyes see reflections of light, ears hear sound waves, touch feels the physical world, the nose picks up scent.

  But Ash could taste touch, see sound, feel emotion on his fingertips. How amazing it must be to feel the world with such a diverse palette. In a way, he was like a superhero with special powers. But like most superheroes, he was troubled. Something burdened him, and I think that was why he was where he was.

  Ash intrigued me like no one else had before. I had Jordan, but Jordan had Trevor. And that was a great thing, but I was lonely. I wanted someone who I could peer into and discover. Ash seemed like that person. He seemed like he was storing a treasure chest of thoughts and creativity inside of him. I wanted to get past that quiet exterior and learn about this mysterious artist who wandered the streets.

  Oh, and he was attractive. Intrigue plus attraction usually equaled something I couldn’t consider with him. The reality was, he seemed to have no future, no place in society. I was poor now, but I had vision. Ash had lost his. Like Jordan said, the streets are fucked up, and more often than not, so are the people who live on them.

  As I was browsing the web for more articles on synesthesia, my phone rang and I was shocked to see my caller ID display: Ash.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  “What’s up?” I asked, trying to be nonchalant.

  “I’d like to try painting again if that’s okay with you.”

  “Of course,” I sat up in my seat. “When were you thinking?”

  “I’m in the neighborhood.” Which I believe was code for his usual spot.

  “Well, I’m just home hanging out.”

  “I’ll come over then.”

  He was at my door within minutes. When I let him in, I was shocked to see he had almost completely shaven this time, with just a light stubble fanning his face.

  “You look so young . . .” I said, as I let him in.

  “Did I look older before?”

  “Not considerably. It’s just that every time, you shave a little more, and it makes you look a little younger each time. You definitely look like someone who is barely into his twenties. The beard hid a lot.”

  “That’s the point,” he said, sliding his bag to the floor. “And I am well into twenty, plus one.”

  “What happened to the last painting?” I asked.

  “What does it matter? It was shit.”

  I sighed. He was determined that it was a piece of shit, and I couldn’t change his mind.

  His clothes smelled freshly laundered. It’s not that he ever stunk, in fact, I assumed he had access to some place to clean up and shave, but today he smelled of fresh detergent, a scent I had always found comforting. Finally, I had the balls to ask about it.

  “Where do you shave? Do you go to a shelter?”

  He looked back at me over his shoulder. He had already made his way over to the easel and was messing around with a tube of blue acrylic paint. “My brother, he has a guest house. When I need somewhere to stop, he lets me shower there, do laundry, eat, sometimes sleep, but I never stay for more than one night at a time.”

  “He doesn’t let you?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t like walls and I don’t want to.”

  It was clear that I had gone as far down that road as I could have for the time being. But the fact that his brother had enough money to have a guest house in LA while he was homeless added to the mystery.

  “He’s the one who gave me the phone. He’s older, so he worries.”

  Ash’s unsolicited admission surprised me.

  “I have an older sister, too, who worries. I get it.”

  “Plus, my sister-in-law is a little icy.”

  “Huh?”

  “When you asked why I don’t stay. I wouldn’t anyway, but I might spend an extra day just to shut my brother up. I can tell she doesn’t want me there though, and I’d rather just go. She gives me the nudge.”

  “Oh . . .” I felt sad for him, even though he didn’t seem sad at all about his sister-in-law.

  “Well,” Ash said, sliding off his canvas jacket, to reveal a white t-shirt with faded streaks of color that the detergent could not eradicate, “ready to dance?”

  ASH

  I found myself visiting Bird two to three times a week after that first dancing and painting session. At first I would call ahead, then one day she called me, and then call-aheads stopped all-together. I started to get a good feel for her schedule and would just show up. I knew I was pushing my limits, but the experiences we shared were so seductive. I would still hate my work, and Bird would tell me how much she loved what I drew or painted, but she didn’t understand. She had never seen what the old me was capable of. Of course, technical skills are a requirement in art, but there’s something extra, allowing oneself to become completely lost in inspiration, and I would not allow that.

  Every time I visited her, I felt giddy, happy. I hadn’t felt that in a long time, and that was intentional. Whenever I saw her, I feared this would be the day I would become a little too giddy, a little too excited, I would get caught up in the spiral that sometimes felt impossible to crawl out of. But every time it didn’t happen, I got a little more confident in seeing her, a little more expr
essive in each work. I always held something back though. I had to.

  I had been consistently visiting for about three weeks. I noticed Jordan would poke his head in often to say hi. I got it. I was a bum in his eyes. Something had to be wrong with me. But after a while, Jordan stopped coming, or he would stop in to genuinely chat with us. I liked Jordan. He was big in spirit. I envied how he could be that way when I had to stay so clenched.

  I came to her on a Friday night. I didn’t call, and I fully expected when I knocked on her door, she would be out with her friends. But she swung the door open with a smile, her lavender aura perfectly outlining her. Lately, I had been smelling lavender around her. That was new.

  She wasn’t expecting company and she had on a loose-fitting, baby-pink tank top with no bra over some tiny white boxers. Her legs were long and shapely, and it was hard not to steal a glimpse. Heat began to dance its way down my neck. The tank pressed against the outline of her small breasts and I had to distract myself by discussing business.

  “Are you down for a session?” I asked.

  “Have I ever denied you?” she replied, sauntering towards the futon with a sway in her hips.

  It was playful, but I didn’t allow myself to think she was flirting. I glanced over to the futon and a glass of wine was resting on the arm. She was tipsy.

  I had been visiting my brother’s a lot lately, to shave and do my laundry. I wanted to be fresh for her, and she told me that she liked my facial hair trimmed. I knew deep inside that was a bad sign. I should have grown my beard and let it collect food crumbs. I should have let myself become sweaty and grimy. Not enough to sicken, but just enough to repel.

  She grabbed her wine and finished it in one final gulp. “Do you want a drink? I have the finest boxed wine money can buy.”

  “No thanks. I don’t drink.” I can’t drink.

  “Hey, I was wondering?” she asked, coyly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Could you show me how you paint? Like teach me something?”

  “Uh, sure. I could teach you a technique or two.”

  “Like that guy. Bob . . . something.” She lowered her voice. “A happy cloud there, a happy tree here.”