by Alex Austin
But he spoke first. He said, “I wonder what color Mr. Potter’s taxi will be this year.”
He had said, “If we could truly die of love, how fine life would be for those who survived.” He’d said this days ago, again in the dark together with both of them blind, and she had thought: But we will live with so much more than love even if one day we give it all the name of love only to save ourselves.
Now she looked over at her brother, letting these other words fall away from her like a mist rising so the day can begin to clear to any eyes that wish to see through it.
She smiled. She rolled over onto her back, letting her body open up free again to the coming warmth that was more than summer alone could bring. She lay back this way and laughed easily, the fear, the hurt, the entire winter masked by love for this brief time like a condemned man coming to a masquerade dressed comically as Death.
She said, “Gold,” with a playful solemnity to answer his question.
“Real gold.”
“Of course.”
“The great chariot of Alexander.”
“Yes . . .”
“Bringing only kings for the summer.”
“Green and yellow and red and purple kings.”
“Who have only leopards and hawks for pets.”
They both laughed now. The words were old as childhood again. Jean rolled over onto one elbow and his empty eyes stared down at the face of his sister.
“What color are your eyes today?” he asked her.
She said, “Green.”
“Like the sea?”
“No.”
“Like grass?”
“No.”
“Or leaves?”
“Like my eyes,” she said.
“You’re letting the light fool you,” he said in a teasing way, touching her face first only with the tips of his fingers, lightly, then bending to take her mouth again, this time letting his body down gently upon her, as gently as mist settling upon black rocks or windowpanes or the gray wings of sleeping gulls.
And both of them knew, cradled again as children in the cold sand, that childhood was no longer possible.
three
Jean and Sygen heard the taxi. Mrs. Orlovski heard the taxi. Gulls flew up sharply, frightened off dunes and old timbers by it. The very air itself seemed to rattle with it.
The sun glistened on it. An old dog barked at it. The clouds hovered over it. Wasps and new butterflies crashed headlong into it. Fishes, perch and mackerel and white cod, were deaf to it. The day and summer opened all of their warm gracious time to it.
Mr. Potter’s taxi, painted white and purple this year, stormed on along the flat road, cutting a hard shape against the sky, showing a stern pride in its battered grillework, in fenders dented dozens of times against all manner of real and imaginary things.
It roared on and on, sea, sky, and road falling behind it like discarded glories.
Jean and Sygen rolled over to watch it come like wild kings out of the distance, hear it go crashing past them, wave to Mr. Potter, who waved back joyously to them.
Mrs. Orlovski heaved a sigh and one more and another as she ran from room to room as through a cunning riddle to set her house in perfect order now that summer was officially here. She took off her apron, ran to the kitchen, tossed it quickly over the back of a green chair and, as she returned with tiny, almost hesitating steps to the parlor, she reached up out of no more than memory to set a stray hair at her temple into place.
When Mr. Potter’s white-and-purple taxi pulled up in front of the gray house on this fine June morning, everyone knew immediately who his passenger was. It was, of course, Mr. Buvelo.
And Mr. Buvelo, as he had done countless times before, stepped gingerly down out of the taxi with a round smile on his round face.
He walked slowly up the front steps, glancing first at the house itself to see all was in order, then glancing with precise eyes out toward the ocean as if to be sure that it too was just where he knew it should be.
He knocked softly on the front door, straightened his white tie, looked down to see his white trousers had not been soiled during the journey.
In seconds, Mrs. Orlovski opened the door and stepped back with half a bow to let him enter.
“Ah, dear Mr. Buvelo!” she exclaimed, smiling brightly, feeling all the world spring suddenly to life again in her heart.
He walked past her and after a moment’s pause in the dim foyer, he skipped nimbly down the two steps into the living room that was filled with sunlight like a great store of gold in a castle. He took a deep breath and, hands on his hips, he turned, smiling slowly, to Mrs. Orlovski and, with a note of pride and love in his deep voice, said, “How glad I am, dear Mrs. Orlovski, that summer has come again.”