Luke didn’t ask her any questions about whatever man she seemed to love so much. He didn’t want to know anything about him because it would only cause him to feel lonelier than he already was.
Palin was digging a deep hole to their left. She kicked a little spray of wet soil and grass roots onto Aria’s legs. “Palin … quit that,” Luke said, whistling for her to chase a stick that he picked up from his feet to throw for her. They sat watching the river, neither of them knowing what to say, until Luke held the quill of the feather out in front of her, intending for her to have it.
“I can’t take that, I’ll feel too guilty,” Aria said.
“Nah, I want you to have it,” Luke said. “Like I said, I want it to keep you safe and if it doesn’t give you courage and strength to give me your heart, maybe it will give you strength and courage for somethin’ else.”
Aria took the quill from him and smelled it. The guilt she felt made her arms feel heavy. She put the letter and the feather into her backpack and sat with her chin on her knees, watching Luke throw the stick as a distraction from the discomfort that both of them felt.
When they walked back toward the car lot, Luke tried to erase what had been said between them with small talk. He told her stories from his various travels. At one point, he stopped her to look at a dull bronze-colored chrysalis, which he told her contained a painted lady butterfly. “Did you know that a caterpillar doesn’t just sprout wings and turn into a butterfly?” he asked. “Actually, if you opened this thing, all that would come out is this primordial soup. The caterpillar decomposes and it gets totally reorganized back into this whole other thing!”
Aria felt the impact of his statement. As fascinating as the fact was, she knew that he was talking about himself just as much as he was talking about the caterpillar. She was unhappy to have become one more part of his story of things that had made him feel like he was dissolving.
When they got back to the lot, Robert was taking a nap. Palin ran up to him and licked his face, startling him out of his sleep. Darren had changed position, but had not come out of the vortex of his self-destruction.
Luke caught Aria by the shoulder. “I’m gonna go back out there, I think,” he said, gesturing back toward the woods from which they came.
“OK,” Aria said, flustered and not knowing what to say to repair the rupture between them.
Luke pulled her in for a reassuring hug. “I’m here for you whenever you need it, OK? I really like you as a person, not just as a girlfriend or whatever else,” he said.
Aria hugged him back, letting her top hand slide up and down the muscles of his back to indicate her regard for him. He whistled and called for Palin. Aria grabbed the scruff under Palin’s cheeks and lifted the velvet of her muzzle to kiss both sides of it. Palin snuffed and trotted off to lead the way. Luke took a few steps before turning around and saying, “Hey, if you ever change your mind with whatever-his-name-is, you know where to find me.” Aria smiled and waved to him, touching the fingers of her right hand to her lips to indicate a blown kiss. Soon she could no longer see either of them beyond the web of the woods.
Standing in front of Robert, she could smell the hint of ammonia from his breath. His kidneys were not working in his old age with quite the same vigor that they had in his youth. “So are you gonna just stay here then?” she asked him.
“Prob’ly, you know me, I ain’t got no place else to be,” he said. “What abou’chu?”
“I’m staying over in East LA,” she said. “Look, would you mind if I came and saw you sometimes?”
“Hell no, I wouldn’t mind, though I can’t work out why you’d want to hang out with an old geezer exactly,” he said.
“I just do,” Aria responded, not able to bring herself to explain her actual need for him or the amount she had grown to care about him.
“OK then, suit yourself. I can’t promise I’m gonna be any fun, but you know where to find me.” Robert grinned up at her, squinting against the sun. She knelt down in front of him and hugged him. The smell of his clothes was sour with neglect and city grime. He patted her back. Her embrace muffled the words he spoke to end their meeting.
“You go and take care of yourself,” he said. Robert was not a man to make his sentiments known. His mutual affection for Aria was not something that he made known openly to her that day. Instead, he kept it for himself. He let his own being kindle it, like powder swallowed by flame.
Aria waited for Omkar for hours on the berm to the side of the road he would eventually drive down to find her. The tides of life that had brought her there had never warned her about the way she would care for the people she would meet. They did not warn her that a person could grow fond of a place which most would consider rock bottom. The fire that had cremated her time there had not burned the memories away. The flames could not reach them. The sovereign fingers of those that remained refashioned their existence on top of the ash because they could do nothing else with themselves.
Despite the flood of emotions she felt,
