It was. And at roughly sixteen feet tall, with skeletal branches that sag downward, Old Tjikko looks more like a sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree than the oldest known Picea abies on the planet.
“It’s actually the root system that dates back ninety-five hundred years,” Eli explained. “The trunk and branches have died and been reborn multiple times.”
I wondered aloud if I’d been identifying with the wrong tree all my life. And without thinking, I said, “You should tell October about Old Tjikko when you see her today. She likes trees too.”
Eli had been nearby during my altercation with Rae the day before, but he’d refrained from asking me any questions. Now he knit his brow, spoke softly. “You two have some kind of history, I gather.”
I liked Eli. He was interesting and thoughtful. We’d exchanged phone numbers, and he’d invited me to go sailing with him the following weekend, so I didn’t feel right about making anything up. But I also knew I would need a few beers in me before I could give him the real scoop.
“October and I used to work together.” My body stiffened, a reminder that everything about that woman still lived inside of it. “We were close. It didn’t end well. I guess I’m trying to rectify that.”
The sun rose at 7:24 a.m., and by then the line was around the block and past the parking garage. The crowd was feisty that morning, undoubtedly because it was the last day of the exhibit and everyone who hadn’t made it in yet had shown up expecting entry before it closed. There was a lot of pushing and shoving. People tried to cut the line. One guy offered Eli two grand for his spot. A girl in Birkenstocks and thick wool socks offered me sex for mine.
About an hour before the doors opened, a museum representative named Tamisha came out, counted off the first one hundred people by marking them with little yellow stickers, and announced that anyone who didn’t have a sticker would be turned away. However, she assured those one hundred people that they would all get in to see October, even if it ran beyond the 5:00 p.m. cutoff time.
The 103rd person in line was a man who claimed he’d come all the way from Croatia to participate in Sorrow, to which Tamisha replied, “You should have come sooner.”
In protest, the man tore off his clothes, curled up in a ball on the sidewalk, and screamed like someone auditioning for a role in a horror film until Security came and took him away.
All the commotion set a tone that Eli called “unbefitting for the last day of such a beautiful experience.” He asked me to hold his spot, wandered off for a bit, and came back with five big boxes of doughnuts that he passed out to everyone in line.
At first I didn’t take one because I didn’t want my fingers to be sticky when I held October’s hands, but Eli had anticipated that problem and also had a bag of little, individually wrapped moist towelettes. He passed those out too.
I was as nervous walking in on the second day as I had been on the first. Maybe even more so, because I was second in line behind Eli and had much less time to mentally prepare. In fact, I was already standing beside the computer screen rereading the rules when the massive shades fully disappeared into the ceiling.
Eli was still in with October when I opened my voice memo app and once again pushed record. What can I say? I’m a rebel.
I approached the door as soon as I saw Eli exit, then I waited for Security to wave me in, and I entered the room.
October was wearing the same dress she’d had on the day before, except in a different color. This one was a light, shimmery blue, and the tint in the shattered panes seemed to match the dress, though I was fairly certain it had been a pinkish rose color twenty hours earlier. Her hair was down this time, and she had a tiny gold beetle on a chain around her neck.
I slid quietly into the chair and took a mental photograph of October’s expression so I would be able to notice if anything changed once she realized I had returned.
My hands were cold from standing outside, and I rubbed them together to warm them up before I touched her. Then I did what I’d done the day before. I slid my palms underneath her palms and closed my fingers around her fingers. And something did change. I saw it. The flash of a smirk, so scarcely perceptible, so minuscule a stranger would have never noticed it. But I wasn’t a stranger. I knew the subtle nuances of her face, and in that half an instant I saw it sneak up on her, and I saw her immediately pull it down.
She opened her eyes right away, and while the imperturbable facade was still visible, there was something underneath it, something I strove to name, but the only word that came close to what I observed was “amusement,” and that might as well have been an emoji. I had no idea how to interpret it.
I’d come with a pipedream plan: I was going to tell October about my art project, and she was going to think it was brilliant and want to work on it with me. But once I was in the chair, that topic didn’t seem right.
“You wanna know something?” I said, adlibbing. “I still keep a list of words on my phone.” I readjusted my hands so that I had a better hold. “Whenever I stumble across a good one, I add it to my file. There’s over a hundred now. And every time I add one, I think, I wish I could share this with October.” It happened again. A subtle shift. This time
