Calvin Mills

Green

The couple finally fell away from each other to catch their breath. They lay very still on the damp sheets, except for their slow gasping. The boy noticed then, that the flowers the girl brought to his apartment three days ago were already dead. The last few buds had yet to open, but the others were brown and dry, hanging limp.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I’m just thinking about the flowers,” he said, after a pause.

“They look like they’ve about had it,” she said. She pulled away some of the dark strands of hair that had stuck to the sweat on her cheeks and forehead.

He inhaled. The air around him was warm and thick. “What do you think will happen to us?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” she said. Her reaction was quick. The girl sat up then and looked at him.

The boy was curious to see her face, too, to look into her eyes. But he was afraid to just then. He kept staring at the flowers.

“I can’t believe you’re going to do this,” she said, and she made a little sound in the back of her throat.

He knew she was watching him.

“I might as well tell you then,” she said, and she started breathing through her nose so that he could hear each breath.

“Tell me what?” he asked. He turned to look at her, but was only able to hold her gaze for a few seconds.

When his glance fell away, the girl opened her mouth to breathe softly again. “It’s your eyes,” she said.

“What about them?” he asked.

“They’re green.”

“They’re hazel. Sometimes they’re green,” he said.

“They’re green right now,” she insisted.

“Really?” he asked, his voice flat—and he thought—a little nasal.

“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice was deep as she murmured the words.

“What do you mean? I have hazel eyes. That means they’re different colors at different times. Sometimes they’re green. Sometimes they’re gray.”

“Yeah, but what determines that?”

“I don’t know, the color of my shirt, allergies, the weather.”

“That’s not what,” she said.

“What’s not what?”

The girl scooted to the edge of the bed, looking across the floor for her panties.

She located them, stood up and began to dress. She looked away from him, facing the window. He only saw the curve of her breast from behind, the slow, soft, nipple-less curve of it there alongside the gentler convex form of her rib cage. She had two dimples near the base of her spine-one on each side, just above the waistband of her underwear.

“They’re green right now,” she said. She was half dressed and staring out the window at the canopy of trees below. The apartment was high up and she was not accustomed to looking down on trees. They seemed to have no trunks from that angle, and no branches. The grove of trees made a great carpet of green. A few, which stood alone, were like cotton balls, round and fluffy. Or else, she thought, they were like clouds.

“Are they green?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

He took a short, small breath.

She must have heard it because she said, “I knew they would be.”

“Jesus Christ, what are you talking about?” he said.

“Every time we make love your eyes turn green. I was afraid to tell you before.”

“Every time?”

“Yes.”

The boy noticed the flowers again. Then he looked at the girl’s back. Finally, he looked out the window, where all he could see was the slate blue sky. There were trees out there, stretching a long way across a hill. With the humidity and the summer rain, the canopy was an explosion of green. But that didn’t change the fact that the flowers were dead. From where the girl was standing, the trees were all she could see, and the boy knew it. But from where he lay, the window was only a rectangle of pale blue.

 

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