The Interloper V

“I like stuffed pandas, mint ice cream, vegetable soup without carrots, new toothbrushes, snowfall on mountain tops, steamy full-length mirrors, and fires started by thunderstorms,” she tells Bass from the bunk above, “I like chocolate better than flowers and dinner better than chocolate, but, most of all, I love hot breakfast in the morning with fresh gourmet coffee.” She pauses. The bass amp in the corner is still humming. The ceiling fan is vibrating making the ball-chain pull strings scratch against the glass covering of the light fixture and blowing down the scent of her. She smells boyish like the cologne in his scented body-wash. “But her, I think most of all, she would like you to take her by the hand. She would like to have all your attention for once. You should relax sometime and give things a chance to go their own way instead of your way.”

“You're not helping me at all, y'know?” Bass rolls into the corner of the bed and wall, locking himself into his comforter, pressing his face into a green pillow.

She follows him to the wall and whispers down the crack between it and her bed, “you didn't ask for help, you asked for advice. This is truth straight from a stranger. It is all too easy to find things that someone does not like, but I love all of those, especially coffee, and now you know me better than most, even better than your father, who doesn't have a clue. Half of knowing a person is realizing what they want.” The bed above Bass shakes and squeaks as she tosses her sheets around. “It's like sleeping on a rock after a rainy day working on power lines,” she says, “a mattress on the floor would be better than this. How did your brother sleep here every night?”

“What's the other half?” Bass asks.

“To working on power lines in the rain? Electrocution I suppose, a painful lonely death thirty feet above a blocked off road. Everyone walks by with turned eyes, holding their breath, pretending nothing happened.”

“No. What is the other half to knowing a person?”

“Oh,” she exhales, “you have to know what they are afraid of, Bass.”

“Like what?” he asks.

“Well, I suppose I am afraid of being electrocuted.”

She lets out a giggle before continuing.

“I know you well, though, you're just afraid of growing up and maybe realizing you are still just a kid.”

“I'm not a kid!” Bass rolls over onto his stomach, burying his face straight down into the pillow. “I only wanted to talk to you because my friends would make fun of me. I don't know why I trust you when I don't even know you.”

The bed squeaks again as her head pokes down. She looks at Bass though the dim moonlight coming through the windows and says, “Don't choke yourself over it. I told you that I already know you really well, so I think you can trust me to make you stay home that dismal rainy day.”

Bass takes a heavy breath. He rolls over and puts a hand under his ear, and meets her upside down gaze. He sees why fireflies flicker and glare to attract their mates. Her face, with the blood rushing to her cheeks, is the summer glow bringing the day into the evening dusk, carrying it into the night.

“Watashi o shinrai shi nasai,” she says.

“What's that mean?”

“Essentially, it means trust me.”

“Why are you here, really?” Bass asks.

“I can't say. I'm only here to tell you what you want to know, but I don't think your friends will pick on you.”

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