[story] that beautiful apple
author: mellish (scratchmist)
email: scratchmist [at] yahoo.com
They bumped into each other one day in summer. She was sucking on a popsicle and trying not to let it drip down her shirt, and he was carrying a stack of paper piled up to his chin. The heat was making everything waver like the space around a candle, but the road was so wide they wouldn't have collided, if she hadn't been bending down to fix an ankle strap, and he hadn't been trying to remember what the scientific name of water buffalo was. Suddenly her popsicle was a puddle on the sidewalk, soaking through several of his papers. He caught himself in the middle of a curse and thanked god instead that it wasn't a very busy road, so there were no cars passing by at the moment.
"Watch where you're going," he said, and immediately felt like a jerk for saying it.
"I was! You're the one with the papers up to your nose." She had already bent down to pick them up already, anyway. She paused and looked at the scribbles on one page, full of animals and words. "Zoology?"
"Alpha taxonomy, actually," he corrected, smoothly. He had realized when she looked up at him that she was beautiful, with the sort of striking, radiant face that would definitely make him turn back and look again if he wasn't distracted. She had hair that hung halfway down her back, flushed cheeks (maybe it was the heat?), perfect skin, and eyes that twinkled as she passed the papers back to him. Several of the pages were stained a watery red. He must have scrunched his face up without knowing, because she looked almost apologetic as he took them from her.
"Sorry. That must have been hard to compile."
He wondered, briefly, if he was making a fool of himself as he answered, "I'll call it even if you let me buy you another popsicle."
Her eyes widened for a moment, briefly, and she then smiled. When she did that, he felt like he recognized her from a dream, but it was an embarrassing thought, one he banished immediately. She lifted a hand to her lips and laughed, in a way that reminded him of chimes. She said, "Maybe some other time," then turned and walked away.
The second time they met, it was Halloween. He was giving out treats half-heartedly, and she was dressed all in black. "Trick or treat," she said, sticking out a plastic bag at him.
"Aren't you too old for this?" He asked without thinking, because he was trying to recall where he had seen her before.
"I'm sorry," she answered, in a way that made him realize how impolite he had been. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"No," he lied. Because at that moment he did remember her, despite the black dress, the black fingernails, and the black lines framing the eyes that dwelt in his dreams. "I don't think so. And you're right, that was completely rude of me."
"You're... the taxonomist," she said. He couldn't read her expression: shocked? Glad to see him? (He wished.) "You live around here, too?"
"I'm visiting a relative."
"Oh." She blinked. She looked almost too young when she did that, but he didn't think she could really be that much younger than him. Then she realized he still hadn't put anything in her bag, and started to withdraw her arm. "Maybe you're right. I guess I am too old for this."
He stopped her and put a hand just above her arm, because he didn't think he could dare touch her (yet?), and they were (still?) strangers, after all. "Forget what I said. Here," he handed her three candied apples, wrapped up in plastic. "Consider this payment for the ruined popsicle."
"Thank you." She smiled, and it was even more beautiful than he had imagined: it lit up the whole yard, blew through the false skeletons and cotton cobwebs strung all throughout the street. Nothing could be frightening when that smile existed. She turned and walked down the pathway, looking back to add, with a hint of a laugh in her voice, "Watch out for ghosts."
He thought he saw her in the dark once in a movie theatre. The film was about flying ships, the inelegant, noisy, cogwheels-turning-type, that let out puffs of steam as they fluttered through the sky. He was trying to discern whether or not it was her through the brief flashes of light that illuminated the crowd watching the movie, which were frequent enough, but her features were always indistinct. Sometime in the middle of the film, when he was still wondering if it was really her, the flying ships managed to break through the earth's atmosphere. They soared through space and became a little more modernized, steel-like and shiny. It became all about laser blast fights from that point onwards. Despite the frequent explosions, however, her face remained in shadow. Maybe she had gotten full-fringe bangs, or maybe she was just constantly looking down at her popcorn bucket. She didn't seem the type to be interested in this sort of movie, anyway.
Was she watching alone? Like him? He hated to think she might not be.
He wondered if she liked nature documentaries. Probably not? Probably she was a romantic comedy type of girl? Or maybe he wasn't giving her enough credit, just because her lips always looked perfectly glossed and cherry tinted? (Those two times he saw her, anyway. Obsessed probably wasn't the right word for it.)
He swallowed. His throat always felt dry when he thought about her lips.
The credits had started rolling and he hadn't even realized; when he looked back at the seat where she might have been sitting, it was empty.
The next time, she had cut her hair short as a boy's, and they were both wearing skirts, although when she saw him and burst out laughing, he insisted that it was only... a very baggy set of pants, that happened to lack the split seams in the middle.
"Okay." She grinned at him. He felt almost sorry that it wasn't her full-blown smile, even if it was still awfully pretty. "I won't ask why you're wearing it, then."
"I lost a bet," he said lamely. "It's my punishment."
"That's getting off easy, then, because you look good in it."
"Don't say that!" He resisted the urge to look for a mirror and see just how bad it was.
"I can lend you some," she continued, obviously not listening. "I've got lots of green ones and brown ones, I think they'd complement you perfectly. Or would you like one with a leaf print?"
"You cut your hair," he shot back, trying to change the topic, and shuffling his legs in a manner that he hoped would expose them the least. "Why? It was beauti-- uh, nice. Before. I mean, it's still nice now, but doesn't it take a long time to grow?"
"It does," she said. She paused. "I felt like a change."
They stared at each other. He tried not to stare too hard. He tried to think of something clever to say, but his mind just kept repeating, You're the girl of my dreams. Literally.
Instead, he decided that he would prefer not to be known as 'the taxonomist.' "I'm Adam." He stuck out a hand. She shook it, and yes, there it was again, that smile. If he hopped, at the moment, he was pretty sure he would have floated.
"Nice to meet you, Adam." Her hand was warm and slender, and reminded him of graceful things, like, oh, he didn't know. Lilies, swans, the arch of her neck. (Oh, so now he had moved from her lips to her neck?) She let go of his hand and stepped back. "Adam the taxonomist."
Well, he had tried. This time she left him saying, "Good luck naming things!"
He wasn't a big believer in coincidence, but it wasn't until they attended a lecture together that he decided fate was definitely playing tricks on him. It was a huge effort not to take the empty seat next to her - instead, he sat two rows behind her, three chairs to the left, where he could get a perfect view of her taking down notes, while making it seem as if he was concentrating on the blackboard. The class was botany, and the topic was the rose family Rosaceae, species Malus domestica. He wondered if she would be attending every single time. He had never seen her there before.
It took him a while to notice that she wasn't taking down notes, but sketching. Sketching a lot. Before, he could think of an appropriate metaphor for how smoothly her hand moved across the paper, the lecturer had asked him to answer a question he hadn't been listening to. She turned at the mention of his name, but she couldn't have been anticipating him. He flapped his mouth open and closed a couple of times, and had no choice but to sit afterwards, hot and uncomfortable.
She approached him after class. "I'd expect you to do better in this field, Mister Classifier."
He frowned. "Well, I wasn't the one doodling the whole time."
She laughed. "I didn't think you'd still be studying. You look more like a professor to me."
That stung a bit. He tried to sound aloof as he said, "Just research for my graduate thesis." He paused. "You're in university?"
"Fine Arts," she answered, proudly.
He looked at the sketchbook clutched in her arms. So it really wasn't notes, after all. "Roses?"
She opened a page. It was crosshatched all in gray, but somehow he could clearly imagine the deep crimson, the shiny surface.
"Apples."
He didn't know why he couldn't ask for her name. He didn't know why she didn't tell him.
He didn't see her again for several weeks, and was starting to doubt whether she existed. He knew he wasn't crazy, and he didn't have such a good imagination, either. He was standing in line at a coffee shop when somebody suddenly tapped him on the shoulder.
"What should I order?"
"You look like a white chocolate frappuccino," his mind buzzed. "Um," he said instead.
"I'll have an iced tea," she answered for herself.
They sat down together. She traced a finger around the rim of her cup uncertainly before lifting her head and asking, "Isn't it strange?"
He blinked. "What?"
She looked at him, studied his face carefully. Silently. He wished he had put more effort in front of the mirror that day. After a long moment, she sighed then smiled, a bit sadly. "Isn't it interesting how apples are usually the cause of misfortune? Like the one Eris threw. The one Snow White bit, with all the poison in it." She drew a breath. "The one in the garden ..."
He waited for her to say something else. She said nothing. So he asked, before the moment could pass--
"What's your name?" He couldn't help himself; if directly was the only way he could think of to go about it, then that's what he would do.
Stunned silence.
Then she looked at him with her eyebrows scrunched up, as if he were very stupid. "If you have to ask, then I can't tell you." she stood, almost angrily, and he saw that she had not touched her tea. She pulled up her bag and walked away. "Goodbye," she said, but it didn't seem as if she meant it.
What had he said? He thought about it, and it didn't make sense to him.
What was her name? What about her name?
She wasn't coming back, was she?
Probably it was better that way. (Because she was too young and too beautiful and her lips reminded him too much of the red skin of apples.) But whenever he thought about her, his ribs would ache.
He saw her for the last time in a lecture about snakes. Her hair had grown out past her shoulders. She didn't look back, not even when the lecturer called his name, and he answered correctly.
Later that evening, he was peeling himself some fruit, wondering if she would now disappear from his dreams. It seemed like an appropriate time for her to do so, if he wanted to stop waking up in the middle of the night, anyway. He nicked his finger on the edge of his blade, and the blood pooled over the cut, dripped down in a thin rivulet that reminded him of the writhing of snakes. He brought the cut to his lip and sucked on it, and he remembered her sweet voice saying "Apples," her eyes, the strange heat of that summer day, the taste of the fruit, more delicious for all that it was forbidden.
Then he knew: what he had lost, the risks he had not taken, and how it was probably worth it, though he didn't feel that way.
He was at the airport, rifling through papers, wondering if a new frontier would make things better. He was distracted. What was the name of a lily, again? The name of swans? Water buffalos? The name of a girl who kept appearing in his dreams, who would have been destiny, who was suddenly
- walking across from him, away from him, to a someplace he would never have to know: she was leaving, as he was leaving, and their paths wouldn't have to cross again. But he had already missed the next time, and there wouldn't be another. He'd lose her forever, if once wasn't enough. If he had even remembered right.
Somehow she didn't seem surprised when he stopped beside her, panting, clutching at his knees. Her hair fell down the length of her back, and she wore a green skirt that was printed with leaves.
"Where are you going?" They asked it simultaneously.
"To set up an art exhibit," she said, as he answered, "Wherever you are," because that made everything much simpler. She stared at him. Hard. Tucked some hair behind her ears and studied his face, carefully, just as she had the first time.
"Is this coincidence again?"
"No," he said. "No, I know you, and it's strange how I know you but I think we both know each other now."
"But do you know me?"
"Eve." Her name was like a prayer: her name, which had escaped from him, which had come back with the salty taste of blood and the memory of things that hissed and bit, of being reborn.
Her eyes widened at the mention, and he thought he saw them grow a bit watery. She folded her arms and stepped back, away from him. "Well, that took you long enough. But I don't know; that's exactly why I avoided telling you, why I wanted you to know yourself. Because we could be wrong."
"Or we could have our own lives, now that they're inconsequential." He was reaching for her hand again, knowing it would fit perfectly into his. It was something that made, something that would create beside him - "And we could have each other. Couldn't we?"
She was trying not to smile, but failing. He saw it split at the corners of her lips, spread to fill out her whole face, and he knew he hadn't been wrong when he fell in love at what he thought was first sight. She was smiling, and the dazzle of it made the airport seem like a garden; the papers in his hands were the branches of a tree, and he had run out of names for things, for what he was feeling.
"I guess so."
He wondered, briefly, just before he kissed her, if she would taste like apples. He decided it didn't matter.
the end
email: scratchmist [at] yahoo.com
They bumped into each other one day in summer. She was sucking on a popsicle and trying not to let it drip down her shirt, and he was carrying a stack of paper piled up to his chin. The heat was making everything waver like the space around a candle, but the road was so wide they wouldn't have collided, if she hadn't been bending down to fix an ankle strap, and he hadn't been trying to remember what the scientific name of water buffalo was. Suddenly her popsicle was a puddle on the sidewalk, soaking through several of his papers. He caught himself in the middle of a curse and thanked god instead that it wasn't a very busy road, so there were no cars passing by at the moment.
"Watch where you're going," he said, and immediately felt like a jerk for saying it.
"I was! You're the one with the papers up to your nose." She had already bent down to pick them up already, anyway. She paused and looked at the scribbles on one page, full of animals and words. "Zoology?"
"Alpha taxonomy, actually," he corrected, smoothly. He had realized when she looked up at him that she was beautiful, with the sort of striking, radiant face that would definitely make him turn back and look again if he wasn't distracted. She had hair that hung halfway down her back, flushed cheeks (maybe it was the heat?), perfect skin, and eyes that twinkled as she passed the papers back to him. Several of the pages were stained a watery red. He must have scrunched his face up without knowing, because she looked almost apologetic as he took them from her.
"Sorry. That must have been hard to compile."
He wondered, briefly, if he was making a fool of himself as he answered, "I'll call it even if you let me buy you another popsicle."
Her eyes widened for a moment, briefly, and she then smiled. When she did that, he felt like he recognized her from a dream, but it was an embarrassing thought, one he banished immediately. She lifted a hand to her lips and laughed, in a way that reminded him of chimes. She said, "Maybe some other time," then turned and walked away.
The second time they met, it was Halloween. He was giving out treats half-heartedly, and she was dressed all in black. "Trick or treat," she said, sticking out a plastic bag at him.
"Aren't you too old for this?" He asked without thinking, because he was trying to recall where he had seen her before.
"I'm sorry," she answered, in a way that made him realize how impolite he had been. "Do I know you from somewhere?"
"No," he lied. Because at that moment he did remember her, despite the black dress, the black fingernails, and the black lines framing the eyes that dwelt in his dreams. "I don't think so. And you're right, that was completely rude of me."
"You're... the taxonomist," she said. He couldn't read her expression: shocked? Glad to see him? (He wished.) "You live around here, too?"
"I'm visiting a relative."
"Oh." She blinked. She looked almost too young when she did that, but he didn't think she could really be that much younger than him. Then she realized he still hadn't put anything in her bag, and started to withdraw her arm. "Maybe you're right. I guess I am too old for this."
He stopped her and put a hand just above her arm, because he didn't think he could dare touch her (yet?), and they were (still?) strangers, after all. "Forget what I said. Here," he handed her three candied apples, wrapped up in plastic. "Consider this payment for the ruined popsicle."
"Thank you." She smiled, and it was even more beautiful than he had imagined: it lit up the whole yard, blew through the false skeletons and cotton cobwebs strung all throughout the street. Nothing could be frightening when that smile existed. She turned and walked down the pathway, looking back to add, with a hint of a laugh in her voice, "Watch out for ghosts."
He thought he saw her in the dark once in a movie theatre. The film was about flying ships, the inelegant, noisy, cogwheels-turning-type, that let out puffs of steam as they fluttered through the sky. He was trying to discern whether or not it was her through the brief flashes of light that illuminated the crowd watching the movie, which were frequent enough, but her features were always indistinct. Sometime in the middle of the film, when he was still wondering if it was really her, the flying ships managed to break through the earth's atmosphere. They soared through space and became a little more modernized, steel-like and shiny. It became all about laser blast fights from that point onwards. Despite the frequent explosions, however, her face remained in shadow. Maybe she had gotten full-fringe bangs, or maybe she was just constantly looking down at her popcorn bucket. She didn't seem the type to be interested in this sort of movie, anyway.
Was she watching alone? Like him? He hated to think she might not be.
He wondered if she liked nature documentaries. Probably not? Probably she was a romantic comedy type of girl? Or maybe he wasn't giving her enough credit, just because her lips always looked perfectly glossed and cherry tinted? (Those two times he saw her, anyway. Obsessed probably wasn't the right word for it.)
He swallowed. His throat always felt dry when he thought about her lips.
The credits had started rolling and he hadn't even realized; when he looked back at the seat where she might have been sitting, it was empty.
The next time, she had cut her hair short as a boy's, and they were both wearing skirts, although when she saw him and burst out laughing, he insisted that it was only... a very baggy set of pants, that happened to lack the split seams in the middle.
"Okay." She grinned at him. He felt almost sorry that it wasn't her full-blown smile, even if it was still awfully pretty. "I won't ask why you're wearing it, then."
"I lost a bet," he said lamely. "It's my punishment."
"That's getting off easy, then, because you look good in it."
"Don't say that!" He resisted the urge to look for a mirror and see just how bad it was.
"I can lend you some," she continued, obviously not listening. "I've got lots of green ones and brown ones, I think they'd complement you perfectly. Or would you like one with a leaf print?"
"You cut your hair," he shot back, trying to change the topic, and shuffling his legs in a manner that he hoped would expose them the least. "Why? It was beauti-- uh, nice. Before. I mean, it's still nice now, but doesn't it take a long time to grow?"
"It does," she said. She paused. "I felt like a change."
They stared at each other. He tried not to stare too hard. He tried to think of something clever to say, but his mind just kept repeating, You're the girl of my dreams. Literally.
Instead, he decided that he would prefer not to be known as 'the taxonomist.' "I'm Adam." He stuck out a hand. She shook it, and yes, there it was again, that smile. If he hopped, at the moment, he was pretty sure he would have floated.
"Nice to meet you, Adam." Her hand was warm and slender, and reminded him of graceful things, like, oh, he didn't know. Lilies, swans, the arch of her neck. (Oh, so now he had moved from her lips to her neck?) She let go of his hand and stepped back. "Adam the taxonomist."
Well, he had tried. This time she left him saying, "Good luck naming things!"
He wasn't a big believer in coincidence, but it wasn't until they attended a lecture together that he decided fate was definitely playing tricks on him. It was a huge effort not to take the empty seat next to her - instead, he sat two rows behind her, three chairs to the left, where he could get a perfect view of her taking down notes, while making it seem as if he was concentrating on the blackboard. The class was botany, and the topic was the rose family Rosaceae, species Malus domestica. He wondered if she would be attending every single time. He had never seen her there before.
It took him a while to notice that she wasn't taking down notes, but sketching. Sketching a lot. Before, he could think of an appropriate metaphor for how smoothly her hand moved across the paper, the lecturer had asked him to answer a question he hadn't been listening to. She turned at the mention of his name, but she couldn't have been anticipating him. He flapped his mouth open and closed a couple of times, and had no choice but to sit afterwards, hot and uncomfortable.
She approached him after class. "I'd expect you to do better in this field, Mister Classifier."
He frowned. "Well, I wasn't the one doodling the whole time."
She laughed. "I didn't think you'd still be studying. You look more like a professor to me."
That stung a bit. He tried to sound aloof as he said, "Just research for my graduate thesis." He paused. "You're in university?"
"Fine Arts," she answered, proudly.
He looked at the sketchbook clutched in her arms. So it really wasn't notes, after all. "Roses?"
She opened a page. It was crosshatched all in gray, but somehow he could clearly imagine the deep crimson, the shiny surface.
"Apples."
He didn't know why he couldn't ask for her name. He didn't know why she didn't tell him.
He didn't see her again for several weeks, and was starting to doubt whether she existed. He knew he wasn't crazy, and he didn't have such a good imagination, either. He was standing in line at a coffee shop when somebody suddenly tapped him on the shoulder.
"What should I order?"
"You look like a white chocolate frappuccino," his mind buzzed. "Um," he said instead.
"I'll have an iced tea," she answered for herself.
They sat down together. She traced a finger around the rim of her cup uncertainly before lifting her head and asking, "Isn't it strange?"
He blinked. "What?"
She looked at him, studied his face carefully. Silently. He wished he had put more effort in front of the mirror that day. After a long moment, she sighed then smiled, a bit sadly. "Isn't it interesting how apples are usually the cause of misfortune? Like the one Eris threw. The one Snow White bit, with all the poison in it." She drew a breath. "The one in the garden ..."
He waited for her to say something else. She said nothing. So he asked, before the moment could pass--
"What's your name?" He couldn't help himself; if directly was the only way he could think of to go about it, then that's what he would do.
Stunned silence.
Then she looked at him with her eyebrows scrunched up, as if he were very stupid. "If you have to ask, then I can't tell you." she stood, almost angrily, and he saw that she had not touched her tea. She pulled up her bag and walked away. "Goodbye," she said, but it didn't seem as if she meant it.
What had he said? He thought about it, and it didn't make sense to him.
What was her name? What about her name?
She wasn't coming back, was she?
Probably it was better that way. (Because she was too young and too beautiful and her lips reminded him too much of the red skin of apples.) But whenever he thought about her, his ribs would ache.
He saw her for the last time in a lecture about snakes. Her hair had grown out past her shoulders. She didn't look back, not even when the lecturer called his name, and he answered correctly.
Later that evening, he was peeling himself some fruit, wondering if she would now disappear from his dreams. It seemed like an appropriate time for her to do so, if he wanted to stop waking up in the middle of the night, anyway. He nicked his finger on the edge of his blade, and the blood pooled over the cut, dripped down in a thin rivulet that reminded him of the writhing of snakes. He brought the cut to his lip and sucked on it, and he remembered her sweet voice saying "Apples," her eyes, the strange heat of that summer day, the taste of the fruit, more delicious for all that it was forbidden.
Then he knew: what he had lost, the risks he had not taken, and how it was probably worth it, though he didn't feel that way.
He was at the airport, rifling through papers, wondering if a new frontier would make things better. He was distracted. What was the name of a lily, again? The name of swans? Water buffalos? The name of a girl who kept appearing in his dreams, who would have been destiny, who was suddenly
- walking across from him, away from him, to a someplace he would never have to know: she was leaving, as he was leaving, and their paths wouldn't have to cross again. But he had already missed the next time, and there wouldn't be another. He'd lose her forever, if once wasn't enough. If he had even remembered right.
Somehow she didn't seem surprised when he stopped beside her, panting, clutching at his knees. Her hair fell down the length of her back, and she wore a green skirt that was printed with leaves.
"Where are you going?" They asked it simultaneously.
"To set up an art exhibit," she said, as he answered, "Wherever you are," because that made everything much simpler. She stared at him. Hard. Tucked some hair behind her ears and studied his face, carefully, just as she had the first time.
"Is this coincidence again?"
"No," he said. "No, I know you, and it's strange how I know you but I think we both know each other now."
"But do you know me?"
"Eve." Her name was like a prayer: her name, which had escaped from him, which had come back with the salty taste of blood and the memory of things that hissed and bit, of being reborn.
Her eyes widened at the mention, and he thought he saw them grow a bit watery. She folded her arms and stepped back, away from him. "Well, that took you long enough. But I don't know; that's exactly why I avoided telling you, why I wanted you to know yourself. Because we could be wrong."
"Or we could have our own lives, now that they're inconsequential." He was reaching for her hand again, knowing it would fit perfectly into his. It was something that made, something that would create beside him - "And we could have each other. Couldn't we?"
She was trying not to smile, but failing. He saw it split at the corners of her lips, spread to fill out her whole face, and he knew he hadn't been wrong when he fell in love at what he thought was first sight. She was smiling, and the dazzle of it made the airport seem like a garden; the papers in his hands were the branches of a tree, and he had run out of names for things, for what he was feeling.
"I guess so."
He wondered, briefly, just before he kissed her, if she would taste like apples. He decided it didn't matter.
the end