The Move to Darna (Cont.)

he jumps straight up, dropping the can to the floor. He bends and picks it up, places it on the counter, flips on the main light then turns and stares at his phone.

Finally the ringing stops. Darna wonders why the person didn't answer, and then all at once she mouths the word, "Shit!" sits in the doorway, thinking about the other noise she heard. Her pack between her legs, she searches through her belongings for the can of corn.

"That's twice," she tells herself, two times she's been careless here tonight and why? She leans her head back against the door frame, remembers something she read in a book a few months ago while ducking into the library out of the cold. "To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the Self." She thinks about this, the suggestion that there are no accidents, only choices on different levels made, her leaving the corn neither conscious nor unconscious but somewhere in between. "Yeah, but none of that explains why." She closes her pack, convinced her carelessness was not deliberate, the corn not indicative of some secret desire to get caught. Why would she do that, give herself away after going to so much trouble to hide?

She stands and listens while the person below moves into the front room, comes closer to the stairs, a shadow coiling around the banister before retreating. Silence, then seven muted notes and a voice from the kitchen saying, "It's me. I know. I couldn't answer. I put it down and couldn't find it. Because it was dark. At the house. The one on Douchester. That's right, the one I showed today."

The main kitchen light goes off, the remaining glow barely reaching the landing. Darna thinks back to that afternoon as she arrived and noticed a man in a suit, a boy really, only a few years older than her, how later, as she hid in the closet, she thought of him again, how misplaced he seemed, tugging at his collar and shuffling his feet. Although she only glimpsed him for a second, his presence in the house put her at ease. "Good karma," she thought then, inexplicable and sweet, and remembering again the corn, she comes closer to the stairs.

Sam says, "Cleo," says, "Cleo," says "Of course not, Cleo. No." He sits with his back against the refrigerator, his legs bent and drawn up like two bony mountains. The can of corn is beside the sink, ignored for the moment, the mystery of its appearance surrendered to the great list of things he's never been able to explain. Cleo's voice enters his head, stirs about. "What did I say?" she wants him to tell her. ("What did I say!") He isn't sure how to answer, is no good at this sort of thing, the finality required, like dragging boots in an effort to stop a speeding train.

He pushes his right hand through his hair, the phone against his cheek. "I don't know. I can't," he replies in monotone, his words soft. He wants to say more but she's talking at him again, catching him in a whirlpool of sound. In bed the other night, just after Cleo came to the studio and mocked his painting, Sam feigned sleep as she climbed on top of him, pinning his shoulders with her hands. He pictured her above him with his eyes closed, her head tipped to the side, her body curled like a cat about to pounce. Uncertain before, he saw his painting complete, the images shifting and reformed. Cleo too, was transmuted, turned into someone he didn't recognize. He waited, then opened his eyes, reached for her gently, trying to let her know, but she was already rolling away, not understanding, angry with him for failing to satisfy her. She gave him her back, said "Just forget it, Sam," and turned on the tv.

He looks from the kitchen, through the minor light above the stove and toward the darkness in the front room. "Cleo," he repeats into the phone, says "Cleo," says "Cleo," and puts a hand to his face. Her caw continues, urgent as always. She speaks over him, chimes "Sam, Sam, Sam!" a wind setting kites to soar.

The shadows and light on the panels of glass in the back door remain varied hues of yellow, silver and blue. Sam climbs to his feet, stands and spots his own reflection in the glass, tries to place himself, feeling neither inside or out. Cleo barks, the same energy used to seduce him repelling him now. He thinks of the painting he's just finished, his canvas redone on a clean white surface, the merging of new colors and contours, and bending to sit again, he stops, the tint in the glass playing tricks on him. He sees a shape behind shapes, an image appearing, shades inside shadows over his shoulder, giving way to hidden forms.

Darna on the landing, hears the boy on the phone say, "I can't, Cleo. No. Because. I can't." His pleading is the sound a deer might make, all anxious and apologetic. A need she thinks, and moves two steps further down.

The first time Berit hit her, hard with the flat of his hand, the blow landed flush across her cheek, her head snapping and her feet slipping from beneath her. He grabbed her wrists as she fell away, pulled her back as if reeling a fresh catch to shore. His shirt smelled of cigarettes, pine cones and sweat. He held her until she stopped squirming, whispering down into her hair, "Come on now, Darn. You know, don't you? You can't leave me no choice like that." The night before she hadn't returned to the park, had stayed late at Marchino's, helping bus tables, working early shifts, too, the last few weeks, cleaning up after lunch and getting ready for dinner, pocketing forty bucks for her effort. Berit laughed at the sight of such cash, said "Shit, girl," and had her give him twenty. He came around in the dinner rush, twice got her in trouble with Marco, who in his starched white shirt and black matador's vest snapped like a little papillon dog. "No more of this, you understand?"

Darna takes another three steps down, pauses to listen again as Sam in rhythm says, "I know, I know, I know, I know," exactly like that part from the old Bill Withers song. A week ago she took what money she managed to save and rented a room at the Econo Lodge. Berit waited only a night before barging through the back door at Marchino's, two busboys along with a junior chef waving a wet silver cleaver pushing him out again into the alley. Marco cursed and shook his fist, asked Darna afterward if she was ok, then fired her with a weary, "Sorry, sorry, sorry. You can't work here no more."

The light from the kitchen creates shadows down near the last step. Darna's bare toes approach the floor as if entering a cool pool of water. She hears again the boy's voice, abiding and soft, tips her head back as if listening to music, wonders why the first time Berit hit her in the park she didn't leave for good. She remembers how he held her tight, the pain in her jaw and sore stretch of muscle already stiffening her neck as she tried to squirm free but couldn't. An animal trapped, she gave way while Berit placed his lips atop her head and worked his hands beneath her shirt.

"Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle." Darna sets her feet on the floor and waits, as if testing the surface, the glow from the kitchen balanced against the darkness at the top of the stairs. The house is stuffy, sealed tight. She thinks back to Jack in the shower, his hands hard and how hot the water was then. She didn't scream, did not drive her heel down and call for her mother. Did not run when Berit said, "Come on now, girl," the second time he hit her, pushing her against a tree, turning her around afterward and asking, "You like that?" Sour between her legs, she didn't answer, stared off instead toward the red tails of cars on Mercer Street swimming away at steady speeds.

"If I could," Sam says as Darna nears the kitchen and thinks to herself, "Yes? What?" She steps from the stairs into the front room, passing through a gauzy grey curtain of night. Sam turns from where he's been staring at the panes of glass in the rear door and watches, startled, on the verge of shouting. The phone remains against his ear. Darna comes and takes it from him, switches it off and sets it on the counter. The can of corn is visible near the sink. She imagines the house furnished, sees herself carrying a brown bag of groceries, Sam in the front room finding something for the stereo, one of the old tunes she likes, Credence Clearwater or James Brown. She smiles, for the first time in a long while, there in the middle of the floor, the light from the stove a beacon.

Sam looks back at her, an apparition, an image culled from a painting he's only dreamed of creating. She touches his cheek and he doesn't mind, moves closer, trusting, surprisingly so, inexplicably happy. Darna, too, knowing then, it almost doesn't matter when from behind there's a crash of glass and the back door breaking, a basso voice booming like that singer in the old Temptations song, "You're frightened and confused/Which way will you choose/You want your mama." She hears from the porch, "Darn! Darn! Darn!" and stepping out of the light, her thinly soled sandals atop the glass, she slips into shadows before Sam can reach her, running.

Steven Gillis is the author of the novel The Weight of Nothing (Brook Street Press, January, 2005)  Steve's first novel, Walter Falls, was  named a finalist for the 2003 Book of the Year for Literary Fiction by ForeWord Magazine. Steve teaches writing and literature at Eastern Michigan University and is the founder of 826 Michigan, a chapter of Dave Eggers' 826 Valencia.
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