Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Henry and I met in high school. We were not a thing. He was a jock. The sheer width of his shoulders making their way down the narrow hallways of McKinley High was enough to clear a path. Tall, silent and generally glowering, he exuded a reverberating “no” without ever saying a word. He’d been that way since he transferred in sophomore year. He was a star football player, and his teammates seemed to love him, but even the cheerleaders kept their distance from the quiet teenager.
Sure they were interested, but he didn’t really inspire a lot of conversation when they approached and eventually I think they just gave up. I overheard their pining for three years of gym class and bathroom gossip sessions so I would know.
He never talked to me. We would have made the comical picture though. Delinquent daughter of the saintly single mother whose only saving grace seemed to be a penchant for good grades even if she was determined to piss off and undermine every single teacher who crossed her path with a star football player who towered a foot over her head?
We all believe a soul mate is out there, right? That somehow the cosmos or the gods or someone will flick whatever strand of fate they need to at the opportune moment so that the destined two see each other through the crowds in JFK and such?
That’s not how it happened. We had classes together all the time. We knew each other but never spoke. Had we not ended up at the same dive bar in city across the country six years after graduation, I would scoff just as much as the next realist about fate and soul mates.
To be honest, the shadow that suddenly loomed over my shoulders in that dark bar in Portland on a rainy night scared the living shit out of me. I screamed unsteadily when his large hand clamped down on my shoulder. The bartender looked up. The hand was off my shoulder. And then I heard a deep voice that I only barely recognized saying my name.
“Penny? Henry River. We went to high school together, remember?” He’d backed up another step under the glare of the bartender. Then he grinned, and I remember being so struck by the way the smile actually lit up his face that my shoulders must have dropped because everything was okay again. The bartender went back to his customers, I removed my hand from my own throat, and he dropped his chin a little trying to catch my eye. “I hope I didn’t scare you. I thought I recognized the tattoo from my table.”
“Henry River. Henry. What are you doing here?” My voice was still a little breathless with the question, but I got the words out, and my heart seemed to be slowing down a little bit. He told me he was in town on business. Some big fancy client his bosses had sent him out from Boston to sweet-talk. He wanted to buy me a drink and hear all about my life.
I had laughed at the offer of a drink.
We hadn’t been friends in high school. I couldn’t see the reason for us to become friends now - especially considering our bicoastal status - but I liked his quiet bulk next to me at the bar, his table abandoned and tab transferred. One drink turned into two drinks. Two drinks turned into lunch the next day after his meetings and before I had to be at work.
Then we were waking up next to each other in a fancy hotel room, and I was wondering how I ended up naked with the varsity football star who fastened his cuffs with metal and wore aftershave that smelled like mint and orange in this post-college existence we seemed to be living. He ordered room service after he tossed me a button down shirt I could have belted and worn as a dress. We spent the morning laughing, and he almost missed his flight.
That’s how it happens. One day you’re alone, and the next you’re part of a pair. We never would have worked as teenagers. I was too angry. He was too shy. Now we complimented each other. He had shaken off the shyness and was comfortable as the center of attention. I had made peace with the teenage demons I had been battling and come out on the other side of college quieter, more determined and now appreciative of the biting wit we had both cultivated to entertain the opposite sex.
It still took a year for me to move back east. Try as I might, convincing your long distance beau to leave a lucrative position in a company where he’s already received one promotion and is being groomed for more proved to be impossible. And my brain knew that it really wasn’t fair. He had a solid career that was actually tied to the city where he lived. I was answering phones in a brittle art gallery and writing at night, both jobs I could have held anywhere in the country.
I’d fled the east coast after college. There were no tearful late night phone calls to girlfriends and siblings I missed desperately. Mom kept in touch with sporadic calls as her hectic schedule allowed. But we weren’t close - not the way I saw in the TV movies that were my after school babysitters - and I was fine with that.
Henry was a whole different story. Quiet to the point of muteness in school, imagine my surprise when I met the rest of his family. Three younger sisters and a brother, all of whom worshiped their big brother. Parents who were always around and asking if we needed anything or if we wanted to get together for dinner on Sunday.
It was bizarre and wonderful.
Fast forward seven years and we’re here, comfortably settled in a tiny house far enough away from the big city that I can breath but close enough for him to get to work. I loved the life we’d built for ourselves, surrounded by friends with family just a short trip away. We still giggled at each other when we met up at the register of a bookstore, both carrying a small stack of books we definitely didn’t need.
Henry was my best friend, my cliched partner in crime, and I still knew, sitting at the microfiche machine that afternoon, even he would roll his eyes and grab me up for a kiss if I told him about the gnarled little man I had seen crawl out of my purse that afternoon. He would follow it up by asking if I was finally working on that fantasy novel again as he threw me over his shoulder and carried me upstairs for nefarious activities.
But the miniature man was sitting here, knees bent beneath the fold of my purse, tapping out a beat on his knobby knees with knobby knuckles. He actually looked like a gnarled twig. I didn’t see how that would help. He seemed to live in my books. Why want to look like the source material rather than the product? But who was I to question physicality in my strange companions.
I did think for a moment about how ludicrous all of this was; how I was clearly seeing things that couldn’t possibly exist, and a part of my brain was wondering if I wasn’t completely and totally bat-shit crazy.
But I knew within days that I wasn’t. Because he stood in my hand, looked in my eye and told me the plot of Rebecca before the week was out. If that won’t convince you that the vision you’re having is real, nothing will.
Finally it was time to move. Closing time in my small town had come, and the librarians were shuffling patrons towards the exits as quickly as possible, moving among the tables towards the front of the room, speaking in soft voices to the individuals still seated. We must have both been captivated by the movement and the peace of the room because my hand rose and rested on my purse, and he didn’t move. I had time to shift my attention to the movement in the room before looking back and realizing that I was holding the bag closed against him.
He was pressed to the edge of the zipper, one slim set of fingers clenching the leather I had always seen as thin but that filled his palm. I released my grip promptly, doing my best not to actually usher him into the bag but hoping that he got my drift. The fold of leather rose above him and then he was gone, diving into the shadowed recesses of receipts, the stray paperback and a cellophane wrapped candy or two. The bag didn’t even expand with his burrowing. No one glancing in our direction would have noticed anything more than a woman abruptly releasing her purse for no apparent reason.
On my walk to the car I decided that this was just silly. I mean, realistically, he was either completely a figment of my imagination (totally feasible) or I needed to talk to him. He lived in my bookcases. I didn’t let just anyone touch my books after all. Took me a solid six months of living with Henry before I deigned to mix his books with mine on our shelves.
“I won’t hurt you,” I said a block into the drive home, speaking as confidently as I could. How does one address something that you’re not completely sure isn’t a figment of your imagination?
The top flap of leather huffed briefly and there was a slight vibration in the air, but I heard no actual word that I understood.
I continued driving. Green Day was playing faintly on the radio. The road wuffled under the tires. There was no doubt in my mind that I would reach home, gather my things, and never see hide nor hair of the tiny man again.
Logic was no longer a question. I knew I wasn’t crazy. He had stood - on one foot and for only one moment - on the palm of my hand. His shoe had been the size of a pencil eraser though not the same shape. It had felt as smooth as the woodland figurines my grandmother had collected later in life and then left to me in a misbegotten moment of nostalgia on her deathbed. And I had seen the swirls of mahogany and dusky purple in his skin.
Gravel crunched under the tires pulling into our driveway. I cut the engine, huffed loudly and clicked my seat belt free. Bag, books I had hastily checked out with Dave as I hustled towards the door under Mrs. Devonshire’s watchful eye tucked under one arm, and the bag pulled slowly up one arm.
“I’m home!” The words rang through the empty kitchen. Henry was home. I could feel him in the air, filling the house with his warmth and presence. Water burbled in the pipes so he must be in the shower.
My things dropped unceremoniously to the counter. I forgot for a moment that I had just been talking to my purse in the car. How was the question I immediately asked myself. How does one forget talking to their purse in the car?
“Freeze!” The words jumped from my throat before my eyes registered the tiny man by the hideous sugar caddy I couldn’t get rid of no matter how much I wanted to. “I see you.”
He put one foot forward and looked like he might dash towards the shadow where his foot rested.
“I just want to know your name.”
“Learid,” he said, the words sounding more like papers rustling against each other than individual letters forming words. Then I blinked, and he was gone.
My feet felt heavy and light at the same time going up the stairs. My tiny shadow had a name. It was a nice name. Learid. It fit the little man with the shock of dark hair. I pushed through the door to our bedroom feeling that the day had been a success in more ways than one.