Dark Side of the Moon: 4 Dark and Fanciful Tales of Portero by Dia Reeves

Author:Dia Reeves [Reeves, Dia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-03-23T23:00:00+00:00

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The trolley pulled up in front of the St. Teresa stop and Cado exited, his eyes so traumatized by light that several seconds passed before they adjusted enough to see Patricia sitting on the blue bench. Her sunset gown covered with a black silk robe. Her feet bare.

Her toe polish chipped.

“You came back,” she said, wonderingly, staring at him like she’d never seen him before.

Cado grabbed her and lifted her off her feet. “Why are you running the streets barefoot like a country girl?”

“Never mind my feet!” She squeezed him even harder than he was squeezing her. “You sounded so weird on the phone. I just knew—”

Whatever she knew was drowned out by the cathedral bells striking four.

He’d only been gone an hour? It had felt like a million years. Yet there was the dead woman, as faceless as ever, but no longer animated. The lampposts were on again. Maybe they’d never gone out—he had gone out.

Cado buried his face in her neck. “You smell good.”

“Like Paris, still?” said Patricia, amused that he thought such things when he’d never been out of Texas. “Or maybe like Amsterdam?”

“Like life.”

“You know now, don’t you?” she said. “What I meant about reality?”

He nodded, then tried to speak, but it took a while. Patricia understood. She lived in a town where everyone understood such things. But only he had survived it.

He sat with her on the bench and told her what happened.

“How strange,” Patricia said, when he was done, staring at the trolley and the spidery surprise inside. “But it’ll make a nice addition to the museum exhibit, I’m sure. Can I see the knife you killed it with?”

“You can have it,” said Cado, handing her the case. “That can be our symbol, since you hate flowers.”

“Your flute can be our symbol?” said Patricia, confused.

“My flute’s in the trunk of my car still,” Cado explained, snapping the latches open. “I lost the sheath to my hunting knife, so I’ve been carrying it around in this old case ever since.”

Patricia turned the knife, cloudy with alien blood, this way and that. “What’s the symbol?”

“That our love can destroy anything.” As soon as Cado said it, he regretted it, struck by a powerful image of Patricia and him rampaging like Godzilla, trampling whole cities into rubble.

“Cado”—Patricia clutched the knife to her chest—“that’s so sweet!”

He took her in his arms, relieved, and then kissed her. “And just for the record,” he said, “that wasn’t a goodbye kiss either.”

Sometime later after Cado had insisted on dressing her feet in his Chucks, they began the walk back to Patricia’s house.

“Did you find your answer?” she asked him.

“Rice,” he said immediately. “If they’ll have me.”

Her squeal of joy echoed over the whole town.

“I feel stupid to have been so worried,” he said, the bricks of the sidewalk cool beneath his socks. “Life’s too short not to do what you want.”

“Sorry I didn’t believe in you,” Patricia said, as they stepped over the dead woman in unison. “I do now.

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