My Friends

Chapter Five

FIVE

Louisa’s head hits the ground so hard that her vision goes dark. For a moment she thinks she’s dying, she’s unconscious for a few seconds, for just one of those seconds she actually thinks she can hear Fish’s voice from beyond the grave. Perhaps that ought to make her happy, but it just makes her angry. Because it was Fish who promised that if they could just survive their damn childhoods, everything would be okay after that. “But you were the one who was supposed to survive, not me, because you were the one who was good at being alone!” Louisa yells in her head, and then opens her eyes in fear and realizes that she might have shouted it out loud.

Someone hushes her, unless she imagines that? She presses her tongue against her teeth, and if she didn’t know better, she’d say she had cat hair in her mouth. Then she hears the hushing again, and when she blinks up at the sky she sees the homeless man on the other side of the trash can with a finger pressed to his lips. Louisa isn’t exactly great at being hushed, she really isn’t, but she keeps quiet and holds her breath when she hears the security guard yell a short distance away: “You speak English? Have you seen a girl?”

Louisa sees the homeless man nod quickly and point in the other direction. The guard sighs breathlessly and turns around and runs. Or maybe “runs” is overstating it, but whatever it is, it’s slightly quicker than his walking. The homeless man stands there until the three hundred pounds of muscle and zero ounces of detective skills finally disappear out of view, then the man leans over Louisa behind the trash can and smiles tentatively. He has a big red Louisa-shaped mark on his face. Their heads must have collided. Louisa remembers running hunched over, so the man must be really short. Beside him sits a ginger cat, she sees now, the homeless man’s clothes are dirty, but the cat looks surprisingly clean and well-kept for a homeless cat. The man looks frightened, but the cat just looks very annoyed, as if Louisa has spilled milk over its stamp collection.

“Sorry,” Louisa whispers in the English she learned from the movie stars, and tries to get to her feet, but she lurches and stumbles right into the homeless man.

When they touch, they both jerk as if from an electric shock, the man falls against the trash can, and Louisa trips over the cat. The cat really, really doesn’t look happy.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Louisa repeats as her backside lands on the ground again.

The man gets laboriously to his feet, his hands are shaking badly and he seems to be in pain, but he smiles as if to say it’s all right. The cat really doesn’t look like it agrees with him. Louisa blushes with embarrassment when she sees that there’s a broken box and dirty blanket behind the trash can, and realizes that she’s blundered straight into the man’s and the cat’s bedroom.

The man looks like he’d like to help her up, but really doesn’t want to reach his hand out to her, she recognizes the body language.

“You don’t like it when people touch you?” she whispers.

The man shakes his head apologetically.

“Me neither,” she says.

He smiles tentatively, as does she. A short silence follows, and unfortunately Louisa is very bad at silences, so she starts babbling. That’s because her brain is a bit of a bully and always tells her that if everyone else is quiet, it’s probably because Louisa seems so weird, so she should definitely start babbling at once! So Louisa turns to the cat and says:

“I like cats! I actually like cats more than dogs, because cats are much harder to shoot!”

Then Louisa’s brain asks her why on earth she said that, and Louisa thinks it was because her brain told her to! Then her brain answers that it’s precisely this kind of stuff that makes people think you’re weird, Louisa! And then Louisa feels so embarrassed that her cheeks can’t hide it. It really is a bully, that brain of hers.

“I mean…,” she mutters apologetically to the man and the cat, “that in films, gangsters always say they’re going to shoot their enemies ‘like dogs.’ They never say they’re going to shoot them ‘like cats.’ Because cats would never sit still long enough…”

The homeless man smiles, the cat very much doesn’t, but it does look like it might dislike Louisa a tiny bit less now. Louisa’s brain immediately tells her to talk more, so she says:

“Plus that people who have dogs often have to stick their hands right down their throats, because dogs are always eating things that can kill them. I mean, should an animal like that really survive? You never see anyone with their hand shoved inside a cat’s mouth…”

Louisa finally falls silent and her brain sighs in despair. The cat tilts its head and appears to be thinking of furballs. The man doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, he looks like he’s ashamed of how much they’re shaking, so he puts them in his pockets. Unfortunately then his pockets start shaking, and he looks even more ashamed of that.

To his relief, Louisa doesn’t appear to notice, because she’s just caught sight of her backpack, the zipper must have broken when she fell and now her whole life is lying on the pavement: The passport, the cans of spray paint, pens, sketch pads, and a pack of cigarettes. Two screwdrivers. And all the clothes she could carry. It hits her so suddenly and so mercilessly that this is all she owns now, seventeen years on the planet and it fits inside one bag, that her skeleton just folds. As she slumps down in despair and starts to gather her things together, she has tears in her eyes, and when the man starts to help her, he does too. It takes a special sort of heart to feel like that about someone else’s belongings.

“Thanks,” Louisa whispers, embarrassment all over her cheeks as she returns the cans of spray paint to the backpack, then she adds shyly: “I didn’t… steal anything in there, just so you know. That isn’t why the guard was chasing me. I’m not a thief.”

The man looks like he believes her, but the cat appears to harbor certain doubts, so Louisa goes on: “And I didn’t vandalize any paintings either! That may have been what that stupid old woman was shouting, but it isn’t true! I would never… never do that. I was only there because I love that painting. I just wanted to see it in real life, just once. I was supposed to see it with my best friend, but she died, and I…”

She bites her lip and her brain starts bullying her again. So she stares down at the ground and mutters some of the worst swearing the homeless man has ever heard. And that’s saying something, because he’s met drunken sailors and been on boats with drunks and once he heard a pregnant woman yelling at a traffic warden, a man has heard quite a few swear words then. He is therefore able to conclude that this young woman is unusually gifted. Louisa curses and curses and curses, then suddenly she starts crying so violently that her whole body shakes, because she had a completely perfect plan this morning, and it definitely didn’t include her standing in an alley behind a church, crying so hard that a homeless cat gets snot on its fur.

“Sorry, sorry,” she sniffs.

The cat looks a little disgusted at the thought of having to wash its fur with its tongue now. The man awkwardly gets to his feet, the knees of his pants even dirtier than before, and holds out her passport. It’s open to the page with her photograph, so he can see her name and date of birth. He opens his mouth, but the sound that comes out is so quiet that it hardly sounds like words, more like the rustling of wind through leaves:

“Louisa. Nice name. Happy birthday.”

Louisa takes her passport, carefully, as if it has a heartbeat. It was Fish’s idea that she get a passport, even though they both knew they would never travel anywhere, because Fish said that a passport is proof that you exist. Now that Fish is gone, it feels like the only proof Louisa has left.

“My… birthday isn’t until tomorrow,” she says.

“I might not see you tomorrow,” the man whispers, with kind eyes and a tender smile. She realizes that his voice doesn’t sound quiet like that because he’s shy, but because he’s ill, it hurts him to talk. She doesn’t know what to say then, and that’s obviously never a good start for her brain, but in Louisa’s defense, no one has ever wished her a happy birthday except for Fish. It isn’t so easy to sort out all your emotions when a stranger suddenly does it. Say something smart! her brain is yelling, but instead Louisa manages to say:

“The guard said he was going to call the police! That’s why I ran, not because I’ve done anything wrong!”

Her brain points out that the homeless man probably doesn’t care, but suddenly Louisa cares very much what he thinks, as if it would be a comfort if at least one single person and one single cat in the whole world didn’t have only negative thoughts about her. So everything just tumbles out of her:

“It’s just that I… I’ve run away. I mean: I’m homeless, but not homeless the way you are, not homeless in a way that you should feel sorry for me… I’m homeless on purpose. I mean, I ran away from the place where I was living, so I’ve probably been reported missing. But I had to, because… it isn’t a good place to sleep alone. You know? And I… I heard the adults talking about my best friend Fish dying, and they said it was just as well. They said she was crazy and dangerous, and that the best thing she could do for the world was to not be in it. So I had to run away, because otherwise I would have killed the idiots who said that, because Fish wasn’t crazy! She was the best at nearly everything, and she was my human. She was MY human, she was my HUMAN. And now she’s dead and no one even cares, no one even remembers her! So I ran, because if the police catch me, they’ll send me back to the foster home because I’m a minor, reported missing. But tomorrow’s my eighteenth birthday and then I won’t be missing anymore, I’ll just be… gone.”

Her brain tells her over and over again that she’s babbling too much, but Louisa’s heart is too exhausted to listen to anything higher up now. It’s one of the last days before Easter, the weather is like winter and spring are fighting over the temperature like two annoying siblings, one minute the sun is shining, the next an icy wind is finding its way through the alley and under her shirt. So she says, nodding toward the blanket and box:

“I sleep in cars, it’s a bit warmer. Plus that I like the sound when you lock the doors from inside.”

She feels ashamed at once, because she realizes that the homeless man can’t break into cars when his hands are shaking, and besides, he might not have had a friend like Fish who taught him how to do it. Louisa feels sorry for him, she feels sorry for anyone who didn’t have Fish.

The homeless man stands silently in front of her for a long time, before that rustling sound comes from his throat again, the softest voice she’s ever heard: “I’m sorry.”

So she whispers back sadly: “I’m sorry too. For… whatever has happened to you.”

His eyes look moist and he sniffs, and the cat moves cautiously to the side so it doesn’t get more snot on its fur. Neither Louisa nor her brain know what to do with the silence that follows, so she takes a deep breath and holds something out to him. The man takes it, surprised: a postcard.

“The painting in the picture there, that’s what I broke into the church to see.”

Tears are running down her cheeks, but she looks almost peaceful, or at least as peaceful as anyone can look if they’ve just been crying on a cat.

“I sometimes think,” she whispers to the postcard, “that the artist who painted all that must have been in so much pain, but he must also have been the world’s happiest person. It’s like he must have felt every single feeling inside himself all at the same time, and it must have been almost unbearable, because otherwise no one would be able to paint like that. You know?”

Her brain is screaming at her that she actually seems super weird now, but it’s a bit late for that, so she goes on: “Do you see the kids out on the pier? People think it’s a painting of the sea, but it’s actually a painting of them. And those kids… they’re in all the artist’s paintings. He never painted them again, but if you know they’re there… you can sort of feel them everywhere anyway. My friend Fish and I always used to talk about going there one day. Jumping from that pier. I was going to learn to swim there!”

Those last words are barely audible over her sobbing. The homeless man looks as if he’d like to hug the postcard as compensation for the difficulty he feels hugging people. He hands it back carefully, but Louisa shakes her head.

“You can keep it,” she says.

Because she’s seen the real thing now. It’s in her brain and her heart forever, no one can take it from her.

“I always think that those kids were poor, like me. But now the artist’s paintings get sold for millions, so now he’s world-famous and really rich and doesn’t have to be afraid of anything anymore,” Louisa mumbles, as if trying to hide her envy.

The man looks very envious too, holding on to the postcard. Louisa gets the pack of cigarettes out, Fish was really the one who smoked, but she puts one in her mouth anyway. She offers the pack to the man, and he takes one, very hesitantly. Louisa can’t help thinking that’s a kind thing to do, taking the risk of getting lung cancer out of sheer politeness.

“Do you smoke?” she asks.

He shakes his head amiably.

“Good,” Louisa says, “because I don’t have a lighter.”

Since Fish died, she just likes holding cigarettes, feeling them between her lips sometimes. Just as she’s about to explain that to the man, she sees that his hands are shaking so badly that he can barely hold his. So she asks, in a voice as full of sympathy as it is of curiosity:

“Are you an alcoholic? Is that why you’re shaking?”

The man says nothing for so long that she’s about to apologize, but then his head moves slowly from side to side and he replies:

“No, no, I don’t drink. I… spill nearly all of it.”

It takes so long for Louisa to realize that this is a joke that her laughter comes out twice as hard. She hasn’t laughed like that since Fish was still here. The man looks so happy at having been the cause of that wonderful sound that the next joke comes almost without effort:

“It’s… it’s no laughing matter, I lost my job because… because of this.”

“What job did you do?” Louisa asks, surprised.

“Tambourine thief,” he smiles.

Oh, how she giggles. Oh, oh, oh. The best sound in the world. She waves her hand in the air and exclaims:

“Is that why you don’t smoke? Because you always stub your cigarette out by mistake? Are you really homeless, or do you just keep losing your keys?”

Oh, oh, oh, how he chuckles at that. Louisa wishes she could say something else just as funny, but her brain is useless, so instead she says:

“Are you ill?”

He nods, but without sadness.

“Yes.”

“Are you… dying?” she asks, because he actually looks like he is, as if he might get blown apart if the wind changes direction.

He nods again, but he only looks sad because she looks sad. With a voice full of solace, the man says, out of nowhere:

“Life is long, Louisa. Everyone will tell you that it’s short, but they’re lying. It’s a long, long life.”

She can barely keep her balance, hearing that. It’s honestly quite a lot to take in from a stranger all in one go, isn’t it? Particularly when you haven’t spoken to a single human being at all for a very long time. She puts on her backpack just so she can hold on to the straps, so she knows what to do with her hands, and then she looks down at the ground and mumbles:

“My friend Fish couldn’t handle being alive. She was hurting too much. But I think I’d like to try, to be alive.”

The homeless man nods proudly, and Louisa might be imagining it, this surely wouldn’t be the first time, but she can’t help thinking that the cat looks a little proud as well.

She doesn’t say good-bye, she isn’t good at that, so she just raises her hand, and the one-armed man in the tree on her lower arm looks like he’s waving. But just as she’s turning away, the homeless man suggests:

“Would you… would you like to paint something?”

She looks back over her shoulder in surprise, and the man makes a gentle but grandiose gesture toward the back wall of the church, as if it were his living room. Louisa doesn’t know what to do, no one apart from Fish has ever asked her paint anything. How can you say no to that?

So Louisa stops and paints. She shrugs off her backpack and uses up almost every single can of spray paint. She paints small hearts and fish that feel no pain. She paints cockroaches, like that stupid old woman in the church called her, but she paints the cockroaches so they are beautiful. So beautiful that their beauty is an act of vengeance. Then she paints jellyfish in guards’ uniforms, and the homeless man smiles so widely at that that he almost falls over.

He tentatively reaches for the can of spray paint she’s holding, and Louisa looks so surprised when he gently takes it from her hand, without touching her skin. Then he paints, with trembling fingers, and the fact that Louisa is still standing when he’s finished is actually quite remarkable. Because her heart has left her body by then.

He paints skulls.