Under the Bridge
The rain was just starting to fall in the moist grey sky as we climbed up the hill underneath the bridge. Large chinks of rock loosened beneath our feet as we stepped.
I laughed.
The underside of the bridge was covered in graffiti, and I watched him take in the red, blue and black scrawlings. His eyes were lost, his uncombed blond hair and scruffy clothing gave him the appearance of a vagrant who had woken up in an unfamiliar place.
One of Jim Morrison’s bums on eternity came to mind.
He lost his footing, stumbling and sending a grey avalanche down into the waters below. I held out my hand to help him onto the support where I sat.
It was painfully evident that he didn’t belong here.
A long nail scratched my knuckle as he hoisted himself up. I put my thumb in my mouth, tasting the metallic tinge of blood.
Those long nails. How did he play guitar with such long nails? I looked at my own, filed short with the remnants of chipping polish, and still not capable of the things his fingers did.
He sniffled, leaning back, lean ivory stomach showing between the black of his shirt, the blue of his jeans.
I reached for the water bottle, only half empty, unscrewing the cap and pouring the remnants of the clear liquid onto the rocks below, staining them black. He watched.
The scissors slit the screen square to fit around the neck of the bottle, being sure to indent it enough.
He watched intently, with those intense eyes, so hard to look at and not get lost in that they were an un-color, not black, but swallowing everything that looked into them.
His fingers snapped the rubber band off his arm as he handed it to me. I took notice of the word printed on it… SUSPICIOUS.
“Suspicious, eh?” I asked, nothing in my voice.
“Yeah,” the same grey voice, the same intense gazeless stare. “My mom gave it to me. She said it reminded her of me.”
I smiled at the irony as I fastened it around the bottleneck. The corners of his mouth upturned as he caught my sad smile.
My fingers fumbled at my backpack, grasping the two small baggies by their fingertips. They deftly removed the small brownish buds, packing them tightly into the screen over the bottleneck.
He moved closer to me. I held the makeshift bong to his mouth.
His face was so close to mine that I could see the fine blond hairs on his upper lip, his chin, those fuzzy adolescent fibers.
I flicked my lighter. He closed his eyes, concentrating deeply. I let the wind blow the flame out before I lit anything.
He breathed but got nothing.
“Before….” I started, watching his eyes open to meet mine, looking at my
reflection in those twin tides, still with the absence of brown, blue and green.
I turned my face away. “Do you trust me?”
His eyes widened, searching my eyes, brow, mouth for any traces of mockery, looking for my joke.
“What don’t I trust about you?”
I flicked the lighter again, bringing it towards the screen. He lowered his face to the plastic hole in the ridged body of the bottle, breathed in…
And took a hit.
