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from his jaw line, sliding her tongue between her lips, pressing it against the stubble,
running it up the sleep greasy sheen of his cheek until she could taste the tear that had
trickled from one of his closed eyes.
Eli? she whispered again.
Still nothing.
She rolled back over, pulled the sheet up to her chin, and closed her eyes against
the dawn.
After the blueness had left the room, replaced with a yellow that was harsher and
fuller of sun, Eli woke up. Maya was lying next to him, already awake. He reached over,
beneath the sheet, pulled down a little lower now, and ran his hand up her silk smooth
thigh.
Morning, Sweetness, he mumbled through drymouth.
You were whimpering again. She didn t even look at him, just kept staring up
at the ceiling.
Was I?
Actually crying this time.
Did I wake you?
No, I was already awake.
He rolled over and nibbled her ear.
Look, Eli, is there something you need to tell me?
About what?
It s not like you, that s all. The whimpering. The crying. I want you to tell me
what the hell s the matter with you.
Eli leaned across the bed, over Maya and her fabulous heat, to grab his cigarettes
and lighter from the nightstand. He brought himself back over to his side and propped the
pillow up against the headboard, shook out a cigarette and lit it. Through the thin, twirling
veil of gray smoke, he looked at their small apartment. They had something good. He
liked what they had created over the past year. They never argued. They didn t really have
any worries and, until this past month or so, they had had some really great sex. Eli didn t
want to lose any of that.
Maya sighed into the heavy yellowness of the room.
Are you going to tell me? she said.
Eli took another drag and crushed the cigarette out.
Yeah, I ll tell you.
Sometimes, when everything was blue, Elijah didn t just see what was in front of
him. There was something else. It was like the air around him was too thin or something.
Almost like he could see through it. And it wasn t just his sight that was affected. He
heard things too, when everything was blue.
It started right before Eileen and Cynthia died. The week before, to be exact. June
15. More than two years ago. Two years and one week ago.
Dawn in the bedroom of their new house in the suburbs and Elijah had woken up
and looked around the room. The blue filled the room and inside the blue, Elijah saw the
swirling shapes. He got out of bed and walked into the middle of the room, deeper into
the blue, Eileen sleeping soundly, Cynthia still tucked away in her room with the Dr.
Seuss murals painted on the walls.
The blue wasn t like any other color Elijah had ever seen. It almost seemed like
calling it blue was to do it some sort of injustice. It couldn t be categorized like that. It
was the blue of a hundred different skies. The blue of Heaven, perhaps.
Elijah stood in the middle of the room, shivering cold and still sweaty clammy.
He felt the blue moving all around him. He felt it brush up against his ear and whisper
something no more intelligible than the wind. Sitting down, he marveled at the way the
blue could coil itself up before slowly, hypnotically unfurling. He admired the color and
the sheer mystery of it.
Over the next week, his feelings changed.
The blue continued to visit him, gaining in intensity.
Three days after the first, Elijah noticed there were people in the blue. Spirits
maybe. Ghosts. Who knew? He wasn t sure he wanted to know. By the end of that fourth
day, he could make out some of the faces in the blue. There must have been hundreds. All
surfacing through the blue before receding.
Before the sun ate the blue that day, he saw the face like a bruise. That was when
he knew everything wasn t going to be okay.
On the fifth day, there were fewer faces.
On the sixth day, even fewer.
On the seventh day, the day of Eileen and Cynthia s death, the only face
remaining was the one that looked like a bruise. That was when Elijah assumed the man
with the face like a bruise had somehow consumed the other faces. Maybe he would have
opened it up to speculation, something to ponder, to think about, maybe even ask
somebody about, if it weren t for the car crash that took Eileen and Cynthia that night.
The grief in and of itself was crippling and then there were all the legal
ramifications on top of that, the people in suits telling him his time for grieving was over,
and the blue was gone anyway so there wasn t really anything to think about.
A little more than a year later he met Maya and his grief was replaced with love.
Although the love was somewhat tainted with guilt. So much guilt, in fact, that Elijah
could never really bring himself to tell Maya about the previous loves of his life. Initially,
he told himself he was just waiting for the right time. Eventually, he convinced himself
there wasn t a right time. He had waited too long. To tell her now would surely cost him
the relationship.
But the blue had come back and the man with the face like a bruise and Maya
had heard him crying and whimpering names, fragments. Enough to make her suspicious.
That, on top of the impotence and the despondency, was sure to ruin everything he and
Maya had.
Neither one of them had gotten out of bed to open the windows or turn on the air
conditioner and Maya lay beside Elijah, the tears coming out of her eyes mingling with
the sheen of sweat on her cheeks. She brushed the moisture off with the back of an
already moist hand and reached over to the nightstand to get a cigarette. He had never
seen her smoke. She seemed like a different woman as she greedily lit the cigarette. She
inhaled the cigarette and coughed up a combination of tears, phlegm, and smoke. She sat
up, keeping the sheet pulled to just above her breasts.
I thought, she said, that you had found someone else. I thought those were the
names you were saying. Some whore at the office you were fucking.
I would never do anything like that to you. He put his hand on her thigh, ran it
up to the crease between where her leg met her pubis.
I thought that was the whole reason why you couldn t& you know.
I would never cheat on you. You know that& don t you?
She shook her head. It happens.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Maya s crying increased. Unable to
finish the cigarette, she crushed it out. Elijah moved his hand onto the soft mound of her
sex. It happens, she mumbled again through a thick mouth. He brushed his hand over
her clitoris and then stopped, bringing his hand quickly away.
I need to go, he said.
Don t go, Maya cried.
I have to work. I need to go.
He dressed in a hurry and left the apartment, slamming the door on his way out.
Once in the car, he knew he wasn t going to work. He was too angry. He didn t
exactly know why. He sat in the hot car, sweat rolling down his face, shaking with anger.
Slowly, he composed himself enough to pull away from the curb and take the twisted
mess inside his head with him.
Stopping at the liquor store, he bought a bottle of Jim Beam and continued on to
the Moston Memorial Gardens. There, he would be able to sit. To contemplate. Sort some
things out.
He opened the Jim Beam as soon as he got out to the car and was nearly drunk by
the time he got to the cemetery. He pulled the car up near Eileen and Cynthia s gravesites
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