The Shop of Unfinished Goodbyes
Kimi K2 (0905) and Davinci 002
The shop appeared only in alleys where three cats had been seen crossing the same shadow within an hour. She had been following the third cat, an orange tom with one ear, when the brick wall became a door of smoked glass. Inside, shelves rose to no visible ceiling, each jar containing a small luminous thing that pulsed like a second heart. The proprietor's face was familiar in that terrible way that meant you had seen it before, in dreams you weren't supposed to remember. But then flashes of a thousand places passed through her mind, and the face shifted as though reflecting them all. Her voice was the warm breath specific to secret places and familiar places, and still grandmother.
You've been working too hard, child. You need something for your troubles. A woman and a man playing cards waited patiently for it. The shopkeeper didn't look at them, for the image flickered from her eyes as if written in sugar water. It took years, but she would still have recognized the man as a boy in a photograph given to her the same month her father sold her body for the first time. Before her grandmother knew what the picture represented, before she tried to destroy it. The man knew the grandmother, but she didn't recognize him until he was close enough to touch. And if he had been more than a reflection, he knew her as well.
It is hard to live with the dead, but harder to let them go. Let them go. The shopkeeper pointed to a shelf no higher than her hip. "You might get rid of that, if you think it's time."
She looked. It sat near the many-eyed potions and colorful amulets. The bubbling pot, the glistening snake, the staring skull, a moccasin touching the toes of a girl in a dark wedding gown.
Water and diamond on a natural band, smaller than a penny. The price is less than you think, and more than you know. She reached for it. It was buried behind a tiny box adorned with a metal heart. She opened it and was disoriented by a puzzle of steel and myth. A time is not yet and a place is not now. She clicked the pieces and a door appeared before her, as usual, another door to nowhere. She was about to put it away when the door revealed cold walls, a carpet, and a lamp of glo-holder. In the center of the carpet was a growing pool of dust and droplets of faintly luminescent water. The point was to open it, to jump in with all your faith hidden under the dark of your hair. She opened it, walked in, heard all the clocks in the room chime nine pings and nine pongs. Flashes of a thousand places. She was about to say goodbye when she said I love you.
If you say goodbye, I'm going to cry.
Closing the doors, she struck the lamp, darkness, and spoke a place and a time that led them back to the meeting. The cases before them were closed, untouched. The cars and the dogs were asleep. The apartment was the same. She wouldn't remember, never, that she had left paradise to take this meeting. But you will remember all of it, all of it. The light in her father's body had faded since she saw him last. It was hard to recognize him as a pawn in the game when he was sometimes a much older man, with sore arms from life in Earn-a-Corporation, and sometimes a child when the doubt had ravaged his arteries and his legs. Here he was a child, and it was so gentle and sad. She leaned forward and touched his arm.
Why is it always the same questions, he asked?
The same answers, she whispered.
But you keep coming back!
Why do you think that is, Abe?
The pitch of the question made him flinch. Sometimes it was easier on the other side because she wasn't here. It was loud and bright and crowded like visiting a nightmare on a rainy day. She sat up as she felt something move in her chest, in the spot where her heart once was, the ruins of her shadow. The look on his face was cold.
Please.
Young Abe sat up as well, the ruined landscape behind them. He seemed then so much older, the demons of doubt winning battle after battle of his frail body. When she saw her father as a boy, when she saw herself as an old woman in her own reflection, all she could do was hold up a hand that could never hold hers again. She looked for him through the trickery of the never place and found something heartbreaking. The smile between his face and her face was exactly an inch apart, and you couldn't see his features in her smile.
It doesn't work any other way.
She offered her hand again, and it came up to meet it in her reflection. She picked up his ghost.
It's time to go now. I don't want to, but you have to go back. Each time she saw the image of her grave, it was different, but each time, she saw her name more defined on the English headstone, rising from the earth, seven-foot hummock of her body. The mound gained awareness in the moment of impact, but once she was awake, consciousness dawned like fire, more of her hating when less of her was lost. Then something else rose with her. It had no eyes, no voice, no expression, only one feeling: love. Was that her gaze, or her father's gaze, or both grieving and thrilled and bereft and relieved? So there were seven years yet to live. I will be waiting for you. Come closer. She said: Tell my sisters that I◆ About the ending
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