Table of Contents Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Editor's Note Review of Coventry Review of Virginity Or Death! Review of Imperial Reckoning Poetry Politico By Beth L. Block Peonies By Natasha S. Garnett A Foreigner in the Street By Tony Zurlo Sand Hill Cranes and Other Eccentricities By Jaqueline Powers On Sleepless Nights By Joy Harold Helsing I Don't Want To Be Hughes By Joe Koch Fiction Baseball Games and One-Eared Cats By Pete Laffin Beige By Dawn Merrow Geezer Cage By Scott W. Alten Sandlot By J. Conrad Guest Dinosaurs and Barbie Dolls By Michelle McMahon Burlesque Show By Stanley P. Anderson About the Contributors © 2006, River Walk Journal and respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Do not use or reproduce without permission. River Walk Journal, Inc. Board of Directors Chairman - Elizabeth Ross Vice Chairman - Joseph Koch Secretary/Treasurer - Geri Stock-Ross Editorial Director - Patti Kurtz, DA Literacy Director - Vacant Policy Director - PA State Rep. Jess Stairs Advisory Board Chairman - Patti Kurtz, DA Asst. Chairman - Dan Lachenman, PhD Samuel Hazo Christopher Leland Edwin Yoder Joseph Bathanti Journal Staff Publisher - Elizabeth Ross Editor-In-Chief - Joseph Koch Sen. Fiction Editor - Patti Kurtz Sen. Poetry Editor - Neeldhara Misra Sen. Creative Nonfiction Editor - Brenda Coxe Contributing Editor - Robert Dittman Blog Contributing Editor - Maggie Koster Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/subs.html. Questions about promotions, subscribers' services, and advertising should be sent to publisher@riverwalkjournal.org. River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit VolunteerMatch.

Beige By Dawn Merrow New England weather forces one to appreciate respite. More than appreciate; as a man who has grown up in the wait-a-minute weather of Massachusetts, I worship at the feet of a cleverly placed box fan or still moment in a blizzard. That’s why I loved her. My mind, my heart, my life, are all a series of sweltering July afternoons and pinprick cold February mornings. As a result, I find myself continually seeking out my respite, boredom. Beige, pilled wool and neatly filed, unpolished, fingernails provided me with calm to the storms I conjured for myself. Nothing trapped my wandering, shuffled gait like the girl no one else had ever seen. I was spending my last winter of graduate school meandering between the bar a couple blocks from my apartment, and my classes. The dissertation I was struggling through was being written primarily on tattered bar napkins. The Power of Boredom was to be my masterpiece, the culmination of everything I had studied. It was going to make me a doctor of philosophy. I never intended it to also be the icebreaker with the love to define all my previous loves. While walking a deserted Boston street to my bar, fresh from a class on Nihilism, I saw her. She was sitting on a bench, waiting for a bus, reading a book of poetry. William Wordsworth. Her slight shoulders were layered heavily. Underneath a navy blue down coat I saw the top button of a worn tan sweater. It appeared to be wool. The plastic top button, a deeper shade of tan, sat securely fastened on the curving center of her collarbone. Her neck was long, wrapped solidly in a knit scarf that perfectly matched her coat. Atop her bound neck was her down turned, reading, face. The features were small, cast in a heavy shadow. She had mat brown hair tied back in a ponytail, which was only faintly off center. Equally bundled was her lower half. She had protected her legs from the cold with heavy denim and snow boots that rose halfway up her calf. The book she read, Selected Poetry of William Wordsworth, was held securely in her lap by gently manicured, but not polished, fingers. “I’ve always enjoyed Wordsworth,” I said, and sat down beside her. Her blandness was intoxicating. She shifted her weight away from me, a deep flush coming to her cheeks. For the first time, she looked at me. Hazel eyes, the color nondescript and vague, darted from the page to me. I thought it was impossible, but her mouth actually got smaller. “Poetry is so beautiful,” I tried again, “are you an English major?” She shook her head subtly in the negative. “Marketing communication,” she whispered, and I rejoiced. There were no embossed poetic musings for her, only buying and selling. She was perfect. “Oh,” I said, trying to hide my excitement, “do you go to Suffolk?” “Emerson,” she replied. “I go to Emerson.” I knew she was too good to be true. Of course she went to an art school. “Are you an artist?” I asked, praying she was not. “Not really,” she answered, and then added more to herself, “and I really hate poetry.” I smiled broadly and held out my hand to her. “My name is Michael,” I said to her, “what’s your name?” “Jane,” she answered, ignoring my hand. After a series of silent moments, her staring at the book and me staring at her, she closed the book and turned to me. She took a very deep breath and then said, “Are you going to rob me? If you are, I should let you know that I don’t have very much money on me, and this book isn’t worth much of anything. All I have is my money for the bus, that’s all. You can stop being nice to me, if you plan on robbing me. I know you must want something, I mean why else would you…” I cut her off, “Would you like to get a drink with me?” Her mouth hung open, halfway between words. “No?” I answered for her. Why would she want to get a drink with me? She’s obviously not the kind of girl to take a chance on a stranger. She probably had never taken a real risk before in her life. A life of simplicity, and safety, suited her variety best. “I…” she said, “…I can’t.” Better than a flat out rejection, inability I could work with. “Somewhere else to be?” I asked; I knew I was being pushy. “Not really,” she answered. “I’m only nineteen.” It had never occurred to me that the innocence about her actually had a source. She was a good six years younger than me, no wonder she appeared so pure and angelic. I had assumed it was a gift she had, immaculate boredom. Her untouched beige. “Oh,” I had said, “you don’t seem young.” “I’m not…” she struck back meekly, “…young. I’m not young.” “Younger than I am,” I replied. I enjoyed the sparring. I knew I would win. “That’s true,” she backed off. Once again, we were sitting in silence. I hated silence, it was too still; not nearly chaotic enough for me. The wind was picking up, so I didn’t know how much longer I could sit in the freezing cold. The bus would also be coming to pick up my find, and was not heading in the direction I would have been going in. Her home was one way, my liquor was another. “I’m a philosophy major,” I said, trying to start up a new conversation. “I hadn’t asked,” she said. She was trying to get rid of me; smart girl. “Where are you heading?” I asked. I was grasping at straws. Slippery, short, spiked straws. “Home,” her voice was curt, abbreviated. She never said more than she needed to, most likely never did. “Do you live in a dorm?” I knew I was beginning to become the man mothers warn against. My questions were treading on dangerous ground. Jane knew this too. She didn’t answer my question, but reopened her book. It was obvious she wasn’t reading; I could see her analyzing my intent. She never got a chance to answer me. I saw the bus coming down the street, slowly making its way through heavy snow and road salt. “Well,” I said, pulling out a scarp of paper with a few sentences on Nihilism written on it, “Jane from Emerson who hates poetry, I’m writing down my phone number and address. You don’t need to call me, but I think you’re very…” Interesting? No, that’s not the right word for her. I never completed the sentence. After scrawling my first name, phone number, and address down on the back of my notes, I handed her the piece of paper. She didn’t hesitate in taking it, but immediately got on the bus with it in her hand. I called after her, “I go to the bar down the street every night,” then coyly added, “They serve soft drinks.” The bus pulled away, and I saw her smile. Three nights later, as I sat stoically staring at my usual area of veneered bar, Jane came through the door. From where I was I could hear the door open, and then I saw a reflection of navy blue in front of me. I knew it was her, but did not look up. She hesitated, shuffling her feet and staring at me. Then, with quick, loud steps she came over and sat at a stool two down from mine. The bartender, John, came to her, about to ask for an ID. “Just a Coke, please,” she whispered to him. He smiled at her with the Irish eyes that reminded every girl that came in of their late grandfather. I glanced over at her; she was halving her attention between the book in her hands and me. This time she was reading a collection of William Blake. “I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love,” I said, still not looking at her. She smiled, recognizing the Blake quotation. “You know,” I began, turning to face her, “for a girl who hates poetry you sure do read a lot of it.” She had on the same coat, scarf, and ponytail. The sweater was different, though; a deep rose color. She was wearing a skirt, too. It was made of a heavy cotton-like material, and reached far below her knee. The boots, while still heavy, seemed more feminine. She had dressed for me, which was clear enough. Her drink was brought to her, and she nodded kindly at John, who glared at me as if he were protecting her. He knew exactly who she was; I had spent the last few days obsessing over every detail of our first meeting. The perfection of her name, the complete lack of interesting features. She sipped her drink slowly through the straw, holding her mouth perfectly still. It was then that I noticed she wore no make-up. Not a stitch. No mascara, no rouge. Her skin was pure. “So,” I continued, “why do you read it if you hate it?” “A class,” she responded, eyes glued to her glass. I sighed, and moved down a stool. Now, there was only one between us. Her legs and arms stiffened, frightened of the closing space. Alternating mechanically between book and soda, Jane tried her best to feign ignoring me. It wasn’t working. Her eyes gave her away, straying to my huddled frame. She had quick eyes. “Do you like my bar?” I asked her. “It’s not your bar, school boy,” John muttered at me from behind the tap. He took my empty glass and replaced it with a full one. Jane laughed to herself. It was quiet, and only just shook her right shoulder. “Well,” I corrected, angry at John for getting the first laugh before I had, “do you like our good friend John’s bar?” Jane looked up at John, who was intently waiting for her answer. Not as close as I was, however. “John,” she said smiling, “I like your bar very much.” “Thank you, dear,” he said, “how would you like another Coke, on the house?” She nodded her approval, and continued to grin like a little girl into her book. As John prepared another Coke for my discovery, he provided me with unsolicited wisdom. “You must always anticipate the needs of young ladies,” John crooned, sounding more Irish with every syllable. I knew if I hadn’t spoke of Jane before her arrival, John would never have paid this much attention to her. He did it to antagonize me. “I’m not…” Jane began to say, but stopped. John slid the glass in front of Jane, winked at her, and walked away. “I’m sorry about him,” I said, trying to get a read on her face, “he thinks he’s a sage.” “I think he’s sweet,” she said, smiling again. “Why did you come?” I asked her, skipping over any further distraction. “I thought you might need your notes,” she answered. From inside the book she produced the paper I had handed her. She held it out to me. “Keep it,” I said. I should have expected such a thing. I finished my drink and walked away, throwing a twenty dollar bill onto the counter. She should have been enamored with me. If not, then maybe she’s not what I had assumed. They always fall for me right away. It wasn’t worth fighting for it. Sure, she was everything I could ask for. Vanilla. Untouched. Bundled and kept. But, I don’t chase, I hunt. When I reached the door, I heard her behind me. “Michael!” she yelled, like a frightened rabbit. “Michael! Wait!” It was the first time she had used my name. It stopped me where I stood, but only for a moment. I kept moving. She had to chase, had to learn what that felt like. She followed me all the way to the corner of the street, where I turned around and stopped. Her face was flushed, scarf unraveling. I wondered if that was the first time she had ever been that disheveled. “Oh,” I held and leaned against the telephone pole next to me, “were you calling for me?” “You knew I was,” she huffed, adjusting the scarf into place. “Did you want something?” I was playing it cool. Cruel, perhaps, but it needed to be done. “I came for you,” she said, looking at the ground, catching her breath. “What?” I wanted her to repeat it. This had to be repeated. “You asked me why I had come,” she explained, as if I didn’t know, “and I lied. I came for you. The notes were an excuse. I came for you. I was curious.” “Curiosity is one of the forms of feminine bravery,” I quoted, and waited for her to recognize the speaker. “Victor Hugo,” she mumbled, still adjusting her trimmings, “and I’m not brave.” “Sure you are,” I reached out and brushed a stray hair from her face. “You came here, didn’t you? Sat there and smiled at a stranger. Admirably brave, that’s what you are.” “We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken,” she said, as if reading it from her mind. I knew it was a quote, but couldn’t place it. Every word, I knew it from somewhere. “Fyodor Dostoevsky,” she found the name for me, with perfect pronunciation. I was impressed. “Are you trying to say something, Miss Jane?” I asked, baiting her. “You seem interesting,” she admitted. “Well, I am,” I was boasting, but only the truth. “I seem to scare you.” “I’m not used to it,” she confessed to me, taking a slight step backward, away from me. “Not used to what?” I closed the gap she created, even daring to move closer than I had been before. “People,” she stammered a little over her words, and tried to back away, “seeing me, like you do.” Her eyes were locked on mine. Once again I closed the space. Her hands were unstill, darting over her coat. She was unsure how to process what was going on. We were standing underneath a streetlight, the yellow shadows making her look ill. A car went by, the first since I’d come outside, it drew both of our gazes to the street. When I looked back to her, she was walking away from me. “Jane,” I called, and started catching up with her, “Jane, don’t leave.” “I have to go home,” she responded, in a voice more forceful than before. “Can I walk you?” I asked, finally in a brisk power walk beside her. Her heels were snapping against the sidewalk, I still maintained a shuffle. “You don’t even know me,” she sounded hurt. What had I done? “I want to,” I stopped her by grabbing her arm; she tried to grab it back, but gave up. “No!” she yelled, trying to push her pace. Her feet were moving faster than her body was. I didn’t want people thinking I was chasing her down…which I was. Jane was much more agile than I would have assumed, but only had so far she could go. Was she going to walk all the way back to campus? Most likely not. Whether she stopped to hail a cab, or to wait for the bus, I would catch up to her. It was the latter option. At the bus stop where we had first met, Jane sat down solidly. Her breath was shallow, and a thin layer of sweat collected on her brow. Running away was certainly a workout. I tried to bait her, trick her into not being whatever form of cowardice she had turned into, but I was too busy choking on the frigid air filling my lungs to try. The most exercise I’d gotten recently consisted of walking to the bar and lifting my cigarette laden fingers to my mouth. I rested my hands on my knees, bent crookedly at the waist, and stared at her. Her shining leather foot, crossed over her right leg at the knee, shook in yet another patch of yellow streetlight. “The next bus won’t come for another half an hour,” I said when the ability to speak and enough air to do so finally returned to me. She tilted her face further away from me, like a child in obstinacy. “You’ll freeze,” I sputtered. Not true, but a good argument to make. I sat down next to her, and sighed heavily. “I shouldn’t have come tonight,” she muttered, staring down the street. “I’m not the kind of girl you want.” “You have no idea what kind of girl I want,” I replied, an airless chuckle coming from my throat. “Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable,” she quoted Goethe. “A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents,” I quoted back at her and waited for her to figure out who’d said it. She lifted her chin in thought, and then turned to me. “You’ve stumped me,” she said in disbelief. “Georg Christoph Lichtenberg,” I cited, “he was a mathematician.” “Oh,” she said quietly, “and you’re right, I don’t have any idea what kind of girl you’d want. I don’t know anything about you at all. But I have a good feeling you wouldn’t want someone like me.” “Like you?” she had no idea how perfect I thought she was, but I couldn’t tell her why I needed her, “Smart? Pure? Beautiful?” There is no woman on earth who does not enjoy being told she’s beautiful. Even if they know they’re not, they like to be told. Most men wouldn’t find Jane’s plainness attractive, or enticing. I am not most men. “I know I’m not beautiful,” she said, “and now that I know you’re trying to falsely flatter me, I’m even more suspicious of your intent.” “Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed,” I whispered to her, knowing she had every right to question me. The quotation would impress her, at least. “Josh Billings,” she cited with a slight grin and then said “and your point only serves to prove mine.” “I wasn’t arguing,” I snapped, like a child in my assertion. I sat firmly on the very end of the bench. My chin was angled toward her, but I couldn’t bring my eyes to focus on her face. I looked past her, to a distant line of trees over houses. In the very late night, very early morning light my sight was trapped in a sense of complete darkness. I let the lids fall tightly, hoping to open them again and find bright, blinding sunshine. There was none, just the blurred darkness. “There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion,” her voice hummed to me with soft syllables, “Carl Jung.” She didn’t give me a chance to guess that time, instead she turned to me. “Do you have emotion?” she asked. I didn’t know how to answer, and I don’t think she expected me to. “Sometimes,” she continued, “I fear I don’t.” The yellow lights of the bus stop grew brighter as her confession reached my ears. The night seemed to disappear, the cloud of her breath dissipating in front of her in a growing sense of daytime. My vision was tricking me, my mind beguiling the tired orbs into seeing Jane’s loneliness projected as a wave of natural light. Even then, I was not tricked. She knew the words, the inflections, but I was certain the complexity, the winding intricacies of a poet’s heart, did not dwell within her. I sighed, and searched for words with enough beauty to match hers, but had none. None of my own and no one else’s either. Had I been beaten at my own game? “Do you live close by?” she asked me, her voice still far away, caught in the Carl Jung quotation. “A quick walk,” I answered, my insides suddenly warming. I had won, I had her. She rose from the bench, and looked at me expectantly. “It’s warmer there,” she said flatly. I stood up beside her, not wanting to look at her. I nodded in the direction of my apartment, and we began walking. Our pace was slower, both of us muddled in our perceived high noon. The walk to my small apartment building never seemed so long before. Each step felt as though it were propelling us backward, away from our destination. Our exhales arched in front of us, like long winding fingers, begging us to keep moving. When we finally reached the third floor of my dilapidated apartment building, it was as if a decade had passed. I fumbled taking my keys from my pocket, focusing more on the sound of her shallow, tired breathing behind me. I unlocked the door after excruciating moments of struggle. Jane kept her hands in her pockets, her eyes darting from me to the shadowed passage, back to me, and then to the stairs, her escape route. I opened the door as wide as I could, offering her entrance. She stayed entirely still. I hate waiting. I turned my back to her and walked into the apartment, making a show of removing my jacket and throwing it dramatically onto the sofa in the center of the modest room. There were piles of books and papers scattered on the floor, which I stepped over, and found a small lamp in the far corner. The musty yellow lamplight beat away some of the cold shadows, and I turned back to the door, expecting to see Jane still frozen just outside. What I saw, however, was the peeling wallpaper of the hallway. That was all. She had run away, again. Not bothering with my jacket, I ran into the hallway and down the stairs. I found her standing at the bottom of the first flight, caught between the second and third floor. She had her eyes closed tightly, and was slowly mouthing something to herself. When she heard me approach, her lips stopped moving, and she rested her head again the concrete wall behind her. “Yet I do fear thy nature,” she said, eyes still closed in mock prayer. The Macbeth quote stopped me from coming any closer, and I stayed a stair above her. “You don’t need to be scared,” I said to her, forcing every shred of sincerity and gentleness I had left to give. This project was beginning to become a chore. “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear,” she quoted Mark Twain in her far away voice. “If you want to run away,” I began with defeat, “I’m not going to stop you. Just be sure of why you’re running and what it is you’re running from.” She opened her eyes and inhaled slowly. “What time is it?” she asked. Dumbfounded, I looked at my watch. “Just before three,” I answered. “The sun comes up in a few hours,” she said, mapping out constellations in her mind, “do you have roof access?” I stuttered, trying to remember whether or not my building had a roof. “I must,” was my conclusion. Jane started walking up the stairs. She walked past me, and then said without turning, “You might need your coat; it’s very cold.” I didn’t ask any questions, just followed behind her on the stairs. Jane didn’t wait for me when I ran into my still wide open apartment to grab my coat. I had to sprint up half a flight to catch up. Whatever it was she was up to, she was determined. We got to the door to the roof. I was out of breath, my legs compact pillars of peach jam beneath my heaving cement torso. Jane was fine, flawlessly composed. She reached a steady hand to the unlocked door and opened it with ease. I’d lived in that building for two years, and had no idea I could go onto the roof. The open door created a vacuum that removed all warmth from the passage. I shivered, but Jane did not. She marched out onto the roof with ease, showing no indication that the cold bothered her. I pulled the thick material of my coat snuggly around my body and slowly moved out into the wind. It ripped through me, bitter with the earliest signs of morning dew. Jane was untouched, moving closer and closer to the edge of the building. “When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure,” Jane yelled to me through the wind, her arms spread apart and eyes suddenly alive. “Who said that, Jane?” I asked, walking toward her, cautiously. “Alice Hoffman,” she answered, lowering her arms and turning her back to me. “Jane,” I called. “Yes?” she responded, without turning back to me. I was directly behind her, watching the smallest flecks of winter wetness collect on her hair, wisps of which were flying around freely. “Turn around,” I whispered. She did so, and when she did I wrapped my arms around her. She brought her arms close into her body and leant her head against my chest. “It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior,” she mumbled into my torso. “Anne Bronte,” I breathed into her ear. “Why would you wish for something you already have, Jane? You are everything beautiful about the world.” In the moment, holding her there, I believed she was. Her reliance on the complexity of others was bewitching and sparkling, it trapped me inside of her. Jane took a deep breath and I felt her begin to cry. We stood there in silence; Jane huddled into my chest; until the sun came up. “It’s like being reborn,” she said, the yellows and pinks spilling over us. “Who said that?” I asked, not recognizing it from anything I’d read. “I did,” she sighed, pulling away from me and walking to the very edge of the roof. I pulled her back to me, this time not allowing her to curl into a protected ball. I touched her face, drawing her close to mine. “Yet I do fear thy nature,” she said in a breath of fear. That was when I kissed her, slowly and warily. Her body crumbled into my arms, and she gave into the kiss. The sunrise had never been so present, so seen, so perfect. That is how I fell in love with her. The next three months were spent wrapped in each other, showered in the yellow and pink light of every sunrise and sunset that passed. Bundled and sheltered we died each evening in the west, and were reborn together in the east come morning. The winter began to melt away into spring, and we melted into one another. I finished my dissertation far earlier than anyone had ever imagined I could. I read it all to my Jane, as she sat in studious silence and took in everything I had to say about the salvation of boredom. As the last word of the last sentence was spoken, her eyes narrowed in a moment of understanding, a moment that I did not see. She forced it quickly by, and smile broadly. “I’ll be quoting you someday,” she said, and then pressed her soft lips against my cheek. I did not perceive the hollowness of her voice, the moist mouth against my skin distracted me. I pulled Jane’s mouth to mine, and kissed her deeply. We made love on the roof as we had done a hundred times before. She closed her eyes and hummed and cooed the praises of my brilliance. I listened to her words, but moved my gaze away from her and onto the slowly rising sun. She was mine, I had won. She was no longer a frightened rabbit I had to hound; there was no longer a chase. I fell into the pattern of dull, effortless love I had craved, reveled in. “I love you,” Jane said when the birds began to alert that the frost was melting away; “I love you more than any quote in any book could ever say. You make me unafraid, Michael.” Jane rested her head against my chest, her breath warming the still bare skin. “Jane,” I said, “you’re everything I’ve ever needed.” Bland, boring, beige. We lied there, listening to spring emerge, until the sun had fully risen. Jane suddenly sat upright, and began gathering clothing. “What time is it?” she more demanded than asked. “About six minutes before six,” I answered after looking at my watch. A loud, startled gasp came from Jane, and she hurriedly buttoned and zippered her coat. “I need to go,” she said, fumbling with her scarf. “What? Why?” I was very confused. She hadn’t run off like this since before our first sunrise. “I…” she began, then stopped and sighed, “It’s…It’s for school. I have to go.” She escaped, down the stairs. I quickly threw on my own clothing and followed quietly behind. Jealous, crazed thoughts of another man, equally obsessed with Jane’s blandness, began running through my mind. She didn’t get onto a bus; instead she ran the streets of the city, turning corners I wasn’t aware she knew were there. I stayed a few yards behind, hoping her rushing would distract her from looking back. We ended up in a block of rundown apartment buildings. This was not Jane’s dormitory, and she had never mentioned having a place off campus. She never mentioned having a friend who lived nearby, either. I was convinced she had found another man. Jane took a key from her coat and unlocked the door to one of the buildings, leaving it unlocked as she raced up the first flight of stairs. I waited outside, counting a slow twenty-five seconds to myself before guardedly climbing the stairs. After two flights, the narrow stairwell opened into a long, rectangular loft. The walls around me were lined with extravagant landscapes of the sun rising and setting over a horizon of buildings; the same buildings that can be seen from my roof. There was one against a far wall, at least nine feet high and fifteen across. The most vibrant yellows and pinks spilled from the corners, arcing around the rising disc slightly left of center. It was the sun I shared each day with Jane. I moved toward it, passing intricate paintings on either side. Canvas after canvas moved in and out of my peripheral. With each I passed, I moved closer to the grand sunset that awaited me at the end of the room. Once in front of the final prodigious piece, I ran my fingertips over each inch of every textured stroke. I saw it- A signature neatly placed and clearly readable in the bottom right hand corner- Jane. It was then that the room began to spin. I heard voices in a nearby room; first Jane’s humble, muted tone, then the impressed rumble of an older man. “I used the yellow to represent the slow but pervasive nature of early love, and the purple as the fear of that love,” I heard Jane explain. Her voice was thick and involved, not like when she read quotes from memory. It was the voice I thought I had discovered in her. Jane and the man came from the room they had been in near the entrance of the loft. “I’m very impressed with you, Jane,” the man said. Jane didn’t respond. “Michael,” she exhaled, her sound wavering in a fearful sob. I turned to her, she was shaking. I left the room, walking by two strangers. Jane came behind me as I ran, trying to catch up as I maneuvered back to my apartment. She was screaming my name. “Let me explain!” she bawled through a crowd of pedestrian commuters. Explain? There was no explanation for deceit. She was not my Jane; my perfectly boring, simple, plain Jane. She was an artist. How could I have been so wrong? Jane found me on the roof we had shared in her lie. “Michael,” was all she could say, her breathing shallow and uneven. “Yes, Jane?” I said, my back to her. I was staring out over our sky, our sun, our horizon. It was then that I knew I never wanted to see another sunrise, nor sunset. They had been liars like Jane, like myself; basking us in a sense of love and freedom and truth. Jane could keep her sun. “I loved you,” I said. “Michael,” Jane began, “you loved what you thought I was. I loved you, all of you, even the part of you that could never really love me in return. The part of your heart, or your mind, that refuses to be vulnerable to an equal. You loved what you thought was a naïve, lost, boring little girl.” My heels hung off the side of the building. “Yet I do fear thy nature,” I arced the words across the wind and sky through clenched jaw. That is when I fell, to spite falling for her.