The Girl by the Blue River
There is a girl that lives in a skyscraper by the great blue river.
She is young, and life carries her lightly, as a strong gust of wind carries a little red oak leaf through crisp November air. Each one of her days is a whirlwind of experiences: from packed lecture halls to expensive cafés, from art exhibitions to cocktail happy hours to club nights, on she floats, always with one group of friends or another orbiting around her as if they were planets and she their sun. She always has a funny story to tell them, be it her own or about a stranger she met at a bar the night before, and laughs along each time, just as amused by her own life as her friends are. And, on those rare occasions when she makes it home before sundown, she looks out onto the blue river from her balcony as its ripples glimmer in the golden sunlight – for nobody else but her.
I know her quite well. But she does not know me.
I know that her apartment is like a tiny urban fortress, all her prized possessions arranged neatly across wooden shelves and cabinets: clothes the color of late spring and early fall, glossy vinyl records, framed pictures of all her good friends. It is full of plants that she tends to every morning: vines crawling up walls, calatheas with leaves as big as folding fans, sturdy succulents perking up from windowsills. I have countless photos of them in my camera roll. I have photos of her, too; some nights I look at them as I lay in the damp darkness of my windowless room, struggling to fall asleep. Photos of her in a crowded concert hall, her as she pots one of her new plants, her making a silly face in the mirror – short auburn hair freshly blow-dried, tiny rhinestones sparkling at the corners of her eyes, waiting to welcome friends and friends of friends into her home for yet another merry nighttime get-together.
She’s famous for these parties among her classmates. Everyone knows that that’s where they will drink the most, eat the most, hear the best and newest music. They know that nothing is expected of them in return but good company: that their hostesses’ generosity parallels only her whimsy.
I have been hoping for an invitation to one of these soirees for a long time. It seemed to me that I would never receive it. Her world is, after all, so far removed from anything I’m used to – full of color and adventure, while mine is unsightly and dull; it would take a real miracle for them to collide.
Yet somehow, like by some supernatural force, I got lucky. This very morning, the invitation arrived in my mail.
An afternoon spent in nervous anticipation, hair washed and blow-dried, outfits meticulously selected, scrapped, and selected again. I must look my best tonight: this may be my only time to see her in person, and I must not squander it. Because, if I play my cards just right, tonight I might live out my biggest dream.
If she takes a liking to me, she’ll draw me into her orbit, and tend to me like one of her beloved plants. As her light glows through me, I’ll become more and more like her. I, too, will glue little rhinestones to the corners of my eyes, and cut my hair short, and laugh as carelessly and sweetly as she does.
And then, eventually, I will become her.
But it is too early to get wrapped up in intoxicating scenarios, for I had just rung her doorbell. Clinking glasses, cheerful voices, lively instrumental music – all muffled behind the armed door, hiding like Heaven behind its golden gates.
Finally, she opens the door. My heart drops.
“Hello!”, she exclaims – as effervescent as she’d always been. Then, her eyebrows narrow, gaze focused. “Have we met before?”
I shake my head, gently like I had rehearsed. “No”, I say. “Not yet.”
“Could have sworn I know you from somewhere”, she chirps in animated disbelief. “Well, come on in, then! Make yourself at home!”
Her home feels like my home already, and her friends feel like my own – all a thing of a past life, distant but never forgotten. I sit on the corduroy couch and sip my mate soda from one of the mismatched champagne glasses, I eat tea sandwiches with pesto made of windowsill-grown basil, I browse her rich vinyl record collection. Her friends chat to me, and I chat back, but cautiously; I must not do anything to embarrass myself, especially not tonight.
Around midnight, I find her alone on the balcony, beer can in hand, the see-through door between us cracked open invitingly. The city lights on the other side of the blue river twinkle softly and loaded barges trail past, twelve floors below us. I approach her, and before I can say anything, she speaks to me.
“I love your hair”, she says.
“Thank you”, I smile politely. “I used to wear it short, just like you.”
“What made you grow it out?”
I look out towards the thin sickle of the moon just above the horizon, thinking of something to say that would not give me away. “Just time, I suppose,” I finally answer.
Her eyes narrow for a moment, as if scanning my features, and I almost see a trace of recognition in her gaze. Then, before I know it, she is back to her lighthearted self: “Well, it looks good on you. I think I may grow mine out one day, too.”
I want to tell her not to, to keep it exactly as it is, but stop myself.
“So, this time,” she continues, “has it been everything you wanted it to be?”
I think of that time. It began with nights just like this one – the early, happy ones I remember, but the later I go, the blurrier they get. I think of the gaping holes in the back of my mind where memories of them should have been, how they piled on and dragged me down. I remember friendships withering away along with neglected house plants, eroded by things I did not remember doing or saying, or claimed not to remember. There were countless apartments and rooms, all of them somehow dark and dingy, never measuring up to the homeyness of that first apartment I got mercilessly kicked out of for being late with rent one too many times. The days I spent in them I’d mostly slept away on moldy mattresses, never changing out of the same pyjama bottoms. I remember things getting better, too; that first clear-headed breath I took one bright morning, realizing, totally unexpectedly, that life still had something good in store for me.
But even after that, it was never the same. A life force that seemed boundless before – like hers does now – had been drained out of me.
“And more”, I simply say, nodding my head.
“Oh, how fabulous”, she looks at me with admiration. Then, after a few moments of silence, that look of recognition comes back, and she says suddenly: “You know, I think I figured out where I know you from.”
My breath escapes me, and I feel my eyes widen in surprise. “How?!”, I demand, a little too loudly. A few other guests look through the glass of the balcony door to see what’s going on, but I don’t care, not anymore – my mask has already fallen anyway.
“Simple”, she shrugs. “You look like someone I’ve always wanted to be.”
I laugh. “Oh, sweetheart. Why would you ever want to be anything else other than what you are? Look at yourself. I’ve never seen a thing more beautiful than you. This apartment, these people, this hair… I miss it all so much. Please, don’t ever change.”
“How could I not?” She looks straight into my eyes, voice cracking slightly, the cheerful demeanor gone – suddenly, I begin to see something of myself in her. “You have so much life behind you. It’s not fair of you to tell me not to live it.”
“But, I… I lied to you”, I sigh. “That life, it wasn’t all I wanted it to be. Some of it came close, sure, but for the most part I wish it had never happened.”
“It made you you though, didn’t it?”
The balcony falls silent, the chatter and the music from the living room just barely penetrating the glass door. I stare back at her eyes and feel mine begin to tear up, preemptively regretting the heartbreak that I am about to cause her, for there is nothing else at all that I can say instead of:
“Yes, it did. And that’s the worst part.”
She draws me into a tight hug.
“Please, don’t say that”, she whispers into my ear. “You know I have no other future but you. So just let me love you the way you are.”
I hug her back, and feel a teardrop roll down my cheek. A bitter sadness rips through my chest: my plan was doomed from the start, and my dream could never come true. The blue river, the house plants, the twinkling city lights in dusk: none of it could ever be mine. Not again.
So I hold the girl close, as close as I can, because I know that the time has come for me to finally let her go.