Frank-mentary Memories

[1] - Frank

IT'S COLD in Chicago. There is snow on the side of the road, grey with the rubbish of many people and many vehicles, but white if one digs ones fingers deep enough into it. The sky is dark with clouds, heavy with snow waiting to fall. Winter hangs in the air like a young bird taking flight, hesitant to let itself fall in case its wings don't carry. Autumn always makes Lolita's throat full of something. She can't place what she tastes in the air when she opens her mouth to relieve herself of this feeling, but she knows that it is bitter.

It snowed three days ago- fast and heavy enough for the snow to still be piled up in some streets, still hanging in the branches of some tress, still desperately clinging to the windowsills of Lolita's apartment. Her hands are always hesitating when she reaches to open her windows in the morning – the white snow contrasts so beautifully with the grey buildings, the grey-brown sill of her apartment and the grey of the sky. They have become hardened frames of ice in the last days of autumn however, Lolita doesn't want them to melt. They make her feel comforted when she looks at them.

Today she sees the snow on the ground between the pavement and the road and she only feels melancholic – as though the grey she normally finds so attractive has infected the snow.

Chicago has been a base for her for almost three years now. She knows how to hail a taxi here, how to do her taxes here. She has a job here, a cat here, a bed she can call her own here. She can cook well here, can find the ingredients she needs here. She even knows where to find good shondesh. And yet, Lolita doesn't know whether Chicago is home. She is unsure that she knows what home is anymore, because although Chicago is loud and safe and big for her, and there are places for her to find herself, places for her to loose herself and places for her to be herself too -  she feels strange and misshapen and unbent in this city.

Lolita sighs as she waits for the pedestrian light to turn green, her hands in her pocket, shoulder length hair blowing into her face and sticking to her lips. When the light changes to green, she tucks the hair behind her ear, looks down and walks like everyone else, neatly tied shoes moving forward. She thinks about winter and the snow again, humming under her breath. Her fingers curl around a pen in her right pocket and she smiles in a distracted way.

"Excuse me," she hears but doesn't listen. Lolita carries on walking, her hair bouncing into her face, her smile waning, her eyes on something that is not in front of her. "Excuse me!" A hand touches her and she jumps, curses, making angry eye contact with a tall woman. Lolita blushes, pushes her hair behind both her ears again, unconsciously having pulled the pen from her pocket, groping it tightly with her right hand. Her satchel slips down her shoulder and she pushes it back up with her free hand.

"Sorry, yes?" She's not in a rush, but she doesn't know this woman and her fingers are shaking. Her mind was elsewhere. To be back on the streets of Chicago with this woman shocks her.

"I didn't mean to startle you – excuse me. I...I was just wondering if you knew where this-" A body pushes against the unknown woman and she drops the paper she was slowly extending to Lolita, a book under her other arm slipping to the ground as well. She makes a low sound, closes her eyes and exhales in a way that suspends Lolita in time - down to her breathing, she is frozen. This stranger's mouth twitched in a micro expression of annoyance, her left side eyebrow creasing first into her right side eyebrow, the skin around her nose pulling taut. The expression she wore now was so familiar to Lolita that it hurt like a forgotten toothache coming to the fore again - to see it so suddenly, in the last days of autumn in the streets of Chicago at 7:36am on her way to her office.

Lolita doesn't stoop to help the woman pick up her things, but looks down at the hair on this woman's head instead. It is dark brown, coily and cropped close to her head. She is dark brown too and warm looking, slender and elegant in her movements. Lolita gasps when this stranger reaches her fingers out to take the page stuck to the damp pavement, noticing the slender nailbeds, the narrow fingers, and the smoothness of the skin on her hand. Lolita steps backward, almost as though physically struck by the likeness this stranger bears to a memory that is too vivid at night and in the morning, when she looks in the mirror, when she cuts her hair, when she drinks coffee, when the sun burns through the leaves of spring. How can deep brown eyes resemble gold and green?

Lolita's eyes well with tears, her body melting out of its rigidity and shock.

"Oh," She breathes, almost faint.