Chapter 2: A Body Guard

2
A Body Guard

The cars that hiss past leave a thin, wet breathe of air in my face.  Pumpkins and ornaments of monsters and corpses clutter the shop windows and door steps.  Why do we celebrate death, I wonder?  I used to love this time of year.  I suppose it’s easy to laugh about death when death has no meaning to you.
The gray mornings grow a deep orange since October rolled around.  I hate the color orange.  I miss the gray mornings.  I blend in with gray like a relative.  Now leaves float down covering the dull cracked sidewalk and crunching under my converse, like obnoxious children calling out when they find a creature in the shadows.  I want to hide.
I step to the rhythm of the drums that pulse through my head phones.  It keeps me from thinking.  Thinking.  What rhymes with thinking?  Blinking…Linking…Sinking…
I hate poets.  Poets take the weather and nature too seriously, or make creepy comparisons to leaves and obnoxious children. 
I slow down, the beat picks up momentum.  I put the music on pause and stick my phone back in my damp hoodie pocket.

She walks a few feet in front of me, her back turned.  The large man who  just speeds past me a few seconds ago now brushes past her, their shoulders almost collide.  Idiot.  Doesn’t even look back.  She teeters slightly on her prosthetic legs, grabbing her faded white fence for support.

She’s waiting for me.  She always waits for me.  Not because she enjoys my company--I don’t enjoy hers either.  But perhaps simply because I’m always here.  It’s my job. 

I’m her bodyguard.  I don’t get payed for this.  I wasn’t commissioned.  This is my hobby.  Just like being a parent or a husband, there is no logical reason why anyone would want to be either of those things.  You don’t get payed to do it, yet, it’s still a job.

The back of her pink beanie is tilted up. She’s looking at the sky.  I take longer strides. I should reach her before she runs into a lamppost.  Now she’s close enough to touch.  I don’t.  There is a force between me and the short blond human being, like the negative-negative of two magnets. 
“Morning, Domino!”  Her slightly cracked, cheery voice.
“Morning, Qym.”

We proceed along the walkway that is just wide enough for us to stand at a comfortable distance.  That if I take one misstep with my left foot, I’d step into the road.  Then I’d match the corpse decorations.  I’d make a lovely corpse decoration. 

The absence of music through my headphones is filled with the sigh of cars passing, honking, screeching, reverberating bass, and the occasional insult from a gaping window.  And, of course, hum of Qym’s mechanical knee joints bending as she walks.  Qym has been legless for over a year now.  I’ve been her bodyguard for same amount of time.
I hate Qym.
“You happy it’s Friday?”  She asks.

Reason Why I Hate Qym #1:  She tries to make me talk.  And it’s in her presence when I wish to remain most silent.

I hum my reply.  Small talk makes me nauseous.  I fight the constricting in my stomach for whatever social skills I’ve attained, and return the question.
“You happy it’s Friday?”

She takes a deep breath, “Oh, gosh, yes.  Actually, I like work, but-” her words falter, she pushes her plastic rimmed glasses farther up her freckled nose. “I never thought I’d say this, but I kinda miss school, ya know?”
No.  I don’t know.
I try to think of something clever to say besides, “Yeah,” but words don’t fit together.
“…Yeah.”
Why is it so much easier for words to fit together into poems that rhyme than it is to speak them?

Past her street, after bridge, we pause before the intersection.  Wait for the cars to come to a stop, and grab each other’s hands. 

I don’t hold hands with people.  Only Qym.  And only when we cross the road.
We walk across, me a little in front, dragging her slightly as she struggles to keep up on her stiff, make-shift legs.
We pause on the median, still gripping hands, wait for an obnoxious truck to make a turn in front of us, and proceed.  This is a part of our everyday routine—my job.  It started the day I became her bodyguard.  I pretend my arm doesn’t shake, my heart doesn’t go sick, while she just stares at the sky. 
We reach the other side and release our grip.  I stick my hand back into the safety of my pocket.
 

Reason Why I Hate Qym #2:  I hate my job

The graveyard to our left is barely seen through the dead vines tangled through the rusted wire fence.  This isn’t a Halloween decoration, and no Halloween decoration’s line the gate.  Perhaps people think death is only funny when it’s plastic and inflatable. 

The large, immaculate marble stones and weeping sculptures are sectioned off from the smaller, more rustic slabs of rock.  Like that one closest to the gate, a mere square slab that barely reaches above the shriveled, overgrown grass.  With a name on a gold plaque.  Savvy Sylvester Burns.  And two dates.  Two dates whose times are much too close.  No inspiring quote, no “Beloved Son and Friend,” no “You Will be Missed” or even a “Rest In Peace.”  I bet I could have written his epitaph.  He would have liked that.

The little stone watches me as we pass.  I feel the pressure of its gaze, as though it has eyes.  I look away.  He wants me to talk to him.  Always wanting me talk to him.  I never do.  He should be satisfied with me having to pass his cursed grave site every cursed morning.  For four years.  What would we talk about anyway?  Life?

“See ya, Domino!”  She parts to the left, behind the café.  I keep walking.
“See ya.” I keep walking, until I know she’s disappeared into the ally between the two buildings, to the “Employee’s Only” door.  Then I look back.

She isn’t attacked, all is well, and now I have to put my job on hold.

Reason Why I Hate Qym #3:  She has a strong instinct beyond all human capability to get herself hurt.