The Ash Leavers

The love of a million lights.

A sprawl of glittering lights. Together they meld and blend until they form a picnic blanket of manmade pinpricks. Roads punctuate the landscape like veins, and the sky is thick with cloud and festering smog. It could be any big city in the world. Big cities fascinate me. I like to imagine the thousands of people who live heaped on top of one another, legs intertwined, mouths spitting the same sounds, feet commandeering the same streets, yet eyes never meeting. Manmade pinpricks, each vying for attention and elation and meaning. But what do I know? I am yet another pinprick wanting an unwavering gaze for a moment or two.

               Iveta is beside me. I wonder if she looks out at the night, spoilt and overfed with romanticisms, and compares it to her own city. I want to tell her they’re probably all the same, that years of history change nothing and that there will always be nets and pinpricks and sumptuous nights, but I can’t because a person doesn’t have that authority. No one should take away fondness as penance for bitterness. That is what I believe, anyway; I might be wrong.

            The window of my apartment is small enough that our shoulders are pushed together, and I think that from below we must appear two women who look the same, with our shared posture: hunched shoulders, craning faces and protruding collar bones. Obviously, she’s paler than me, whether from winter or cigarettes or wisdom, and her hair is blonde, thin and tied behind her. She is smoking, and her sigh with every exhale feels close enough to be my own. I wonder if she’s seen things she will never tell me about.

In warmer spells like this, we spend entire nights together and I ask her about every article she has ever written, every place she has travelled and every horror she has seen. I don’t watch the news as often as I should, so every story she tells me seems exceptional. I love hearing about wars, a multitude of colourful people who fight with passions unknown to me or mine.  They spray love with their bullets. Even as she tells it, I see that she doesn’t understand it. Of the few things I can say I know, one of them is this: I will never leave Oslo. I send Iveta on my travels instead.

            Iveta is dropping ash onto the cool metal of the fire escape. Her silvery eyes are squinting. Perhaps it is because today, we are talking about love. Iveta speaks, and, as usual, I listen with awe, because whether she is wise or not, she understands more than I ever will.

            “No relationship is perfect,” she says through smoke, her voice is thin but commanding, like she’s constantly whispering. “You learn that from divorced parents and bitter older siblings. But then you have to weigh up this belief against the television and the love songs and you end up swallowing it all. So you believe that if you love someone, truly love them like a knife in your side, then the good will be good and the flaws will fade away like wrinkles in something pretty.”

            I breathe in deeply and admire the wrinkles around her eyes. She gestures casually with one manicured hand, although I notice she’s chewed her thumbnail down to the skin.

“You try to measure it quantitatively �" I’ll stay if it’s 80% good �" but the ratio keeps slipping and you don’t know when it’s bad because you only half-realise that the numbers don’t mean anything �" they have f**k all to do with relationships. 70-30, 40-60, surely you think… you think that once it goes underwater �" once the good percentage gets under 50, a C grade �" then it’s bad and you leave or you fight or you cry. But you can’t do it like that; there are too many details to keep track of.”

“What details?”

“The details of loving someone. ‘He was on a 48, but I like the way his hair smells in the morning’; ‘she was perfect until I asked her that question �" why did I ask her that question?’” �" she always puts on a high mocking voice for imitating other people, even if they’re voicing her own thoughts �" “everyone hates to ruin people, but no one can stop, it’s like we have to keep pushing round the spotlight until something turns up in the corner of the room that makes us think ‘maybe this person isn’t the one I want.’ And then we finally realise that we have no f*****g idea what we want and why we want it.”

            She sighs as the cigarette leaves her mouth.

            “Do you know what you want, Gjori?”

            “Sometimes I think I do,” I murmur. “But I never remember in the morning.”

            “That’s clever. If it doesn’t last long then you have nothing to miss.”

            “I miss other things. I miss you, sometimes.”

            “I know.” She pauses for a moment.  

            “Gjori?”

            “Yes.”

            “Why won’t you leave Oslo?”

            I blow onto my hands, because it has started to get colder. In all the years I’ve known Iveta, I’ve never lied to her.

            “I like big cities.”

            “There are other big cities in the world.”

             “Do you love Prague?”

            “Yes, of course. It’s my home, my mother lives there. But I left it, and I don’t regret it.”

            I look out at the scene, thinking that the darkness will lift soon; the usual, greyish twilight has already set in. Iveta’s cigarette is gone, reduced to ash that falls through the thin air to the people below.

            “Do you love Oslo, Gjori?” she asks me, and we look at one another for a moment, one quiet moment in the night before she flies away and I slip into the streets below.

            “About 50-50,” I reply. We laugh, and Oslo soaks up our laughter. The pinpricks glitter as if wanting to be in on the joke. Then we kiss and leave the morning to come after us.

            

Author's Note

Tell me your thoughts! Please and thank you :)

Reviews

[nozone]

I enjoy the story, life in a dark place, tension, and hope. I have some suggestions, though I’m not sure how much is too much. The characters are real stating interesting views and questions. Good work.

Meld, blend are essentially the same / They blend into a picnic blanket of man’s inflicted pinpricks. Roads slicing / streets, empty eyes never
2d paragraph there will always be nets, what is, net, in reference to. A person doesn’t have the authority, doesn’t work for me.
4th paragraph, spray love? maybe, spill
For me the thing with percentages goes on to long.