Robert Crane - Untouched

We rode an escalator up to the second floor where the movie theater was. The box office had a short line in front of it, and movie posters were plastered into frames on the walls on either side of us. Behind us was an opening that looked down on the first level of the mall and across the wide space to the walkway opposite. Intriguing smells wafted over to me: popcorn from the movie theaters, and from the food court behind us the scent of burgers, Chinese food, and maybe hot dogs; I wasn’t sure.

We’d decided in advance what to see, and I heard Zack buy two tickets as I continued to look around, mesmerized by the sights, sounds, and smells that were all around me.

I was staring at an ice cream stand when a flash of dark hair across the gap caught my attention. A woman had been standing at the railing, and I hadn’t noticed her until she moved. Her hair was long, like mine, dark and stretching down around her shoulder blades, and for some reason it looked wild and unkempt to me. She was close to middle age, wore a red dress, shorter than the black one I’d seen before and cut lower at the neck. She turned and I saw her profile. My heart jackhammered at the sight of her, the realization.

It was Mom.

I was moving the moment it hit me, my feet pounding along the floor. I jumped to the railing and leapt across the wide gulf that separated one side of the second floor from the other. I landed, feeling the pressure of the impact run through my knees and ankles, but I felt no pain in spite of having cracked my foot earlier in the day. The woman in red turned, only a few feet in front of me, and her eyebrow raised when she saw me breathing heavily from the exertion of my running leap.

It wasn’t Mom.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” My mind was racing. From a distance, she had seemed like a dead ringer. Up close, it was obvious that it wasn’t Mom. “I thought you were…someone else.” Mom never wore makeup; this woman’s eyes and cheeks were covered in it, giving me the impression that she was fighting the clock with everything she had, even though she was still pretty. Also, I was a little surprised by her lack of a coat given the weather—even more so by the dress.

Her eyes were cool, and she looked around, as though she were trying to decide where I had come from. They froze on my cheek as Zack ran up behind me. She stared at him, then back at me, with eyes that were filled with a sort of concern. “Did he do that?” She pointed at my cheek and I remembered that I had a bruise from my fight earlier.

“What? No,” I said with a little laugh. “He didn’t hurt me. He couldn’t.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry I’m not who you thought I was.” She turned to walk away. I watched her go, noticed the sway of her hips, and wondered what kind of a man would be attracted to a woman so obviously starved for attention.

There was a hum from the crowd gathered around me; people were talking, those that had seen my jump, low, muttered voices of incredulity. I think I heard someone mutter, “PCP.”

“Way to stay nonchalant.” Zack eased up beside me. He watched her go, his eyes never moving off her backside and answering my internal question about what kind of man would be attracted to her. The looks of others as she moved through the crowd provided more clarity; apparently, any man with a heartbeat. I looked down at my simple turtleneck and jeans with my new heavy coat. Practical, I supposed, especially for the girl who kills with a touch—but not likely to generate the kind of attention she was getting. “What is she wearing?” I said it mostly to myself.

Zack answered anyway, watching her as she walked away. “Damned near nothing.”

“In this weather? It’s winter. Isn’t she cold?”

She turned and Zack’s eyes alighted on her chest. “Looks like it from here.”

I looked back at him, and I tried not to make it a glare, but I failed. “What?” He looked at me with slight alarm, as though he had no idea why I was irritated with him. I looked to the store that the woman had exited, and sure enough, on one of the mannequins in the window was the exact same dress I had just seen on her.

I drew closer to it, but this time not to look at the mannequin that wore it. I felt my gloved hand touch the glass, as though I could connect with the dress behind it, feel the silk between my fingers. It was a symbol of all I could never be. All I could never have. “Nothing,” I said after another moment. “Can we go to the movie now?”

“Sure.” He stepped out of the way and held out an arm as if indicating I should go first.

Most of the movie I spent buried in my own head, frustrated. I mean, hadn’t it been obvious that I wasn’t destined to be able to touch anyone, anytime? I cursed myself for my foolishness; Zack didn’t want to die, and a relationship with me was just that, a death sentence. At least, if it was to involve anything other than conversations. And if there was absolutely no physical component to a relationship, was it anything other than a friendship?

A guy like Zack had friends. I was fairly certain he could have his pick of any number of women, too. Why wouldn’t he look past me at some devil woman in a red dress? Even if she was twenty years older and taller and more shapely and knew how to apply cosmetics and bleh. Was it possible to hate someone you didn’t know and hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with? I even envisioned walking up behind her, taking off a glove and giving her a little touch to the arm. Not enough to kill her, just enough to zap some of the prettiness away.

Then I cursed myself for being petty and tried to watch the movie. It wasn’t easy; it had no plot and a lot of explosions. I felt my mind wandering for minutes at a time and when it came back, I found I hadn’t missed much.

Afterward Zack offered to walk around the mall for a little while longer but I declined. I suspect he saw through my terse answer, but he didn’t say anything as we walked to the car.

It was a quiet ride back to the Directorate. Even though I could have sworn it was only about twenty minutes, it felt like an hour. We pulled into the parking garage and he stopped the car. I started to turn to him to say good night, but he preempted me.

“Did I…say something or do something that pissed you off?” He was staring at me, earnest, for all his faults.

“No. I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought that woman in red—I thought she was my mom, from a distance. She looked like…” My words trailed off.

“Ah,” Zack said with a nod. “I wondered what would possess you to jump across the mall like that, in public and in full view of a hundred people. It all makes sense now.”

“Why didn’t you ask me before?” I stared straight ahead, looking hard at the concrete wall that was just in front of the hood of the parked car.

“In my experience, if a woman seems upset, it’s better to wait a little while before you probe to get to the bottom of it,” he said. A sage, he was. “You know,” he said with confidence, “in case it was something I did, I didn’t want to make it worse by seeming like I didn’t have a clue.”

I heard Wolfe’s laughter ringing in my ears and I saw red. “Of course it wasn’t you,” I said, calm. How did I manage that calm? No idea. “Well,” I said with an urgency I couldn’t define, but that welled up along with a hundred other emotions I didn’t want to give voice to, “good night.” I grabbed the handle to the car door and forced it open, rushing to get out before he could say anything else. My hand gripped it tighter than I intended, and I heard a squeaking noise as I stood up, and I looked down to find the door hanging free of the car, loose in my hand.