Anne-Marie Kinney - Radio Iris

“Hey,” Marcus says, coming up behind her, and Iris spins around to face him, startled.

“Hi.”

“Do you have another?” He indicates her cigarette.

“Oh, no— I got this one from Mallory.”

“Ah, okay.”

They stand facing each other for a moment, neither one thinking of anything to say to the other.

“Could I get a drag of that one?”

She passes him the cigarette, and he takes a quick puff before passing it back.

“You don’t like going out much, do you?” he asks.

Iris looks back at him. “I guess it’s… a little loud.”

“But it’s your birthday,” he says brightly, and it sounds ridiculous to her, a sentence without meaning.

She opens her mouth to give some kind of answer, but she’s struck by a sudden image of the view from the shed’s dirty window, where she’d looked to see if the great crack from the yard had stopped the air outside the shed too. She’d stood on her toes, and peeked out to see her father drop a stack of paper plates onto the grass and take off running toward the crowd circled around the base of the fig tree. She saw her mother racing over from the driveway, dropping a paper grocery sack in the dirt and pushing through to the center, bodies parting to make way for the two of them, Sebastian howling in their wake. She remembers ducking then, and staying crouched there for a moment, face pressed to the dark wood. When she looked up again, she watched her brother climb down the tree, all eyes following him until the other mother, who must have been alerted somehow in her house just at the end of the road, whose wild eyes telegraphed the severity of what she saw before her, came rushing through, collapsing in a heap over her boy’s limp body. After that, she didn’t see anyone’s face. All she saw were backs and profiles. All she heard was the wail of the ambulance, and the long silence that followed.

Iris puts the cigarette out in a glass ashtray and looks down at the patio’s wooden floor, scuffed almost to a shine. She looks up at Marcus again, and he seems closer than before, though she can’t say for sure. She hasn’t been looking at his face, but in his general direction, taking in only the shape and general color of him, the pattern of his shirt. He picks up a glass of red wine from the table beside them and holds it out to her.

“Are you giving me some stranger’s wine?”

“No, god— I set it down there. I don’t know why I didn’t give it to you right away. Sorry.”

She takes a sip, and it coats her mouth in warmth.

“You should be happy,” he says quietly, and Iris looks away.

Iris feels a growing chill against her arms then, and looks up to find the nearest heat lamp extinguished.

“I’m gonna go inside,” she says, “it’s kind of cold.”

He nods, and Iris approaches the back door with him following a few feet behind.

She quickens her pace, bypassing the table and making a beeline for the ladies’ room. She closes herself up in the stall farthest from the entrance and stands there, leaning her forehead against the door. Her fingers graze the hem of her dress, and she feels a rush of embarrassment at its shortness, its gaudy shine. She feels like a mouse trapped in the body of a flamingo. Then she remembers stepping out of the shed that night, into the dark, with no clue as to how late it was. The yard was empty, and in the distance, she could see the kitchen windows lit. She walked up to the tree and looked around. She saw the snapped branch on the other side and crouched down to touch its smooth, silvery bark, until her mother’s voice came calling from the house.

“Iris, are you ready to come inside? Come here!”

She looked back, still crouched.

“Iris, get away from there, please!”

She looked back at the house, frozen in place, in her folds of bright yellow chiffon, neon in the colorless night, the sash untied and dragging in the dirt. She gripped the cold, loamy branch in her small hand and wondered, where could he be now? She’d seen the boy earlier, poking around near the shed, and she’d wondered if he could hear the music, if he would open the door and find her hiding place. Where did they take him?

“Iris, please!”

And the desperation in her mother’s voice snapped her out of her trance. She walked slowly up to the kitchen door and her mother pulled her sharply inside by the arm.

“Change out of that honey,” she said.

“Iris?”

Iris opens her eyes in the bathroom stall, collects herself, and steps out.

“Jesus,” Mallory says, “I thought you’d passed out or something.”

“I’ve got to get out of here…” Iris says, stepping out of the stall, realizing all at once that she’s drunk.

“Seriously?” Mallory pouts.

“How are you getting home?” she calls after her, but Iris has already left the bathroom, the door swinging behind her.

She sees Marcus hovering near the bar and grabs his arm.

“Can you take me home? Now? It’s too far to walk back in these shoes and I— ”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he says, and follows her out the door, nodding at his friend on the way out. When he gets outside, Iris is marching lopsidedly in the wrong direction. He takes her elbow and steers her toward his car.

When they pull up to Iris’s building, Marcus turns off the ignition.

“So, this is you,” he says, and brushes a finger down her forearm.

He lingers there, and Iris, sobered a little by the ride, can feel him inching closer. She’s unwittingly sent a signal, she figures, and isn’t sure whether or not she wants to take it back. He brings his face in to hers, and though startled, Iris lets him kiss her for a second. She keeps her eyes open, taking in his pores, the boyish peach fuzz on his upper cheek, and breathing in his thick, vaguely sweaty, but not unpleasant, scent. He slowly eases his tongue into her mouth, and she closes her eyes, and wonders how far this might go if she lets it. Her skin buzzes with the proximity and she surrenders to it, unnerved by the electricity that seems to be running through her. Then, abruptly, he pulls away.

“Okay, sorry,” he says. “You’re not into this. I get it.”

“Oh. Oh.” She doesn’t know what she did.

“It’s okay.” He looks straight ahead, his cheeks flushed, hands on the steering wheel.

“Sorry,” she says, and gets out of the car. As she’s unlocking the front door, she looks back to find him still there, phone pressed to his cheek.

When she gets inside, she pauses on the stairs to her apartment for a moment, then turns back down toward the garage instead. She walks to her car, the clacking of her high heels echoing on the greasy pavement, lets herself into the passenger side and plunks herself down, feeling the exhaustion of standing on stilts all night. She opens up the glove compartment and pulls out the note.

It is later, and I’m not here. But you are.

She reads it several times. She leans her head back on the seat and closes her eyes, drowsy, heavy.

She drifts back to the kitchen doorway then, her mother’s hand yanking her inside.

Change out of that honey, please.

She nodded, and walked down the darkened hallway, running her fingers along the wall. She stopped then, when she saw her brother’s bedroom door standing open. She moved toward it and stepped inside, but he was nowhere to be found. The only thing she saw was the open window, and the curtains stirring in the breeze.

In her car, Iris opens her eyes and reads the note in her hand again.

I’m not here. But you are.

How would he know? How would she? She tucks the note into her clutch and steps out of the car. She climbs the stairs up to her apartment, trying to feel the presence of her body in the air, but all she feels is the hang of her dress, as though there were no body inside it.