Paper Flyers

Chapter 13- Quinn

     Bitter coffee in one hand and crumpled paper in the other, I sat on a rusty old bench, overlooking the Puget Sound. The couples that dotted the walking path in front of me, both young and old, had my complete envy. They made love look so simple, so easy. It wasn't. It was hard not to screw up, hard to say the right thing, and in this moment, near impossible to be be further away from Winnie than just a couple of blocks and forced to focus on something that wasn't her fiery red hair. Just looking over the top of my newspaper I swear I saw her four different times, freckled nose tilted towards the sky, watching the birds migrate. I could swear I saw her hunched over writing, back turned against the fall winds that tried to penetrate everyone's jacket. 

     In the few moments I did manage to focus, I was skimming job openings in the paper. I few weeks ago, I would've tried to find the one that payed the most, or the one closest to my house. Now I focused on the one I thought I'd enjoy most, and the one that would leave me with enough hours to see Winnie. 

      After some distracted glancing, I did find one opening that caught my interest. The Museum of Communications needed a new tour guide. Here was another place my mother had taken us when we were little. She loved history, wanted to know how and why everything started. As a kid I must've visted every museum in the state at least twice, but this one had been my mother's favorite. Consequently, I had it memorized like the back of my hind, the narrow hallways and low ceilings leading to rooms of old telephone equipment. More than once, my brother and I had pretended to be old-timey detectives seeing things like a black and white film. 

  Smiling at the memory, I stood, discarding my paper and empty coffee cup into the garbage can and headed off for the Museum. 

   I headed uptown, excited at the chance to have a new job and decent meals again. I'd also have money to spend on Winnie, whether that meant buying her books or buying her dinner. 

   On the way I passed sky-high office buildings, and thanked my lucky stars I wasn't working in one of them. Graffiti sang at me from the sides of bridges and even the sidewalk in some places, and I couldn't help but smile at the vibrant colors. Odd words were strung together in bubble letters that looked about to bounce, and although they didn't have any meaning for me, I knew that for some kid they had secret meaning. 

    Besides the usual string of cabs and buses, there weren't many people out on the streets on this lovely Tuesday afternoon. With no company but pigeons, I strolled down the worn concrete and past the shops and businesses lining either side.

  I wished Winnie was with me. I could've pointed out every sngle building, could've told her the story of the homeless man who used to sit on that corner and write poetry with a dying piece of chalk while people scattered pennies on the ground around him. 

  I rounded the corner and found myself outside the burger joint I'd eaten at my first night I moved in, with the grimy floors and the delicious food. I saw the lamppost that I'd sat next to after I ate, looking up and feeling very alone. 

  I wanted Winnie to hear all of this, to know everything about me. I wanted to know everything about her. It'd be like trading books, containing the first segments of our lives, catching up with each other. And then, once we were both all filled in, we could start a third book, about both of us and we'd be all caught up from then on. Maybe that's why people fall in love. Maybe there's some huge library of everyone somewhere, and in order to save space and time they stick two people together, so they only take up one book.

  I walked past a few more shops, a few more memories, and then came upon the museum. I was different from what I remembered. A little shorter, a little squatter, a little less grand. It's letters that I remembered shining in the sunlight were dull and rusted, it's welcoming posters faded and uunnoticeable.