Ashes Of The Phoenix

“I don’t mind” she said with a toneless voice “But don't use more than half a bottle of water!” she recommended.

A few minutes later Jag came back, and, without saying a word, he walked through the door and closed it behind him; the girl simply slid the lock in place and listened to the boy’s movements in the hall, and as soon as everything was silent, she went to lie down on the bed.

After a night of restless sleep, Fade got up at sunrise, quickly put her rollerblades on and went to check if the child was still there or if he had gone away. While she slid the security bolt open, she couldn’t fully understand which of the two possibilities she would have preferred.

She opened the door very carefully, looked around and saw the boy in a corner, curled up like a cat because it had been cold the previous night. She felt no pity at the sight: too many times she had slept in those conditions, and she had seen hundreds of people acting in the same manner. “Come on, get ready!” She ordered, waking him up.

The day didn’t start well for the girl: in her haste to escort Jag to wherever he wanted to go - and finally get rid of him - she didn’t have the time to style her hair in her usual hairdo, so she went around wearing a hat which was big enough to cover all her hair and a pair of sunglasses to avoid being recognized; a pretty futile attempt, for she continued to wear her threadbare purple and black rollerblades.

She absent-mindedly followed the brat who walked before her carrying a big map with both hands. The child kept on speaking to himself reading the names of the streets and raising his nose in the air, looking for a match with the plates attached to the walls of the streets.

This went on for a bit and, suddenly, Jag stopped with the open map still in his hands. So abruptly that she almost bumped into him.

“What's the matter? Are we there?” She asked.

He didn’t answer; he just stood still in the middle of the street. Then he finally admitted: “I'm lost...”

Fade, stunned at first, burst out in a fit of rage: “What do you mean you’re lost? We’ve been walking around the city for hours and you realize only now that... Give me that!” She ordered, snatching the map out of his hand to understand where they were. Following a moment of confusion, she understood: “You idiot! This is the map of another city! How will you be able to find your way around with this?!”

“How is that possible?” He asked with the blank stare of a person who doesn’t understand what is happening.

“You tell me! It’s also the map of the city of another State!”

“That's why you speak with that strange accent” he replied tersely, without giving the slightest importance to the huge mistake he had made.

At that further demonstration of total detachment from their problem, she crinkled the map with a single move of her hands and threw it on his chest. “I'm done with you! I'm leaving!” She finished, moving quickly back in the direction from which they had come.

“Wait!” He shouted before she was too far to hear him. She stopped, although she knew she was making a mistake, and stood still without looking back.

Encouraged, the child ran to catch up with her, with the crumpled map under his arm.

“You were kind to me,” he said “Let me repay you.”

He dropped the map on the ground and took out of his back pocket a ridiculous - in Fade’s opinion - portfolio with manga illustrations on it. To her great astonishment, it was full of large bills.

Jag took one and handed it to one. “Here, this is for you.”

“This is a joke, isn’t it?” Was all she managed to say without the slightest hint of wanting to take the note. “Of course not!” He continued, “I think it’s the least I can do to thank you for what you did...”

Fade stared at the bill. Of course, that would have been enough to get her by for a while without worrying and risking her neck or prison in order to grab a meagre meal, but inside her something was stopping her: decisions she had taken, mental chains blocking her actions, oaths, prohibitions and obligations that bombed her brain every day reminding her why she was in that situation.

“Goodbye,” she said, walking away from that awkward position. This time the boy didn’t stop her, he just looked at her going away, while he soundlessly lowered the hand holding the bill. He stood there, with his usual neutral expression; then he snorted and smiled sarcastically and cynically at the same time: “Hm! She’s incorruptible.”

Fade ran through the streets in a sweat, as if trying to escape the storm of thoughts that echoed in her head. She ran to escape from it, because sliding on the asphalt allowed her to return in tune with her more neutral thoughts. But it didn’t work; she reached her home with difficulty and jumped on the bed holding her head, now hostage of a flood of screams, loud noises and rushes of images that crazily overlapped in a space too narrow to contain them. Crumpled like a can she let out an agonizing cry of pain, and then collapsed on the mattress of her miserable shelter.

The next morning she awoke completely groggy. She seemed to have slept for a long time without actually realizing how long; she laid a while on the mattress, then she tiredly turned her head towards the room.

Jag was sitting in the opposite corner, with a sketchbook on his knees and earphones at his ears. As soon as he noticed her movements he took off his earphones and stared at her.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She asked in a whisper, barely moving her parched mouth.

“I was worried about you; I followed you and saw that you were ill. What happened to you?”

“A bit of a headache” she replied.

“A bit of a headache? To me it seemed like a real headache,” he replied with a mature tone.

“It’s none of your business, now go away or else...” but she couldn’t even finish the sentence because the crisis of the previous night had been so strong she fell back to sleep.

Jag put his headphones back on and continued to scribble on his sketch pad.

At lunch time the girl woke up, roused by the loud noises the kid was making while he opened the cans on the kitchen counter next to the bed. She sat up with uncoordinated movements, but all she could do was sit with her arms resting on her knees. She stared at the roller-blades that were still on her feet. “Didn’t I tell you to leave?” She asked with her head leaning toward the floor.

“I still haven’t repaid you” was the child's response.

“Then, as payment, I want you to get lost,” she replied dryly.

“Don’t be silly,” he chuckled, finally managing to open a can of soup “I always reward those who help me.” That said he poured the soup in a dish, put it in a microwave oven and pressed the start button.

“What the hell is that?” She asked tilting her head.

“Multi-coloured soup, it’s good! It’s the only food with vegetables that I eat, actually...”

“I didn’t mean that” she interrupted him “What is that thing doing in my house?”

“Oh, while you were sleeping I took the opportunity to bring a little comfort to your home! With this you can warm your food, I also bought an electric stove, an oven, some light bulbs and, of course, I made sure to fix the electrical system and connect it to the to a network, then...”

“Are you crazy?” She shouted jumping up as if she was suddenly reinvigorated “That way they’ll catch me immediately! And how do you think I’ll manage to pay the bill?”

“The bill? You don’t have to pay for it, I took care of it” he calmly replied. The girl was about to argue, but she was interrupted by the sound of the alarm indicating that the microwave oven had ended its cycle. Jag opened the door, took out the steaming dish and placed it on a straw place mat he had specially bought for the occasion.

“Here you go,” he said inviting her to sit on the stool next to his. Fade remained silent, lured by the idea of eating something hot, she sat down, picked up the spoon and ate the soup, while the child beside her, munched on pretzels, one after the other.

After the meal, she started talking again with a less dismissive tone than usual “Well, I guess now you repaid me, I wish you luck in your search, no matter what it is!” And she remained silent, as if she expected the story wouldn’t end there. Strangely, however, the kid slid off the stool with a little jump and started toward the door. “Then goodbye ...”

He slipped the safety bolt aside and walked out, closing the door behind him.

The great silence following his last gesture left a bitter-sweet taste in her mouth: the satisfaction of having regained her independence but also dissatisfaction, as if she lacked the answers to figure out what had really happened.

At that moment, her gaze fell on the kitchen counter, on which, next to the half-empty box of pretzels, the child had left his sketchbook. She pulled it towards her and lifted the cover to reveal a first subject.

The design was sketched and rough, but solid in structure and with a slight touch of contrast in the parts where the author had found it interesting to bring out the volumes. It represented a singer curled up during a concert. The face and hands, more refined than the rest of the body, seemed to unleash the pure energy of the music that was channelled into his body, barely outlined, and stretched out to radiate all around him.

She continued to browse through the album. In the following pages she found various studies of musicians, detailed with dark and light contrasts of hands in various positions and musical instruments, mostly modern. She stared at a drawing of a pianist: the sheet was shaded because of strong chiaroscuro, probably made with a soft pencil, which recreated the shiny black effect of the instrument. On some points, the rubber erasures simulated reflections. The man’s face was engrossed in a serene and melancholy expression, as if he were playing music of past memories.

Fade flipped through a few more pages, until the last subject, this time designed with a red pencil. It represented the profile of a naked girl kneeling on the ground. The line her body formed remembered the slow death of a swan as it collapses. Her hands were clasped, resting between her knees and the long hair hanging in front of her face showed only a glimpse of her eye, full of anger and despair as she stared toward those who were watching her. On her left leg, a long scar broke the delicacy of her features.

She felt as if someone had just scraped her soul with a rusty spoon. She stared at the drawing, reading her thoughts for the first time. A knock on the door brought her back to reality.