Short story, untitled right now. Possibility for UEL application, perhaps:
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If he stands any closer he'd be touching you, and that's not something you want or need right now, not at all. Check out the way he's cutting the paper, voice gravelly and deep, with a sweet accent that is partly southern and mostly all Nawlins' yat, no 'ar's in words, just 'aw', like "part", but it's actually 'pawt'. He's got this accent as he explains with paint-stained fingers what he's doing (cutting colored paper into magnificent figures of opulent trees and rotting gravestones).
"It's nothin' like what we got here, in our cemetaries," He's saying to you as he continues to cut away. Around you, tourists are brushing past adorning fanny packs and whining children with sticky hands, "We got stand-up tombs, becuz of the water levels and such, it's surreal, really."
You're mesmerized by his tanned fingers and paint splattered long sleeves and the warmth he's radiating off onto you by his proximity. His name is Clyne, he told you when you'd approached him, wallet in hand to buy one of the plentiful paintings he's got strapped to the fences surrounding Jackson Square. In the near-distance, the St. Louis cathedral is being white-washed by big black men in overalls who are whistling better than some people can sing.
Clyne's paying no attention, not at all, standing on the corner beside you as he talks, explaining something or other, looking like he's stepped out of a 40's photograph, hair tucked under a fedora, baggy sleeves rolled to the elbows, and suspenders sliding down his thin shoulders.
"And, uh, the storm rolled in, right, and here I was, tucked into this uh, ball," He's barely distracted when a mother-type, toddler slung over her hip, wanders over with one of his least-appealing most-touristy painting in her hand, "That's twenty-five."
She palms over a twenty and five singles and he reaches one-handed into his back pocket to tuck it away, not even glancing at her, not once. You feel like an idiot because you're still there, hanging to his every word and feeling awe-inspired and like a tacky dolt for being enamored with him. He's a foreign being to you, so far away from the artists you met at your liberal, artsy college that he's intriguing, haunting, beautiful.
"And, anyway, yeah so me and Shea, he's over on the west side, down more by Decatur," He continues, cutting away. The paper is taking shape - long spindly branches and knotted wood emerging from old computer paper collected off of the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, all being delicately cut by a child's pair of scissors, "We ran for whateva we could, you know, climbed high onto the rooves of warehouses of the business district. Ate lots of weird nutrition bars and shared a bottle of stoli and a jug of apple juice for three days until we could walk the streets again."
He looks up at you then, the girl who's hair is plastered to her face because of the 85 degree heat, the girl with the touristy-tee shirts balled into a plastic bag; the girl still clinging onto his every word, and he smiles. His teeth are white, albeit crooked in some parts, and his eyes squint at you, which distorts his oddly-handsome face (everything's mis-proportioned and yet it just works) because of the sun, which you can feel beating against your back.
"What's your story?" He asks, honestly, and you don't know what to say. You're here to do service work, actually, to help rebuild New Orleans, to make yourself feel better for being such a lazy asshole who's spoiled and too-comfortable in her Northeastern liberal arts college, surrounded by pretentious assholes who don't have the dime of talent Clyne has.
"Just visiting," You say instead of everything that had just been running through your head. He smirks, more glimpses of white teeth under lips that you know must be salty-sweet because of the sweat mixed with the mint gum he's chewing on.
You suddenly just want to kiss him, because he's a lot of amazing in this light. He nods.
"Layla, you said yo' name was?" He says, his blue eyes meeting yours for the first time. You just nod in response, feeling a surge of something, just something, that he remembered. He sticks out his free hand, and you slide your palm into his and shake his hand tightly. You can feel the dried paint and the callouses and you wonder what it'd feel like on your face, or neck.
"I know I already introduced myself, but I'm Clyne," He says, and you smile back at him this time, feeling the blush spread across your face as he lets go of your hand.
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Later, there's wine, lots of it, and Clyne's got a guitar and you're sitting in some warehouse with a bonfire raging and lots of other people who also look like they've just stepped out of a '40's portrait. Clyne's introduced you to the lot of them but you're terrible with names sober, so being drunk just makes it hopeless all together. You're not really concerned with them, though, because you've only got eyes for him, despite the blonde pin-up type with the crazy tattoos who's glaring at you from across the fire. You're drunk and you think he's mysterious and he's survived Hurricane Katrina on a bottle of stoli, nutrition bars and apple juice and that's just fucking insane, really. He's also all-kinds of talented, strumming away expertly at the beat-up acoustic in his hands, and he's already promised to show you his studio later, when it got quieter.
By the flicker of the firelight he looks much more beautiful then he did in the bright New Orleans sunlight, and across the fire, he catches your eye and winks at you, a slow smile crawling across his lips.
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You end up from his studio (which isn't much more than a sectioned off portion of the warehouse drowning in old-sheets used as drop cloths and half-painted blocks of wood) to his bedroom (a small room tucked in the back), and you tumble into bed with him, finding out he tastes more salty-sweet-smoky then just salty-sweet because between this afternoon and now in addition to smoking a cigarette he's also eaten spicy-gumbo and smoked sausage (a meal you'd shared with him on one of the corners). He kisses drunkenly, and his hair tickles your forehead when he takes off his hat, and he's unbelievable in bed - more concerned about you then him, really. He kisses like he means it and whispers a mixture of sweet and dirty things in your ear, effectively making you blush and then flush almost right after each other. By the time he gets your shirt off you've already laughed out loud and cried, and you are so ready for the night ahead. So ready.
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By day, the room is nothing more than a box-spring mattress on the floor with a surprisingly clean comforter and dark sheets. The wood floor is paint-spattered and there are records, unopened paint tubes, and half-drawn sketches strewn about. Clyne himself is laying on his stomach, a pillow tucked under his head and mouth slack-jawed. You spend awhile getting up, getting dressed, waiting for him to budge, but he doesn't - apparently he's a deep sleeper.
Instead of waking him, you slip your sneakers on and scribble your name and number onto a scrap of paper found on the floor.
You kiss his parted lips quickly and tip-toe out of the room, feet shuffling silently through the warehouse where his friends are still sleeping in various bouts of undress on the floor in front of the smoldering fire. The only one awake is Tye, a performance artist that you remember did a wonderful impression of Kermit the Frog the night before, who's smoking a cigarette outside when you tip-toe out. He smiles and waves.
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The next day and the next and the next you work side by side others tearing down sheetrock and emptying out cupboards of forgotten teacups filled to the brim with stagnant, putrid water from when the Lower Ninth was under drowning, and you barely think of Clyne as you hear the stories of others. He's there, somewhere in the back of your head, the beautiful boy with the suspenders and smirk, but he's not much in the grand scheme of things, not when you watch a woman break into tears as she explains her daughters cry when it rains these days and that she's lost her whole family except her older brother, who's so petrified that the levees will break again that he refuses to come home.
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The last day, you and the group of students you came with make one last trip to the Quarter and from across Decatur, you can see Clyne as he cuts away at his paper, continuously making art. He's got a soft smile on his lips, like he's in on a secret no one else is, and he doesn't notice you at all.
You dig your camera out of your bag and snap a picture of him just to remember him by.
Later, that picture will get printed because it's so surreal - a twenty-something year old artist, dressed to the nines in his slacks, button up shirt, suspenders and fedora looking like he'd been caught in the wrong century. It'll end up on your wall next to Clyne's art, which stands out as utterly remarkable against the ugliness of the walls in your room, and people will inquire lots about both photo and portrait, and you'll explain your trip to New Orleans as clinically as possible.
You won't tell them about how he kissed you so sweetly, spoke so dirtily in your ear, confided between moments that he both loved and hated what he was - nothing more than a street artist in the shadows of a fallen city. You won't tell anyone that while you hated your more traditional life he hated his own non-traditional one and that you both felt remarkably connected in your inability to change who you were, of what you've become by the roads you're ending up on.
He won't call you, but that's okay, because you'll never forget him, and you'll never forget what it was like to walk down those streets, metallic Mardi Gras beads seemingly melting off of the trees everywhere, like cold, colored icicles misplaced in time and place. You won't forget the stories, the tears, the teacups or the mold-ridden walls. You won't forget the slick, sweet/salty of his kisses and whispers in your ear:
"It's haunting, ain't it? This city? This dead city? Makes you think remawkable things can happen to you, sometimes...but only sometimes."
His laugh was just simply musical.
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/end.