#bot1

When he finished, he drew his fingers away slowly, suddenly panting as if he was exhausted – and he truly was. Nina didn’t speak for a while, didn’t move either; when he looked at her, she had her hand closed in a fist pressed against her lips – tore into a wide smile, cheeks carmine in excitement.

“That was really beautiful,” she said.

Unexpectedly, she stood up, paced slowly towards the keyboard and stood behind him. When she leaned over, Tyler could feel her hairs touching the back of his neck, and a shiver ran up his spine – she smelled of chamomile. Her finger hovered above the keys, like she wanted to press them but wouldn’t dare to. Tyler told her to drag a chair, sit down next to him; come, he said, I’ll teach you a few things. She did.

Her fingers felt smooth to the touch – light, velvety – long and delicate. They were cold and moved slowly, and Tyler guided them, placing her hand in his, whispering careful indications: this, and that one, and then these – and the sounds came in accordance to her movements. The notes, played slowly, one by one, with intervals of seconds between them, rang a pang of desire – her giggling merely completed the melody, a chirping of fresh waters in a forest, or of a singing nightingale in the morning. Tyler watched her profile as her eyes concentrated on her repetitive movements – the curve of her nose, the tip of her upper lip. She turned her face around, eyes facing him. They glowed in amber, stars in a dimly lit and messy living room, his very own night sky. When she smiled, she bit her cherry-pink lips shyly.

Tyler’s finger touched her chin; he thought she’d run away, like a scared bird, that nightingale awoken in the night, disappearing into the distance. But she merely flinched, licked her lips and tilted her head – as if expecting. It took more courage than he was willing to admit to himself – to lean forward, to touch her lips with his, to feel her breath merge with his, to feel her hot skin in his – she tasted of rum and let out tiny, embarrassed gasps – excited, contained, he couldn’t know. Her body, however, was rigid, one hand gripping her seat, the other falling still on the keyboard – lost, like a spider, feeling its way somewhere, uncertain where to.

When Melodie lowered her bow, she huffed an amused laugh – and Zamir clapped only once, his eyes lighting up in real, palpable tears he didn’t bother himself with wiping away. “Beautiful,” he murmured. “You must play more, you two. Perfectly synchronized, and you—” he waved his hand at Melodie, eyebrows arched in marvel, submissive to her talents, “—it was like listening to an Angel cry.”

The stories were many, a fairy tale told through time, as if one could not find it possible that such a sad, desolated city – left to poverty and survival, walled in by the beautiful, superimposing Sunrise City – had once held anything luxurious at all. Some said the businesses had decayed when the migrants arrived – starving, poor, begging for money, for help, for caring. The attendees of the fine restaurants and expensive shops did not compute – the shock was overwhelming, they felt threatened. Some spoke of armed militaries setting a boundary, but then violence had erupted – riots and pillaging, windows being broken so the contents of its stores were stolen.

Eventually, the owners of those businesses saw a decline in their profits. The once luxurious beaches fell abandoned – lounge chairs replaced with swirling garbage, rolling across the sand, ignored; the rich customers of the stores disappeared; the beggars sat at every corner, the restaurants closed their doors so they wouldn’t have to fill their garbage cans with leftovers – it might attract the poor, they said – and one by one, the tourists left – shocked, outraged, terrified of living side-by-side with who they deemed savage – the migrants who settled in the nearby neighbourhoods, who cluttered their windows with plastic bags and always had a ton of laundry flapping in the wind outside – visual pollution, they claimed. With no commerce, no clients and no tourism, business shut down – and the owners simply left. Behind, stood a graveyard of their past conquests, now occupied by the wanderers – the warehouses made their home when they had none, the decaying buildings saw their materials being stolen, reused for good purposes – whatever was left, it found life anew, and in the rubble of a distant past – unachievable, too glorious to believe to have ever been real – the local kids built their home.

Many still disliked the docks – especially the deported, the rejects and renegades who trusted no one and lived with fear inside their hearts. But Tyler didn’t – he enjoyed the view, the sound of the waves slapping against the walls, swallowing what was left of its beaches – nothing but a thin strip of land, more desolated than ever – a tall mesh of rusty metal with holes cut into it – legend had, the military had set it up so kids wouldn’t go swimming in the ocean. It didn’t work – they always found a way. And one could see it torn to pieces, holes big enough to fit a whole family through – occasionally, floaties left forgotten during the summer, and the okupas from the warehouses sunbathing.