#da-eun

In the dimming blue twilight, dark clouds sat just over the horizon of squared off rooftops and a crane, and a man in the shadows behind a dumpster watched the green door. He coughed into his fist, phlegmy and thick, then spat a loogie onto the pavement. A stripe of incandescent light zigzagged up the stairs and stuttered over cracks in the asphalt. Four silhouettes cut into the light, slipped out the door, then shut the door behind them, trapping the light back in the basement. As they came up the stairs, Spiders looked over the tall pretty girl, the tall pretty boy, the short androgynous one, and the short waifish girl. Children, the lot of them.

“Lost babies,” remarked Spiders Guy. “Lost little babes.” He didn’t step forward out from behind the dumpster or anything. No, he just started speaking from where they couldn’t even see him yet. “Downstairs treat you well, plaything?”

“Okay.” Da-eun immediately brought up her bat and rested it on her palm. “We’re not doing this tonight, or ever.”

“You left the light, but the shadows scare you,” Spiders observed. “You’re thieves and breakers, breaking in, breaking the materials.” He had neck-length gray hair under a trucker hat, a weathered face that was half scratchy with stubble, and wore a thick flannel jacket over a zip-up hoodie and a few sweaters, old but reliable jeans, and steel-toe work boots. The teenagers could see none of that because still he stood back by the wall, and here behind the building no street lights reached them.

“You’re the upstairs geezer,” recognized Bevie. “Spiders.”

“Spiders?” asked Da-eun, concerned.

“He’s the Spiders Guy,” explained Bevie. She started walking onward, feet flinching on the cold asphalt and sharp pebbles. “Got a ciggy, Spiders?”

He stepped forward and fished out a crushed pack. “Peck on the cheek, sweetheart, and I won’t tell your daddy you’re out with your friends.”

“And you’ll give me a cigarette?” asked Bevie.

“Don’t,” Da-eun warned.

Spiders grinned and held up a cigarette. Bevie put her hands on his arm and stood on her tiptoes to give him a little smooch on his craggy cheek. He smiled and patted her shoulder.

“There you go, grandpa,” Bevie said.

He passed her the cigarette. “Sweet little thing.”

“Do you know him?” asked Paul.

Bevie let Spiders give her a light, then took a long drag before she responded through curling blue smoke. “I told you who he is, didn’t I? This is our neighbor.”

“Better hurry on out of the woods before the wolf comes home,” warned Spiders.

Bevie nodded. “You’re right, old man. Thanks for the ciggy. You’re the best!” She hugged his arm then walked on back over to Da-eun. “Relax, bitch, jeez.”

“The hippie has the most shadows,” observed Spiders. He pointed the fingers holding his cigarette at Paul. “How’d you gather so much shade, hippie?”

“Let’s go,” declared Da-eun, and she started toward her car. She’d parked on the street.

“Do you see ghosts?” Paul asked Spiders.

Spiders hocked up another loogie and spat. “Boy is spun of sugar and cinnamon. Sugarglass boy. Bet you got smooth, soft fingers. Too many wicks: two lit, one soot and smoke.” He tapped ash from the tip of his cigarette then sucked his teeth. His eyes fell on Calvin. “Fat tits.”

“That’s all you gotta say about me? Paul is sugar glass poetry and I’m just fat tits? Fuck you,” Calvin sputtered and flipped Spiders off.

Spider put up his own middle fingers and waggled them mockingly as if to cast a spell. “Woooh-oooooh tomcat, throw your hissy spit.”

Da-eun had made it to the end of the alley and put a hand on her hip, other hand leaning on the top of the baseball bat propped out like a cane. “Come on! Stop hanging around that creep and let’s get out of here.”

Paul put an arm around Calvin and ushered him toward their waiting driver. Bevie strolled along with them, smiling over her glowing cinder.

---

The radio played Janet Jackson. A comfortable orange glow from the street light washed over the inside of Da-eun’s coupe. She reached across the passenger seat and pulled the lever to rocket it forward so Calvin could get out. From the sidewalk he waved back at the car, then crossed the lawn to his front door. Paul waved back, then Alis opened the door to confront her son about the lateness of the hour and his lack of a phone call. Calvin disappeared into his house.

“So where are we taking her? Where did you live before, Bevie?” Da-eun asked, buckling back up and checking her mirrors before pulling back out into the street.

“Ugh,” Bevie replied and encircled her arms around Paul’s arm, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Paul, you’ll let me sleep at your place, right?”

He shook his head. “My grandparents would never allow it, and if you think we’re getting cozy you are very much mistaken.”

“Just tell me where you live and I’ll get you back to your family,” insisted Da-eun.

Bevie pushed off from Paul and pulled her knees up to her chest. “Drop Paul off first.”

“My car is back at Hyun’s house,” replied Paul. He watched her run her fingers over her lips and apply more lip balm, and he remembered Bevie didn’t know who Hyun was. “Which is Da-eun’s house, while she’s back from college anyway. So she has to drop you off first.”

Da-eun pulled off to the side of the road and parked. She’d circled a block in the suburb where Calvin lived while she´d waited for directions to her next stop, but didn’t want to waste any more gas. With her arm hooked over the backrest, she twisted around to look into the back seat. “You’re not going to live in my car, and Paul’s not taking you home. With how you’re not exactly dressed, there’s not really any place to take you but back to your place. It’s safe there, right?”

Bevie looked back at Da-eun with a deadened, sulky pout.

“Is it safe?” asked Da-eun.

The girl shrugged. “Wouldn’t it be cool if my parents moved while I was gone?”

“No,” said Paul, looking at her weird. “It would not be ‘cool.’”

“Maybe they figured I died and they didn’t want to hang around in a place with all these suckass memories so they packed up and moved to, I dunno, Ohio or Montana or someshit. And I was just completely on my own. I think that would be totally neato.” She grinned.

Da-eun let a few beats pass to give the remark some space then said, “You have a weird sense of humor.”

Bevie rolled her eyes and hugged her knees closer. She rattled off her address.

“With your knees up like that I can see your coochie,” Da-eun told her. She turned back around in her seat and started her car back up. “Don’t forget you’re basically naked. Can you give me directions there, or will I have to get out a road map?”

“I don’t know where we are,” laughed Bevie. “What makes you think I can give directions to where I live? Dumbass.”

“Bitch,” muttered Da-eun, and she turned her engine back off before digging a road map out of the door pocket and turning on the ceiling light. She began to cross reference the address to listings on the side of the map and found where it indicated the house would be on the grid. “H...5…” Her press-on nail traced across the paper riddled with veins in blue and red over squares of green and beige, winding rivers and lakes in pale blue, and tiny text.

Paul felt the extra souls churning in his throat. He contained their questions and conversations, like Calvin had been unable to. How had Spiders known Duria was there? Could anybody else see her without mirrors?

Da-eun dropped Bevie off at a small house up on a hill, with a steep, narrow cement staircase to the front porch. An old blue and white pickup parked on the sloping driveway of two paved stripes on a section of lawn cut at a shallower angle than the rest. Bevie shut the door behind her and smiled up at the house. She heard the woman who’d driven her say, “Hey! Weird bitch!”

Reaching across the passenger seat to the window, Da-eun handed her a receipt with a number written on the back. “Call me if...just if you want to. You can call me. It’s my family’s number so my dad or my brother might pick up. Ask for Dee.”

“Dee,” repeated Bevie. She reconsidered a snarky response but instead gave a quick nod. “Thanks. How did you know about me?”

“Ask him.” Da-eun nodded toward Paul. “He and his friend insisted we come rescue you. Cal even knew it was you in there. Beats me how. They say it was ghosts.”

Bevie smirked. “So Casper brought a rescue team.”

“I guess. Have a good night.” Da-eun settled back into the driver’s seat and buckled up.

“Night,” bid Bevie. She waved to Paul, then started up the stairs as he waved back.

Paul held his jacket in his lap and caught Dee’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Back to your place then, huh?”

---

A mug of tea steamed between Paul’s palms. He sat at the dining room table, thinking about how he was going to affect one more rescue that night. Chewing on his lip, he looked at the clock on the wall. His grandparents had a Roman numeral clock with a silver rim, circular and plain. An elderly corgi slept on a plaid dog bed near the fireplace. Paul thought since it had gotten so dark, of course it would be too late to call Daiki’s mom back and find out how to get to the hospital, but it wasn’t even nine yet.

“I mean it’s a little late, and it’s kind of a strange question, but it’s not too late,” Paul murmured to himself and his passengers.

“Did you say something, Honey?” asked Barbara. She turned from where she sat on the couch watching a game show. A television sat in its nook in an entertainment center set up next to the fireplace. The TV guide lay on the coffee table next to today’s newspaper. Barbara was a woman in her sixties with glasses on a chain and short, dark hair flecked with silver. She had a lighter complexion than her grandson. In that regard he took after his father. Barb and Floyd had kicked out their young daughter Deborah when she’d gotten pregnant, then taken her back just long enough to get the baby. They wouldn’t even speak to her boyfriend, Uriel, except to tell him to get off their property. That was eighteen years ago.

“Just talking to myself, Gramma,” replied Paul.

“Did you have fun at your friend’s house?” she asked.

“I did. We played games and hung out in his room, then we had dinner. His sister is visiting from college and one of my other friends was there, too.”

“That sounds lovely, dear. What are your friends’ names again?”

“Hyun, and the other friend who was there was Calvin.”

“I don’t think I ever met Calvin.”

“You have. You just always seem to forget his name when you see him.” Paul looked back at the clock. “I’m going to call another friend before it gets too late, Gramma.”

“Well gosh, it’s already almost nine! Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” she asked.

“No, Gramma.”

She frowned. “Oh, I remember Calvin now. When I was young they weren’t naming little girls ‘Calvin.’ That was strictly a boy’s name. But there’s Billies and Jamies and Jackies out there now of all sorts, so you never can tell. Just isn’t a very pretty name, if you ask me.”

Paul nodded, sighed, and got up to go call Rei. Barbara continued talking about names until she trailed off and looked to the television screen. “What is ammonia!” she guessed.

“Hello?” greeted Rei. “This is Dr. Rei Cooper.”

“Hello. I’m sorry for calling so late. This is Paul again. I called earlier today.”

“Oh, yes. I remember. Daiki still isn’t back yet.”

“Yeah. Um, could you please tell me what hospital he’s at?”

---

The parking lot had gotten bumpy with tree roots pushing up the asphalt. Paul found a spot and walked around until he found the entrance to the general lobby.

“Visiting hours are over, son,” an old man at the desk informed him.

“Oh, sorry. I’ll go,” apologized Paul. “Give me just a minute.” He looked at the directory posted on the wall on a large, dark brown plaque. “Where would coma patients be?”

“The ICU, but you’ll have to come back in the morning. Visiting hours are from eight AM to five PM.”

Paul nodded. “Alright. Thank you. Sorry to bother you.”

He left back through the double doors and the secondary set of double doors just past them, and began to circle around again to find another entrance. Wet asphalt reflected streetlights in pebbly vertical stripes. Small shrubs grew from curbed islands of beauty bark and plastic erosion netting. No continuous sidewalk marked the circumference of the hospital, so Paul picked his way between bushes from one parking lot to the next. After wondering for some time, he noticed a couple caregivers taking a smoke break. As he watched, they put out their cigarettes and walked together back in. He slipped in just after them then ducked down a hallway into a bathroom just as they looked behind them. The bathroom had a handrail, a red cord hanging to the floor, and a little door in the wall between this room and the laboratory for urine samples. He combed his fingers through his hair to work out nerves and tangles, then slipped back out into the hall. Paul muttered the floor number he needed to get to under his breath and found the elevators.

Somebody came out of the elevator pushing a cart loaded with food trays. The man gave Paul a curious look, but Paul just nodded in greeting and pressed the button to shut the elevator doors before the man could ask any questions. He could feel his pulse in his fingertips and lips, and wasn’t sure if all of the weightless sensation was due to the elevator or if some of it could be blamed on the thrill of yet another infiltration. Daiki thanked him and encouraged him from inside his head, which Paul’s lips mouthed as he tried not to actually talk to himself aloud. The mirrored walls of the elevator reflected back a strange doubling of his reflection, slightly blurred and not quite right, and a bluish gleam from no clear light source. He laughed nervously, then got off at the floor. Nurses and other medical staff hurried about their rounds. Radios gave muffled pieces of conversation from where staff had clipped them to their scrubs or pockets. Paul kept his eyes down and moved from room to room, peeking into each open door. Machines beeped, a janitor mopped up bodily fluids, a nurse sorted medication into little paper cups, and everybody was in a hurry except for the nurses at the central nurse station with their coffees and their computers.

“Excuse me, who are you?” asked a woman with dark brown skin, Indian features, and a white lab coat.

“I’m. I’m. Um.” He was not a good liar, not when he had to fabricate something instead of just leaving out information.

“I think you need to leave,” she concluded. “Will you go yourself, or -” Her pager went off. She cursed and radioed security. “Stay right there,” the woman ordered and hurried off.

Paul nodded and stayed where he was until she turned her back. Six rooms later he saw a pale face with black bangs out cold in a bed. “That’s me,” he whispered and slipped inside. A machine displayed pulse, oxygen level, and other statistics Paul had no frame of reference for. An IV fed fluid into Daiki’s arm. He wore a pale green hospital gown, with the thin, white woven blanket pulled up to his armpits, arms laid out at his sides atop the covers. He had a bruise on his face from where he’d hit the floor.

“Nice to meet you,” Paul whispered and laid his hand on Daiki’s cheek. The pulse monitor beeped faster and Daiki’s eyes popped open just as a cool shudder ran through Paul’s spine.

Daiki looked at Paul and smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

“You both there or am I going to hear from the dead girl in a minute?” Paul asked.

“We’re both here,” Daiki assured and stretched his fingers out, feeling out the sensation of control over his own limbs again. “We’re not separating any time soon. Or probably ever.” He yawned. “Fuck it’s good to be back in myself again. You ever need anything, anything, ever, just ask.” Daiki tried to sit up but got dizzy.

“Alright, man. I just need to get back out of here. Take care,” Paul replied and gave Daiki a big, crooked smile before escaping back out the door and speed walking toward the elevators.