Day 96

The volcanic man painted the murals with his hands, taking off gloves as dark as charcoal, revealing hands the shade of petrified wood with running, throbbing veins of liquid hot rock. He would grab something in his hands, if it was small, he would use only one, but if it was larger, he would use both and press his palms together. First, the edges of the object would quiver and lose form, then steam and smoke mingled together would rise up, ash and carbon riding white plumes upward as structure gave and solid became soupy, pliable. Today, it was a red plastic condiment bottle, which he poured out empty, then rinsed clean in the kitchen of the small kiosk in the Eastern terminal of the airport and then walked to the windows by Departure Gate 56 and did his art, watching as the plastic bottle melted away, flowing over his palm and down his arm, but like an expert was able to catch it all, and with the pointer and middle fingers of his opposite hand, took a heavy glob of the boiling red and lacquered it to the glass in a powerful left to right arc. The "paint" bubbled on the glass and steamed the surrounding area. Joanna had watched him work this mural out of boarding signs, copper wire, trashcans, bottles, jars, leather shoe polish, and now red, right in the center, his movements large and quick as to not lose his medium to the cold air of the airport. It was always sixty-eight degrees in the airport, always, and he had to keep pumping in heat. When he finishes this time, Joanna could almost see it this time, it was an animal or something that moved, the red being its body, perhaps its head. She drank the second watery beer of the day with her left hand and thought about what she would do if he came over to her again, and did his questions, his voice was soft but grew louder each time Joanna did not answer. She would never give him what he wanted, it wasn’t his to use, it was her arm. The volcanic Man finished, went to a bucket of cold salt water sitting on a tarp a few feet closer to the jetty of departure gate 56 and dunked his hands inside, rubbing them together with a sound like wet stones sliding. Its what he did to take everything off of his arms, making a noise like wet stones rubbing together. He didn’t wince, but Joanna knew it hurt him, the steam that rose up sputtered and the water popped, theres no way it couldn’t hurt. When he was done and the water was stained red he put his gloves back on and hoisted the bucket, walking just with feet of Joanna, but he did not stop today, did not ask her any questions. She had gotten ready, Holding the lip of the beer a few inches away from her lips. She had gotten used to slinging the contents at him, wince and walk off as the first few words got out of his mouth. He wanted he prosthetic right arm.

“It’s perfect.” He had said the first time. “The shade of blue is what I need to finish it.”

“You can’t have it.” She had told him, “I’ll need it when I leave.”

“You aren’t going to leave.” He had said, and extended his body forward, trying to place a gloved hand on her arm. “You need to just let me have it.”

She had spat on him, aiming for his eye, but missing and sopped over his chin and rolled off before turning to vapor. She had never spat on anyone before, not ever in her life, but she had done it then, because when he said it all she had thought about the plane that had brought her in, and how she had walked off, alone, right off the jetty, into the airport, where everything was taupe, even the toilets, with only a letter in her jacket pocket that declared she would have to wait her, the connecting flight would be the next day to get her to Bryce. She had been here two and a half weeks. The airport had electricity, heat, water, and air flow, but no people, except for the volcanic man, who had wandered past her one day, the second day she had been there, right past the row of seats she had been laying on, the jacket covering her chest, her cherry-red hair, spilling over the vinyl and onto the floor, where it pooled, she had broken the hair tie she had used to keep it up in a tight bun with a slit from an unbeknownst sharpened fingernail, and had watched him start on a mural, this was by departure gate fifty, and each gate had two windows, and he had covered one window a day since she had first seen him. She didn’t speak to him that first time, didn’t speak a word as he melted a plastic ashtray the color of a watermelon rind and made four horizontal streaks up, and up, and up, and up from the left to the right. Something inside of Joanna ticked into working order again when she watched him the first time, like she were watching animals again, she analyzed his every movements, how he melted the objects, how he walked, how straight his posture was. He moved like a human, but his eyes moved like something else, like something that wasn’t sure what it was. After two hours of watching she decided to gain his attention, sitting up, and letting the jacket fall into her lap. He smeared a stack of clear plastic cups in wave patterns across the green, blending them. He didn’t turn to her until she spoke.

“What is it?” she had said, as flat as she could.

He looked at her, all of her, at once, and then to mural. “It’s a message.” He spoke.

“And?” She asked, now looking at the rolling swirls of green and white.

“And the message isn’t intended for you.” He spoke, going to his bucket and laying his hands inside. “You are already here.”

Even though he pretended to be busy with his form, and how he moved, she could notice the way his eyes darted, to her, looking at her all over, always returning to the same place, her prosthetic, and the blue plastic that encircled what was left of her forearm.

“I’m waiting for a connecting flight out of this gate.” She had said and he laughed, almost before she got all of her words out. The laugh was cough-like and sent particles of glistening stones out from the back of his throat.

“No,” he said, “You are waiting for someone else.”

Joanna thought of Bryce and the way his nose was broken the last time she saw him, the space between his eyebrows a plume of purple. He had gotten mugged the day before she left for the safari, and they had to kiss with their faces farther away so no part of his nose touched hers, he had cried from the pain last time. Joanna watched the volcanic Man for a moment longer, before he came close and then gestured towards the mural.

“It’s a message that says to stay away. People aren’t supposed to be here.” She looked at the colors, which flowed easily, and caught the light well, and were overall rather pleasing.

“Why not?”

“They don’t leave. Nobody ever leaves.”

“You don’t leave?” She asked, trying to see if he looked in a direction, a flick of those wild eyes, so that she could slip out the same door he came in. But he stared right at the blue of her arm.

“I choose not to leave. So that people like you don’t come here.”

She waited another moment and covered her arm with the jacket.

“That’s nice of you then.” Is all she said before he met her eyes again.

“You should just let me have that.”

“What?”

“That blue, there is nothing blue in this entire complex. Nothing, and I have looked in quite a few places, and been through quite a few other poor people like yourself. But none of them have had anything I could use. Nothing has ever been blue.”

She had waited again before speaking.

“That’s kind of sad.”

And that’s when the moment happened and she had spit on him. He had recoiled but stayed for a moment longer. She had known that if she didn’t do something he would have taken the arm. She had seen a lion do the same thing to another male, he had gotten close and watched the small kill that the females had given him, and when his cries of want went answered he had struck the other male twice in the face and taken the kill. That wasn’t the first time he had done it either, the lion that is. So she treated the volcanic Man like a beast, knowing that if she showed fear he would take what he wanted, but if she stood her ground, he couldn’t take it. And she needed to keep it, it was the only thing that wasn’t hers, the only thing that connected her to Bryce.

The volcanic Man had walked away and Joanna watched him go and finished her beer. She had taken the habit of drinking up the second week in, as all of the kiosks were full of anything a person needed, so she stuffed her pockets with bags of chips and pretzels and sat down to watch whatever he made, and make him remember that he couldn’t have what he wanted. But today was different, and a beast was only different when he could get what he wanted in a different way, so when she finished her beer she got up and walked after him, following the heat he left behind him like a scent trail, the air conditioning was so good in the airport that she could tell where he was by simply turning her face until she felt a rush of heat against her cheek and walking in that direction. She did it from Departure Gate 56, to 50, to 45, all way down to 20, where it split off into a long tunnel, and the heat became trapped inside and she sweated through her jacket for how long it all was.

She thought that the last time she had sweat this much was in the back end of a jeep. She had the camera for video propped on the side of the seat, watching out back, the still picture camera slung around her neck, her good arm trying to focus and her prosthetic trying to keep the band around her neck from swaying as she lined up her shots of the animals, who just breathed and breathed and breathed in the heat. It seemed to be all that they could do. Seven total, sitting in the shade of a tree. Soon her breathing was as slow as the rest of the animals and she could taste the salt of her sweat running into her mouth and she relished it so that each spike of salt could keep her awake until she became numb to the taste and fell asleep. She awoke to her prosthetic hand in the mouth of young cub. Clouds had gathered overhead and the heat had broken, she had rolled onto her back and her arm was dangling, now a curious toy that she watched it gnaw on. It took the flesh like wrapping off of her pinkie and ring fingers before she pulled it away from her. The cub had stayed, waiting, until a few flashes from her camera sent it a few paces back and the crack of thunder had sent it pedaling back to the tree. Three day later she was on a plane out. Bryce was in the hospital, had been for a week, the details weren’t there, but she was supposed to leave. She got on a flight and ended up in the airport with the Volcanic man.

She had made it out of the tunnel, farther than she had walked in quite some time, all the way to the central hub, where the Man had left his mark. Cruder forms of the murals were along the walls, stick like figures, to curving colors, almost like finger paints, eyes in different colors around curving walls. The heat led her to a set of double doors that left her hands stinging after they touched the metal, down a flight of stairs and into a place she had never seen, with walls that sweated and hallways that grew darker and darker until she couldn’t stand to keep her eyes open and just kept walking, all of the hairs on her body rolling in waves of heat, that salt running into her mouth, and then, like a nothing, it fled, pulling away from her like the cub had from her hand. And she opened her eyes to look at the Volcanic man with the largest machine she had ever seen behind him. It was round, at least a story high, perhaps taller, made of what looked like chipped ceramic with brass and silver pipes running from one end and around. Its base rose to above each of their heads and was made of heavy looking metal, with one large solitary grate as large as the volcanic Man was tall.

“It’s a boiler.”

(The way out is through the boiler, he lets her through for the arm, this seems like the start of something really big. Feels kinda Young-adulty)