A lost place									           Peter *
I.
The air that swirls past my face is cold, a chilling breeze that makes contact with the surface of my face like a gentle but firm plate of ice.  I grit my teeth, grinding the heavy molars against each other, blowing a compressed jet of warm air into my scarf to heat my face.  The black billows circle around my cheeks and down my neck, trailing off of my shoulders behind me.  Below me the pavement is illuminated.  In the fluorescent moonlight, a glint of pink shimmers in between the blades of grass.  I shuffle towards it, kneeling to the ground and running my bare fingers through the tangled blades of grass.  They run across something metal, smooth, with the kind of surface that makes an odd squeaking sound when you rub it with a lot of pressure.  My fist closes around the object, and I bring it up to investigate.  Another hairclip, the third one this night.  I pocket it and continue to walk down the street, not having any particular destination in mind.
	At home, I have a wall of things.  Small glass shelves affixed to the wall through supports and adhesive lined with many, many instances of the junk that falls off.  Hairclips have become a recent favorite of mine, which I display with a code of height on the wall to color, like a rainbow.  Red on top, black on bottom.  The white ones I discard, it does not fit with the aesthetic.  Because of current fashion trends, or something of the sort, the pink and black portions of the rainbow are inordinately large.  Although this should bother me, it doesn’t – the reason I have in my head is that the distribution of colors truly does represent the natural order of the world of hairclips.  If pink and black are the colors that are most common, then the manufacturers will make them in a larger ratio to others.  A simple hypothesis, but there is a nagging feeling within me that does its best to negate it.  Perhaps pink and black are the most unliked or uncared for colors, seeing as they are the most common ones to have fallen off and been forgotten.  Therefore, blue and green are actually some of the more common and treasured colors.  Regardless, it is a battle of hypothetical ideas, one that I will never venture to support with evidence.  The ambiguity is much more pleasing to my tastes.
	The bench is cold.  Maybe it’s wet.  The moonlight is not enough to decide distinctions in coloration between wet and dry wood.  Did it rain earlier?  I was inside the glass-walled atelier all day, so I should remember.  The clouds were gray all day, my favorite kind of sky – the sun was slightly visible through them, but there wasn’t a hint of blue.  A gray mist in the form of clouds, the low rumbling of thunder, beacons of light through tiny puffed out holes, a light ambient mist that could not quite qualify as actual precipitation worth mentioning.  I decide that the bench is probably dry.
	The buildings behind me aren’t very tall.  This isn’t quite a city.  Three, four stories.  Their white concrete walls loom over me.  The reflection of the moon on white-painted concrete is a very tangible pale luminescence that covers the walls like a second coat.  Windows are black.  Curtains are drawn.  Who lives in the fourth floor room overlooking my bench?  The window is undecorated and empty, with black insides.  The interior workings and physiology of an apartment building seem to be beyond my speculative scope for tonight.  A bird chirps in the distance.  Odd.  That doesn’t usually happen at night.  Maybe it was a locust or a katydid.
	I spread them out in my hands.  The treasures of the night so far.  Three clips, two pink, one forest green.  The green one had paint scratched away in areas, looking very worn.  The color reminded me of Alice’s pants, which were also green with holes near the cuffs.  Alice and the color pink never got along very well, since she liked black and white.  If she was to add a third color, it should be green.  I don’t think I can remember her having any pink things.  The other things in my hand are a plastic wind-up turtle with one of its feet chipped off, a paintbrush, and a baby’s shoe, the light slate blue fabric ripped down the side.  When I got home, I could repair it with a needle and some blue thread, and it would look good on my shelf.  I wasn’t sure about the turtle – the plastic was very cheap.  A child was probably playing with it and pushed down too hard, snapping the arm off.  It might be too gaudy and cheap to display.  The paintbrush was an obvious candidate for the top shelf.
	In all truth, there is a thing I am looking for, something that fell off of myself some time ago.  It’s difficult for me to recall what it is, but its absence is a tightening noose around my ribcage.  Collecting the things others leave behind loosens the rope, but that alone will never free me from its grasp.  But I feel it every night.  The thing that I lost is within my grasp, and if I keep searching, I will eventually find it.
	The doorknob to the building is very dusty.  My fingers sink into the dust, the air pressure causing it to burst up in a cloud around my hand.  Maybe nobody has used this entrance for a long time.  It might be possible that I’m the only one who has used it in the past three years.  The doorknob provides a small bit of resistance, but it is unlocked.  The door opens and I enter, closing it behind me.  The room is completely dark, but I know it instinctively.  My eyes are fixed on the ground.  I don’t need to see to complete the action of finding the railing on the staircase and closing my palm around it.  The stairs are familiar to me.  One, two, three, four.  I count the steps as I climb.  I close my eyes and turn the corner.  There are seven more turns after this one until I get to the fourth floor.  Halfway between the third and fourth floors one of the stairs is collapsed, the third one.  Of course it hasn’t been fixed.  I stride over it, not even bothering to check.  My fingers trace over the oak door, down to and circling around the handle.  I can feel the dust collecting in piles underneath my fingertips as I drag them around.  Opening my eyes, I knock on the door.
	“Come in,” the voice from inside says.  I nod to myself, and I can feel the corners of my mouth arching into a small grin.  This is rare.  Tonight may be the night I find out what I’ve been looking for.
	I push the door open, and windows are open.  The night breeze washes over me, cold but refreshing.  The girl with the unraveling rope necklaces is standing in the center of the room, her back towards me, in a scalloped nightdress.  Her lanky form is visible underneath as a shadow against the moon.
	“Alice.  You’re a sight for sore eyes.”  That’s what I tried to say.  My throat cracked with dryness, though, and I’m not sure how it escaped my lips.
	Alice didn’t say anything, but the wind curled around her in a way that suggested a smile.  I let my eyes wander around the room.  The canvases against the wall appeared blank, but I knew that they were covered in layers of white paint.  In the corner, the broken lamp sat on a night table.  The shade was ripped in several places, and the bulb had shattered in the first month.  A new one was never bought.  I sigh deeply as I enter the room, closing the door behind me.
	“It’s been ages, hasn’t it?”  I approach Alice from behind and rest my hands on her shoulders.  They feel brittle, as if any forceful touch would crumble them to dust.
	“I missed you,” she says.  Her voice is soft and whistling, and for the most part, is lost on the wind.  I lift a lock of her short blonde hair in between my fingers, stroking it with my thumb.  It feels like silk.
	“Let me see your face.”  I wrap my arms around her waist, moving to turn her towards me.  I feel her cold hands on my arm.
	“I can’t,” she whispers.  “You shouldn’t see it.”
	“Alice…”
	“Please,” she says.  “Just let it be.”
	Air escapes my lungs as I slump to the ground, my back against her legs.  As I close my eyes, I feel her moving downward, until she’s sitting with her back against mine.  I reach back and grab blindly for her hands, finding them in a matter of seconds.  We intertwine our fingers and breath steadily, listening to the buzzing of insects.  Her hands were cold and soft, and I grasped them tightly, as if I would forget them if I let go.
	“This is just like back then,” she says.  I bite my lip.  It’s cruel of her to bring that up, especially after refusing to let me see her.  But it’s true.  I’d been thinking that from the beginning.

That Day
	It had been raining earlier, and I was running late because of it.  The sidewalk was slippery with mud and small puddles of water, so I had to ride my bicycle with extra caution.  Still, Alice had missed classes again, and I was anxious to see her.  She lived alone in room 403 at the building on Golden Trail and Main, a good half hour from campus.  Considering that, and her general demeanor, it wasn’t surprising how often she skipped school.
	There wasn’t an elevator in the building, so I had to climb the stairs.  My foot caught on the third step on the seventh flight, and I would have fallen on my face had it not been for the low railing.  Silently cursing the landlord for not making repairs, I bit my lip and continued to the door.
	“Alice?  Open up, it’s me.”  I said while knocking.  “Come on, you shouldn’t stay inside all day, especially when the sun’s finally out-”  The door creaked, opening and swinging a few centimeters inside, leaving a crack through which a dim light filtered out of the room.
	“Hello,” Alice said.  She stood by the door in a long nightdress with a black ribbon tied into her hair.
	“May I come in?”  She nodded, and stood aside as I entered the room.  “Jesus, it’s gloomy in here.  Candles?  Really, put those out… here, why don’t you try opening your curtains once in a while?  If you’re not going to leave your room, at least get some sunlight in here.”
	“It was raining.”
	“It stopped.  See?”
	“I was going to go out.”
	“Liar.  You’re not even wearing shoes.”
	Alice groaned, letting herself fall backwards onto her blue striped sheets.
	“You don’t have to keep coming, you know,” she said.
	“Then come to class.  I’m worried about you.”
	“Will you stop bothering me if I do?”
	I ran my fingers across my chin, pondering for a moment.  “Probably not,” I decided.
	“You’re annoying.  Get lost.”
	“Sure, sure.  Put your shoes on, we’ll go for a walk.”
	“Are you even listening to me?”
	“Is that a new headband?  I’ve never seen you wear it before.”
	The room was silent.  I leaned back against the window, rubbing the fabric of the curtains in between my fingers.  It was frazzled in places, and I became occupied with pulling on a loose piece of the black thread.  It came out slowly, kinks folded into place from years of being folded together.  Even if I pulled on both sides, the thread would return to its zigzag shape the moment I let go.
	“Fine,” I heard.  “I’ll get dressed.  Wait outside.”  I nodded, letting the curtain fall against the wall as I left the room.  Ten minutes later, she emerged in a blouse and ankle-length skirt.  I stood from my position on the stairs, and we walked down wordlessly.  There may not have been anyone else living in the house, since it was always quiet – for some reason it never felt important to ask Alice about the other inhabitants.  I heard birds chirping as I opened the door to the outside, and I could see a rainbow in the distance.  Alice was looking at her feet.
	“Have you been to the forest recently?”  It’s not that the silence was uncomfortable; I just wanted to hear her speak up.  She shook her head.
	“Well then,” I said.  “It’s been beautiful lately.  What do you say?”
	“Okay.”
	The rest of the walk was in silence.  We passed through wet and glistening blades of grass, a rejuvenated shamrock green in color, almost too green to be real.  Dandelions in the patches of weeds scattered their seeds as I stepped on them.  All around us, I felt the young breath of the world; cool against the skin, saturated with calm and evaporated rainwater.  A soft earthen taste with a slight hint of metals when I inhaled.  In the distance I heard the rush of the forest creek, and the sound of large birds flapping their wings frantically to achieve lift off from flimsy branches.  Before I was aware we had entered the tentative shade of the forest, and I found Alice’s hand in mine.
	In front of us the creek water rapidly tumbled down the stones that made its bed, yielding to exceptionally strong-stemmed weeds that grew in its wake.  The rain had caused it to flood, but it still wasn’t wider than a few yards or deeper than a few inches.  Farther into the woods there was a small waterfall that emptied into a pond, but I could feel Alice trying to catch her breath.  I stopped at the edge of the water, and sat on a large boulder.  Wordlessly, she sat next to me.
	“It’s nice, isn’t it?”  She was fumbling around with her ankle, her left leg up across her knee.  “…is something wrong?”
	“Splinter,” she muttered, after looking up in surprise.
	“Oh.  Got it?”
	“Yeah.”
	Time passed.  I’m not sure how long we were sitting on that rock before the sun started to go down.  The whole time Alice sat upright, like a statue, her hands in her lap and her eyes on the ground.  At first I thought she had fallen asleep before I saw her open eyes.
	“Alice,” I finally said.  My eyes were focused on the sunset through the trees, not her face.  “I’m here for you if you want to talk, you know.  I don’t like seeing you sad.”
	“I’m sorry,” she whispered.  “I don’t know how.”
	“I want to see you smile,” I said.  Always, I could talk with her without worrying about saying something stupid.  Words went directly from my subconscious to my lips with no stops in between.  It didn’t matter.  I always felt like I was saying the right thing.
	“I’m sorry.”  She let the strength leave her body, and I felt her form collapse against my shoulder.  Something wet soaked through my sleeve.
	“Well, don’t be sorry.  The most important thing is that I see you.”
	I felt her thin arms wrapping around my forearm in a loose grip.  I turned to look at her, but her face was buried in my shoulder.
	“Don’t stop coming,” she said.  “I’m sorry for telling you to leave.”
	“I’d still come even if you hated me for it.”
	“I’ll try to come to school.”
	“That’s good.  It would make me happy if you did.”
	Locusts began to sing in the distance, and after a while spent staring at the stars, I walked Alice back to her room.  I wanted to tell her that I loved her, but the time never felt right.
II.
I wake up in my atelier.  The floorboards creak under me as I sit up.  I draw my hands through the thin and down blanket that I’ve been using as a futon.  The faux velvet surface provides a great amount of resistance, and when I look down the trails I’ve marked with my fingers are darker red than the rest of the blanket.  I feel heavy.  That’s right, my coat is still on.  I search my pockets, pulling out hairclips, a paintbrush, a black hair ribbon, and a baby’s shoe.  I feel something else inside as I’m walking over to my shelves – a piece of junk plastic that looks like a shapeless green mass.  I toss it to the floor.  It’s garbage.
I arrange the hairclips by color.  The paintbrush goes on one of the higher shelves, alongside pens and other tools of marking symbols.  I carefully place the ribbon on the top shelf, after wrapping it around my finger several times, tightly in an attempt to iron out the kinks.  I remember that I’m going to sew the tear on the shoe, so I put it back into my pocket to deal with later.
The sun must have risen hours ago.  My atelier is lit best at noon, and there’s enough light to make out the three dimensional form of the white paint covering the scattered canvases.  My stomach roars at me.  I don’t recall when I’ve last eaten.  I open the door to my kitchen, hanging my coat on the back of my chair and opening the refrigerator.  Eggs, raw chicken breasts, stalks of broccoli.  Broccoli it is.  I wash a stalk in the sink, and slice the thickest part of the trunk off.  It crunches between my teeth, filling my mouth with cold.  It doesn’t have much taste without salt, but that’s how I prefer it.
The water in my shower is cold.  I haven’t had warm water for a month, since the landlord seems ambivalent about repairs.  It doesn’t matter – scrub enough and you’ll get clean, regardless of the water temperature.  Cold is good for the senses, and it wakes you up.  I brush my teeth and spit into the sink.  Mouthwash.  Maybe I should work today.
My fist opens.  I realize that I’ve had the black ribbon intertwined with my fingers this whole time, and I’d been stroking it with my thumb.  How could I not notice something like that?
I haven’t used my easel for months.  The collection trips were supposed to inspire me, but they have become a career in themselves.  In addition to being a painter, I am a collector of lost history.  I hope that my memory is up to the task.  For something to vanish from the world when it’s my job to keep it there would be terrible.
I place one of the blank canvases on the easel.  No, it probably isn’t blank.  I can’t remember what I painted on this one originally.  All of them were covered in white, so I couldn’t tell the difference.  I take my palette knife and begin to scrape the white away.  Perhaps I could reinvigorate myself with ideas I’d had in the past.
I continue scraping for nearly an hour, being careful not to let the knife cut through the ribbon.  My first impression is a portrait of a blonde girl, but as I uncover more, I discover that she has no face.  Was it supposed to be an abstract work?  The composition is very much like a portrait, but I will be the first to admit that my mind has been clouded lately.  Perhaps I thought differently in the past when I made this.  It was, from an objective standpoint, a very fine painting, and I can’t think of why I might have covered it up.
Pulling away from the canvas, I finally pull the ribbon out of my fingers.  Annoyingly, it won’t stay in the right shape.  I give up, and place it on the top shelf – honestly, I thought I’d done that earlier.  I examine the shelves of lost things and nod.  Even with the imperfect final element, it would be fine for the project I had in mind.
I grab my oils, sit at the stool, and paint her face.