The daydream girl

These kinds of things always seem to happen to me. A girl falls fourteen stories, yeah, she’s gonna land on my car. And there she is, all nestled in the hood that’s wrapped her up like warm blankets, kind of half-smiling but you know something’s off because her neck’s turned a little funny, but get this, eyes closed, no blood, just a beautiful, sad girl in a red sun dress asleep on my car. It’s enough to make a guy drop his latte. Really just a special moment.

I imagine it sounded like when you push on a cookie sheet and then it pops back into place, but deeper. I was on the wrong side of a plate-glass window at the time and didn’t hear anything. She just came into the frame and disappeared into my car the way a stone wrapped in a red flag would, say China’s. What I instead heard was the air being sucked out of the room by a dozen coffee-breathed mouths and one “Oh God.”

Everybody kind of stayed put, but I got up and walked over to the door and opened it. My car was honking that slow, plaintive alarm that comes factory-installed, not one of those aftermarket sirens that are only good for scaring cats away. I remembered I’d left my keys inside on the table. I thought the horn fit, anyway—I was just going to turn it off because that’s how we maintain social order.

I looked at her for a long time. She had nice skin, almost translucent. Her shoes looked expensive. I’d say she looked like a model, but her nose was too big for it. There’s always something. People were gathering around, watching out of windows, you know, the way a city does when it isn’t something they can do anything about and therefore don’t have to ignore.

I thought this would be a great love story, if only, and maybe I did fall in love with her a little bit. Anyhow I couldn’t stop studying her face. The girl with dark hair and a secret. I wished she could fly.