A shadow flickered in the room's corner keeping her from spiraling further by focusing on the past months. Sloane whipped her head to the right. Was it a trick of the light? Their house phone honked, interrupting yet another thought.
Francesca stared at the answering machine in vague anticipation. A familiar woman's voice rattled off Italian.
Sloane remembered hearing it for the first time and wishing she'd had subtitles. Mama Nuccio only visited once a year–if they were lucky–still, she'd insisted on learning. No matter which language Mama Nuccio wanted to use in person or on the phone, she'd understand it. For the next two years, Sloane had learned and relearned bits and pieces of Italian. Her brain hadn't been able to grasp any foreign language until Francesca.
"You can do this; you've just got to stop and breathe. You're getting too stressed about the tenses. It's not as hard as you're making it out to be, love." Francesca had giggled at Sloane's frustration one evening. "Let's play our game, see if that can't de-stress you a little. Or was that your plan all along?"
Maybe. Sloane loved Francesca's hands-on style of teaching, what could she say?
"If you think it will help, Teach," Sloane replied. She'd jumped onto the bed and tried not to shiver.
Francesca had straddled Sloane and spoken slowly as she pulled off her tank top. Each time Sloane repeated the word or phrase incorrectly, Francesca would slide the shirt back on excruciatingly slowly.
However, when her Italian pronunciation had passed the grade, Sloane had loved the pleasure of hearing the hooks of her bra snap and feeling the band release from around her. Francesca's lips, hands, teeth hadn't touched her until they'd finished the entire lesson. By then, Sloane had lain on her back naked with the windows still wide open. Some nights they'd touched and teased until stars collided. Others, it was fast, hard, and parades two blocks away could hear them.
Nights like those allowed Sloane to understand most of what Mama Nuccio's message said.
"The plane leaves at 5:30. It will cost a lot of money to change, so don't be late. Okay? It's for the best, Essie," she said, calling Francesca by her term of endearment. "Sloane would want this for you. You know that."
Wait! What did she mean? Was Francesca leaving?
No, Sloane wouldn't want that for Francesca! She'd want Francesca to stay in their home until they were old and purple–never grey–just as they had planned. It would give Sloane the time she needed; she hadn't accomplished anything.
"You don't know what Sloane would want," Francesca whined softly towards the machine. Hunched shoulders and a drooping head kept her still at first. Eventually, with a heave, she picked up her head and pushed the blanket aside. Atrophied calves shook as she stood.
Floating around the house, Sloane tried to halt her packing process. She tried again to knock over the knock-off Tiffany lamp they'd bought at an antique show in San Mateo. As her hand passed right through it, she cursed. Almost eleven months and she hadn't figured it out.
She attempted to indent a pillow with an angry fist; her tattoos looked like one black sleeve as she tensed her arm. After failing to rattle a bowl filled with sour milk and a food-crusted spoon, she tried to grab things from Francesca's hand. But Sloane knew she could only watch in abject horror.
Francesca's eyes were too busy swimming to choose logical items. She grabbed a hodgepodge of clothing, a hairbrush, a toothbrush that she forgot to use regularly as of late–much to Sloane's nonverbal attempts to remind her, the book she wasn't reading, and a myriad of Sloane's things. One of Sloane's favorite worn t-shirts made it in before Francesca remembered deodorant.
The entire contents of Sloane's side table were tossed into her bag: two zebra gum wrappers from the afternoon Francesca had taken her to Toys-R-Us to have a real childhood experience, a ripped notebook paper that read, "Sloane, You're my forever," an old book that smelled like wonder, and a chipped coffee mug with a purple lipstick stain.
Sloane's perfume was collected last, seemingly so it could be on top. Though Sloane watched Francesca untwist the glass strawberry day after day, she never sprayed it. Francesca tugged a cotton candy pink crop-top sweater with sparkles woven through it from atop one of the many stacks of books which made up their library loft of an apartment. Carefully she rolled the frosted pink glass strawberry bottle in the rayon cotton blend.
Francesca buried her face in the sweater. After a moment, she pulled back and sobbed. "Now you've gone and ruined it! It can never smell like her again. And you've stained it. Everything is your fault, Francesca. You did this; you caused everything. You kil–"
Her voice dropped to a whisper as she apologized to Sloane once again. Abandoning her packing, she crawled into bed and wrapped her limbs around one of Sloane's many salt and drool crusted pillows. Her chest caved in with the loss of Sloane who stood by the bed begging to be heard. When a shadow flickered in her peripheral again, she didn't turn. All the while, Sloane willed Francesca to feel the hand hovering over hers.
An annoying techno song sounded Francesca's alarm in the morning, and Sloane tried to scream through the encompassing mist. "I'm here, don't go." Still, no words came out. Her lip quivered. "What if I can't leave?"
After her morning ritual of remembering the accident, Francesca grabbed her suitcase and glanced around the room through blurred vision. Without brushing her hair or teeth, Francesca left Sloane to stare at a closing door. The lock's soft click trapped her in her own home.
Sloane wanted to drug herself to sleep, forget it all, not notice the time Francesca was gone. But no matter how many times she closed her eyes, they'd always creak back open–her body wide awake despite her mind's fogginess matching The Gray's. Sloane could never have another second of Francesca's love. At least Francesca experienced it in her dreams; whether that made it better or worse, Sloane wished she could see for herself. Instead, her chest ached with the loss and absence.
Book stacks that used to comfort Sloane closed in on her. Dirty dishes sat in the sink. Her imagination of the odor through The Gray made her gag. Dust clumps clung to the velvet backs of face down framed photographs of her and Francesca. Months without cleaning left their house a shell of the lively home it once had been. And now, Sloane would be stuck in the lifeless home alone.
Straddling the line of devastation and rage, she watched the light change through their single picture window. Francesca was so present in the tiny loft that Sloane began to resent her for renting them the hole-in-the-wall she'd wanted.
When they'd first moved in together, neither of them had known how to exist in a small space with another person, despite Francesca having lived with friends and other lovers. They couldn't seem to stop bumping into one another, saying, “Excuse me,” like strangers. After over a week of awkward days and steamy nights, Francesca's shoulder had nearly touched Sloane's as she left the bathroom. Sloane had grabbed and kissed Francesca before she could apologize for being in the same space.
"I never want to hear you apologize or say, 'Excuse me,' again unless I've got a paintbrush in my hand and paint gets on something it shouldn't. Got it?" In an attempt to look serious, she'd pulled her invisible eyebrows together.
Francesca had hugged Sloane tightly. "I promise to kiss you instead of saying anything. How's that?"
"That–" Her smile had widened. "I can work with."
Sloane stared at a miniature card from Francesca's great-grandmother she'd thumbtacked to the side of a bookshelf. A mouse in overalls sat in a teacup. Inside, squiggly handwriting told her she was a beautiful and sweet girl. As if a beacon cutting through The Gray, it was a sign that she'd have to come home.
Did Francesca leave to forget about Sloane? Months of pain and grief, and she had to be done? If Sloane found a way to Italy, found a way to see Francesca again, would it matter? She couldn't touch her. Francesca could barely sense her. But Sloane probably shouldn't go anywhere. Francesca couldn't live without that card.
Another flicker of darkness interrupted Sloane's spiral. She turned only to see a dirty kitchen slightly obscured by mist.
"What's going on?" she shouted to an empty room–each syllable snatched by The Gray almost as fast as they escaped her lips.
The only sounds were the tink of the water from the boiler room hitting copper pipes and the songs of traffic as they leaked through the broken window seal above Francesca's side of the bed. Silent to the world, Sloane sighed. The ambient noise their home had provided lulled Sloane to sleep, inspired her paintings, become the soundtrack of her lovemaking–it had been everything.
She'd leave and never hear it again, forget it existed even, just to see Francesca's freckles again.