david and sharon

david's irises were an unassuming shade of mossy green around the outside, spiking into ragged brown-sugar wreaths that encircled his pupils. his left eye bore a wider swath of brown than his right. he didn't think anybody knew this, and he felt o.k. about that most of the time.

david was not thinking about his eyes in the elevator on thursday. he was thinking about all of the things in his refrigerator that he didn't want to eat for dinner, and whether or not he had ever returned that movie he had rented and never watched, and the strange sensation along the outer part of his left leg, between his ankle bone and a point halfway to his knee, exactly between the muscles of his calf and his shin . . . nothing, really, like so many of us do on our way to the exit after work. and then the doors opened, eight floors from the street, and a girl in a straight gray skirt and a blue tweed pea coat stepped through them and wheeled back around toward them. before she did so david looked at her face, which was taut and prim and dominated by a pair of very round, very detached eyes, and after she did so david looked at the back of her head, which was neat and smart except for one strand of dark brown hair that had sprung itself from her upsweep and now pointed brattily toward what appeared to be a smudge of red ink on the back of her neck, just below her right ear. there were four people between david and that ink spot, but he would have stared right through them if he'd had to. he was no longer thinking of anything but that blot, and as he stared at it it bled the intensity out of all of the other objects in the elevator, until it was the only trace of color in the entire enclosure.

as the elevator slowed to a stop at the ground floor, several things happened in an uncertain order.

• david thought to himself, "perfect."


• the girl reached up with one hand to scratch her neck where her hair was tickling it, and david noticed more red ink staining the tips of her first and second fingers.


• everyone in the elevator took two steps forward.


• the elevator doors opened.


• the familiar metallic clanging clink of a keyring hitting a hard floor made its way to david's ears from under the feet of the people separating him from the ink-marred girl, who was suddenly in the lobby and making her way rapidly to the revolving door that led out to the sidewalk.

her keys, david thought; she's dropped her keys. then, thank god, david thought; thank god, thank you, thank you, thank you god, and he snatched them up and bombed after her.

she walked fast. man, did she walk fast. she walked so fast that for the nearly four blocks it took david to catch up with her without out-and-out running, he wondered if she knew he was following her and was deliberately maintaining their distance. she barely even slowed at the crosswalks, just charged out into the intersections, a seamless blue bullet, and to keep from remembering the coffee stain on his right thigh and the number of times he'd worn his unironed shirt since its last washing he kept his sights on that red fingerprint, the impish spurt of humanity that he was sure was the truth of her. and even if it weren't, he still had her keys; she had to stop somewhere. she was far enough ahead of him that, while she was able to march across the roads unimpeded, he, by the time he reached those roads, was very nearly killed trying to keep pace. but he hustled on, fixed on his inky beacon. and finally, as the strange sensation in david's left leg was just beginning to reassert itself, she slowed, fishing for something in her pocket. he did run then, afraid that his window would slam shut, and as he closed on her, waving the mess of keys at arm's length in front of him, the girl's round eyes became even rounder. she kept them on him as she flattened herself against a nearby mailbox, dropping her chapstick. they were just like his, he noticed, brown in the center, green around the edges. he thought maybe one pupil was larger than the other.

he realized that she hadn't thanked him yet. in fact, no one had spoken, and he didn't know how long he had been standing there in front of her, panting quietly, the keys jangling brazenly in the space between them.

"you dropped these," he breathed.

her eyes, and he hadn't thought they could do it, but they did get even rounder as she looked from him to the ring and said firmly, "no."

david was very confused. it must have shown, as the girl said, more gently now, "those aren't mine."

oh, david thought. oh. oh no. ohhhhhhh, no. oh no oh no oh no

she was giggling. he dropped his arm to his side and his eyes to the sidewalk, where her chapstick had rolled to a tentative halt a few inches from the curb. what the hell, he thought, and he knelt down and grabbed it.

"you dropped this?"

as she reached for it she started to say something and then stopped, her prim face crinkling up and then backing down. her red-tipped fingers reached around to brush her rebellious hair from her neck. awash with optimism, david met her gaze and asked, "what?"

"nothing, i just . . . are your eyes two different colors?"