Chapter 5 (Empty Hearts)

While according to several city guidelines, June’s neighborhood does legally classify as a ‘residential zone’, anyone daring to venture into its vicinity would agree that this neighborhood is technically a flat, humid swamp where the plastered edges of crudely designed buildings stick out like sore spots. It seems to June that a few draggled architects over the last few years had flanked a cauldron bowl of inch tapes and compasses, chanted vivaciously around it in their fancy robes, and had mistaken altitude for ambition. “Sic atur ad astra,” said the words of a Latin poem written by the Roman poet Virgil in the Aeneid. It meant “Reach for the Stars.” Somehow between then and now, architects, for some reason, had decided that by stacking the same Scandinavian and Pacific Northwest modernist buildings on top of each other, they could coax the sky to give in, not realizing that to be able to reach for the stars, one needs to be able to look up at the sky first.

That’s something only the people in June’s history books understood. In the stars, they envisioned stories: the story of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the story of Cassiopeia and Cepheus, the story of Draco the dragon – stories about monsters and lovers and hunters. June read somewhere that this blanket of nostalgia, in which one snuggles into history books, is called anemoia. She also knows that nostalgia is a terrible historian, and that the only reason she wants to be in her history books is because she is fortunate enough to have never lived there. The early twenty-first century was an unkind place.  She’d read stories about the name-calling, bullying, harassment, discrimination against queer people. Add her skin color and gender to the mix, and the history books become less a place to live and more a place to survive. History is only beautiful when you visit it as a guest, through music tapes, books, art forms, and portraits. These are the parts of history that June wants to bring to the present, because guests are only allowed to take souvenirs, not raid closets.

Is the Department not erasing our histories? That is what Orion Fields would ask. June sighs. As she walks through a thin path between the thick canopy covers of what she calls tall buildings and what Rue, her neighbor, has decided to call a park, she tries her best not to step on the litany of earthworms crawling in the broken trail under her, or to swallow the bugs as she continues her long tirade about Orion Fields.

Next to her, Rue has her attention divided between June’s complaints and the leash that her dog, Toto, is trying desperately to break free from. While trying to restrain Toto from running off into the woods or eating something he shouldn’t eat, Rue occasionally slips into the “Mhm, Mhm” that friends often do when subject matter has swayed into the matter of complaints. Rue, as June’s friend, knows that on a bad day, pigeons are horrible pests, office lights are too strong, rainbows should only have primary colors and yellow is just another shade of green.

“What even is the point of Re-instating his memories? She won’t remember him. It’s like trying to remember a ghost,” June says, wildly gesticulating and smashing the poor fly that decided to question how it felt to land on her shoulders. The sun’s rays, bouncing off the windows of these useless buildings, are beating down on them, and even with the wind meandering as a mediator against its scorching heat, it’s not enough to hide the loud sound of the massive beads of perspiration racing across Rue and June’s bodies, or to stop the assault of these poor little bugs.

“Maybe he’s a superstitious fellow. You never know,” Rue shrugs.

“I am being serious.” June rolls her eyes.

“Oh, are you? I’m seeing you after three weeks, and the only thing you’ve talked about is this strange man who merely wants to remember someone he was once in love with,” Rue admonishes, pulling on the dog leash around Toto, who finds himself distracted by yet another firefly, his tongue rolled out and swinging freely like a pendulum against the breeze.

“He’s not in love with her. That’s what I am trying to tell you. If he were in love, the Department wouldn’t erase his memories. The Department’s right here. I’ve seen it myself in his eyes. It feels like someone is screaming behind them, yet his face is so…still. His eyes make me question the man he’s trying to hide behind them,” June says. “He looks so overwhelmed…but when I ask him how he’s doing, he just does this stupid thumbs up.” June mimics Orion.

Rue stops in the trail, scratching the back of her head and stroking the green extensions of her blonde hair. Rue inches closer to June, her expression narrowing, and she pinches the bridge of her nose as if she’s sniffed a dirty little secret lying between them; an accusation is coalescing on the tip of her tongue. She has the air of a prison guard who’s just caught a burglar trying to dig their way out with nothing but a plastic spoon and the promise of a small dent inside their cell.

“You like him. Don’t you?” Rue says, the weight of those words stinging like needles into June’s skin. She clenches her jaw and straightens her posture with a heavy inhale. It makes no sense to admit this. She’s only met him thrice now, going over the details of his Reinstatement.

“No,” June says softly, trying her best to sound dismissive, but the voice that escapes her is thin, almost like a whistle carrying no conviction.

“Yes, you do. This is exactly how you’ve talked about all of them. All the people you’ve claimed to have ‘fallen for’.” Rue accuses, quoting the air dramatically. “ You never introduce us to them, but you do always describe them. And it always begins with a complaint that grows into a kind of craving you feel for this person. That’s the way you feel about him. I can tell.”

“I am angry at him,” June says, trying to hide her eyes.

“No, you are jealous that he’s trying to remember someone who’s clearly not you.”

“I am not jealous,” June puffs.

“Really? Then why are you blushing?”

“I’m not.”

“I remember there was one person whom you really liked a couple of years ago. Bleep. How much do you remember about him?” Rue, who’s never had an Erasure and keeps forgetting how it works, asks.

“It’s all pixelated,” June explains. “Even his name. When you say it, I don’t hear it.”

Rue says, “Before you started dating Bleep, you used to say, ‘I am in so in love with him, and he doesn’t even like me back.’ I remember watching you continuously lose your mind over Bleep. You wouldn’t sleep, and you’d complain all the time. Anyways, soon those complaints turned into admissions, and you guys were happy for the entirety of it as far as I remember.”

“Clearly, I wasn’t that happy,” June says.

“Oh, and even with Bleep,” Rue continues, ignoring June. “You described her as a burning sensation. Like you were on fire. Y’all even had a bleep together.”

“Again, good riddance to those memories,” June says.

“No, Rue. You are right.”

“I am?” About Orion? June wants to add, but stops herself.

“What do you presume love feels like if not burning? You are constantly on fire, trying to hold onto embers before they fall onto the ground.”

“I am going to write that down later.”

“Mhm, mhm. But do you get it?”

“I think I’m losing the plot here. What are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to say that this is how I feel with Kian all the time. Like, I am burning all the time. Do you know that thing they say about love?”

“They say a lot of things about love.”

“Stop interrupting!” Rue admonishes. “See! You understand! You interrupt only when you’re nervous or have lost an argument.”

“I do not. What do you think about an edible coffee cup?”

“And you also try to change subjects.”

“It’d be like coffee inside a waffle cone.” June nods.

“June! Listen! Being in love is one of the most vulnerable things you can do. If there is a certain way you feel about Orion, whatever it is and however little of it is, just allow yourself to feel that way. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Mhm, Mhm.”

“Don’t be so afraid of protecting your heart that you pretend not to have one.”

June thinks about that and feels shame wash over her again. So much shame. Shame for wanting to be seen the same way Orion sees this other woman. It’s gut-wrenching to feel this way about someone you barely know, is it not? How strange that she doesn’t know whether she wants to forget Orion Fields or cherish him forever?