When they arrived back at Marilyn's house, they didn't make any further arrangements, but when she stepped out on the porch the following night, she immediately spotted the silhouette of Michael's afro hairstyle against the yellowish light of a streetlamp, that sucked away all colours and left the world in shades of grey and orange-yellow. He was half sitting on the front fender of a car, hands loosely folded in his lap, gazing at the surrounding houses, as if he had done so countless times before, and intended to do so countless times to come. And it was certainly starting to look that way, as he was there the night after that as well.

They walked around the streets of Encino. Michael was polite and friendly, asking her where she wanted to go or making suggestions that they should have a look one way or another. He probably thought nothing by it, but Marilyn relished his gentle attention, that was warm and relaxed, and that had a normality to it she had never experienced with her classmates. And whatever it was that made him come back each night, it did.

Some parts of their walks were filled with conversations on topics like movies they had seen or political matters such as the upcoming presidential election in fall, which would be Michael's first time to vote. The fact clearly excited him, and he made no secret of his preference for the 'peanut' Jimmy Carter, a view Marilyn had no problems sharing in. Michael's family, however, didn't come up again. And despite the fact that she would have liked to learn a bit more about the circumstances surrounding Jermaine and Randy, she didn't ask. She enjoyed his presence too much, even when they didn't talk at all, to possibly risk upsetting him or causing him to back away.

Other parts of their nights out were nothing but light-hearted fun. Michael had an entertaining character and seemed to be able to come up with an almost endless string of childish ideas. Sometimes, when he walked next to her, looking around himself with that boyish expression he would get and humming some melody she didn't recognize, she caught herself wondering where that young man had come from so suddenly. And then there was always a tiny bit of worry, too. The worry that he might disappear just the same way he had come, and leave her stranded.

"Look!" Michael giggled, leaning close to Marilyn, making her worries disappear instantly. A whiff of musk scent came with his motion, and the sense of warmth as his shoulder almost touched her chest. Along his outstretched arm she spotted a dog in a front yard, probably meant to guard the premises, lying on its back, seemingly fast asleep, its white belly gleaming in the light of the streetlamps.
"Well, that one isn't much use, is it?"
Michael laughed and shook his head. "No!"
They walked up close to the gate and pressed their faces against the bars to see better in the dim light.
"Aw, it's cute, though, making the best of a warm spring night," Marilyn said in a hushed voice. "And it's probably wide awake the moment it hears the slightest sound."
"Meow", said Michael.
"What are you doing???"
He shrugged and grinned. "Meeooww..."
"It's going to wake up!"
"Well, it's on the other side of the gate. Worst thing that can happen is that it starts barking. Meeeeow..."
"And what if its owners hear and come outside?"
"Well, I'd tell 'em a bit 'bout their dog startin' to bark at innocent people just walkin' down da street!" Michael said with an attitude followed by yet a wider grin. "Meeeooowww!!"

He tried a couple of times more, high and low, hissing and snarling, but none produced the desired effect - or any effect at all, for that matter. The dog didn't stir. There wasn't the slightest flap of an ear or the tiniest twitch of the tail.
"Maybe it's dead..." Michael said, doubtful.
They both looked at the dog with some concern, now. Marilyn sincerely hoped, it wasn't.

After Michael's vivid imitation of a cat, the silence felt odd. Slowly, she became aware of the night sounds that surrounded them. There was the faint hum of L.A. - of cars driving through the streets and the far away wailing of a siren -, the call of a night bird up in the Hollywood hills, the rustling of some small animal in the dry leaves under the rhododendron bushes next to the gate, and something else...
"The dog's snoring!" said Marilyn.
"Well, it's obviously deaf, then!"
"Meow," said Marilyn.
The dog jumped.
So did Marilyn and Michael.

For a moment no-one moved. The dog glared at them where they stood frozen in place behind the bars of the gate, and they just stared back. Then Michael pursed his lips, pushing his lower jaw forward. "Okay," he stated dryly, "now, I'm jealous."

"You just didn't hit the right pitch with the dog," Marilyn said as they continued their walk, unwilling to find out, if there was maybe a hole in the fence somewhere, after all.
"You know, I did basically wake it up. Your final Meow just happened to come at the right point in time. But I did all the real work... Ah!" Michael threw his head back, "Who am I kidding?"
"Whom."
"Oh, go away!" Michael said, but at the same time roughly wrapped his arm around Marilyn's neck, pulling her into his shoulder as he walked and leaving his words no time to offend her.

In an unfenced front yard, they came across a large number of leisurely grouped metal flamingos, a decoration that maybe wouldn't have surprised Marilyn in Florida, but seemed out of place in L.A. Upon Michael's suggestion, they pulled all the birds out of the lawn and arranged them along the path, facing whoever would leave the house in the morning. He walked up and down the path aligning the heads of the waist-high, pink metal birds while Marilyn stood at the doorstep watching the arrangement. At least in the dark, it was an eerie guard of honor.
"So, what do you think?" Michael called in a whisper.
"Honestly? Creeps me out!"
"Really?" he skipped up the path, his sneakers making a soft thud every time one of his feet hit the ground, and looked at it all from Marilyn's point of view. "Yeah," he said after a moment, and with growing amusement in his voice, "this is odd!"

When they came by the house the following night, the flamingos had been put back into their leisurely groups, and so Marilyn suggested that they should form a big question mark. It was actually a lot harder to do, than she had thought, but in the end the layout was recognizable, and they both considered it a good night's work.

They spent the better part of their walk towards the flamingo-house the next night debating new arrangements for the birds. Many ideas were wild and by no means possible, and they both knew it, especially after they had realized how difficult a simple question mark could be, but that didn't matter. It was the mere fact of dreaming up something, that gave them pleasure, and for a while they engaged wholeheartedly in it.

Finally, Michael's idea of an inner and an outer circle, one looking this way and one looking the other, as if the birds were line-dancing, was agreed upon. But when they came to the front yard, something was different. While all other flamingos had been rearranged into their original positions, one was standing in the middle of the lawn with a piece of paper stuck with scotch tape to its beak. Marilyn and Michael crouched low in front of it.
The paper read:

"We've had a very long day, and we're tired.
Can't we just stand here?
Please?"

Of course they were just metal ornaments, but Marilyn still felt sorry for them. And after all, who asked so nicely couldn't be refused. She would have liked to leave a message, but neither she nor Michael had a pen, so she just presses a lipstick kiss to the paper, before Michael returned the lonely messenger to its leisurely group of metal-flamingo friends, and they both continued on their way.

It was a good neighborhood they were in; cut lawns and old trees lined the street. Having lost the flamingos, they looked around for something else to occupy their mind.
"Let's play a game!" Michael said suddenly.
"What kind of game?"
"Okay, here goes! Let's pretend we could choose a car. Any of the ones around. Who sees it first gets to have it! Deal?"
Marilyn shrugged and nodded, and they split up to check the driveways.

"Over here!" she heard him hiss some time later and followed his call.
"I'll take this one!" He ran his hand over the roof of a big, dark BMW limousine that looked like it was more used to being in a garage at night.
"Seriously? That big thing?"
"Yeah! That's a German make. They make good cars, you know!"
"I know that. It's huge, though."
"And fast, too!" Michael went around the vehicle inspecting it, as if he could really keep it. "I'm sure it goes 110 miles an hour - maybe even more!"
"Downhill with tailwind?"
"No, I'm serious, girl!" Michael put his face close to the passenger window, cupping his hands around his eyes in order to be able to see the inside despite the reflections of the streetlamps.
"You're not allowed to drive that fast anywhere in this country."
"Down in Texas, I think, you are. You know, out in the dessert."
"So, you're going down to Texas to drive it?"
"Why not? There are worse ways to kill time on a rainy Sunday afternoon!" Michael smiled as he came around the back. Marilyn watched his hand appreciatively travel along the delicate chrome trim on the car's trunk.
"You almost broke your neck falling off a bike only a good week ago! 110 miles an hour? I don't know about that..."
"You can't fall off a car! Yes, that's definitely my baby! That one or none. I'm not leaving without it!" he said, and with an arrogant air about him propped himself up against the driver's door right in front of Marilyn.
She looked him up and down. "Fine. Now, all you have to do is find a way to open it. Maybe you could sing the glass of the windows to pieces?"

Silence.

And for a shocked moment, Marilyn thought she'd gone too far.

Michael burst into laughter and shook his head. "No way! I can't do anything like that! - How do you pick a lock? Hmm... Bobbi-Pins, I've heard. Do you have any?" And without warning he jumped forward and ruffled Marilyn's hair in a boyish, teasing fashion.

She was so taken aback that at first she couldn't react at all. The playful way in which he showed absolutely no sense of distance - or the absents of distance - left Marilyn shaken up. She wasn't used to being touched. She had a very strong feeling of what her personal space was. But to Michael the concept of personal space seemed utterly unknown.
His hands sank heavily onto her shoulders, and he smiled. "Okay. Your turn. Which car would be yours?"
"Don't..." she said in a low and somewhat complaining tone, as she tried to straighten out the mess he had made of her hair. But at the same time she found herself smiling. Embarrassed for no reason she could put her finger on, she looked away.

As they walked along the pavement, Michael kept looking back at the limousine, until it was out of sight.
"You would really like to have a car like that one, wouldn't you?"
Michael stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. "Yes," he said, "I really would."

Marilyn found it hard to choose a car. In reality, any car would have done the job for her, as long as it had four wheels and a functioning engine, but saying so would have killed the game. There had to be something special about her choice, something she could relate to, something she could elaborate on. But they were all the same to her. They all looked the same, too. Until the bug came into view.

"That one? Are you sure?"
"Yes," Marilyn said, giving the car's rounded fender a caring touch. "It's a German make, you know. They make good cars!"
Michael narrowed his eyes at her, and she laughed.
"We might really be able to open that one..." He said and eyed the car doubtfully. "We probably wouldn't even need Bobbi-Pins." He started to inspect it. "If it could talk, it could probably tell us a few stories about the war - after all, it survived it. And I don't mean Vietnam! Why this one?"
"Because it's like me," Marilyn said in a low voice. "No-one in their right mind, who has a choice, would take it."

Marilyn had the feeling that Michael had a thing or two to say about that, but if he really did, then he never got around to it. Instead, his expression suddenly became alert. "Someone's coming! Let's go!"
"What? Where?"
"Let's GO!" He grabbed Marilyn by the hand and dragged her across the driveway and into the adjoining bushes.

~~~~~
Hello, friends! :)
Nice to see you again.

As you know, I'm not normally one for long talks on chapter bottoms, but I'd love to say a few thing about this one. So here goes! :D

First things first, it's unknown, if Michael did vote in the 1976 presidential election or for whom he voted. However, it is likely that he did share the overall high political interest of the young population at the time caused among other factors by the Vietnam war and the Watergate Affair. Being unable to voice a political opinion under the strict regime of Motown, a rule by which he lived almost his entire life, elections would have been his only possibility to act upon such interests, and it is therefore likely that he did vote and that he did feel excided about it.
The only time that Michael voiced a political opinion - to my knowledge - was when he stated to have voted by absentee ballot for Bill Clinton in the 90ies. Therefore the Democrat Jimmy Carter would seem to have been in his line of political choice.
However, these are assumptions that cannot be verified.

Second. A long time ago, a friend of mine, ShonaShaniece, asked me to read one of her stories, which more or less started out with a girl opening a bathroom door with a Bobbi-Pin. (It was an Original Fiction story posted on a different account, and I don't think it still exists.) I said, that wasn't possible in reality, but she convinced me that it actually was. (We were thinking of different kinds of locks, you see.)
Now, I don't write my stories straight, and at that time I was just writing the first, shorter draft of the car-scene in this chapter. So I had Michael propped up against the driver's door and say his line, "Yes, that's definitely my baby! That one or none. I'm not leaving without it!" - and there I was stuck. I knew where I wanted the scene to go, but for that to happen, I had to move him away from the car, and I didn't know how.
And then we were having this discussion, and I though, that's it! So when Michael says, "How do you pick a lock? Bobbi-Pins, I've heard," Kashona, I want you to know, that he heard it from you! ;)

Alright. I had better stop here, otherwise I'll have a longer Author's Note than I have a chapter! LOL

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Thank you for reading.
Have a wonderful day! :)

l love you,
Birdie <33