The neon lights flickered and sprang to life, bathing the outbuilding used as a garage in an oddly bright light given the time of day. It was a long-stretched room with a wide double-winged door painted in green. Behind the door, they had to maneuver the bicycle past two cars before it became spacious. A long line of metal chests of drawers stood along the right wall, and tools of all sorts were lining the left or handing from the walls all around. The floor was swept clean.

Being lit up in the dead of night, the place looked strange, as if it had been startled out of its sleep.

"What does your father do for a living," Michael asked, and as Marilyn turned to him, she found him looking around with his mouth slightly open.

"He's a businessman. But he enjoys fixing things that are broken. It's a hobby. Sadly, he doesn't have a lot of time for fixing stuff, though. But he prides himself that there isn't a tool he doesn't have."

"I believe that instantly!"

Marilyn put the bicycle in a corner at the very back of the garage.

"Is it really okay, if we just leave it here? Won't your father be upset, if we just put something in his place?"

"I don't think it's in the way over here, and he probably won't even notice it any time soon. Now, let me have a look at you."

Michael was taller than her by about a head, and had an unusual face with high cheek bones and soft eyes, dominated by a wide but fairly short nose. His dark skin was scarred by acne, and he looked worn out. His face had an ashen tint to it, and above his right eye he was smeared with dried blood. He stood there quietly while she inspected him in the cold neon lights, but he kept closing his eyes. When she turned his palms up and they both looked at them, he drew a shaky breath through his teeth. He held his hands stiffly, as if they didn't really belong to his body.

"Let's go and clean this, okay?"

He nodded, but when Marilyn looked at his face, she had the feeling he would have agreed to anything.

In the ground floor bathroom, Marilyn sat him down on the toilet lid. "Alright," she said, as if talking to a child, crouching down in front of him. "How do you feel?"

"My head aches. And I'm a little dizzy, too." Helplessly, he reached for his head. "And I feel a little sick..."

"Where did you hit your head?"

He indicated an area above his right temple, and when she rose and touched him there, he flinched. Gently, she parted his hair.

"You've quite a bump, but it's just a minor cut." Marilyn sank back into her crouching position and looked up at his face. "I still think it would be better to call an ambulance." She remembered seeing him fall, and felt cold recalling it.

"Please, just let me off the hook..." he said weakly.

"Okay. I'll treat your injuries, and then we'll see what we'll do."

He nodded with a minor movement of the head giving her a crooked smile. And that smile got to Marilyn in a way that she couldn't quite place.

"I'll get you something for the headache first..."

Through the torn fabric of his pants, Marilyn could see blood still slowly running down his shin. Kneeling down, she carefully rolled the pant leg up to his thigh. The wound was dirty, and the blood had started to trickle onto the white sock he was wearing in his sneaker. She took off his shoe and sock and placed a towel under his foot. Then she got gauze from the medicine chest and gently laid a piece onto the dirty wound. Due to the bleeding it stuck by itself and stopped more blood from running down his leg.

Then she reached for his arm and rolled up the torn sleeve, too. He obediently stretched out his arm and let her do it. His elbow and part of his forearm were raw. She covered the area with gauze, too. This time it needed a bit of tape to keep it in place. "I'll wash the wound and do it right. It's just so you don't get more blood on your clothes." And also, because having wounds covered relaxes people. It relaxed him.

But his hands seemed to cause him the biggest problems. He held them awkwardly, not knowing where or how to place them.

Marilyn washed her own hands thoroughly and laid a fresh towel in his lap. "Let's take care of your hands first, okay?"

He just kept nodding.

She washed them in a bowl in his lap. It would have been easier to do it under running water in the sink, but he looked so shaken and grey that she didn't want to make him get up. Afterwards, she cleaned the bowl, filled it with new water and poured an antiseptic into it that gave the water a dark, reddish-brown color.

He didn't look convinced at all, when she placed it in his lap again and told him to bathe his hands in it.

"It won't burn, don't worry," Marilyn gave him a warm smile. "Actually, you'll find it's quite pleasant. It's cooling. My mother is a doctor, and I've had my hands in that stuff a dozen times, when I fell off my bike - as a little girl learning how to ride it..."

That made him laugh, but he regretted it immediately, grimacing and reaching for his head. Then he tentatively put his hands in the liquid.

"Okay?"

He was still only nodding, but he was smiling to himself.

Marilyn washed his forehead and the small cut in his hair, thinking that it couldn't be a bad sign, if he portrayed a sense of humor. His head was unsteady under her touch, especially when she tried to wash the dried blood from his hair. Carefully she put her free hand to the back of his head, touching him just lightly with her fingertips - just to give him some steady reference.

But at her touch Michael's head sank back resting heavily against her hand. His hair was far less nappy than she had thought. She felt his warm curls between her fingers and the firm, rounded shape of his skull in her palm.

Argh! Ugly-Edmond touched me! Yuk! Ugh! I'm sure to get warts now!

Marilyn's heart rate shot up. Her hand at the back of his head petrified. His eyes were closed. She felt the impulse to gently rub his scalp with her fingers where they lay in his hair, but she didn't dare to move them in fear he might feel it. Of course he would feel it. Of course he already knew her hand was there. But she couldn't shake it off. And so her hand stayed awkwardly frozen in place, while she tried hard to concentrate on what her other hand was doing.

Being close to his face, she realized that inflammations of acne were still visible in some places. It must have been terrible when he had been younger. She wondered, if he had suffered from it the way she suffered in school.

But when he smiled, all that was forgotten. Standing over him, she watched him cautiously. When he wasn't dirty and tired and in pain, he would be a handsome black guy. And even in the state he was in now, his smile affected her.

As she couldn't access his elbow very well while he was bathing his hands, she knelt down, put his foot in another bowl, and continued with his knee. The blood caused dark-red swirls around his toes as the water running down his leg carried it with it, before it dispersed equally.

The bathroom wasn't small, but still, with them both in it, it seemed oddly crowded. Out in the street she hadn't noticed how wide his shoulders were, or how strong his thighs and arms. Now that she knelt below him, she in her light summer dress, he bruised, torn up and with blood on him, she realized that he was a grown man. She enjoyed having him there, his physical presence. She enjoyed having a reason to come close to him, feel the heat that radiated from him and smell the musk fragrance of his skin. In school she was used to young men reacting with disgust when she happened to touch them accidentally. But his injuries gave her an excuse, and he didn't seem to mind.

As she washed the blood down his leg, feeling strong muscles under tender skin, she realized in a strange way that living skin was hot.

When she looked up, she saw that he only had one hand in the antiseptic, seemingly trying to create something like a whirlpool and studying the changes of color in the water, while stabilizing the bowl with the fingers of his other hand.

"Don't play around with it like a little boy. You have to bathe both hands."

Duty-bound and looking a little caught out, he put his left hand back in as well, letting the dyed water run through his fingers and making little waves.

On a counter behind Marilyn sat a little boat, a toy about the size of a matchbox, with a blue bottom and a red chimney. It was a piece of memorabilia from her childhood, now used as decoration. In an unobserved moment she reached for it and then quickly slipped it into the bowl on Michael's knees. At first it went under, but being lighter than water it bobbed to the surface again, swaying a little and sliding towards him across the dark liquid. He looked in surprise first at his unexpected companion and then at Marilyn who sat at his feet.

She shrugged. "For children, so they don't get bored. My mother used to give me that so I would leave my hands in there."

For a moment, Michael watched the boat cruising between his hands, then, not lifting his head, he looked back at Marilyn as he gave it a little shove so it floated across the bowl.

And there it was again, that crooked smile he would give from under his lashes.

It cut through Marilyn like a hot knife cuts through butter. His eyes resting on her gave her a carnal feeling. She looked away, back at where her hands were now covering the wound on his knee with clean gauze again, and then washed the last remains of blood off him.

She was just cleaning the bowl she had used to wash his leg, as the bathroom door opened, and her mother stood on the threshold. "What's going on?" she asked concerned, looking from her daughter to the strange young man. "What happened?"

Marilyn explained it truthfully, and still somehow felt caught out being alone with him. But her mother didn't seem to notice anything odd about it. She crouched down beside him and watched him intently, while he apologized for being a bother.

"That's okay, Michael, dear. Don't worry about it. How do you feel?"

"My head hurts when I laugh, and my body hurts, too. But your daughter was so kind to give me something for the headache, and it's much better already."

"No aspirin," Marilyn said before her mother could ask.

"Do you feel dizzy, Michael?"

"A little, but it's gotten better, too."

"Do you feel sick as well?"

"I did feel sick after walking here, but now it's okay."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

Michael gave Marilyn a puzzled look. "It was pretty much as your daughter said..."

"But can you tell me in your own words?"

Marilyn nodded at him encouragingly.

"Well, I was going downhill fast. And then there was a sharp turn, so I went to the very right side of the street and then to the very left side to make the turn less sharp, you see. And as I came round the bend, I suddenly saw someone standing in my way, and I wanted to stop, and then I was on the ground already. It happened fast..."

"How did you fall? Can you tell me how it happen? Did your bike fall over or were you thrown off?"

"I'm not sure..."

"You're not sure?"

"No..."

"You don't actually remember the accident, do you?"

For a moment Michael looked at her confused. "No..." he said slowly. Then he suddenly gasped at Marilyn in utter shock. "Oh my God! Are you okay? Did I hit you?"

"No! No, you didn't! I'm fine!"

"Were you unconscious?" her mother continued.

"I don't think... I don't know..."

She turned to where Marilyn stood leaning against the sink. Under the gaze of her mother she just nodded slightly. "But he wouldn't let me call an ambulance," she added.

Her mother sighed and took a toothbrush from a glass on the sink. She held the bottom end in front of Michael's face. "Follow it with your eyes."

Afterwards she produced a small flashlight from a drawer and told him to look straight at her. When she flashed it in his eyes, he flinched.

With his permission, Marilyn's mother examined Michael's head and felt his wrists. She found nothing dramatic, but told him that it was impossible to tell, if he had any broken bones for certain without an x-ray. "If you have any severe problems with your hands or your leg in the next few hours, or if your stomach area becomes hard to the touch and you feel pain, you must see a doctor!" she said insistently. "You mustn't do any physical work. You shouldn't read neither, nor watch TV. When your head hit the ground, your brain was injured because it was hurtled against the inside of your skull. That's why you lost consciousness and can't remember the moment before. Without an x-ray, I can't say how severe the injuries are. You have a concussion at least. You have to rest, so your brain can heal. But if you experience a bad headache and you feel nauseous, if the dizziness comes back strong, if you have problems with your eyes - anything of that sort, you must go to hospital immediately. A blood vessel in your head might have been damaged, and that is very, very dangerous, do you understand? You could die from that! Also, you mustn't take aspirin. Acetylsalicylic acid acts as a blood thinner and can make a possible bleed inside your skull worse."

While she spoke, Michael's expression became more and more uneasy. "Okay," was all he murmured after she had finished. But he still didn't want an ambulance.

Marilyn's mother had another look at the abrasion on his hands.

"Do you want to finish this?" Marilyn asked from where she stood by the sink, holding on to it, as if it might fall off the wall, if she'd let go.

"If you want me to. But I think you're doing just fine. And I have a very early start tomorrow."

"I offered to take Michael home by car," Marilyn said as her mother was just about to walk out the door. "He lives at Hayvenhurst Avenue."

Her mother nodded. "Take my car, then. But please come straight back. You have school tomorrow. Get well soon, Michael!"

Then she had a long look at the boat in the bowl, but didn't comment on it.

~~~~~

[Photo by the side by Michael Tighe, New York, 1977]

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[Special Thanks to Jolie for the analysis of Arfo-American hair in general and Michael Jackson's hair in particular! Much Love, Birdie <3]