The door shut, and there was silence. Michael sat very still, eyes turned down, hands in the antiseptic motionless not making the slightest sound. The boat on the dark surface seemed abandoned.

"You can take your hands out, now," Marilyn said softly, her voice cutting through the still air.

For a moment he looked at her with a disturbed expression, but when she stretched her hand out for the bowl, he nodded.

At the very last moment, he reached for the boat and fished it out.

The dyed water was dripping onto the white towel in his lap, while Michael turned the object in his hands. "This is cute."

"Yes. I loved it, when I was a child." Marilyn crouched down in front of his knees again.

"How about now?"

Surprised, she looked up at him and briefly met his gaze, then she turned her attention back to the boat between his long fingers. "Now? Truth be told, I haven't looked at it in a long while... I can still remember how it made me feel when I was little, though it was so much brighter, then. Somehow - I don't know - the paint has rubbed off, or maybe the colors just faded." Her affection for the boat grew while he toyed with it. "But yes, I still think it's cute."

He smiled and handed it to her. And when she took it, his fingers brushed against hers, soft and cool and wet from the antiseptic bath.

The unexpected touch sent sparks through Marilyn and made her chest feel tight. Her eyes shot up to see, if he had done it intentionally, but only found his friendly yet open smile. If he had, then he was pretending now, that he hadn't.

Gosh, she had washed his hands earlier - how could the touch of his fingers now suddenly do this to her? But it could. Getting up and putting the boat away, she was still aware of where he had touched her, as if that patch of her skin were dimly glowing.

Before covering the grazed areas of his palms, Marilyn took the towel from Michael's knees and thoroughly dapped his hands dry. At the moment, they were troubling him less due to the cooling and pain-relieving effect of the antiseptic, and he moved them quite freely. As she had his right hand in the towel, something caught her eye.

"What's with your fingers?"

Michael bent forward, too, and they both looked closely.

At first it seemed, as if there was something white, like a mysterious powder or cream, on his ring finger and his little finger, but when Marilyn inspected it, that wasn't the case. The tip of his ring finger had no color, none at all, and neither did the nail bed of his little finger. She had thought that it had to do with his fall off the bicycle in some way, that it was some kind of injury, but although it was as if the dark color had been peeled off, the skin itself seemed whole.

"Oh, that," Michael said lightly. "That's nothing. It's just scares. Don't worry about it."

And then he moved his hand so Marilyn couldn't see the fingers anymore.

After putting cream and bandages on his hands, Marilyn pushed the rolled-up shirtsleeve on his right arm a little higher to tend to his elbow. "Can you hold on to this?"

He nodded. This time he didn't touch her hand. Maybe it had just been accidental earlier.

As she tried to wash the caked dirt from his skinned arm, Michael watched her closely. His face was tense. Marilyn tried to be gentle, but she was still sure that she was hurting him. Water carrying blood and dirt dripped off his arm onto the towel she had laid in his lap again.

"Be careful, so you don't get your dress dirty," he said suddenly.

Marilyn looked at him, and then at her dress. She had forgotten what she was wearing.

That dress doesn't suit you. I can't believe you left the house in it. Don't you have a mirror?"Oh, that," she murmured, "That's okay. It doesn't matter. It's nothing. I just put anything on. Don't worry about it."

If only she had put on something else - anything else.

"But it's pretty. And it looks new."

... and so she thought she could buy pretty. Stop dressing up.If only he would stop. "Hmm..."

But he kept eyeing the dress. "I mean it. Be careful with that!"

Marilyn gave him a brief, weak smile and then looked away, focusing on his arm, ignoring him, pretending, imagining that she didn't hear him. Only a moment ago having his eyes on her had been - charming. Now it felt heavy and oppressive.

"Really...!"

He tried a couple of times more, but she answered with nothing other than small, low, uncomfortable hums. After a while he fell silent.

The silence was heavy. Marilyn was aware of every breath she took and every move she made, of every drop of dirty water that ran off his arm or dripped from the washcloth, and that she couldn't prevent from doing so, and of the splashing sound, when she rinsed the cloth. She bowed her head low so she didn't have to look at him, while she was all too aware of his face and his eyes only about a foot away from her own. The tongue in her mouth started to feel dry. She didn't dare to swallow. It was as if, if she was only silent and still enough, she could maybe vanish in some way. Her neck and shoulders started to hurt from her rigid position. So did her legs from kneeling.

When she finally got up to take the bowl and washcloth away, she feared she might tremble and pour the bloody water all over the bathroom. It didn't happen. But she felt exposed standing and walking in that awful dress, the yellow parts of its pattern shining brightly and mocking all her efforts to vanish from sight. What had she been thinking buying it?

She took some bandage and gauze from the medicine chest and filled her lungs with one deep, inaudible breath before turning back to him. Walking over to where he sat, she risked a brief look from below not raising her head, but turned her eyes away again immediately, when she met his.

"I'm pretty torn up, aren't I?" Michael said suddenly in a low voice.

Smoothing the bandage around his arm with one hand while pulling the rolled-up end tight with her other, she stopped mid-move and looked at him. There was something in his tone, something different, that made her. He had been watching her work, still holding up his torn sleeve, now he tentatively met her gaze. His face was close to hers, his expression troubled and unhappy. Yes, he really had soft eyes...

Marilyn took a deep breath and nodded. "You heard what my mother said..."

"Yes."

"I think she meant every word of it."

"I know..."

She continued wrapping the bandage around his arm. "You're really afraid of your father, aren't you?" Talking about him was much better than the silence.

But Michael didn't answer, and when Marilyn looked up again, he had his lips pressed in a thin line.

"It's okay. I'm a bit afraid of my father, too. I think that's how it is with fathers."

He smiled a little and went on to watch her work in silence.

"What would your father do, if he found out about your fall?" she continued.

"He'd be furious. He'd probably slap me in the face."

Marilyn's head shot up again, her eyes wide. "He couldn't hit your injured head!"

"Yes... Maybe he wouldn't do that. But he'd want to, you know... He'd want to."

"But wouldn't he want you to be checked over properly?"

"He would, I guess. But afterwards he'd be furious because I hurt myself. Or because I could have hurt myself. As it is, he'd be furious either way. But if I go to the hospital, he's sure to know about it. If I don't, there's a chance he'll never know anything happened."

"I'm sure he's really scary." Marilyn gently taped the end of the bandage fast and carefully rolled his sleeve down. "So. That's as good as we can do tonight. But I'm afraid there's some blood on your shirt."

He inspected the torn fabric hanging off his arm. "Thank you for piecing me back together. I think the shirt is beyond rescue, anyway."

"Will your father be angry about the shirt, too?"

"No, this isn't the kind he'll notice being missing."

Michael rolled down his torn pant leg. And while he stuffed his bloodstained sock in his pocket and slipped his naked foot into his sneaker, Marilyn wondered what kind of shirt his father would be missing.

Driving through the sleeping streets of Encino a little later, a hollow tiredness started to come over Marilyn. They drove in silence, but this time it was the silence of exhaustion. Most of the way Michael sat in the passenger seat with his eyes closed.

In the east the sky would soon start to pale.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, when she reached Hayvenhurst Avenue, "but you have to tell me where to go. Which way do you live?"

He opened his eyes groggily. Slightly confused he looked around himself, then ran his hand over his face. "It's this way." He pointed to his right.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes. I'm just very tired right now..."

After a few more minutes, he indicted a tall, dark gate, and Marilyn pulled over.

"This is where I live," he said and with an effort pulled himself together to get out. "Thank you, again."

"No problem. I just hope you'll be fine..."

"No, seriously! Thank you! For everything. For being kind. For driving me home, for treating my wounds," he raised his bandaged hands at her, "for keeping my bike..."

"That's nothing. It was my fault, too..."

He smiled, warm and open though visibly exhausted, holding her gaze for a moment. Then he looked away. "I'll come for the bike tomorrow, maybe, if that's okay. Oh, gosh, no, I should say later today!" He let his head drop forward, and there was the shadow of a laugh at the fact that it was already morning.

"Whenever you have time. I have school 'til 4:00. I should be home by 4:30. I'm not really into after school activities. Just ring the bell. Oh, wait, I'll write the address down for you."

Michael got out and closed the door. He looked at Marilyn through the closed side window for a second, the slip of paper from her mother's notepad between his fingers, then he turned and walked to the gate. She watched him go.

She wasn't sure, if he talked to someone or entered a code, but the gate seemed to unlock, because he leaned against it and shoved it open. He looked back at her one more time, and then he was gone.

The gate closed.

And Marilyn in the car suddenly felt alone.

For a moment longer she looked at the gate and at what could be seen of the premises behind it. Now that the gate had closed, it seemed all quite again. There were no lights coming on, no signs of life, nothing. As if the house had swallowed Michael up, sucked him in never to let him go again.

But it was just a sleeping house.

She sighed and, after another look at the still estate, started the engine and pulled out into the empty street.

Marilyn wasn't from a poor family, and the home she lived in surely wasn't small. But this had to be a big place, a really big one, and Michael apparently really lived there. She wondered, if it was staffed. It probably was, to some degree, anyway. Was he the son of the house or maybe an employee? The son of the housekeepers? Maybe he was the pool boy. She smiled. At any rate, he was a cutie. He had lashes long enough to qualify as a tripping hazard. And that upward glance he would give, this come-hither look... Gosh, that would have made any girl proud! And his smile... He had a perfect smile. Two rows of perfect teeth in a perfect mouth. Just sometimes his lower lip would opened up more on his left side, exposing more of the left half of his lower teeth. And this crooked smile made him look boyish and shy and - just gorgeous.

In her nightdress in front of her bathroom mirror fixing her hair before going to bed to catch two hours or so of sleep, she had to admit that she didn't know him at all. She realized that she didn't even know his full name. She didn't know what he did for living, if anything. She didn't know his age. Maybe has was married already. No, he had spoken about his father getting upset, not his wife. If he was the son of that house at Hayvenhurst Avenue, he certainly had a girlfriend. They all had girlfriends. Was she thinking 'girlfriend', now? And if he was the pool boy, he probably had a girlfriend, too - or an eye on the daughter of the house. Or an affair with the wife. Or all of the above.

She shook her head at herself.

The fact remained: She didn't know him at all.

And who was she? Marilyn looked at her face in the mirror. She was the stupid girl he had damaged his bicycle and hurt himself trying not to run over in the middle of the night.

The question was not, if she knew him. The question was, if she should make the effort to try to get to know him. What if she did, and she found she actually really liked him, and then it didn't work out?

Ugly-Edmond.

It never worked out. Could she take another rejection? Did she have the strength for it? Should she even be wasting so much time thinking about him?

On the other hand, who didn't play had lost already.

Anyway, he would come back for his bicycle. She would assess the situation then.

Marilyn switched off the light. Darkness engulfed her.

She didn't know him at all.

And who was she?

Ugly-Edmond.

~~~~~

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