Re: carnival: sparrow/matt
He didn't answer her, whether he'd ever been to a carnival like this one before. He couldn't answer it truthfully. He thought because it all felt familiar, like a pattern, that he had, but he didn't know.
He was trying. He was trying to blend, to be seen just enough. This was a new project. In the past, from what he could remember of those first missions he was sent on, the goal had been to become unrecognizable, or to be seen by a single person. Now the goal was to be ignored. His left arm hung a little too rigidly. He took care of the town's animals two days a week, but spent little time on Main otherwise. He lived in the woods, where people lived who wanted to be left alone. He wasn't a mystery. He was a known quantity, a loner, probably a veteran, not interested in conversation.
She had a warm and winding voice, and he liked listening to her talk, even if he saw nothing spark behind her eyes. He knew that look. It couldn't be faked.
He did move toward her as she described the traveling show, talked about what she liked she what she didn't, smiled warm and inviting, and he sat down in the little chair next to the bed. He stepped a little heavier on his left foot as he made his way through the delicately decorated space. He was a giant in here, a dirty blot on pristine whiteness and soft things.
"Don't think?" he asked, after he sat in the chair, sideways, turned to face her. He glanced back. He could see his footfalls over the wood floor in small muddy crescents and dots, a trail from the door. He noticed it only with a critical eye, disturbed that he'd left a trail.
She didn't think places aside from Repose were as safe. Was she a native of the town, this girl in the stalled out travelling circus?
It was obvious she liked the dancing part. She was graceful enough that it could be a joy, the way it wasn't for people who didn't have the knack. She said she liked this part, people and touch, but he wondered if he'd know if that was so. He usually had a good eye for lies, but he could only tell that she believed what she said. That meant she was very, very good, or it was true.
He didn't expect to be asked a question. He was fine with listening to her talk, enjoying the husky, lulling quality of her voice, the drafty thread of cool air from outside, the smell in here, like women's things. The chair was close enough in this miniature place that his knees almost touched hers. He hadn't exchanged this many words in person with anyone since he'd come to this town. He didn't sit in quiet rooms and talk.
Conversation was an uphill climb. He was better at it now than he'd been a year ago, when he first stumbled away, stripped to the bone. Some things were still novel and still difficult. 'Want' was getting less complicated over time, but expressing it wasn't. He didn't think he wanted anything, so he tried to remember what he'd pictured in his head when she said she was a dancer.
"Knew a ballet dancer once," he said. His lips curled a little. At some point, he'd been handsome, easy on the eyes, good with girls, or maybe never. That was imagined, just like the ballet dancer, who was equally a lie. He did remember a pair of ballet shoes. It was a fragment among long stretches of rain-soaked streets, tall cliffsides, automobile crashes and faces slumped messily into tables, splayed open on pillows, hanging loose-jawed at absurd right angles. A warm splinter, just the shoes, not who'd worn them or where they were, sitting in a cubbyhole with flaking blue paint. "But I don't know anything about dancing."