Leaves

By the time he got home, it was dark. There was nothing he could do but wait. He turned on his TV, but that just seemed to make the room darker.

It was after ten when she called, and he rushed to the phone.

"April? Where are you?"

Her voice sounded small and mechanical Telephones were so absurd. "Harold? I'm all right. I had to call you. Harold, I'm leaving."

"No!" he said. "No! You can't April! I need you. Before you do antyhing, I have to see you. We need to talk."

"Harold, I can't. Not now."

"Not now? Why not? Where are you? April, I love you. I love you, baby. Please, just meet with me."

"I know," she said. "I know you love me, darling, and I love you too. But I can't stay. Not now."

"No, wait! I can change. Really. I was just an idiot." He licked his lips, suddenly desperate. Her voice was so faint, as if she were already far away. "Meet me. I have to see you, April, right now, before you do anything. Meet me on the bridge."

"Harold, I can't. I don't know if I can be ready..."

Her old readiness problem. He laughed, but his laugh had no humor in it. "I know you, April. You can do it if you want to."

"No. It's different this time, Harold. It's not my decision any more."

"What do you mean? Whose decision is it? April, is there someone else?" The thought cut him like a knife. His hand tightened on the phone. "Is that it? Is someone there?" He felt nauseous, sick with loss and rage. He turned around and poressed his head against the cool of the plaster wall, as if it mighht explode.

"No. Of course not. There's no one else."

"Then meet me. Ten minutes."

"Harold..."

"Meet me!" He slammed the phone down before she could reply, grabbed his coat and flew out the door before she could call him back.

The night was dark, and felt like something huge, with wings. He ran over the grass, over the lamp lit lawns and shadowy streets, across the empty baseball field and to the abandoned access road that led to the bridge. He could see from some distance away that she wasn't there. There was no one beneath the old yellow street lamp, just the skittering leaves. That didn't disappoint him, though. He didn't expect her so soon. He'd made it in record time, running all the way.

He stood on the bridge catching his breath. The Patch was inky black in shadow, and the trees his friends had nothing to tell him now, standing there as if afraid. The whole world seemed frightened and afraid. Even the shadows seemed to be trying to climb into themselves. He could hear the dry leaves rubbing together like the whispering of countless mouths, saying words no man could understand.

April came walking towards the bridge, out of the Patch, moving slowly, reluctantly.

How had she gotten there? Jumped the golf course fence and cut across the greens? She was wrapped up against the chill, in a big cloth jacket and a muffler around her neck, a beret on her head—her symbol. It filled him with grief.

"Where are you coming from?" he called while she was still some distance away. "Where were you, April?"

She stepped easily down the slippery bank. She seemed to glide along the marshy shore, her hands tucked into her opposite sleeves and pressed against her chest as she walked up to the bridge. She looked cold and she'd been crying. Her eyes were red.

"April, April," he said. "I don't want you to go. I want you back, the way things were before. Can't we be like that again? I was such an idiot. I love you, April."

She stopped several feet from him, crying still. She shook her head as if she didn't want to hear. "Don't," she said. "Don't."

"April..." He took a step towards her. She took a step back. "April, please. Just let me hold you. You're shivering. Just let me—"

He stepped towards her. Her back was against the bridge and she had nowhere to go.

"Don't—" she said.

He slid his hands inside her jacket, the way he always used to do, to warm himself with the heat of her body—slid his hands inside and felt nothing, and April wailed, turned her sad eyes to him and wailed as he watched her dissolve in front of him—dissolve into nothing. Her face, her hair, her legs and her body, all dissolved, melted away, the skin ripping off like tattered tissue paper as the wind took it. He got one look at her eyes, terrified and then sad, resigned, the light going out as the skin of her face lifted off and blew away, leaving nothing in his arms but dried leaves, spilling over his hands. Her jacket opened and collapsed over his arms, and there was nothing in there but leaves, dead, dried leaves. Her jeans fell—her panties—and the leaves skittered like frightened spiders across the concrete of the bridge.

"April? April! Oh my God, April!"

He heard her wail, the sound of the wind as it blew through the patch. The trees shuddered in horror and the wind gathered the leaves as a mother gathers her children in her arms and blew them irrevocably into the darkness of the Patch.