Wet Pavement Cracks

The world was melting. It wasn't a pretty melt. It was the kind of melt that turned everything into a gray soup. The snow banks along the edges of the park paths looked like piles of dirty laundry that nobody wanted to wash.

It was cold, but a different kind of cold than the biting winter. This was a heavy, soggy cold that went right through your puffy coat and sat on your skin like a wet towel. Brian stood by the green bench. The paint was peeling off in long, curly strips. He poked at one with his thumb. It felt like a scab. He shouldn't have come. The park felt too big today. The trees were giant, reaching up with skinny fingers toward a sky the color of a sidewalk. Everything was dripping. Drip. Plink. Splat. It was the sound of the world falling apart, one drop at a time.

Stacey appeared from behind a cluster of naked bushes. She was wearing a bright yellow raincoat. It was the only bright thing in the whole park. She looked like a lost rubber ducky. Her boots made a squelching sound in the mud. Ssh-luck. Ssh-luck. She didn't look at his face. She looked at the ground. Brian looked at the ground too. There was a lot to see down there. A tiny river was forming in the crack of the asphalt. It was a very busy river. It carried bits of gravel and dead grass. It moved fast, like it was late for something important. Brian shifted his weight. His feet were already getting cold inside his sneakers. He should have worn his boots, but he wanted to look like he wasn't trying too hard. That was a mistake. Now his toes were just wet and sad.

"You're late," Stacey said. She didn't sound mad. She just sounded tired. Like she had just finished a long race and didn't win a trophy.

"The bus—" Brian started.

"It's fine. It doesn't matter," she cut him off. She sat down on the edge of the bench. She didn't sit in the middle. She left a big space for a ghost to sit between them. Brian sat down too. The wood was damp. He could feel the moisture soaking into his jeans immediately. It was gross. He watched the water river. It was hitting a big chunk of ice and splitting into two. One part went left toward the grass. The other part went right toward a big hole in the ground.

"Look at that," Stacey said. She pointed a gloved finger at a specific spot in the stream. A soggy, brown cigarette butt was wedged in a narrow part of the crack. The water was piling up behind it. It was making a tiny lake. The lake was getting deeper and deeper, but the water couldn't get past the orange filter. "That's what it was like. In January."

Brian looked at the filter. It was gross and shredded. "The cigarette?"

"No, the getting stuck part," she said. Her voice was flat. "We were just... building up. All that water. All that pressure. And we just sat there. Not going anywhere. Just getting deeper and muddier."

Brian didn't know what to say to that. He watched the tiny lake. It was starting to overflow the edges of the crack. The water was spilling out onto the flat part of the sidewalk, making a big, shapeless puddle. It wasn't a river anymore. It was just a mess. He hated messes. He liked things to have a place. He liked maps. He liked knowing which way was North. When they were together, he felt like he had a map. Now, he felt like he was standing in the middle of a forest at night with no flashlight.

"I tried to move it," Brian said. He wasn't sure if he meant the cigarette or their relationship.

"You tried to push through it," Stacey corrected. "That's not the same. Pushing just makes the water spill over. Look at the mud now. It's everywhere."

She was right. The puddle was turning the dirt next to the path into a swamp. A single blade of green grass was trying to poke through, but the mud was burying it. Brian felt a weird lump in his throat. It felt like he had swallowed a marble. He reached out with the toe of his boot. His boot was covered in dried salt from the winter. He carefully pressed the edge of the sole into the mud right next to the cigarette butt. He pushed. He moved a little bit of dirt and a few pebbles. He was trying to carve a new path. A bypass. He worked slowly, like he was building a castle in the sand. He made a little groove that connected the tiny lake to the rest of the crack further down.

"There," he whispered. The water hesitated. It swirled around the new opening. Then, with a little rush, it ducked into the groove. It started flowing again. The tiny lake began to shrink. The cigarette butt stayed where it was, but it wasn't a dam anymore. It was just a piece of trash. Brian felt a tiny bit better. Not a lot. Just a tiny bit. Like finding a penny on the ground. It doesn't make you rich, but it's something.

"You're always fixing things," Stacey said. She finally looked up. Her eyes were red. Maybe from the wind. Maybe not. "Even when they don't want to be fixed. Sometimes things just need to stay stuck until they fall apart."

"If I didn't fix it, the whole path would be underwater," Brian argued. He felt a spark of heat in his chest. It was the first time he'd felt warm all day. "You can't just let everything flood."

"Why not?" she asked. "At least then it's honest. At least then we know we're drowning."

They both went silent. A crow landed on a nearby tree branch and screamed. Caw! Caw! It sounded like it was laughing at them. Brian looked at the water again. It was moving faster now. It was following the crack perfectly. This crack was long. It went all the way down the hill toward the big drain by the entrance. Brian knew this path. He and Stacey had walked it a hundred times. A thousand times. They used to call it the Ghost Map. They knew where every bump was. They knew which puddle stayed the longest after a rainstorm. They knew the shortcut through the pine trees that smelled like Christmas even in July.

"Remember the Ghost Map?" he asked.

Stacey nodded. She was tracing a circle on her knee with her finger. "Yeah. I took the long way around the deli yesterday. Because I didn't want to see the spot where we found that dog."

"The one with the blue collar?" Brian asked.

"No, the scrappy one. With the one ear. We followed it for three blocks. We thought we were heroes," she said. A tiny smile flickered on her face, then vanished like a lightbulb burning out. "I realized I still walk the way you walk. Fast. Shoulders up. Like I'm late for a meeting I don't want to go to. I have your ghost map in my legs."

Brian felt the marble in his throat get bigger. "I still look for your car. Every time a silver hatchback drives by, I stop breathing for a second. It's annoying."

"It’s more than annoying," she said. "It’s like being haunted while you’re still alive."

The water reached a big intersection where three cracks met. It was a chaotic spot. The water didn't know which way to go. It swirled in a circle, trapped in a little whirlpool. Brian watched it. He wanted to reach down and help it again, but he kept his foot still. He had to let the water figure it out. He had to see what happened when he didn't interfere. The whirlpool spun and spun. It sucked in a tiny leaf. The leaf went around and around, faster and faster, until it finally got spat out into the deepest crack. The one that led straight to the drain.

"It’s going to the deep," Brian said. He pointed at the drain. It was a big iron grate set into the ground. It looked like a mouth with square teeth. The water was rushing toward it now, eager to be gone. It didn't care about the park or the bench or the cigarette butt anymore. It just wanted to fall into the dark.

"The deep," Stacey repeated. She stood up. Her yellow coat crinkled. It was a loud sound in the quiet park. "I think I'm ready to let it go there. The January stuff. The cigarette stuff."

Brian stood up too. His knees popped. He felt old. Even though he wasn't old, the winter made him feel like an ancient tree. "Does it ever come back out? The water in the drain?"

"I don't know," she said. She started walking away, her boots making that same squelching sound. Ssh-luck. Ssh-luck. "Maybe it goes to the river. Maybe it goes to the ocean. Maybe it just disappears."

Brian watched her go. She was a bright yellow dot against the gray and brown world. He looked back down at his work. The new path he had carved with his boot was already starting to fill in with silt. The water was still flowing, but the edges were crumbling. The world was always trying to fill in the gaps. He looked at the iron grate. The water was disappearing into it with a soft gurgling sound. It was a hungry sound. It felt like the park was eating the winter. It was eating their memories too. He felt a sudden, sharp urge to run after her. To tell her that he still had the map. To tell her that they could find a new way that didn't involve getting stuck. But his feet felt like lead. They were heavy and cold and stuck in the mud.

He stayed there until the yellow coat was gone. The sun tried to poke through the clouds, but it wasn't strong enough. It just made the sky look like a bruised peach. Brian looked at the cigarette butt one last time. It was still there. It hadn't moved an inch. It was a stubborn little thing. It didn't care about the river or the drain or the deep. It was just going to sit there until it rotted away. Brian turned around and started walking the other way. He walked fast. Shoulders up. Like he was late for a meeting he didn't want to go to. He followed his own ghost map, out of the park and back toward the street where the cars never stopped moving. The thaw was happening, but the air was starting to bite again. The wind was picking up, whispering things about a frost that wasn't finished yet. The spark of heat in his chest was gone, replaced by the familiar, heavy chill of the city in March.