anything at all - cesar ruiz

A man in a second hand jacket shuffled carefully over the cement cracks past a short woman with a tall shadow, their paths diverging where sidewalk met the park circle. He slouching down with roses in his hand and she swishing tight tennis skirt pleats. Her hands signed out conversation in her earphones and the signs did not mean anything. The third throes of spring beamed down, the almost-summer sun a little higher in its dive than when the clock same pointed yesterday. From a bench with two young persons perched the sunlight was almost perfectly eclipsed by a tall man of bronze. Beams peeking out between what must be the ears and the halo’d glow washing out the features so that you could not see the statue’s face. But the couple were engaged in close conversation and did not see to try. They did not see the way the head’s corona bursted out in blotching swirls that guided subjects around the circle park. Around a statue of whom everyone forgot the name. 

“It can be anything you’d like.”

She sat with one leg tucked beneath her stomach on which the opposite hand was resting.

“What about Eliza.”

He was all arm, stretched out on the back rest because his child was coming. There was not yet hesitation because it did not yet have a name.

“No. It can’t be that. Anything but that.”

“You said any thing at all.”

"I said anything you’d like. But that is only half a name”

“I like Eliza.”

“Then I lied. It can be anything but Eliza.”

“Elisa then.”

“That’s another half a name.”

“We could say it wasn’t. It will be a whole name to her.”

“But I would know it wasn’t.”

They took pause in conversation to smile politely at the dog pressing up against their legs, tail rippling its whole body against them. They did not look up at the lady on the end of the leash and so did not know her before dog and walker continued away.

“Francine. That’s a whole name.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?

“I lied again."

“I know you did. As soon as I said it.”

“I really do mean anything”

“Just not that.”

“Yes. Just not that.”

A breeze picked up a curl of hair from the woman’s forelock and placed it gently on her brow. The man looked at it and smiled but did not move to brush it back because there was no part of her that could be out of place. The sun was just a tad bit lower now and the  rays spilled over the bronzed statue’s shoulders. The light’s cape washed down and unfurled and the woman felt her chest grow hot. He reached out gently and brushed her belly. When it shrank he knew they’d both grow larger but for now the child belonged to her.

“Tell me everything it cannot be. And then we’ll see what is left.”

“That is very hard.”

“It will only take some time.”

The clouds did not follow the setting sun and one drifted over it on the back of hidden currents. A streaking trace of an airplane led behind it and the path was pointed at the statues face. But time had taken its once fine-carved features, and for this moment both man and child could be anything at all.

Cesar Ruiz is a data scientist and amateur writer who lives in Washington DC with his wife and retired sled dog Hippo. His has been published by the Washington Writer's Publishing House, Apocalypse Confidential, and others. He maintains a personal newsletter where he shares his unpublished, original work at https://cesarfelipe.substack.com/.