Page 31 of Icarus

“Better. He just twisted it, and you’ve been gone for a week.”

Helios pushed the art book under his second pillow at the head of the bed, then sat up straighter to gaze at Icarus across the dark space.

“How often do you go out there? To Chicago,” he asked.

Icarus shrugged. “I’ve only been there twice. But I’ve been to Denmark, France, Italy, London, LA, Detroit, Sweden—places with museums to visit. We only travel for lectures now, but a while back my dad would take commissions that had to be completed in person.”

Helios looked interested.

“I’ve only been to New York, Chicago, and here. What are those other places like?”

Icarus looked through the gap in the draperies and out the window. He could see the light from the diner peeking over the trees.

“Cities are all the same. They have this sound, like a hum, that’s the noise of people talking and cars and construction, birds and dogs and children playing, and electricity that kind of . . . bursts on your palate the moment you step off the plane. During the day it’s louder; at night it’s quieter. The streetlamps are different colors and it gives the whole place an aura. Chicago is orange, Paris is yellow, all the cities in Sweden are a greenish white.”

Icarus paused, but Helios didn’t say anything, so he continued.

“Everyone in each city has different personalities, of course. But there is also a haze for that as well. People go on and on about whether a place has nice people, but I think it’s more noticeable whether there is a strong community. In the nicer places of London everyone is so much more isolated than in the nicer places of New York. I’m talking about . . . well . . . that feeling where you know you can go to your neighbor and ask for a cup of sugar or stop someone on the street to ask them for directions. In London, they won’t stop at all. In New York, as you know, you’ll get a bunch of street names and lefts and rights. In Chicago, they’ll say, ‘I’m headed that way too. Walk with me and I’ll show you the way.’”

Helios pulled his legs up and wrapped his arms around them. He lay his head down on his own shoulder.

“What else?”

“Each place has a different smell, but the base notes are the same,” Icarus went on. “Steel, piss, hot concrete, sweat, and skin. If you’re near a body of water you can mix that scent in too. And women. The smell of women and the perfumes they prefer layered over it all. In Paris the women like to smell powdery, like old people. In New York their perfumes smell like colognes, there’s a lot of spice and complexity. Nordic women like to smell green, more like gardens than like flower blossoms.”

“Green streetlights, green women,” Helios snickered.

Icarus shrugged. “Yeah. And eventually, the entire city begins to make an impression, like a Rothko. Just a haze of layers and sensations in color.”

He crawled forward and pulled the art book from under Helios’s pillow and flipped to a Rothko to show him. He pointed at the painting titled Orange, Red, Yellow.

“If someone mentions a city I’ve been to, it feels kind of like this. And the memory of all the sensory impressions sort of settles in your chest, as an ache with a name.”

“An ache with a name . . .” Helios repeated, closing his eyes. Then he laughed dryly. “When I asked, I thought you would tell me about whether they had good restaurants or cool stuff to do. Not all of . . . that.”

Icarus drew back, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I—”

Helios shook his head sharply. “Don’t be sorry. This was better, anyway.”

Icarus frowned. Shrugged.

“What is the impression of here?”

“What?”

“This town. Where you’re from,” Helios asked seriously. “Describe it the way you did the others.”

Icarus frowned and tried. “I don’t think home has the same impact unless you’re returning to it after a long time away.”

Helios didn’t say anything; he just waited.

“Small places are . . . lost in time,” Icarus said. “Things move slower. The women still smell like the perfume my mom used to wear twenty years ago. There’s a bottle on the mantle I used to . . . never mind. The haze here is like black smoke and gray fog. It’s a rainy place and even when the sun is out you can tell. The air is prickly with possibility, but the ground is magnetic and heavy. Going anywhere or doing anything feels like running in a dream. It’s an open-air prison.”

“I see.” Helios brushed his fingertips across the surface of his quilt.

“What is it for you?” Icarus asked boldly.

Helios shrugged. “The green of the wood, the blue of the sky, quiet, violence, and you. Perched in my window frame.”