Maggie's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The man kept watching the ceiling. His face had softened, but his eyes still skipped across the shapes without holding. Maggie could see it. He was calm now, yes, but calm was not the same as seeing. The ribbon in the river glowed brighter than the rest, holding what he had handed over. If she stopped here, he would leave rested and forget the room by morning. That was not enough. She wanted him to look at the lounge and understand what it was showing him. She stood and moved closer to the glass chair. The chair's surface swirled slow under him, pink into blue into gold. She rested her hand on the rim. "Look at the lamp," she said. He turned his head. The lamp sat on its stand across the room, a glass heart pulsing steady, colors running through it in thin channels. "Watch it breathe," she said. "Match it." He frowned. "Match it how." "Slow your breath to the light," she said. "In when it brightens. Out when it dims." He tried. His first breath was too fast. He caught himself and started again. The lamp brightened. He drew air in. The lamp dimmed. He let air out. His shoulders dropped a second time, lower than before. Maggie waited. She did not speak. After a minute a butterfly lifted from somewhere behind the river and drifted toward him. Its wings moved in the same rhythm as the lamp. It landed on the back of his hand and opened and closed its wings once. He looked down at it. His mouth parted. This time his eyes did not skip. They held. "Oh God," he said. His voice was quiet. "It's all one thing." He looked at the butterfly, then the lamp, then the ceiling, then his own hand. His hand was shaking a little. Not from fear. He laughed, short and surprised. Tears came up but did not fall. "How did I not see this," he said. He was not asking her. He was asking himself. The lounge had landed. He was inside it now, not beside it. Maggie felt something shift in her own body. A warmth, low, under the skin. She looked down at her hand on the rim of the chair. The gray that had climbed past her wrist was still there. But below it, at the base of her thumb, a thin band of color had come back. Pale rose, moving slow, like ink under water. She stared at it. She had not expected that. The lamp pulsed. The man breathed with it. The butterfly stayed on his hand. Somewhere in the river, the ribbon that held his worry glowed brighter still, waiting.