Part and Nitch
2020
It was near dusk when the man Part stepped onto his friend Nitch’s doorstep, and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t nervous. He knocked. Several seconds passed before the door opened and the woman Nitch emerged, wild hair long down her back.
“Hello, Nitch,” said Part with a smile, eyes crinkling handsomely.
Nitch smiled as well. “Hello, Part. How've you been?”
He shrugged. “You know me. I live an easy life.”
“I know you,” said Nitch. “So why are you here?”
Questions, questions. Part had never liked those. But Nitch never asked questions she knew would be answered, he knew that much, and so he knew that he wouldn’t have to answer this one.
“Just invite me in, would you?” He flashed a charming grin. “We can put a kettle on the stove and brew your favorite.”
With a knowing look on her face, Nitch pushed the door open wider and beckoned him inside. “Yes, come in. You’re lucky—there’s already a kettle on the stove.”
Together they went into her little house, and instantly Part was reminded of things he wished not to be reminded of. The carpet, hand weaved. The candle, burning citrus. The drapes, cherry red. Nitch was facing away from him, silhouetted in the setting sun.
“You know I’ll never change it.”
“You always were stubborn.”
“Me?”
“You.”
She gave a playful laugh and turned to face him, nodding towards the kettle. “It’s ready. Turn off the heat, would you?”
Not moving, he stared at her face, empty even as she laughed. “It’s not whistling yet.”
“It will. It’s been on there long enough.”
He shrugged and went to the stove, where the kettle was just beginning to hiss. Breathing in the aroma, he closed his eyes as the hiss grew to a whistle. It filled the room. Through his closed eyes he could feel Nitch turn back to the window again.
“Part,” she said. “Part, turn off the heat.”
He opened his eyes and turned off the heat. Immediately the whistle died down, and he reached for the mugs she had set out. One blue, one red.
“Can I have the red?”
“Sure.”
As he poured the water, Nitch came up behind him and dropped the teabags in.
“It looks like dirt,” he said, watching the teabag steep in the water.
Nitch laughed.
They went out to the deck and sat, mugs in hand. It was a warm night. The river rippled under the languid wind, and the world tilted into something softer. Listening, Part tipped his head back and breathed.
“Wow,” said Part, “it’s so much easier.”
“I don’t sit out here often.”
He looked at her, at her still hands and slow-blinking eyes, cool face and long hair. “Wow,” said Part, “you’re really whittled down, aren’t you?”
A cold beat passed. Nitch looked at him, and for once he sensed that she wasn’t trying to actually look.
“It’s so much easier.”
“Nitch—”
“You shouldn’t have come, Part. I asked you not to come.”
Brow furrowed, he sucked in a breath. “You haven’t changed anything.”
“Should I have?”
“I would feel better if you had.”
She set her mug down hard, and drops of dark tea splashed onto her hand. With a bitter smile, she looked out to the rippling river and the flaming sun and the drifting wind and said, “But it’s not about you, Part, is it?”
“Nitch!”
“You aren’t selfish, I know. But what would you have me do?” Eyes flashing, she laughed drily. “Grow back?”
He searched for words, but she was faster.
“You said it yourself, Part—I’m ‘whittled down.’ I’m not going to grow back. I can’t. There is nothing to grow back with, and nothing to grow back to.”
She sat forward in her chair. Her jaw clenched. Her pretty hair, silvery in the fading light, fell across her face; in the moment before she brushed it back, Part was blind.
“But you asked, Nitch,” he said quietly.
“No, I didn’t.”
He huffed a laugh, uneasy. “C’mon. We know each other too well for lies.”
“Think I’m lying if you want. It’s been years. I’m dead now.” Her eyes shifted to his. “We barely know each other anymore.”
“Nitch, you haven’t changed anything.”
“Why should I have?”
“Nitch, you’re not dead. Sad, maybe, and mourning, but not dead.”
Hurt passed like a shadow in her cloudy eyes.
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know lots of things.”
“Not the things that matter.”
“If you came with me, breathed the mountain air, maybe it would be easier.” He stood and offered her a hand. She refused to look at it, watching him instead.
“Maybe it would be easier.”
“Yeah.”
But she shook her head and peered down at her own hand, where the skin was beginning to blister. “Nothing’s that easy, Part.”
“It doesn’t have to be easy, Nitch, just easier.”
She stood and walked inside. Over her shoulder, she said, “I’m tired.”
“Going to bed?”
“Yes.”
“Think on it,” he called to her.
The door closed quietly behind her and with it, the man Part was blind again. And he was tired too, he realized, and the woman Nitch was truly lost to him now. So he left, and went to breathe the mountain air, hoping that it would, indeed, be easier.