A Fairy on Your Nose

The streetlamps flickered inauspiciously against the darkening sky, casting evanescent shadows on the rain slicked pavement. The man in the navy tie pressed his son closer to his side as the gaudy neon lights danced capriciously at the edges of his vision. A trace scent of rain was still faintly discernible in the open air, choked by the overshadowing odor of cigarette smoke and cheap alcohol. The pair of figures hurried down the quiet boulevard, footsteps echoing loudly on the empty street. The child's steps splashed clouded water against his father's dress pants, a fact that would have amused him immensely had he been watching where he was going. Instead, he peered attentively into the darkened cross streets.
   
"They're looking at me Keith," the boy murmured, staring out into the shadowed alleyways. His father turned his head away.

"They're not," he replied, although he was almost sure they were. Keith was out of place in this area, too finely dressed in his black suit jacket and the navy tie that did little to complement it. Although his shock of russet hair stuck up ungracefully in some places and more often than not he appeared slightly under-coordinated, Keith was still very clearly much wealthier than this part of town was used to seeing. As this thought ran through his mind, his left hand slid rather unconsciously into his back pocket where he kept his wallet. For the moment, it was still there.

"I think they are, Keith," the boy insisted, trying to peer around Keith's towering figure to see into the narrowed alleys beyond.

Keith sighed in response to his son. "Just ignore them…" he answered. Then as an afterthought, "And don't call me Keith, alright? I'm your father."

The boy shrugged and apologized, but quickly forgot again in his excitement. "Do you think they can see me too?" he asked expectantly, as he finally managed to pull ahead of Keith and glance around his tall figure. "They look so lonely. Do you think they'd invite me in for a cup of tea?"

"No, I don't think they would Nikolai," the man returned and jerked his son back to his side. "Stay near me now, understand?"

"Mr. Hahn says hobbits like tea," Nikolai continued, as though he hadn't been listening. "Do you think they'd give me some if I asked?"

"No, I…" Keith stopped short and considered his son. "…Hobbits?"

"Yes," Nikki replied. "The hobbits that live in the alley."

Keith shook his head and kept walking, dragging his son a little too roughly behind. It had been like this for weeks. Nikki would make senseless comments out of nowhere about things Keith thought he ought to understand by now. It was Hahn's fault, he thought to himself bitterly although he didn't fully believe it. Still he did wish Jerry Hahn would mind his own business and keep his overly-minted breath out of his son's ears.
He hadn't realized what a nuisance the man was until he had moved his son out to his apartment over eight months ago. After his wife died, Keith packed up his son and home and brought everything out here. Anyway, Keith had been spending the week nights in this apartment for some time. His job in the city was two hours from the family home and commuting just wasn't an option during the work week. He was used to being alone, and in a way, he was less broken up about his wife than he should have been. He had always loved her, but sometimes he felt like he didn't quite belong in her life. She deserved someone better than him, and truth be told, he felt a little like a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit. He had tried for some time to catch up with her life on the weekends when he came home. He tried going to PTA meetings and family barbeques with neighbors whose names he couldn't remember. He tried attending luncheons with her new friends or listening to gossip about the other teacher's aides she worked with. He tried talking about new sprinkler systems, old laundry detergent, and Nikki's first day of school. He tried all those things, but ultimately it came down to the fact that for 120 hours of the week he was here and she was there.

The sickly smell of unfriendly alleyways disappeared as Keith and Nikolai transitioned into a brighter, well-lit neighborhood. The crumbling buildings and dark corners transformed into newly renovated apartments and a superfluity of streetlamps. Within a few blocks, Keith was tugging open the door to the complex and nodding tiredly to the receptionist. He pushed the button for the elevator, but tired of waiting for it and dragged Nikki up the four flights of stairs instead.

As they passed Jerry Hahn's door, Nikolai brightened. "Keith!" He shouted suddenly. Keith shushed him.

"Don't talk so loud."

Nikki mumbled an apology and after a pause continued, "Mr. Hahn said he could pick me up from school tomorrow!"

"Shhh…"

"Sorry," Nikki whispered, only slightly softer than before. "…So….can he?"

"Can who what?" Keith asked, not fully paying attention to his son's question and fumbling with his keys.

"Can Mr. Hahn pick me up from school?" Nikki repeated.

Keith fitted the key into the lock and turned it, opening the door to their apartment. He looked at Nikki. "What about Aunt Kara?" he asked. "She's expecting to pick you up tomorrow."

Nikolai shrugged; then headed into the apartment and dropped his backpack on the floor. It thudded softly against the carpet. "She's not my real aunt," he answered.

And she wasn't. Instead, she was the mildly unhappy creature who married Keith's closest friend from college. Big-hipped and small-chested, she was less gracefully proportioned than she liked to imagine. Her defining characteristic was her ginger-orange hair, currently bleached and dyed a platinum blonde at the tips, giving her a sort of "punk" look that didn't at all suit her. She worked part-time at a coffee shop a few blocks down from Keith's and often brought Nikolai home to her apartment in the afternoons. She was certainly less than a motherly figure and like Keith, she didn't quite know what to do with the child. Her activities consisted mostly of letting Nikolai watch all the TV he wanted. She also had no intention of finding value in a home-cooked meal, making Nikki the only child in his class who knew the phone numbers to every take-out restaurant within a mile radius.

Keith shrugged at his son and opened the sparsely-stocked refrigerator, pulling out a leftover container of spaghetti. It was one of the few meals he managed to cook without burning. "She likes you though," he mentioned, referring again to Kara. "She doesn't have to be your real aunt to take care of you."

Nikki pulled a chair over to the dishwasher and stood on top of it to reach the cabinets above. He knocked down several cereal boxes reaching for the case of Cap'n Crunch. Keith walked over and started picking up the containers. "Hey, you heard me right?" he asked.

Nikki nodded, then shook his head. "But she doesn't really like me," he protested. "She likes the dragon-man who brings us dinner."

Keith put the cereal box down. "Nik, we talked about this…"

"It's true!" Nikki exclaimed. "She's lonely because her elf is never home! She's always sad and she misses her elf, but the dragon-man makes her smile again."

Keith made a face. He didn't understand what Nikolai meant and it worried him when he talked like this. Although Nikki didn't quite understand it either, what he was saying wasn't completely inaccurate. Kara's husband, who always reminded Nikki of Tolkien's elves, was often away on business. The few times Nikki had met him, he had struck him as a very composed and gallant gentleman and his defining characteristic had been his hair, which hung long on the back of his neck. Although Keith didn't realize it, Nikolai often referred to Kara's spouse as the elf.

The dragon-man was also not a figment of Nikki's imagination. By this he meant the college student who worked evenings at Chang's Gourmet Chinese Take-Out and often delivered to Kara. Kara didn't believe Nikolai was capable of understanding that she was having an affair with him, and when she kissed him at the doorway and invited him in, she hoped Nikki wasn't watching.

"Okay, time for bed," Keith announced, taking away Nikki's bowl of cereal. "You've had way too much sugar today."

"Kara says I'm not allowed to have sugar…"

"Uh-huh." Keith nodded, but he wasn't quite paying attention. He was thinking about his son's outbursts and the problems they were causing in school. His first grade teacher had already contacted Keith several times to discuss placement in a "special" school or perhaps the idea of holding Nik back for a year or two. She told Keith that she was worried about Nikolai's mental capacity and that she felt he was covering his insecurities by inventing wildly outrageous stories.
Keith wasn't sure he believed this.

"Nik, what's that say?" Keith asked suddenly, pointing to the label on the side of the cereal box he was holding.

Nikki bit his lip. "Umm…Tigers love breakfast?" he guessed.

"Nikki, come on. You know what it says."

"Wow, look at that Pegasus!" Nikki shouted, trying to redirect Keith's attention to the pigeon hovering outside the window.

"Nik…" Keith repeated, holding the box in front of his face.

Nikolai rolled his eyes, "New 'Low In Fat' formula," he read, just as the package said.

"Why don't you just say that the first time?" Keith asked, placing the cereal box back on the shelf, at once self-satisfied and annoyed. He was quirking a smile that spoke to his feeling he had somehow beaten his child's teacher and gotten his son to read. Yet he  managed to do this with a scowl in his son's direction.

Nikki shrugged and changed the subject. "So can I stay with Mr. Hahn tomorrow?"

Keith shut the cabinet door with a rough motion, then sighed. "We'll see."

"That means no, doesn't it?"

"It means 'We'll see,'" Keith replied. "Now go put your pajamas on. It's late."

"What about my cereal?"

Keith pinched the skin between his eyebrows and shook his head. "Just eat fast, okay?"

Nikolai nodded.

~

Keith rolled over to the sound of city traffic and an alarm clock that reminded him of a sinking battleship. He slammed his hand down on the table next to his bad, knocking over two books and his cellphone before he found the source of his disruption. Frail sunlight filtered in through the uneven slits in the blinds he always meant to straighten out and somehow found it necessary to rest against his sleepy eyes. He pressed his face into the pillow.

"Keith! Keith Keith Keith Keith Keeeeeiittth!" A flying weight landed on his bed.

"Ouff," Keith muttered.

"Keith, get up! The fireman's already out of bed!"

"The who? What?" Keith murmured, pushing Nikki's body away from him and drawing the covers back up around his shoulders.

"The fireman!"

Keith rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and sat up. "…The sun, Nik?"

"Shh," Nikki replied, placing a tiny finger to his lips, "He doesn't like that name." Keith laughed despite himself. Every day he told Nikolai to call him "dad" and every day Nikki bounded into his room insisting on referring to him as Keith. Then Nikki worried about insulting the sun's name preference. God, I'm raising a piece of work, Keith thought with a thin smile.

Keith dropped Nikki off at school, spent a long day at work that even three cups of coffee couldn't cover, and eventually made his way back to Kara's after supper. He walked up the three flights of stairs to her apartment after the doorman informed him the elevator was once again broken. On his way up, his passed a frazzled shaggy-haired delivery boy. His lip was bleeding and he nursed his jaw. Keith made a point of ignoring him.

As he reached Kara's door, he put out his hand to knock. He rapped his knuckles on the door and waited a moment. No one answered. He tried again. Come on Kara, he thought wearily, I've had a rough enough day as it is, I just want to get Nik home. But again, no one answered. He knocked three times, but after nobody came to the door he finally tried the lock. The door swung open easily and it suddenly became quite clear why Kara hadn't answered.

Kara's husband stood quietly with his back to the door, staring out the open window into the street below. The apartment's lights glinted across the bloody knuckles of his left hand. "Joseph… please," Kara whispered, laying a hand gently on his shoulder. He shrugged it off rather roughly.

"Tell Nikolai it's time to go home," was her husband's only reply. Kara spun around to see Keith, standing awkwardly in the door frame, hesitating. Embarrassment colored her features, her cheeks the same red as her hair. She moved away from her husband, as if to put some physical distance between the source of her shame.

"Nikki," she called. Nikolai appeared in the living room, backpack slung over one shoulder.

"Bye Kara," he whispered. "Bye Mr. Elf."

Suddenly, Nikki's words from the night before made much more sense to Keith. The dragon-man, the takeout delivery boy, and the elf, Joseph, his friend from college. "The dragon-man makes her smile…" he thought to himself. She's sleeping with him. He felt an abrupt pang of sadness for Joseph, but he didn't know what to say and after a moment, he left without saying anything.

"He still loves her," Nikki announced as they were walking home.

Keith shook his head. Nik was a kid – what could he know about love?

"He does," Nik insisted.

Keith ran a hand over his tired eyes and sat Nikolai down on a bench one street over from their apartment. He sighed and watched other people stride past him, hurrying home to families, spouses, and the people they loved. He closed his eyes and thought about Kara. How could he not have noticed? Here he was trying to be a good father and he was sending his kid to stay with a woman who was having an affair. Had he ruined Nikki by exposing him to this? He worried he had done just that. He scrunched his eyes shut tighter, blocking out the world, trying to shut out all the people in it that were causing him pain.

He felt Nikki's touch on his hand. He opened one eye and glanced sideways at him. Nikolai cocked a slight smile, "You have a fairy on your nose." Keith crossed his eyes to glance at the tip of his nose. Nikki giggled. A firefly flew off his skin and hovered between them. Keith watched it, broke out into a smile, and then a laugh. He hadn't ruined Nikki at all. There was nothing wrong with him. Nikolai saw magic in a world where everyone else saw darkness. And Keith laughed with a happiness so uncharacteristic of him since his wife's death.

He looked at Nikki, "Tomorrow you can stay at Mr. Hahn's," he told him. Nikki grinned. And the two of them sat there on that bench pointing out fairies until the light faded from the sky and Nikolai fell asleep in Keith's open arms.