Alice

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky and no one cared.

No one cares about a lot of things. Take roads for example - roads are so amazing. We have the luxury of taking our cars with their round rubber feet, rolling around on roads built specifically for everyone to take their other cars on. The people can all roll around in different directions and get cross at each other for a while until they roll onto the right road to take us to our home, exercise spot, work, school, or other prison.

We only have roads because someone had carriages, carriages because someone had wagons, only had those wagons because someone had a chariot and those were only around because of the road someone invented from the path that was easier to steer people with horses, or groups of human feet to walk on.

All roads lead to Rome - and all roads could eventually lead to an old lady in her Sunday clothes, driving her dead husband's mustard-coloured Datsun to visit his favourite beach lookout, to think of him with a tear and a smile.

I thought about Alice a lot while I looked at the purple clouds. She and I would quietly make our way across each of our lawns just before midnight, to lie nearby to each other on the little-bit broken sunbeds I had saved from the local tip shop a few years ago just for this purpose.

After only a month or two of knowing Alice and Barry, we had both agreed to rip down a few metres of the fence in between our houses; much to the disgust of the ‘proper’ neighbours that oversee everything here in GreenLawn Estate. They don’t like things to be too different and I seem to have a different idea of neighbourly than they do.

Most nights we would lay there for the exact 37 minutes the clouds do their thing. I know it’s normal, not special, and yes, it happens every night; but roads, trees, bubbles, and children aren’t special either unless you choose that they are. Each of us wake up every new morning and have a fresh chance to decide whether we are going to find something amazing, or whether we want to not smile as we hit our life KPIs.

Alice and I looked. We watched as the clouds rose from behind Mount PauAngou and formed into the vaguely people shapes they seemed to mostly prefer. We laughed as they twirled and tripped as the red and rose sky seemed to tickle or even burn their cloudy feet. I had always asked and wanted to know more about them but teachers rolled their eyes and just said that was ‘how it was’ and to ‘stop being so pushy about knowing everything’. Sometimes things just ‘are’.

Alice and I held hands and sometimes danced together if her hip wasn’t playing up, while everyone else was busily laying in bed watching 15-second reels splash across their phone; all as they despised themselves for not even being capable of going to sleep before work. We chatted about when she was young and traveled with Barry all over, past the new mountain ranges that the clouds grew from and over past the old ruins from times gone by; before the mountains rose up so suddenly.

Alice was almost half a century older than me, so the neighbours didn’t like that she was my best friend. Barry was in the late stages of his at-home palliative care and couldn’t see much anymore, so Alice laid next to him after 12:37 am each night and held his hand as she used her beautiful words to paint for him the purples through his mind.

Barry died during Autumn while the purple clouds were dancing across the sky, and Alice wasn’t there as his soul left. She laid down and held his hand and told him all her beautiful words, but he had gone. Her voice cracked and her tears tasted of salt and sadness in her mouth.

I helped with his funeral and drew purple clouds to put in his wicker basket. I helped lower him into the ground under the mountain and plant his remembrance tree. She was there but she was gone.

I tried to share meals but she intended to fade. Flowers, apples, music all seemed dull as they were put in her home. I watched her life as if on a photo app with the saturation filter being pulled further down each day.

Our sunbeds have stood unused for months. She never wanted to come back to look at the purples and she faded from my life. I knocked at the windows but she just looked out, past me a little as her mouth falsely smiled and her hand puppeted a wave.

I’m fine dear. I’m ok, love. Everything’s fine. Her mouth worked but she dimmed.

I missed the late winter clouds the night I broke into her garage. I spent the next three weeks breaking into her garage until I could get Barry’s old car running well. It was 11:59 pm when I drove it out and pressed the horn until she limped, bleary-eyed to the front door.

We drove that car under the clouds and past the mountain. We drove through old and new places, stopping, walking, and looking. We saw the early spring sunrise and drove back home at 11:59 am.

She drives now. I squeeze her hand if I see tears welling. Barry’s car is kept shining and polished, and she loves my gifts - Barry’s picture printed on a car freshener swinging from the mirror. Barry’s smiling face printed and stuck onto the hula girl dancing on the dashboard every time Alice takes a corner too fast. She laughs as she feels the breeze. His soul has come back again; it came back one night when the clouds danced. You can see him in a speck of purple as Alices’ eyes smile.