Radiant Days by Elizabeth Hand Page B

cigarette’s tip, then slapped his palm against his jeans.
    “How’d you do that?” I’d seen no sign of a match or lighter.
    “Get to be my age, you learn some shit. You cutting high school?”
    “No. I’m in college. Was. I got kicked out.”
    “College? You don’t look like a college girl.” He shot me that one-eyed marksman’s gaze and shook his head. “I woulda pegged you for, what, sixteen? Actually, I might not’ve pegged you for a girl at all—that hair.”
    He settled back onto the bucket, picked up the plastic container and popped the lid. He stuck in a finger and poked around, held up a worm as long as a shoelace. “Hungry?”
    “No thanks.”
    I peered into the second bucket. It was half full of water, and in it was a single carp, its scales shimmering from dull gold to gray to bloodred. Its fins fanned slowly as its head broke the surface.
    I stepped back, startled. Its eyes were a liquid black and gazed at me with a skin-crawling intensity, utterly unlike the eyes of any fish I’d ever seen. I looked away quickly, trying to regain my composure. “Do you—do you eat them?”
    “Eat them?” Ted snorted, amused. “Nah. Too many bones.”
    “What will you do with it?”
    “I don’t know yet. I’m still thinking.”
    The wind blew off the water, the sun obscured by cindery clouds. I shivered. Even in my bomber jacket I felt cold.
    “Getting nippy.” Ted finished baiting his hook. He glanced at me and held the rod out. “Here, hang on to this.” I took it while he pulled on his flannel shirt, then handed back the rod. “Where you from? Charlottesville?”
    “No. Greene County, not too far from there.”
    “Bob Dylan lived in a group house in Charlottesville, youknow that? I lived there with him, same house, this was in the early sixties. Taught him everything he knows. How come you got booted from college?”
    “I was in art school. They didn’t like what I do.”
    “Yeah?” He cast a long way out. The worm sailed through the air, then sank beneath dark water. “So what do you do?”
    “Different stuff. A lot of graffiti.”
    I stubbed out my cigarette and pulled the spray can from my pocket, walked to the weathered bench a few feet away. I squatted in front of it and shook the can, carefully began to paint on the slats: a sun glimpsed through Venetian blinds, the pupil of the rayed eye exploding in the middle of one narrow plank, all of it surmounted by my tag. Ted turned to watch me, the pole loose in one hand.
    “‘Radiant Days,’” he read when I was done. “Hey, I’ve seen that around. That’s you?”
    I capped the spray can and scrutinized my work. A shaft of sunlight burst through the clouds, momentarily igniting the bench, and the still-damp paint shone as though molten. I walked to the other side of the bench, stooped, and left my tag there as well, making the letters as big as I could, so they’d be visible from the road. When I was finished, I dropped the spray can into my pocket and walked back over to Ted.
    “That’s me,” I said.
    “It’s good. Is all your stuff like that?”
    “Not all. Some. I like to try different things.”
    “Got anything I can see?”
    “No.” I sank onto the brittle grass. A desolate wave overtook me as I remembered my stolen bag, the pictures that Clea had taken. “Someone ripped me off just a couple hours ago. I was squatting at this house in Northeast, there was nothing in it, but these kids broke in and stole my bag. There was no money or anything—all it had was my sketchbooks, a bunch of drawings, stuff like that. Everything else, my girlfriend took.”
    “Friend girlfriend or girlfriend girlfriend?”
    “Girlfriend girlfriend. Well, ex-girlfriend. We just broke up this afternoon.”
    “Man, you had a worse day than I did, Little Fly.” He reeled in his line, grimacing at the empty hook, opened his bait container, and picked through the worms until he found one he liked. After baiting the hook he removed the cork