The Purest Blue on Earth

8:30 on a Monday morning, and Boston’s financial district coughed and sputtered like a rusty machine rousing itself from a long sleep.

With every click-clack of patent leather on the cobblestone, with every squeak of a shiny briefcase and start of a shinier SUV, another cog found its position in the chorus of places to be, people to see, and deliverables to gripe about. The crisp June air mingled with the exhaust fumes to form a scent all its own, and the quavering soprano of a flight of swallows shimmered where-smog-met-sky, far above the blaring horns of rush hour traffic.

Rachel’s watch flashed in the sunlight—fifteen minutes late to drop Daisy off, though what could a six-year-old possibly be late for? Fuck, and it was raining now, too, without a cloud in sight. That last snooze had done her in. Rachel dug out a garish yellow umbrella emblazoned with an unfamiliar school crest (from one of those private school fairs), clutched Daisy’s hand tighter, and angled the umbrella over the both of them...but what should have been a plip-plip was more of a plop-plop.

“...Was this in the forecast? I thought we’d have at least one day of good weather to walk around the harbor…”

“...Doesn’t look like hail to me…”

“...Ugh, and I just washed my hair...”

Hands rose over foreheads, doing little to shield upward-searching eyes against the onslaught of blue. Not clear like water, blue, like the sky on a cloudless, (supposed-to-be) perfect June morning. And falling in glossy ribbons that grew more substantial by the moment. 

But standing around in the middle of the sidewalk wasn’t going to do anything about it! Wasting Ted’s time, worse, wasting his money…$5 every minute stolen from him by the throng of slack-jawed idiots (and their eyesore yellow umbrellas) blocking his way to the office. As if billable hours came to a screeching halt just because the beleaguered Earth found yet another way to announce her displeasure! It was always tornadoes in January this, tsunamis in California that. They should have been accustomed to her tantrums by now.

“Siri, Call Clarissa.”

“Siri. Call. Clarissa.”

“Siri!”

“Ah, fuck it.” Another sharp blast of a horn from behind Peter. Christ, didn’t they know he could barely see? What kind of military-grade windshield wipers were they working with? Whatever sort of storm this was, it was relentless, and bluer than anything falling from the sky had any right to be. But there was nothing for it but to keep driving…he’d have his secretary call Clarissa from the office; she’d be at home still. Secretaries: keeping marriages alive since the advent of the telephone! 

Daisy reached her free hand out from under the umbrella, letting the smooth slickness fall on her hand and dissolve as if it had never been. She’d often thought about what it might feel like to hold a color—red would be warm and tingly, like cinnamon on her tongue; green would be damp and mossy, like her backyard after a summer rain, where worms lifted their inquisitive bald heads. How satisfying that blue felt exactly like she’d imagined: cool and slippery, like the back of a dolphin. Or at least what she imagined the back of a dolphin would feel like—she’d never even seen one. That would change this summer, though. Her family was going to Aruba. A-ru-ba. Even the name sounded exciting! Daisy pulled on her mother’s rigid, white-knuckled hand. What was she doing, stopping just a block away from school? Did she forget that if Daisy was late to morning circle she’d have to sit in the back, away from all her friends?

8:35 on a Monday morning, and jagged cracks ran across a mottled blue-black sky.

 Although black wasn’t quite accurate…the absence of color, more like. Empty. Empty and cavernous like if Ted looked at it for too long, he’d find himself at the bottom of it. He was well within the slack-jawed throng by this point. $25 gone now, but the ever-spinning numbers in his head had stopped as surely as his feet. Though he exclusively worshiped at the altar of the free market, he had to admit there was something biblical about all this. It was like God himself had brought his scepter down on the floor above, so that radiant ceiling tiles fell on the ants below. One tile narrowly missed Ted’s eye. Rapture, someone might have murmured next to him, though his head was swimming in such a tempest that he couldn’t have said anything for sure.

A line of stationary cars went on for as far as anyone could see…once one driver had surrendered to the siege, the rest had no choice but to follow. A few optimists and idiots (and there was considerable overlap between the two groups) kept on with their horns, but even that had taken on a muffled quality, like whatever was leeching color from the sky had moved on to lowly human sound. 

Peter stood on his hood, hopelessly adrift in the Sea of Multicolored Metal, lifting his phone above his head. For all his maneuvering, and he had tried every conceivable position, he couldn’t get the damned thing to form just one measly bar. A large, though featherlight, shard landed squarely on his face, and what was it he’d said to Clarissa on their first date? Yes, that her eyes were as blue as the sky on a clear, cloudless day. And then her cheeks had turned his favorite shade of pink. She still blushed like that at the smallest compliment, or after a few drinks, or at every tiny embarrassment—she spent more time blushing than not. The darkness was encroaching into the final blue bastions, and what would he compare her eyes to now?

Rachel had long ago dropped that offensively yellow umbrella, and now had Daisy in her arms, though she didn’t remember picking her up. If not for the warm, oppressive weight of her daughter, she surely would have floated off the crowded sidewalk. And Daisy, who, at six-and-three-quarters, was far too old to be held and would usually have resented the indignity, was secretly glad to press her face into her mother’s gardenia-scented hair. Chest-to-chest, their short, shallow breaths fell into perfect sync.

8:40 on a Monday morning, and the last of the sky lazily fluttered down as the sun glittered like a diamond ensconced in black velvet. 

Everyone looked heavenward with wide red eyes and gaping blue mouths, like fish in an empty glass bowl they had once believed to be a whole ocean, even as the water had dwindled day by day. But it wasn’t an ocean, and would it even have an ocean anymore? Water needed oxygen, or oxygen needed water. It was one or the other, at least—something to do with the atmosphere. No…sky blue, ocean blue, none of it would do now, not for Peter’s Clarissa. Bluer than the sky, maybe.

Oh! The purest blue on Earth, and not a word of a lie. Peter would find a way to slip that in at dinner—that would surely make her blush.

8:45 on a Monday morning.