At The Blue Butterfly Emporium
by Amelia Fletcher
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| Photo by Nancy Hughes on Unsplash |
It was a beautiful morning to sell other people’s lives to other living people. One and a half billion dollars apiece—no more, no less. At The Blue Butterfly Emporium, that was the price Edelweiss was expected to put on a human life, because that was the price the government set. Each life came with customized embellishments because the emporium prided itself, above all else, on meeting customer needs.
Edelweiss worked in retail. Every day, she stood behind a counter until her feet ached, selling lives to customers while the nurses, her superiors in the retail department, communicated and enforced the emporium’s many rules.
“You can make all of the mistakes that you need to make, so long as they are not the wrong mistakes," the nurses would tell the retail workers. “But remember, there are wrong mistakes, but there are never right mistakes, and there is definitely such a thing as too many mistakes."
The emporium had a strict two-strike policy for its employees. Make one wrong mistake, and an alarm that sounded like a dying elephant would go off, and then you would receive ten short lashes. Make two wrong mistakes, and the alarm would go off a second time, and the nurses would escort you down a long, dark hallway with no windows and no doors and no end, and you would never be seen again, dead or alive. Edelweiss had seen people get dragged away in the middle of the workday. The rest she learned from whispers. At The Blue Butterfly Emporium, news of death always traveled in whispers.
It was the hottest part of summer when Edelweiss awoke to yet another workday. Heaps of scrap metal, banana peels, and a smashed-in television were already steaming around the tents, and pigeons pecked the dust with a newfound ferocity of appetite. Faceless people shifted and groaned.
St. John’s Bridge rose green and resplendent above the soupy Willamette and above Edelweiss’s young, broken form. It looked as if the bridge's steel was poured through the clouds, and she was similarly poured through a cheese grater onto the soiled blanket beneath it. The bridge watched—everything in the city did. The leaves of the bigleaf maples above her were shapeshifters—some were clawed spoons, others shadowy birds that she knew would scatter away when the light finally fell on them.
“Psst, hey! Lucky!” a voice hissed. “Wake up, Lucky.” Edelweiss felt something tapping at her left leg and decided to ignore it. But the hissing and tapping only grew insistent until Edelweiss threw off the canary-yellow peacoat she had found rotting in an apartment building dumpster and had been using as a blanket, and glared at Clem Taylor. He was looking at her, all fuzzy, holding out a shiny red apple he'd probably found in some orchard. She wasted no time snatching it from his hands and sinking her teeth into it.
Clem also worked at The Blue Butterfly Emporium and had worked there twice as long as she had. Edelweiss was eternally jealous of Clem. He had a last name, a father who worked in a shoe factory, and a mother who had run away on the Greyhound bus before he could crawl. Edelweiss had no one. He was twenty, a year older than her, and had big, blue eyes that always managed to look scared no matter the situation, four missing teeth, and a split lip that was barely beginning to heal because Clem often boxed for extra money. He had a line of bird shit tracing his hairline.
Edelweiss told him so, laughed when he just shrugged and scrunched up his face, and it wasn’t long before they were pedaling deep into the city on two bicycles that were so rusty they creaked like old rocking horses.
***
The Blue Butterfly Emporium was named by Chris C. Peppermelon, a retired socialite and government man who once did a stint as a monarch butterfly researcher in his twenties, back when protecting the environment and acting all smart about it was all the rage, even among the upper class. And as it turned out, Peppermelon’s times with the butterflies were the best times of his life, so when his life began to reach a timely end, and he asked the government to model the new building after an enormous butterfly in flight, they couldn’t say anything but “yes, Mr. Peppermelon” and “We've appreciated your most generous donations over the years, Mr. Peppermelon.”
Mr. Peppermelon’s butterfly monstrosity ate up negative space as if it were a contest. It reeked of disinfectant products and had a bulbous abdomen and a fat head that resembled a giant black gumball. Its blue steel wings pumped through the air, slowly, above Edelweiss, Clem, and the hundreds of other young adults and children who sweated through their clothes and huddled around its set of carefully polished glass doors. It levitated above everyone as if it knew that none of them would be compensated enough for their seven-day work week to afford anything more than some food here and there, and that nearly no one in the entire city could afford anything more than some food here and there.
Edelweiss’s eyes, one black and one blue, quickly scanned the crowd surrounding her until she spotted Mireille Vane, the girl who worked three counters down from her and always wore a red hat with a French look, though Edelweiss could never remember what it was called.
This morning, Mireille was laughing her beautiful laugh and had something powdery, glittery, and teal on both of her eyelids. Edelweiss had only ever seen it on rich people; she would have given anything to touch it. She always would give anything to touch Mireille, to touch a soft arm, a dark circle under a chocolate eye, even an eyelash or freckle. Edelweiss wondered where she could have gotten the makeup. She wondered why the girl she had been studying for so long, it was probably getting creepy, was still clocking in at work at the emporium if she had access to something as luxurious as eye makeup.
Clem nudged her shoulder, and Edelweiss snapped back to attention. Two tall nurses with faces like motionless bologna took roll on ungainly iPads.
“Now remember, adults and children, you can leave the emporium at any time, but only when it is time to leave for the day,” one nurse said in monotone.
The crowd rolled its eyes, and Edelweiss rolled hers along with it. The nurses linked arms and began shunting the crowd through the glass doors and into a spacious foyer filled with clothing racks and industrial bathtubs spitting out steam. Edelweiss hated having her skin scrubbed red with big yellow sponges and heavily scented lavender soap. Her skin was exceptionally clean, given her poverty, because she bathed religiously in the Willamette. It wasn't that she was afraid of dirt or natural human secretions. She was afraid of losing her pride, or at least whatever of it she had left.
The only thing she hated more than the scrubbing was having her bony knees and elbows pushed through bright, happy fabrics, and her hair tortured into a neat braid. So she made it as difficult for the nurses as possible, cursing and twisting in their sinewy arms. “You, child, are dirty,” one nurse said, “we must clean you.”
“There, fresh as a lily, but perhaps still not quite as fresh," said the monotone one. Edelweiss considered slugging the nurse in the fat upper lip before she thought better of it. Some people just weren't worth it.
“Go, the customers are waiting on you,” said another.
No one ever told Edelweiss why the nurses had to assault her with comically large sponges before she could begin her shift at the emporium, but she knew how it made her feel. And she knew that people who are made to feel fundamentally impure are much easier to control, and that girls forced into sky blue jumpers with giant orange flowers in the middle and bows on the sleeves are much, much more likely to feel ridiculous.
It was barely six-thirty when Edelweiss got her first customer of the morning. He was a stout little man in an oversized fedora and reptile-skin dress shoes so shiny that Edelweiss had to look away to save her corneas—Mr. Nine Lives. That was what Clem called him. The man always had exactly nine lives, and if by chance he lost one, he would come crawling back for another just days later. Mr. Nine Lives was what many referred to as an emporium addict, someone hopelessly addicted to the buying of lives out of desperation, depression, the thrill of it, or something else, though it was difficult to tell which for sure. Edelweiss expected that he would live forever, just nibbling through life after life like a kid in a candy shop.
When Mr. Nine Lives walked up to her counter with a purposefully low “Howdy, miss,” Edelweiss replied, “Good morning, sir. What brings you in today?”
She shared a knowing glance with Mireille. Mireille was alternating between jangling her gold bracelets on her wrists against the counter—bracelets Edelweiss had never seen before, though there was always something new with Mireille—and making eyes at a certain dark-eyed guard.
Everyone at The Blue Butterfly Emporium knew that Mr. Nine Lives was disgustingly wealthy, but he was what people were calling new money.
The government set limits on the number of lives its citizens could purchase based on their net worth, so that the wealthier someone like Mr. Nine Lives was, the higher the cap on the lives they could purchase. And if a customer at The Blue Butterfly Emporium was found to have bought beyond that cap, they received a fine or a court order in the mail.
Today, Mr. Nine Lives wanted a life where he got to have a brother again, as his own brother from his current life was long dead, and a wife who didn't become addicted to Bloody Marys and leave him for a male stripper during her midlife crisis. Edelweiss made sure to widen her eyes and nod sympathetically when Mr. Nine Lives got to that part of his request. He might have been a snob with a tendency to try to look down the front of her jumper, but at least he was a solid tipper, and Edelweiss could use all the tips she could get.
“You see,” he said, taking a fat cigar out of his pocket and rolling it between his lips, “I suppose the old girl was alright some of the time before she went haywire, but I want my next wife to be more like you girls here at the emporium, you know. Cheerful, obedient, doesn't make any trouble, you know. And”—his eyes drifted below the neckline of her jumper—“shapely. That's also important.”
Edelweiss grimaced, corrected herself for the grimace, and adjusted her jumper. “Let me see what I can find for you, sir,” she said.
It wasn’t a particularly sticky transaction compared to some others. Edelweiss had grown thick skin. And while she definitely didn't enjoy helping perpetuate misogyny, someone had to do it for it to happen, and that someone was unfortunately her that day. After enough smiling, nodding, and nearly an hour sorting through the available lives for purchase until she found one that matched his disturbing requirements on her part, Mr. Nine Lives was out the door and around the corner, dirty money, wandering eyes, and all.
***
Her second customer of the morning, a girl—probably also new money—and who couldn’t be a day older than herself, came slithering up to the counter at seven o’clock sharp in a leopard fur coat as if time were her best friend. She tapped her pink and gold acrylic nails against it feverishly, and Edelweiss threw up in her mouth.
The girl had one black eye and one blue eye—they were flighty, reminding Edelweiss of a pair of small, nervous birds. She had a small frame, porcelain skin, almost colorless hair, and feet that pointed inward. Her makeup was streaky, likely because of the heat. She smelled the way Edelweiss imagined a dead body left too long in a hearse would smell—like old Christmas ham and decomposing melon, like the gradual decay of elite morality at the expense of the less fortunate’s mortality. It was putrid. She was putrid. Edelweiss nearly threw up in her mouth again.
Edelweiss told herself not to be ridiculous, that she was no one special. That there were a thousand other girls with one black eye and one blue eye, and feet that pointed inward, and dead parents. That her brand of humans was more numerous than pigeons or blackbirds. That the other girl couldn’t be more oblivious to the resemblance they shared, so why shouldn’t she pretend not to notice it too?
But looking at this girl in the face was like looking in a mirror and seeing her own powder-faced, lipstick-smacking corpse.
After all, when a citizen died without provisions for befitting funeral clothes and makeup, everyone knew that the government never failed to find the benevolent cruelty to step in, to provide the necessary rough sponge bath and funeral outfitting before the corpse was shut up in a cold coffin indefinitely.
Though she could feel herself trembling in her shoes, Edelweiss’s actions were easy and practiced. Smile, and say hello to the customer. Ask—casually, and still smiling—what brings them in today—
“Oh, just the usual," the girl said, picking at her acrylic nails like a preening vulture. She paused, drawing down her eyes. “And why’re you looking at me funny? You aren’t ugly and dumb, are you?”
Don’t laugh at the customer’s idiocy. Instead, say, “I don't know your usual. Could you elaborate, please?”
Don’t forget to also ask for the customer’s name and approximate net worth. Record the name, net worth, and desired life customizations in the notebook to your left so that you can easily recall the details later when searching for the appropriate life for the customer—Betsy Jean Moss. Sixty and a half billion dollars. The customer wants a life that goes on forever and ever, and yes, she really does mean forever and ever. And no, she does not care if her request goes against the emporium’s official policy. Can’t you check in the back for an eternal life? She’s Betsy Jean Moss for Christ’s sake. Give her the damn life!
Attempt again to talk the customer down from her original request. Say, “I'm very sorry, ma'am, but at The Blue Butterfly Emporium, we don't carry individual eternal lives, but do not despair. If you become one of our regular and valued customers, you can buy enough lives to live forever. We pride ourselves, above all else, on meeting customer needs.”
And when the customer huffs and puffs and comments on the inconvenience of it all, respond, “If the emporium sold eternal lives, we would lose our clientele and go out of business, and then no one could buy lives at all, could they?” Then probe, “What is it that you really want in your new life, Miss Moss?”
Hide your immediate surprise when the customer’s eyes slink off into the distance for a moment, and she reluctantly admits that she wants a life with friendship in it, that she wants to live forever, but she also doesn’t want to do it alone. Feel a bit bad for the customer. Ignore it. Smile again. Say, “Of course, Miss Moss. Your wish is my command, Miss Moss.” Cross out your previous entry in the notebook to your left. Write, in its place, the customer wants a life with friendship in it. Know that this should be a quick and easy order to process because plenty of lives contain, even revolve around, friendships.
Take a big, cream card from the top of the stack of big, cream cards on the right top corner of the counter. Know that the first name, last name, and social security number of every citizen living under the government is printed on one of these very cards. But don’t read the name in cold, lifeless type at the top right corner of the card. If you feel that you absolutely must, then read the social security number—574-23-8109. But don’t indulge yourself in envisioning the face that will be no more if this card meets this customer's needs. The family that will unexpectedly fissure—that will congregate in a graveyard like blackbirds bearing flowers in their mouths, that is, if there even is a family or flowers at all.
Don’t remember Clem Taylor saying, “Don’t you know why I call you ‘Lucky,’ Lucky? You’ve got no last name, so that means they can’t kill you down at the emporium. I’m jealous. You’ve got to be the luckiest ace in the deck!” Don’t remember knowing that he was probably wrong, that everyone comes from someone, and someone always comes with a name somewhere down the line.
Know that, as a retail worker at The Blue Butterfly Emporium, you are required to continue pulling fresh cards from the top of the stack at your counter until you find a card whose life description on its front matches the needs of the customer in front of you. And once you find a card whose life description on its front matches the needs of the customer in front of you, you are required to sell that card, that life, to the customer then and there, and return any unused cards that were bad fits for the customer’s needs to the bottom of the stack, where they remain in circulation until the right customer comes along.
Know that the order of the cards is predetermined by indeterminable forces, meaning workers are prohibited from skipping over any card that presents a good fit for the customer’s needs, and that any action on the worker’s part that disrupts these rules is a bad mistake, and that every bad mistake is punishable under the nurses.
Read the life description on the front of the big, cream card. Wade through the minuscule type until you find something that either harmonizes with or contradicts the customer's request. When you read to the end of the card, new type will replace the old type, so that what once read widower, lives by the sea and a graveyard, has three black schnauzers in all three sizes, etcetera, will read cradle Catholic who no longer practices, allergic to sauerkraut and chrysanthemums though prefers that no one know, has no friends and is a friend to none…
Know that all of it, the old type and the new, describes the same life, the same person. Recognize that this card is a poor fit and return it to the bottom of the stack. Draw another big, cream card. Internally, curse the monotony of this job. Read, Muay Thai, and western boxing enthusiast, loyal friend—Bingo.
Say, with a light smile, “Miss Moss, I think I've found exactly what you are looking for.” Charge the one and a half billion dollars. Put nearly all of it in the register. Pocket the rest. God knows that at The Blue Butterfly Emporium, the system lacks the competence to notice or care about this aspect. And God knows that Edelweiss could use it, and the blind woman and her two babies, always begging below the steps of St. Birgitta’s Catholic Church, would appreciate it. And so would the young man a block down from her, who was always alternating between feeding the pigeons and blackbirds and screaming at his own shadow.
Glance at the guards lining the back walls like toy soldiers. Glance at beautiful Mireille, who was now softly cackling and blowing a wet raspberry at her dark-eyed guard.
Watch Mireille produce a crisp, yellow rose from beneath her counter. Watch her saunter up to her beaming toy soldier and tickle him behind the ears with its buttery petals. Watch him press his mouth to her cheek and imagine the hot feeling. See him drop coins into her hands as she trades her body for capital. Lose the ability to breathe, to think, for a moment, around the hurt and the anger. Swallow it down. And when that doesn’t work, swallow it down again, and again, and again.
Remember Mireille on a Sunday, standing under a holey umbrella under yellow leaves and rain, saying, “I’ve always had a weakness for beautiful things. Don’t you ever wonder about my weakness for you?” How the drops had hit the pink and brown polka dots on Mireille’s rubber boots and slid down the sides, and the same hot feeling when Mireille had pressed her mouth to her cheek. How love hadn’t felt like a transaction, and that Sunday in front of the church had led to a year-long relationship, complete with casual lovemaking and equally casual disappearances.
Come back to reality, even if you have to drag yourself back. Laugh lightly. Accept, graciously, the tip. Decide that Betsy Jean is a shit tipper. Pocket the tip. Don’t read the name at the top right corner of the card. Accidentally read the name at the top right corner of the card.
***
Edelweiss read the name once—no more, no less. Without opening her mouth to speak, she let the name float above herself, Betsy Jean, and The Blue Butterfly Emporium like a blackbird bearing flowers in its mouth.
Clement Taylor.
Clem hated that name, always had. Said that his pregnant mother probably picked it up off the front of a cereal box in Fred Meyer that she couldn’t afford to buy because there wasn’t anything in Fred Meyer anyone could afford, that the box had probably smelled like oranges and had a glittery little orange guy dancing on it. Said that he bet she walked out of that grocery store with nothing, just like she’d walked out on him and his father and left them with nothing.
Edelweiss glanced at Betsy Jean. She was fishing around in her lime green Birkin, hopefully for a stick of deodorant and not some noxious perfume, though Edelweiss knew that she couldn’t be too hopeful with this one.
She looked through the emporium’s carefully polished glass doors and saw two children, a boy and a girl, picking daisies and dandelions, and watched as two tall nurses shooed at and yelled at them, and the green-gold and black of a cormorant flashed above their heads. When the children stayed planted in the dirt, the nurses came at them with loaded spray bottles.
And finally, Edelweiss looked ten counters down and saw Clem. He was wearing a turquoise emporium polo and brown emporium corduroys that clashed horribly with his red hair. And his ears were turning almost as red as his hair as he practically drooled over the heiress Lucille Channels, a woman that Edelweiss knew had to be pushing forty and always came in with her bug-eyed yorkie, Monty, stuffed under one supple arm.
The heiress always wanted a life where she found true love with a good man who didn’t just want her for her money, though none of the carefully selected lives sold to her at the emporium ever seemed to satisfy her expectations, making her, like Mr. Nine Lives, an emporium addict.
Edelweiss would never understand Clem’s taste in women, but seeing him like that, with the heiress, even if it was just for a moment, she began to understand something else. She began to comprehend the propulsive inevitability of human connection, how even in a system that reeked of death and that was perhaps just as harmful to its customers as it was to its retail workers, someone as addicted as the heiress Lucille Channels could connect lightly and casually with someone as vulnerable as Clem.
It made Edelweiss realize that she, like anyone else, wasn’t alone, not really, when connection persisted everywhere and in an abundance of forms. That she didn’t need a family or a last name. That she had Clem as much as anyone else ever would, and she had Mireille, at least some of the time, and that was enough. It had to be enough, and so it would be.
The digital clock fastened to the inside of the emporium doors read seven twelve in the morning. Edelweiss knew that if she completed Betsy Jean’s request for a life with friendship, then Clem Taylor would be cold and dead in roughly an hour. At The Blue Butterfly Emporium, nothing was ever created or destroyed, only changed in form, and lives were shimmery, indefinite things repackaged as hard commodities, so after a life was purchased, the previous owner usually, but not always, had but an hour to live before their life was fully taken up by its buyer.
Betsy Jean muttered and clacked her pink and gold claws on the counter. Edelweiss glanced at the guards nearest to them. One was asleep, two were scrolling through their phones, and the dark-eyed one was ogling Mireille’s butt, though she could hardly blame him—Mireille had a perfect butt. The coast was clear.
Tucking Clem’s card into the bottom of her stack when she was supposed to hand it over to Betsy Jean, Edelweiss took a fresh cream card from the top of her stack. She would make a wrong mistake and take ten lashes for Clem any day, so she wrote again in her notebook for good measure, Betsy Jean Moss. Sixty and a half billion dollars. The customer wants a life with friendship in it, though she was sure that she scrambled the letters with the traitorous shaking of her hands, and braced to hear the alarm.
This time, the dying elephant sounded as though it were barely holding on, and everyone, employees and customers alike, looked in her direction. Edelweiss felt their eyes everywhere on her body. The nurse who strided towards her counter had grimy buckteeth and tattoos that crawled up both her arms before disappearing beneath her shirt. Edelweiss avoided her eyes and her bologna bitch face. She focused on keeping her chin raised to the appropriate level.
“You can make all of the mistakes that you need to make, so long as they are not the wrong mistakes," the nurse said. “But remember, there are wrong mistakes, but there are never right mistakes, and there is definitely such a thing as too many mistakes. Once you find a card whose life description on its front matches the needs of the customer in front of you, you are required to sell that card, that life, to the customer then and there. You, child, have made a wrong mistake, and you must be punished. Ten lashes. Turn around. Come now, be quick about it."
Edelweiss knew that the lashes had landed when the tattooed nurse turned to leave and leaned against the wall across from her counter, but she didn't feel a single one. She just sank back behind her counter and began tidying her workspace, even though there was nothing in particular to tidy. But her eyes were traitorous as she straightened the cards and arranged her pens. Edelweiss didn’t know whether to blame the black one or the blue one; she just felt them rush forward like two painted toy soldiers, and read the first, middle, and last name—Edelweiss Ann Moss.
***
She looked into the face of her sister, her twin sister—Edelweiss was sure of it. How could she and Betsy Jean have the same face, the same unusual eyes, even the same earthy last name, and be anything but twin sisters? Clem had been wrong; she was not lucky, or even close to it. She had never been. But there had been a time, when she was very young, when Edelweiss had wished for a sister—someone to wear matching dresses with, like the pairs of little girls she used to see walking with their mothers by the river, someone to whom she could tell anything and everything, and never have to worry about them telling anyone else.
But this sister was different. Her skin resembled the underside of a leaf, its raised veins and sunken recesses. She stared out from cold, dead eyes, and her upper lip curled like a rope of purple licorice as she said, “Well?” then stamped her foot and said again, “Well?!”
Well? Edelweiss’s mind raced—two options, and neither of them was easy. She could hand Betsy Jean her card, sell Betsy Jean her life, and probably be cold and dead within the hour. After all, Edelweiss’s life fit the needs of the customer just as well as Clem’s had; she had friendship in her life. She had that connection some people were apparently willing to kill for. Or she could tuck her card into the bottom of the deck and take another fresh cream card from the stack. Or, no, there were really three options, because she could also just run and save the life and death decisions for a later time.
Edelweiss decided to run. She ran in the direction of the bathrooms at the back of the emporium, only she accidentally ducked into the men’s instead of the women’s and promptly vomited into a musty urinal instead of a musty toilet. The immediate smell sent her reeling.
Who even was this Betsy Jean, and why was she suddenly her sister? And why did she have to be such a stinking ritzy bitch, like the kind of girl who carried around a Birkin even though she stunk more than an outhouse in August? If she had to have a surprise sister pop out of nowhere, then why couldn’t the sister at least be a decent person? And what would it be to Edelweiss to retain her life by taking the life of another, the life of someone completely strange to her?
The vein running down her forehead felt like it was about to pop. She pinched her mouth in at the corners, knowing that if she walked out of the bathroom and took another fresh card, she would be nothing better than The Blue Butterfly Emporium, with its blue steel wings and leering customers. She might not have known who Edelweiss Ann Moss was, but she knew that Edelweiss, just Edelweiss, was much better than that, was shimmery and indefinite, and would never stop being so.
And even that distinction was beside the point because if she did do anything to alter the card with her name on it, then the alarm would sound again, and Edelweiss would be taken down that long, dark hallway with no windows and no doors and no end, and no one would ever see her again, dead or alive. She was already dead, whether she performed the transaction or not. And Betsy Jean was alive, and would continue to be, whether it was fair or not.
Edelweiss smoothed her hands over the front of her ridiculous jumper, wiped the vomit off her chin with the back of her hand, and walked out of the bathroom, somehow with a smile on her face.
By the time she returned to her counter, her decision was made. Her actions were easy and practiced. Hand the customer the card over the counter. Smile, and tell them to have a good rest of their day. Tell them to come back soon. Watch them walk out through the doors and into the street.
Edelweiss had watched many customers walk out through those doors and into that street.
Some customers walked out with a newfound bounce in their step. A customer like Mr. Nine Lives would walk out grinning and tip his oversized fedora, not out of politeness, to the first person that they saw. A customer like the heiress Lucille Channels might walk out with a pinched expression, as if they already knew that their purchase was unlikely to meet their expectations and that no purchase ever would.
But her sister was different. Betsy Jean fidgeted with the strap of her purse, and when that didn’t seem to satisfy her, with the edge of her sleeve. She gathered her leopard fur coat around herself, walked ten steps, paused, and started to turn around, walked another five steps, turned around, and said to Edelweiss in a floaty voice as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, “Do I know you from somewhere?”
Edelweiss shook her head. “Of course not, Miss Moss.”
“Ah, yes. Right,” she replied, again gathering her coat around herself and giving Edelweiss a look that said, “What would ever make you think that someone like me would know someone like you from anywhere?” And then she was through the doors and gone. Edelweiss checked the clock—seven twenty-one. In less than an hour, she would be dead. Her eyes flashed to the wall, where the tattooed guard twisted a mostly mangled toothpick between her buckteeth.
Mireille, having gotten the prize that she had sought in her game with the dark-eyed guard, was sulking at her counter with her head in her arms. She raised it when Edelweiss approached—she would always raise it for Edelweiss.
But she nearly froze when Edelweiss leaned down and pressed her mouth to her cheek. There was no hot feeling like usual; her lover’s lips were cold. For a moment, their eyes locked, and for Edelweiss, everything was chocolate, warmth, and the smell of falling rain, just as it always had been with Mireille—but Mireille knew. Of course, she knew.
Edelweiss didn’t cry when Mireille gripped her forearms. She didn’t cry when Mireille tried to heave her body over the counter with both soft arms. And she didn’t cry when, after much pleading and struggling, Mireille let her go to hurry through the doors of The Blue Butterfly Emporium and out onto the street, the monotone nurse’s words looping in her head, “Now remember, adults and children, you can leave the emporium at any time, but only when it is time to leave for the day.” The words made Edelweiss giddy.
But she didn't make it through the doors before she locked eyes with Clem, who was leaning against his counter and tapping the end of his pen against it. She gave him a slight nod, and the last she saw of him was his scared eyes and confusion, and she was suddenly struck with the realization that Clem’s card remained in the stack at her counter, at the bottom, but still in the stack with everyone else’s. Like anyone at The Blue Butterfly Emporium, he would only be safe for so long before he wasn't, but at least he was safe for today.
***
Everything on the street felt too bright, and it wasn’t just the sun. It was tulips so red they looked angry, and the steel flanks of cars ripping by. It was how Edelweiss felt on the inside, as if every spongy cell and atom inside of her body were burning while her skin remained stubbornly cold. Was this what it felt like to be dying? And then again, wasn’t everyone always dying?
And how long would it take for whispers of her death to travel? At The Blue Butterfly Emporium, it never took long. It was unsettling, thinking about them all, sitting around the emporium counters and whispering about the girl who hurried out one day and never came back.
She looked over her shoulder but saw no one; the tattooed nurse was nowhere to be seen. She rushed past her bicycle and Clem’s bicycle, where they still leaned against one another on the rack, looking as though they remembered everything that had ever passed between them.
When Edelweiss was sure that she was out of sight of the emporium, she took the slower route past the primary school and the park, walking under the same yellow leaves no bigger than her palm that she had stood under on the Sunday she first realized that she was wanted by Mireille just as much as she wanted her. She watched them pass from leaves into stout thimbles into canary birds. She felt her every step sink into the pavement and stay there. She walked until she reached the steps of St. Birgitta’s Catholic Church.
The blind woman was there with her two babies—a boy and a girl, and the smallest babies that Edelweiss had ever seen—tucked one into each strong arm. There was almost nothing that anyone could do for them. The government had shut down Child Protective Services years earlier when it decided that children were not worth protecting, and the upper classes were too concerned with the latest sensational parties and investments to step in.
The woman’s face was beautifully lined, and the skin around her eyes was pink, so that she always looked as if she had just been crying. But her eyes themselves were pure white, so white that Edelweiss was sure they were purer than the gown of any bride who had ever entered the church. Years ago, Edelweiss had asked for her name. She’d simply replied that she had none and needed none—everyone just called her the blind woman, and so the blind woman she was.
When Edelweiss dropped the coins and paper into her hand, she hummed and nodded in appreciation. When Edelweiss apologized for the scanty amount and tried to explain that Betsy Jean Moss was a shit tipper, the woman just laughed with an irreverence that burst behind her eyes.
Edelweiss also laughed, and so she and the blind woman stayed like that, laughing beneath the steeple, for what felt like a very long time.
Amelia Fletcher is an undergraduate university student who writes poetry and fiction. When not writing, she can be found admiring old houses and collecting anything that shines.
