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The girl Ivan is talking to is wearing a purple jacket.
Purple is a funny color. It is made by mixing red and blue. Till keeps those crayons the farthest from each other, following the principles of rainbows. Red is the first color on the spectrum of visible light. Blue is the fifth. He may not be the quickest at calculating numbers, but even he knows that one plus five equals six. Mathematicians and musicians must learn to keep measure. A sixth chord is the common name for any added chord where the extra pitch is a sixth above the root. For example, on a C major chord, the added sixth would be an A. Till mimics its beats by tapping on his arm.
The girl's mouth is still moving. She smears the ends of her matching purple lipstick with her sleeves. Her smile stays intact. Ivan returns the gesture with a clenched jaw.
In Till's head, there is another burst of color. Bright. Blinding. Brilliant.
It only subsides when he taps again.
_____
Of course, there are other purple objects in the room.
Touching the tip of his thumb to his index finger, Till prepares to count. Years of playing the piano have blessed him with finger dexterity. Any rhythm is within his reach. First: The paint behind the peeling wallpaper on the farthest wall in the living room. Second: The plastic cup clutched in the hands of the boy stumbling by the water cooler. Third: The singular earring dangling from the earlobe of the boy next to him, its sharp edge reaching his shoulder. Fourth: One of the shades of the blinking fairy lights, glittering on the ceiling. Fifth: The ring around the fourth finger of the right hand of the girl sitting on the sofa by the entrance, eating a share of fries. Sixth: The cover of the third book peeking out from the third row of the bookshelf at his side. At least that's how it looks from where he's standing.
It’s simply a coincidence that these are also ways to die. The human body is rather fragile. Till, who traces its outline so frequently, is all the more aware of the ways it could meet its precarious end. The walls could press inwards. The plastic cup could be filled to the brim with pungent beer. The earring could pierce the skin. The fairy lights could burst into sparks. The ring could be swallowed between bites. The bookshelf could start shaking. Till knows to practice each scenario with diligence, holding his breath. The first rule of gravity: Everything is constantly falling in on itself. His teachers have always praised him for his imagination. As bad as he is at accepting compliments, Till has to agree.
As a child, Till wanted to be an escape artist. He knew that it was his responsibility to take note of every door in a room. Every exit. The truth is all there is: Prevention is often the best cure. Like many before him, Till believes in the butterfly effect. An action as minuscule as the flapping of a tiny butterfly’s wings is capable of causing a typhoon elsewhere. If this is the case, the reverse must also be correct. In the right conditions, a displacement as insignificant as a small breeze lifting a leaf must be capable of preventing disaster elsewhere.
If Till taps with the right rhythm, the atoms scattering across his fingers may then affect the motion of others around themselves. Eventually, they will make the walls and their bookshelves steady. Gifted with these strange powers, Till has to ensure the same.
Amidst this train of thought, he meets Ivan's eyes across the crowd. Or he thinks he does. Through the hazy lights, he can barely make out the shape of his mouth. It must be grinning. After all, the girl is touching his arm. Even more so, now. Still, Till imagines those lips moving. He can almost hear the words in his ears: A zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-six-percent chance. That's it. All statistics, Till. You believe in numbers, don't you? Perhaps you can try believing me?
Without making a conscious decision to do so, Till finds himself inhaling. Once. Then twice. If done with the right internal pressure, it may cause a propulsion in the air around him and make the girl lean a little backwards, giving Ivan his space back. Till would like to try filling it himself instead.
_____
Till is not the only one who knows how to join these disconnected dots. In art classes, his teachers encourage him to connect colors with meaning. For example, when thinking of colors associated with a particular emotion such as jealousy, green is the first that comes to mind. Purple probably wouldn't even be the fourth. Or sixth. It is more often thought to be a symbol of luxury and power. Does the girl feel powerful in that jacket? Does it make her confident enough to cross the remaining inches between her and Ivan's torso? The thought makes Till blue on the other side of his ribcage. When the color comes into contact with the red of his tongue, his mouth froths over with a combination of the two. He purses his lips to prevent the bubbling liquid from spilling over.
The feeling turns to filth between his teeth. It reminds him of the dirt still stuck under his fingernails. What else is he hiding in the nooks and crannies of his being? What else will leave the rest of him stained? Till digs underneath his nails, drawing out the grime. These are the leftovers of the charcoal from his lesson earlier. He'd filled the eerily blank canvas with a portrait of the anemones growing in the windows of their apartment. How had his hands been capable of producing something so soft? Here, they seem to have grown dark purple thorns, almost resembling a pitch black, just as his boyfriend's head slowly dips toward the girl. How is he meant to touch Ivan with the same?
As kids, when Ivan punched him, Till only dripped sticky red. Else, he turned blue with bruises. Ivan doesn't know about the third color existing in the overlap between the two. Till's insides are soaked with the same whenever Ivan's shoulders so much so as brush against another's in the college corridors, coming back with bits of their hue stuck to the fabric of the shirt. Till worries that his own isn’t dark enough to cover up that patch. He knows it's sickening to be this greedy. Is that not what his father would call him every time he asked for a new pair of shoes because he had outgrown the ones before? Till rubs under his fingernails once again to get rid of the soot gathered between those barely remembered syllables. It is hard to get the blemishes of memory out.
When Till feels a little cleaner, he tries to instead recall the way Ivan brushes his scraggly hair out of his eyes before tucking him under the sheets. How he presses his lips against Till's cheek in his sleep. As morning comes around, his cold nose is resting in the crook of Till's neck. All of this leaves Till's skin a flushed pink, which is a more forgivable shade of red. Till has long sworn to only give Ivan such gentleness. Along with the occasional flick to the forehead, leaving the flesh lightly marred. Such are the trials of their love.
This is why he has to keep the purple to himself. It has already started seeping into the abscesses inside his clothes, a couple of sizes bigger than him, because they belong to the boy Till has been staring at for the last several seconds. It makes the fabric reek of the same odor that emanated from all his father's shirts throughout his childhood. On the other hand, the girl must be wearing lavender perfume. Ivan must be close enough to smell it. Prefer it, even. Jealousy, Till learns, may bear the color of pulpy eggplants, easily grown in nature, but it carries the stench of booze. Artificially manufactured in his belly. Lingering like rot.
Till has to wash it out of this sweater before he returns it to Ivan. He has to leave it smelling of detergent instead.
_____
By the time Till returns from the bathroom, the girl is laughing. She’s showing Ivan something on her phone, which is pulled up between their bodies. Ivan’s head is bent in its direction, his hand rubbing the back of his curved neck. The brightness of the screen illuminates the lower halves of both their faces. Ivan’s smile is a ghastly white by this hour. If Till doesn’t blink a few times to clear his vision, his boyfriend will turn into a ghost in front of his eyes.
He blinks. Dead. He blinks. Alive. He blinks. Dead. He blinks. Alive. He blinks. Dead. He blinks. Alive. His eyes burn. He hopes the finality of that last declaration stays.
The girl’s fingers are clutching the fabric surrounding Ivan’s elbow. A harmless sort of touch. It’s likely the debris in the corner of Till’s eyes that is making it dirty. Looking into the stained glass of the bathroom mirror, he had scrubbed his eyeballs raw till they were tinged with blood, trying to make the purple haze leave his vision. He can’t corrupt someone else’s silhouette with his repressed desires.
The girl hasn’t done anything wrong. Her hands are soft, likely shimmering with a translucent layer of gloss. The cuffs of her purple sleeves must be adorned with endearing wrinkles. Unlike Till, she won’t even expect Ivan to smooth her rough edges out. The pieces of this puzzle fit so neatly together. The full picture isn’t even a shameful one. It’s Till who has been slotting each piece into the others all wrong, the same way he has put his hands back together all wrong. As always, he has made yet another misstep. The girl is simply unlucky enough to get caught in the various crossfires of his mind.
To dispel the pressure building inside him once again, Till lets out a hum. The first time, the noise is too shrill. Not unlike the tires of a bicycle screeching to a halt. As a musician, he has to soften the emerging melody. He tries again, clearing his throat. This time, the noise is too low. Not unlike the rumble of thunder in the cloudy skies. Till can’t be the bearer of such a grand sound. He has to know his place. He tries again. Carefully, he exhales. This time, the noise is just the right amount of decibels. It efficiently empties his clogged lungs. Even without a cigarette in his hands, Till feels like he has been standing out in the cold for a pitiful smoke.
For once, he wishes to carry nothing. Not even the fear. Not even the weight of himself.
_____
The girl Ivan is talking to is wearing a purple jacket.
Purple is a funny color. It is made by mixing red and blue. Till keeps those crayons the farthest from each other, following the principles of rainbows. Red is the first color on the spectrum of visible light. Blue is the fifth. He may not be the quickest at calculating numbers, but even he knows that one plus five equals six. Mathematicians and musicians must learn to keep measure. A sixth chord is the common name for any added chord where the extra pitch is a sixth above the root. For example, on a C major chord, the added sixth would be an A. Till mimics its beats by tapping on his arm.
But Ivan is turning toward Till, a loose black strand falling over his eyes in the process. Till’s fingers twitch, disrupting their rhythm. He wants to pick the piece of hair apart. But his hands are too far, and today, they haven’t done too many good things. He doesn’t think they will be able to cross the distance. Earlier, he had even forgotten to fold the pile of laundry thrown on the end of his bed. He’s pretty sure there are still dishes sitting at the bottom of the sink, trapping murky water inside. For the last hour, he has been digging into his own skin, seething at the scene in front of his eyes. Nothing has earned his fingers the right of grazing the ridges of Ivan’s flesh, soothing their own ache with the contact.
Even so, Ivan takes another step back from the girl, waving his hand sideways. She nods, her fingers letting go of his sleeve. Did the force of Till’s breath make her do so? Did it find her guilty of a wrongful act she hasn’t even committed? It hadn’t been his intention. He has never wanted to make an impact on the workings of the universe. Every day, he prays for his body to be rendered more and more insignificant in the grand course of things. At the same time, he still longs to take up more space.
When he was younger, he would lie in the darkness of the living room and listen to his father’s snores through the walls, imagining being able to control their rhythm with a few jerks of his fingers, just as he did with the guitar. Slowly, he grew afraid of truly being able to do so. Is this the result of the wish he made on his eighth birthday, blowing on the grocery store cupcake frosting coating Ivan’s index finger, held up in place of a candle? All he wanted was to have a say. On where he got to sleep at night. On how many inches of his hair he wanted to cut. On how many meals he got to each throughout the day. On what sizes of shoes he was supposed to wear. Did the universe grant him this by making him responsible for every single event occurring in his close proximity? He isn’t quite sure how to best shoulder this burden.
But the girl is still smiling, as if she hasn’t even registered Till’s presence in the far corner of the room. Feeling so deeply purple, Till can’t even imagine himself so invisible. Does she know that the heaviness she feels on her back is because of his stubborn gaze? She wouldn’t brush him away so easily if she knew. But how could she not know? Till has made himself so obvious in this portion of the night. The boy who is a few feet away from her, swaying in another’s arms, he must know, too. So should everyone else in this room. Are they all watching Till, holding him accountable for the flickering lights over their heads? As Ivan makes his way through the sea of people, his shoulders almost bumping into someone else’s, Till scrutinizes each of their faces, checking them thoroughly. Still, no one seems to glance his way. Is it truly this simple to be forgiven for one’s existence?
Till’s pulse grows jittery in his left wrist, especially as Ivan’s fingers wrap around it. He taps once, twice, thrice on Till’s wrist bone, checking in. After a few seconds, he does it again. Till almost wants to giggle. Leave it to Ivan to turn Till’s repetitions into a love language.
With shaky fingers, Till taps back, somewhere around Ivan’s elbows. His hands are still dirty, but such minimal contact shouldn’t stain Ivan. His boyfriend has a strong stature. He can bear the impact of Till’s restless fingers. At least that is what Till hopes. For all his determination to keep his colors to himself, he isn’t able to resist leaning into Ivan when he’s this close, especially after he has been so far for so long. Even the proudest men are brought to their knees by the smallest of touches, and for all his decisively built walls, Till has never been proud to the point of immunity, after all.
Ivan has tapped only six times, but Till is reaching a lowly thirty-nine. Such is Till’s nature: If given an inch, he’ll grab a mile.
Ivan’s arm is still stationary in the air. He lets Till get away with a lot.
Embarrassed, Till pauses, ducking his head.
Ivan hums, bumping his forehead into Till’s. He gazes into Till’s eyes, the same eyes that have selfishly encroached into the space Ivan’s body has occupied for the better part of the last hour. If Ivan knew how green Till truly was, he wouldn’t keep looking at him unblinkingly. Worse, there’s the purple lingering underneath that. Ivan, who can somehow never seem to imagine being on the receiving end of such a color, stares back.
There’s a brief silence. Then, tilting his head, Ivan says, “Three plus nine equals twelve, which is two times six. A good number, don’t you think?”
Feeling like he’s in a dream where he’s been caught naked, Till nods. He can’t see the girl across the room anymore. She must have walked away. He wonders if it is really over. It must be. Her jacket is entirely out of his sight. After a few days of rolling over in bed to greet Ivan’s red pupils, he may even forget its rich shade. He doubts that will happen, though. It’s likely a pipe dream.
Still, in the aftermath, Till wants to say something more legible. Profound. Normal. Ignorable. To whatever he’s capable of producing, anyway.
What comes out is the total opposite.
“Everything’s purple,” he murmurs, tightening his grip on Ivan’s arm. “All of it.”
Ivan’s forehead comes to rest against his. “Is that so?” he says, mouth growing crooked until his tooth shows. Till is reminded of the times in their childhood when Ivan returned another stolen pencil. If he counts, would the number be perfectly divisible by six? Or would it fall short by one? “Not a bad color, overall. Especially if it is Till’s.”
Held in such close proximity, despite the purpling outlines of the veins of his hands, Till is compelled to agree.