The wind huffed.
“You’re losing your touch.”
It was not! The wind was silent. It was stealthy. It was the soft, padded paw of a ghost leopard. It was a raptor’s wing, eerily quiet, before descending and delivering death. It would never lose its touch.
How dare he?—?
The boy laughed and held out his hands. “I’m kidding! I’m just kidding. You know, you used to think I was funny.”
The wind flicked the boy’s ear. It had never thought he was funny.
Besides, the boy always laughed at the wrong things.
He was laughing right now, his eyes watering as he wiped the tears away. If that wasn’t proof of laughing at the wrong things, the wind didn’t know what was.
It hmphed and followed after the citrus and pearl dust scented woman. It stopped at the building she’d ducked into. The wall was cool glass, and the wind flattened itself against the smooth surface. There were stickers, advertisements pasted on, and fingerprints, but the wind could still see through the window.
The boy stopped next to the wind and let out a surprised huff. Then his surprise turned into a wide grin. He ducked into the shop, and the wind swirled in the bells jingling on the door. A blast of sugar, toasted almonds, cinnamon, and chocolate wafted over the wind, and it moaned happily. It drifted on the cool air currents, tasting the bakery’s smells.
The boy strolled to the counter, peering at the pastries, cookies, and cakes in the glass cases.
The citrus and pearl dust scented woman stood at the cash register. She was still disguised as the man with the protruding stomach. There were plenty of people in the shop, and she still hadn’t noticed the boy.
She paid, took a white box, and hurried out of the shop. The boy grabbed two coffees, dropped his money on the counter, and followed. The woman had ducked down a side street, and the wind had to point him to where she’d gone.
He stopped in a shadow when he finally saw her.
She was leaning against the sandstone wall of a building. The street was shadowed, still, and cool. The morning was just beginning, and the street was quiet except for the soft coo of a pigeon resting on the building’s stoop.
The woman had taken her dessert out of the box. It was the largest cinnamon roll the wind had ever seen. It was almost the size of one of the boy’s birthday cakes. It was thick, with ribbons of cinnamon and sugar, and glossy white icing dripped over the woman’s hands.
She closed her eyes, took a monstrously large bite, and then moaned happily. She tilted her head back and chewed slowly, savoring the sweetness. She swallowed and then took another bite, and another.
The boy watched. Enraptured.
When the woman licked the frosting from her fingers, one finger at a time, her pink tongue flicking over her skin, the boy’s cheeks turned bright red.
The woman smiled and turned to him. “Want some?”
He coughed and then asked, “You knew I was here?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Of course I did.”
Ha! The boy was losing his touch. The wind ruffled his hair, and the boy flicked him off. Ha. Who lacked a sense of humor now?
The boy wandered into the shadow, where the dark of the sidewalk gingko and the building met. “I brought coffee. I didn’t know how you liked it, so . . .”
“Two sugars.”
“I looked it up and found a fan site that said you drink it black.”
The woman’s shoulders dropped.
“But that didn’t sound right,” the boy continued, “so I brought sugar packets.”
“And cream?”
He shook his head.
