boulevard*

"You're stepping on the stars," she says with her eyes lowered.

He looks down at his feet and realizes she is right. Between the pairs of shoes spells the partial name, "Humphrey Bog----." Without a thought, he lifts his right foot off the golden tile. Caught off balance by his own sudden reaction, he plants his suspended foot on safer ground, but leaving him standing spread eagle over the now open-faced monument.

"It's too bad you're not wearing a skirt," she adds relentlessly.

"Alright. Enough is enough," he exclaims, as he jolts into half-flight from his awkward pose, like a frightened pigeon chased by a rambunctious child. After several steps off in a wild direction, he looks back at her. She's staring back at him in her steady steps. If he didn't know any better, he would have sworn she was trying to look innocent. But he knows better.

"Yunno, you kinda looked like an ostrich back there," she mouthes, taking another step closer to him. Her face is filled with an expressionless expression. Like a painting come to life.
"Maybe you should consider wearing less tight pants."

"I thought I was doing a pretty good 'frightened pigeon' impersonation, myself," he croaks, in a failed attempted to match her apathetic tone.

By now, she's only a few feet away from him. He turns forward in response and kicks his feet into motion, now determined to maintain some distance from her. He looks back out of the corner of his eye and realizes he has acted a little too late as she is almost onto him. In mid-step, he twists his body to face her again. A defensive retreat. An animal protecting its tail from being caught.

His mind scrambles to find words to lengthen the space between them. He looks aimlessly at the moving ground and tries to think of something to say. Like looking for objects to throw out of a moving car. But as her feet slide out of his view, he realizes that she has stopped moving. Still taking steps back, he finds her feet and follows them up to her eyes and sees that they are no longer targeted upon him. Instead she is looking upwards to the sky.

She is standing still and shrinking slightly as his retreat leaves her in a zoom out. Out of fear, he keeps his eyes on her. Out of wonder, he does not look up. Out of hearing distance, he only sees her mouth move.

"The stars. They're gone. I don't know where they are."















* Hollywood (1984) painted by Edward Ruscha. This guy is a f*%king genius. More stuff inspired by his amazing work soon.