Touch

Touch

“You are dangerously pretty,” I said. “Dangerous to all, even yourself. But especially to me. That she was pretty was easy to see but the danger that lurked behind her eyes was dimmed, even in sunlight. It isn't right, I thought, that beauty should present such a risk.
“But you're here,” she said, “you needn't have stayed.”
“You wanted me to,” I replied. It was true; it was in her eyes.
We left the bar; went to the car. Then I drove a way, but not too far.
“I hear you're famous,” she said. “You're dangerous too. And you like pretty women.”
“What man doesn't?” I said, “it's the way we're made.”
The shadows were crawling across the park. We sat and watched them. Then I read the graffiti scrawled large across one corner of the park's perimeter wall. It was more than two years old, acclaim for a once-popular political leader who was now discredited. “Viva X!” it said. That was all.
We sat side-by-side, silently, almost as if we were afraid to breathe. Perhaps we were. We were both waiting for something to happen, waiting for life to intervene.
“Touch me, and I'll scream,” she said. “Don't touch me and I'll die.”
I took a deep breath. And. Touched. Her.