Chapter 8: CAN YOU SEE ME?

Christopher's back straightened. Did she hurt herself? Should he go check on her? He was contemplating this when she pulled herself back up to her feet. She moved stiffly back to the treadmill. She started it again and got back on it!

Christopher placed his hands on his hips and watched. She was going to walk it out, he thought. That was good. But then he saw her pushing up the speed and she began running again. Damn…

Christopher tapped the controls and zoomed in on her face. Sweat and tears were evident but he could see that her brow was drawn and he saw that she wasn't going to stop until she met her own personal goal. He heard Carlos come up behind him and he quickly flipped the screen to the corridors. He didn't want any of the guys seeing her cry.

~*~

Ashleigh hurt so bad that even though she knew she shouldn't, she came straight home, popped ibuprofen, took a hot bath and then crawled into bed without dinner.

The next day when she went to the gym she was walking stiffly. Blues music was playing this time. How apropos. She looked at the giant on the treadmill. Did he even know she was there? He never even flinched when she came in through the door. He never even turned to look in her direction. Well today she planned to keep her eyes on him. She just wanted to know what he looked like. He had to be fine with a body like that.

He generally left at six so while she was on the curling machine she kept her eyes on him. He didn't look tired even though his dark clothes were made even darker with his sweat. But his gait was steady. Six came and she saw him switch off the machine. His head was down when he headed straight for the boom box and removed the CD. She finally saw him do it. Generally the music stopped and he was half out the door before she looked up.

He must have sensed her looking because he glanced at her; just a glance. And in that one brief second Ashleigh's light brown face paled even lighter. Her eyes widened as her brain tried to make sense of what she saw. The man's face was split in half.

Jesus, she'd never seen anything like it. It was as if someone had taken a machete to him and then someone else had tried to sew the pieces back together. There was a visible seam that ran from his chin, over his lip up into one nostril. His nose was flattened and flared crookedly. The seam continued up between his brows and then ran a crooked pattern to disappear beneath the hood.

They called it a cleft palate but she'd never seen one so bad. The two halves of his face had seemed to shift; the bone structure beneath the flesh, causing his face to sink in slightly, gave him a gorilla–like appearance. He also had no color. He was as white as an albino. His grey eyes were fringed in reddish lashes that looked almost non-existent. His upper lip seemed to have three distinct sections that she couldn't quite understand. He was by far the scariest looking man she'd ever seen.

He was out the door before she realized that she'd stared. She felt herself blushing and hoped that she hadn't made him feel like a monster. But he'd shocked her. She rubbed her face in chagrin. Tomorrow she would make a point of not looking disgusted. If the opportunity arose she would speak.

~*~

Christopher's keys broadcast his arrival as he unlocked his front door. Maggie quickly jumped down from where she was perched on the back of the couch and wrapped her sinewy body around his feet. He reached down and quickly scratched beneath her chin and then put his things away. He had stopped and got carryout on the way home, and after feeding her he sat down with the newspaper and ate his meal.

His thoughts moved to the lady at the gym and he lost his appetite for the third burger and tossed it in the trash. He didn't like the shocked look in her eyes when she caught a glimpse of his face. Not that he blamed her; just that he wished someone could see him for the first time without grimacing in horror. His parents had been too poor to get his bilateral cleft palate fixed for a long time. By the time that he was three years old it became critical as his breathing and lack of nutrition began to affect his life. The state took over and the surgery was performed for free. Unfortunately his was a complex situation handled by surgeons not experienced in his extreme case.

After three corrective surgeries his mother could take no more and he'd been left with bad scars though his palate was now closed. Yet his teeth were crooked and several were missing. Although his hearing had been affected, it wasn't enough to keep him out of the military. And normally speech problems occurred with his condition but his voice was fine—although not often used. Christopher was pale, but not because he was albino. He was just a pale skinned red-head. He kept his hair cut short in a military fade. He was the epitome of a jarhead. He even had semper fi tattooed across his bicep. He had planned to get it tatted on his neck because he would never be anything but a jarhead, but his mother had objected and so he hadn't done it.

Christopher did a load of laundry and changed Mag's litter box. Then he pulled out his guitar and played for a while. He wanted to perform tomorrow and hadn't practiced all week. Friday was Karaoke at The Madd Crab and he generally brought his guitar whenever he sang. He liked the music selection there as well as the people. They were a bunch of rednecks but it was a neighborhood bar with the same rednecks. Sometimes a dumb asshole would come in or a drunken girl. But most knew to leave him alone. And if they didn't learn it the easy way they learned it the hard way. His cousin had introduced him to the place because she had wanted him to sing. She used to be a bartender but had quit for a better paying job at a different redneck bar. He'd stuck around; people knew him already and they liked his singing. Plus they tended to warn the newcomers not pick fights with him.

As he ran on the treadmill that night he was pretty certain that he'd gotten back down into the two hundred weight range. But he decided that he would continue to go to the subbasement gym in the mornings—and it had nothing to do with the lady who smelled like pink flowers even after she was dripping with sweat.