The nurse called back and told us to use bleach on anything we touch. I touched Carlos, my black glove leaving a wet smear on the hairs of his arm. I sprayed the spot playfully. He jumped back, almost hitting the edge of the sphere. He yelped. I giggled. I kept giggling, hearing the sound of my voice cascade off of the sphere.
I’ve never understood how echoes work. People say it has to do with space and curvatures. It probably has to do with dryness too. The large sphere at the center of the room probably wouldn’t force echoes if it were wet. I touched it with my gloved hand, imagining the hundreds of years and thousands of people who came to this place to watch the waters bubble up from the center of the sphere, cascading down the side like skin.
when I pulled my gloved hand away now it left an imprint in the dust. Carlos stood beside me, watching. His spray bottle hung limply in one hand, pointed at the rubble strewn floor of the cavern. The nurse was much further up ahead where Timothy had tripped over the loose stone and lost his balance. He’d scraped his hand badly on the side of a dusty wall. He’d hurt his head worse. Her tending to him meant she couldn’t watch me set my bottle down and place both hands on the sphere, moving my fingers through the thin layer of dust like an artist.
I wandered with my hands and wondered at how all things grow old and forgotten. In the dust the outline of a face took shape, emerging like an expression. Carlos watched me, quiet, his own hands opening and closing as if wanting to join me through a will of their own.
“paint with me.” I said.
he shook his head.
there is an invisible line between exploring a thing and defiling it. I don’t know when I crossed that line, when the face became a caricature of my own. I only noticed once I stepped back from the sphere, observing my work on the cold white marble. By then it was too late. The others were turning back, having reached as far into the cavernous temple as they dared, and now returning to collect the stragglers.
Carlos looked at me and giggled, the echoes of his voice breaking over the loops and twists I’d left in the dust of the sphere. I giggled too. Then I lifted my bottle and sprayed. I kept spraying until the bleach made a new skin on the marble and the trickle of it dashed away the echoes of the past.