No Man sat on the jetty rocks with me. I teased him about getting his perfectly black suit imperfectly dirty. He stood to show me no dirt clung to him. The spray of the waves left no salt. The wind did not move a hair. No Man sat down, in perfect movement, in perfect silence. With a perfect smile as he turned to face me.
“You’re not wearing the Good Guy Lucifer face.” I wanted to touch his perfect skin.
He leaned closer, reading my intent clearly. “There is no need for it now. You can look upon me without fear.” His face is smooth as porcelain, soft as sighs, warm as hugs, and completely devoid of “humanness”. The texture confused me.
He read my face clearly. “Tell me again, what name you use for your readers to refer to me.”
“No Man.”
“There is your answer to your unspoken question.” I just nod.
I look away and face the ocean. That quickly, I forget his face. Puzzled, I look back at him again. I study every unblemished inch. But as soon as I look elsewhere, I forget his face.
“Humans remember items by how the item differs from others. By the imperfections. You will never be able to remember the face I show you, unless I wear a human’s face or an image.” He chuckles. “Without looking, describe my hands.”
This should be easy. As many times as he has manhandled me, I should know his hands. He helped me step onto the jetty. He pulled my spirit out of my corpse. He pulled my arms when he showed me Ravenwoman was burning my bones. And the day of our meeting, he fixed my broken nose by resculpting my face! I should know his hands. At the very least, the tint of his skin.
“They’re… Um… The nails are short and neat and … soft palms… um…” I know the nails are short because they would have dug into my nose if they weren’t. Everything I remember about his hands are from touch. Not sight. “I can’t. I don’t remember what they look like. I don’t even remember your skin color. It’s like you don’t have a skin color, but what I see is because of where I am.”
He smiles and nods. He offers me his hand for examination. At first, it appears to be a young white male’s hand. Too easy for the point he’s leading me to, I think. I decide I want to see a old man’s hand. And I do. I want to see a black youth’s hand. And I do. I want to see the hand of a Hawaiian friend, from when she was a child. No Man’s hand’s appearance complies. But all the hands are perfect reproductions of appearances.
“What I see is because of what I want to see. Your appearance reflects my biases. But I remember these masks. So why can’t I remember when you are showing me yourself?”
His hand changes to his native perfection. I remember the soft touch of his fingers. The smoothness of the back of his hand. A perfect skin texture that almost made me cry to feel. “Because you can’t process it. I am a visual illusion to humans. I don’t exist in human-space. No perfect thing does.”
We sat in silence a while longer. Watching the puffy clouds roll lazily across a tropical sky. “Flesh becomes water. Wood becomes bone. You picked an odd song to get my attention with. The last line of the song is chilling. A warning?”
“It served its purpose well. You came to me after all.” I feel his hand on the back of my neck. I resign myself to being manhandled, again. He laughs and removes his hand. “You’re overthinking again and trying too hard. Come back after you’ve shaken unreasonable expectations off.”
He suddenly shoves me and I go flying into the ocean, clearing the rocks of the jetty. I surface and turn to see him standing with mirth.
“Hey!” I wasn’t mad. I was laughing as well. “What the hell!”
“Come back later and find out!” He yelled but his voice was not distorted for the effort. He waved and began walking up the jetty. I turned and started swimming towards the open ocean. A wave gently crested over me and I was smoothly removed from the dream.