Madame B
Ro London
Stickly furniture. I’m sitting here and I’m thinking, my constitution should be so hard. I haven’t seen her beyond a curtain of remembrances for more than two years. A song you haven’t heard in forever suddenly plays somewhere within earshot and you recall how much you loved it once upon a time; deeper and deeper into it you go. You can’t help yourself. And then it’s over, replaced by a more popular tune. On the phone she told me that she was married now too. Like Madame Bovary? So here I am. I am fear.
A vegetarian. I’d heard he was rather wan looking these days. Carnivorous me set about looking for a place for us to eat. to sit. to talk. to look.
I faced the bathroom mirror but could not see to check for a stray lock of hair or a smeared lip; my too busy mind blurred vision. I abandoned the room and crossed the corridor. Would the faint click of heels on the flagstone tiles warn him?
A hazy image behind the glass in the entry door which had been manipulated to replicate the shape of gentle waves, perpetuated for a final moment the complicated apparition he’d become over time; so much like a eidolon, a thought and idea I could not touch.
I reached for the knob prepared that this was the last moment of my own charge. Holt stood when he heard the movement of the door. We embraced and then were horrified by it; by the knowing we must not invite capriciousness. The pillow of his fall jacket did not provoke anything familiar, but my prurient return to his shape--a puzzle piece found covered in dust under some heavy furniture--gave back the remembered beat of Like a Prayer and the tingle and scratch of taupe pile against my hips.
“I feel a little sick.” “I know these elevators do that to me too.”
“No, I meant--”
“What did you mean?”
“I’m a dog. “
The doors opened and a few bowed heads got on and moved slowly to shoulder into the space between us as though it wasn’t truly free. At the last minute Holt tried to reach me but was too late. I stared down the eye of the hidden camera which showcased our neurosis in bluish gray flashes on for the most part unattended monitors below. No one else cared. No one knew. I insisted he realize. I crossed half of the lobby before stopping to let him catch up.
Walking cross-town I heard little of what he said, more cautious of if he would swerve near or far to avoid oncoming pedestrian traffic, more aware of the equality of our stride or if he preferred to create the illusion that we did not share a destination.
At Fifth Avenue I trod down its darkened expanse flirting with traffic trying to hail a cab. I faced him and the growing headlights and then not while attempting a better posture for success. It went this way a block or so, weaving in and out, back and forth. He’d slowed his pace. I let my hand drop while waiting for the light to change.
“What?” I searched him in the dark back-tracking to better decipher his stance.
“I’m just watching those heels.”
“Is anybody else looking?” I teased him for what was his reaction when without thinking twice I led him, as he regarded it, past the plate glass behind which Live at Five was in full progress.
I think he first began to uncoil when he affirmed that I’d made a good choice of galleries for our theatre. Significantly dark, trendy just to a point and only somewhat trafficked at this hour on this night. Though I’d needed his help locating its position on Waverly, Blind as a bat he remembered aloud with a chortle, I could not help smirk myself at its appropriate name. The irony graduated my smirk to a smile as I tore a match from the Apple emblazoned book to light the cigarette that bobbed between Holt’s lips. Oh, will we be as doomed, or as infamous come meal’s end?
We chose a table, square with a white cloth, not too near, not too far from the door. He sat with his back to the street. It was the seat he took. Our first meal had been shared across a table of about the same dimension. It bothered me that I had been taking care where I held my left hand so I used it to move aside my water glass and accept my first drink of substance. So that was how the inevitable began. He admired my red ring and described how his father shipped him his Oma’s ring via Fed Ex from Japan. I took the high road when he then felt compelled to remark on its worth. And so, number by number we colored in a picture of one another’s nuptials. Like a news segment; a terse Q&A. And this artistic collaboration was bland; we both kept hidden all the good Crayola colors and as it went on, our strokes strayed out of the lines.
I would guess that the dark haired, nose ringed gentleman that sidled up to our
table was involved in the burgeoning alternative music scene in some way or was
merely moonlighting as our waiter and worked by day for the art department of Tower Records. Maybe I only imagined traces of paint on his clothes. He and Holt certainly hit it right off since like-animals tend to acknowledge one another’ s mischief. A mantle of history draped Holt and me, made my tongue thick.
Later Holt would mention to him that while, yes, the meal was good, he failed to find any of the promised Seitan in his dish.
“Sometimes Satan is hard to find,” our waiter countered.
“And sometimes she’s sitting right in front of you.”
But this was much later, after Holt had depleted his cigarette supply and accused me of having smoked them all when I had never owned such a habit. Returning from the bathroom I found him hunched between a couple of cooing females fingering their soft pack. Their eyes had followed him back to the table under which I crossed my legs.
But the act of rinsing my hands at the wide vanity birthed a strange thought that progressed some distance before I was fully aware of it. I found myself conducting a voir dire of the distance from the floor to the surface of the vanity so as to predetermine that if for some reason I were perched above it would it then hold me to_ high to be accommodating. My shoes issued a loud slap when they connected again with the ceramic floor. The evening had made its turn around the bend.
“All I ever wanted was time enough to talk to you about Everything. To swap ideas and opinions like spit. I mean, it’s all I EVER wanted, really. The fact that your dick fit so well in my mouth got in the way, stole the focus. “
“It had all to do with timing.”
“I’m sorry for that.”
“I am too.”
And in the cab en route to the commuter train that would take him and me in separate but parallel directions, in the cab, my hand slipped and he was swift to admonish “you’re being bad.” It took a moment for the recrimination to reach my ears, for the comprehension of language to engage and then for me to equate his statement with some type of action I’d been taking. Oh, my hand, that in the natural course of conversation I had slipped across the dirty vinyl back seat and under your thigh palm down, I hadn’t felt it. Sorry.
I had so much to say, and finally, the forum in which to say it, that I remember that at one point I spoke with my mouth full so pressing was a sentiment or an issue to disabuse. You see, my urgency, volumed by more wine and more wine, had little to do with common desire. I can’t now recall the clothes he wore. I can’t conjure much of how he looked. But I do remember and was busy collecting that night, what was always my reactions to the sound of his voice.
I have him.
You have her.
Who has our memories?
