twelve paces and turn (for love's a duel)

we stepped into the foyer, or pour le public d’un theatre, as an old french poet may have called the room with the cobwebbed trumpet and the dusty fragrance of a forgotten clown. violet knocked, waited, then opened the door. keith, the frontman, stood smiling in the door and violet introduced us. behind him stood a girl with fair skin, dark hair sliced at an angle over her eye. i took her to be keith’s girlfriend.

“this is monica.”

“pleasure,” i said.

her eyes were dark, and they questioned every secret intention.

“how’d you like the show?” she asked.

“oh, top notch,” i said.

we entered.

there were about a dozen people milling about, pouring drinks, talking music, and dreaming into their cigarettes on the porch outside, swaying with the willow across the street. violet took my hand.

“come meet ben and everybody,” she said.

i didn’t say anything, but followed.

she introduced me to ben, who i recognized as the drummer, and ben in turn introduced his boyfriend fritz, who extended his hand in a small catastrophe, which i took to be a handshake.

“how do you do?”

“beer?”

“sure.”

oscar pulled up seats for violet and i on the deck, and we talked about the show in the sweetcool night air. monica stood overlooking the scene with her long fingernails casually flicking the ash over the side, determining with each motion the future course of american style, her shirt, a man’s shirt with the cuff’s cut, sashaying to the yes rhythm of the crowd and the snakelike waves of vibration from the flat. there was talk of jukeboxes from oakland to brooklyn, raggedy dawn stories of life on the road, american existentialism spilled forth from a corner session beneath the glow of a far streetlight, which pounced on every word, crazy, like, yes!

violet asked if i wanted i drink. i said i did, and we went back into the apartment.

“now, tell me what you think?” she said.

“about what?”

“everything.”

“well, i dug the music. there were moments i felt like i was in that edward hopper masterpiece, just glitzing on the city.”

“you’re sure it wasn’t an edward hopper ripoff?”

“like in the simpsons?"

“yeah.”

and she laughed, i laughed, her eyes closed, someone passed a joint, i fell in love.

the sun began to dip through, casting a pale ardor on the potted plants.

“do you mind if i close the curtains?”

“no. please. the light’s shining in.”

we walked back outside and took seats next to oscar. it seemed strange the way violet and oscar barely spoke the entire time at the party. but that’s only a view from the outside. who can tell what kind of inviolable secret warmth festers within. when people leave so much for outsiders, doesn’t that signal a lack of inner intensity?

i walked closer to the window.

“do you mind if i close the curtains?”

"no. please. the light's shining in."

some people began leaving. the sun became sturdier. and beneath the lost clouds high above the adobe tenements, a few newspapers fluttered in the gutter, pigeons cut straight lines over the adjacent flat. it was late, and i was gone, quite gone, the me above me, watching me, watching her. time to go, saying goodbye, walking back toward violet, the swordplay between eyes, in the distance, and the newness rises -- possibilities, chemically charged, the fleeting touching of fingert-i-p-s, and the soft parting of

do you mind if i close the curtains?

violet in the rain

we rode our bicycles to the club in the drizzle.

“ye fallen angels of heaven! you keeping up, man?” oscar yelled from in front.

“don’t worry about me, man, i’m right here.” i said.

the mysterious drizzle multiplied, and we pedaled faster. (the rain cast itself finely, and earnestly, westerly, forming a perfect pastichepatisee of puzzles on the pavement.) and the rain felt beautiful and sad against my face.

we pulled up to the club on the eponymous drag and locked our bikes. the club doubled as an art gallery and tripled as a coffeehouse style restaurant, featuring cheap eats like tangine, a north african stew and grilled lamb chops, and people ate on recycled treadle tables and old, scuffed-up captain’s chairs. on the bottom level was the stage and a huge soundsystem for local and touring indie acts. at the bar you could grab a bottle of chimay, pbr, whatever.

we grabbed beers and sat down.

“she plays the piano - the band’s name is 'sunset rubdown', man, they’re killer.”

“i was here last month for 'clap your hands say yeah,' and those were the goods."

"just wait."

the room was getting crowded, and the scenesters were self-consciously eyeing scenesters. after a few more minutes the lights dimmed and the scherzo of the stagelights stole across the room like the footprints of phosphorescent bohemians. for the first time, i saw that girl illuminated at the piano. she sat there smiling in her wild west black dress, matching her mascara, black as black, a wild flower blooming in the misty night; so hip, so strange, so new.

"what’s your friend’s name?" i asked.

"violet."

and what of the others? a long-haired, bearded thoreau cat strung the bass, looking wild-eyed and apocalyptic; the drummer was a younger kid, slim in a t-shirt, with self-indulgent fingers and a faraway look in his eyes; the frontman was shaggy-haired with a slim cotton tie, and he tapped his foot daintily and bobbed his head to the silence and hum of the crowd.

hark! music.

the piano keys compressed. cool and complex, the room echoed a fairy tale solo sailing over our heads. then the others struck up. it was a cool sound, eerie in its cadence, and it hushed the crowd, save for the clinking of ice cubes.

“music’s the only thing that makes sense anymore, man. play it loud enough and it keeps the demons at bay,” i said to oscar.

“true enough, man, true enough.”

watching the show felt like sitting in an abyss of reality, between fulgurations of all that grabbing and taking and sighing and dying outside the club. just sitting there felt like attaining a state of rapture and utter ecstasy during a dionysian thiasos.

i couldn’t stop staring and felt a pang of jealousy as she made love to the piano.

“my, you are staring,” oscar said.

“my, i do like the view,” i said.

"she’s my best friend. i’ll introduce you later."

"that sounds fine," i said.

when the set ended, oscar told me to wait. he was going to talk with violet. when he returned, he said, “her bandmate keith’s having a quiet, little shindig. feel like going?”

"i could get down with that," i said.

"cool. we’ll meet violet outside in five. she’ll walk with us."

we met outside and exchanged conventional phrases (eyes locked. heart pain! so much to say. no, not too much). oscar and i walked with our bikes alongside violet. it was past two, and through the drizzle, the ghostly-white, pale-white, soft-white lights festooned in the river birch trees shone above the street. the wuuush of leaves were heard, only broken by, yonder, the bird’s treepalip, and on the corner was a long, long line snaking around and into the falafel palace, as we made our way to the party.

riddles and roses: unnumbered scene four

lazy autumn days. playing the piano. i with my book, one leg dangling off the divan, tapping the floor rhythmically to the punch-drunk-pulsing of keys.

“i think i’ll take herman for a walk,” she said.

“i’ll go with you,” i replied.

“um, i think i’d like to go out alone today. i’m feeling a bit melancholy. walking alone in the cool weather would do me some good.”

“well, we could go out alone together (old schopenhauer quip),” i suggested.

she smiled, two garden paths snaking together, then apart, similar to

“okay.” she said.

she searched through the shaggy hair of herman and found his collar to hitch the leash. we left the apartment and strolled into the hazy aether of early october. the weather at this time of year – fallen leaves on cobblestone bridge - always has the quality of an old photograph, linking past and future pleasures, innocently unaware that that’s the pleasure in itself. she looked beautiful and somehow motherly in her sweater. i told her so. she laughed and punched me.

“are you coming to the show tonight?” she asked.

“sorry. i’ve work to do tonight.”

“work. i hate when you work. you always wind up getting drunk by yourself.”

“occupational hazard, dear. by the by, did i tell you my friends will be in town this week?”

“no.”

we were both silent watching herman nuzzle a clump of leaves on the ground.

we walked back at the apartment. she prepared for the show. i poured a glass of brandy.

“you look stunning, doll.” i said.

“be good, will you?”

“yep. good luck.” i said, rising and giving her a kiss as she left.

alone in the apartment, i poured another glass and retired to the study. everything was as still as still, save the wind outside, which rose like smoke through time, an ancient cadence. i began to write.

ice skating. crescent moon, pines, snow clinging to mittens, not melting, unusual.

brandy.

snow on tongue, fall, icy pants, laughing. laughing.

brandy.

building a snowman. little red hands working and molding and shaping. unconcerned. hurt when breathing heavy. alive. so goddamn alive. carrot for nose. shovel in hand. cheering. completion. snowman alive. takes shovel. completed. snowman swings shovel. decapitates the children. horror. so much horror.

poured another glass.

later, driving. sitting with friends on the broken down baltimore pier. behind, the long, long skies over the endless prairies. the train station in boise where the mothers cry. and the stars are out. and don't god shine crazy over the wheat fields?

later, in bed, warm hand.

warm hand, and stirring half-consciously, i.

“how was the show?”

“went well.”

“you can read me when i finish.”

“tease.”

“tomorrow?”

“ice ska…”

“oooh. let’s go thrift shopping.”

“sounds wonderful.”

“coffee, shopping. walk to square.”

“yeaeh.”

i rolled over and pulled her close. she smelled like nicotine and sex, and i thought of the first time i saw her…