There was an alcove at the back of the museum that I was fond of. A wooden statue of the virgin Mary stood at the end of a very long very dark hall way. Rooms twisted and split off from it here and there. Here a place to sit... there an ancient set of panels from a church long sunken beneath the grass in eastern Germany. Rooms on and on forever. All half lit, and bruised with the deep reds and purples of thick thick carpet that ate up all the stray sound. I loved this place. I got paid to sit and study note cards for hours. Days on end. There were quite a bit of really great art too. There had already been that falling out with the rest of the members of the Senate, and as a result I had pulled back and cut off all contact with these malicious people. I reasoned that if I had been their friend for this long... and now they were after me... what next? Would they slap a jew? Would they eat their young? I couldnt tell.
So... I stayed away. I read things. I journaled ferociously. In various colors of metallic inks. Angry words. Bitter words. Wounded words. I should have felt sorry for Hannibal. Pressing and jabbing into his spine everything that made me uncomfortable. It wasn't a fair fight that's for sure.
I was terrified. What if... the worst came to the worst? What if... I was expelled? I'd be out a job. Out of an education... and ya know, with the gun slingers in my family ... out in the street.
There was a window that ran from floor to ceiling behind Mary. Double pained plate glass. The rain had caused most of the window to fog. The window was dressed in lengths of wine colored satin that dropped from the ceiling on either sides of the glass. The whole bit was impressive. Serene, I thought. I stood there staring up at Mary. She'd been cut from wood some time ago, and was beginning to split down the back. No doubt the temperature and humidity had been something of a challenge throughout her life. A fight she wasn't really winning. She was painted. In dark night-black blues. Her face a pearl and varnish color. She looked so very removed. I wished I could have followed her down whatever paths she had taken...
I stood there for some minutes. My expression blank as I thought about all the things that had come to, in the past few weeks. How X and I needed back up plans. And plans to back up those back up plans... Weighing my options with numerous outcomes. At each turn of an idea, there would be another possibility that I hadn't thought of. A new piece of data to add to the algorithm. All of it... had left me... blank. I looked out at all of the limitations of my abilities. My finances and my emotional fortuity. Against it all I felt so very much like a sand castle. No one is just sure when it's going to get swept out. But... It's going to either way.
"Medhead."
I breathed in quick and deep as I heard her voice.
"What are you looking at?"
I didn't reply for a moment. "I was watching the water. It's beading up.... on the window..." I said. Still very much inundated with my own thoughts.
"I haven't heard much from you for a little bit... tell me. How have you been?"
I turned around to face her. Tall. Thin to distraction. Large oval eyes, with heavy lashes... doe-like and inquisitive. A pert face with perfect ivory skin and a tiny little mouth. She was beautiful. Everyone said so. Everyone. And no one could argue. It's just what she was. She always kept a ratty little hair cut that you couldnt decide was more mod, or more lesbian. And she dressed like a gypsy.
Today though she was all in black as dress code required. Her name is Louretta.
"I've... just." I was terrified of this girl. This girl with her mind and her wit. He attention to detail and the sorts of questions she asked. In truth there was a time when I had felt such a kind-ship with her. I loved how painstakingly intelligent she was... How actively her mind begged her to create and how easily she slid from one social group to the next. But as I would learn later, that is precisely what a moth feels before it scuffs a flame and becomes a cinder.
"I've been trying to keep up with my practice regiment." I pushed out. Putting all of my secret thoughts away... far far back on the shelves in case she could read minds as well as she could read a face.
Louretta reminded me of the girl that I had seen in my dreams the other night. They were both thin with razor sharp chin bones.
There were many afternoons since she and I had the fortune to become gallery guards here in meandering halls of the museum, that we would chat pleasantries. We had made a game of things. Surrounded by so much opulence, we had imagined ourselves to be courtesans. The gentility of our conversation was as tedious and as thick as the tapestries that hung mute from the walls and passed silent judgment over the modern era.
We talked about poetry. About what she was working on in her creative writing classes. About her boyfriend Ronny. About whatever. But not so today. Today words had reached her. Today the pleasantries had a different bent. And… what was that new scent that she was wearing? It smelled like…. Malice.
“You’ve seemed different lately…” She said. Leaning gracefully on a door jam. The cocked her head a bit to the side and pouted a little bit. “You’ve been quiet. It’s not like you.”
Louretta had grown up in Britain. A missionaries child, and every now and then to add salt to her conversation, she allowed a bit of this accent to peak out from behind her vowels. She thought, I believed that it added an aristocratic edge to her presence. And you know, at the time it was a bit intimidating. Whenever she was around I felt too small for my clothes. And I fidgeted ever so slightly with my hair.
“I’ve been thinking about things. Ya know, and practicing an awful lot. I have deadlines… and I’m worried about not meeting them.” I offered fingering the flash cards that I had brought along.
“Well that’s a very wise of you to devote so much time to your studies. I wish I could boast such fortitude.” She said. She always spoke this way. As if an encyclopedia had slipped on ballet flats and started menstruating.
“Don’t you think you should be investing in a small group of friends? You know, people that you may stay in touch with after school is over?” She asked as she began walking heel-to-toe in a pattern on the thick carpet. She had let those British vowel sounds peek out when she said “you know…” I sighed.
“I would if I found there was anyone worth putting any time into. I would if I felt… certain liberties that do not exist in this… penitentiary.” I offered back to this bleak little fish… swimming in circles in the hall.
“Ah…” “Oh I see,” She said. She stopped her walking for a moment and raised one eye and looked at me. Then she went back to walking.
I had no idea who she’d been speaking to. And like I said. The Senate had wasted no time in speaking their minds about my relationships. Why is everyone so interested in penetration? Who’s getting it. Who’s doing it. So very carnal. People are crass. Especially college kids. Especially college kids who haven’t gotten any in a while.
“Something just seems changed in you… Something’s different.” She continued. Half to herself. I was begging to be a bit tried of her. “Something’s gone.” And with this she looked dead at me. Oh Louretta. Always with the flair for drama.
I have to say, If it was anyone else with these vague concerns. These ominous observances that seem like the types of things you might say to a stranger after you had tossed a bunch of chicken bones and read their fortune, I wouldn’t have minded. Mostly I wouldn’t have listened. But this was someone different. Someone I felt I could… trust.
“It’s your eyes.”
“What?” I asked…
“You’re eyes.” She said. “They’re all black now… They used to be green…. There used to be light in them, and now… there’s nothing.”
“Oh…” I guess I hadn’t noticed.
There was a sound of a group coming in the hall. We moved back into the positions we were expected to hold. Statues in black suit coats. Arms folded behind our backs.
I was boiling with mute anger. Someone had spoken to her.
Black eyes. What did she know. There was nothing wrong with me. Nothing.
And if there was… I didn’t want to fix it.
