Hands

She thought his hands were the most beautiful she had ever seen.

They spent the day in a small gallery in the city. It was just the kind of museum she loved. Diminutive, intimate, quiet, unassuming, old old old, tall and narrow. They took a rest on a carved bench. He cradled her in his arms. They had paused in a particularly religious and Italian room. She made a passing comment about the painting in front of them--something about how humid John the Baptist's furry dress must have been--and he seemed suddenly in rapture for her quaint Christianity. His grip tightened around her as if to say, "What other little notions are in that head?" "Is John the Baptist someone you think of often?" "What a tiny novelty you and your religion are!"

Earlier she had stood transfixed by another painting in the corner.

"That one reminds me of your hands," she told him.

"Which character?" he asked with a half laugh.

"All of them... but particularly the Virgin Mary. Her hands most look like your beautiful hands."

He chuckled, embarrassed, as she took one exquisite hand between her (inferior) two and confirmed the likeness.

He stood before a Modigliani nude and proclaimed that it was his favorite in the gallery. She found herself unreasonably jealous of his admiration for the female flesh; as if this fictitious woman in the painting was better loved than she. But it was a tender and touching rendering. The woman was so tranquil and sad and vulnerable. However, all Anne and her need for perverse disagreement and displays of shallowness could muster was, "But her face is so pointed..."

They left for a coffee on the terrace, and she longed for his beautiful Virgin Mary hands to be touching her as he rolled another cigarette.

Breakfasting

Anne didn't like breakfast. She didn't like being awake. It was all...unnecessary and tiresome.

Eric's breakfast spread was elaborate and beautifully laid out. There were a variety of juices in a variety of cups in a variety of colors. Fruit was mixed in a bowl. Muffins and breads of myriad flavors were sliced in halves and plated. Two forks. Two knives.

Anne slid the rice paper door to one side and surveyed the damage from a distance; Eric was still fumbling with the coffee in the kitchen. She waited for her stomach to turn at the sweetness of his gesture, but shockingly, all her organs remained intact and she didn't feel as ill as she often did when something nice was done for her.

"Sit down!" he urged as he perched cross-legged on a chair. He was smallish. He reminded her of someone else.

She curled her legginged legs underneath her on the futon opposite. The neck of her sweater gaped at her shoulder as she looked at the floor. Sunlight reflected off the roof of an East Harlem church and dappled her hair and her neck and that bare shoulder.

"You are unbelievably beautiful."

When could she pursue her escape?

She closed her eyes in profound sadness and let him move to her side. She let him hold her face in his hands and tell her again and again that she was beautiful.

"Any man who was lucky enough to get to run his fingers through your hair would return home the next day considering that the greatest conquest he has ever made."

Her insides grimaced and her eyes opened upon an unnecessary line.

Anne sighed at the incongruity and again packed up the suitcase of her particular mind, careful to click the lock securely back into place.

Phonies

Anne sighed and pushed in the door of a Lower East Side venue. Name on list. Hand stamp. She made her way down some stairs (sticky with stale beer) into a cavernous underworld of music and mingling. She had little hope of seeing Aaron before the show and instead focused on obtaining a Blue Moon. Orange slice chucked. Fruity finger licked.

"Hey, Babe..."

His eyes scanned the crowd; she ordered him a PBR.

"Both these on the tab, man."

His shirt sleeves flapped, unbuttoned, and his hair was matted on one side.

"Alright, I gotta go," he grimaced.

Anne crooked his neck with her arm and kissed him squarely on the lips. It wasn't enough.

The room was filled with the usual creeps, the Holden Caulfield phonies. Scraggly, makeup-less girls with tats of the New World splayed across their backs. Insufferable, jaundiced boys wearing cords from the girl GAP.

Anne was wearing black sequins and a tight-lipped-scowl. She overheard some Bandaid Cow making fun of her dress. She cackled in response.

Aaron ducked into the strap of his guitar, and Anne tried to look at him in the old way. Tried to take pleasure in the near-caress of his mouth on the microphone. The soft denim color of his pants and the perfect line of his thigh to his ankle. The way his sweat darkened the hair above his ears and his bangs and dripped off the tip of his nose.

But his songs were memories, killing her softly, and she couldn't listen to the words without crying. She looked away from his eyes and mumbled his lyrics at her knees.

"Let's 'dance' into her!"

New World and Bandaid Cow jostled Anne's elbow, sloshing beer into her lap. Anne lunged for a bar napkin while the culprits, snickering behind their stubby fingernails, vanished back into the crowd.

You want him?? FINE, take him!!! I don't want him anymore!

She looked palely at her own reflection in the purple light of the bathroom. She knew the songs had been played out.

Glass

He kept a damaged lamp on the floor by his bed. A light bulb encircled by broken, jagged glass. Anne was frightened of the lamp from the first moment she laid eyes on it. All she could see when she looked at it was her own white flesh, sliced and drowning in red blood. Why did he keep something so dangerous and broken?


They went to Camden and wandered through the stalls. She made her only purchase of the trip--a black velvet military jacket. The second the Indian vendor slid it onto her shoulders, she was sold. Byron bought a straw hat. With dexterity and tiny fingers, she un-wove the tag for him.


The violet hour began to creep and she suggested a pub by the river. She perched outside while he retrieved her chips and bottle of wine. He attentively showered her with packets of ketchup and mayonnaise and little salt and pepper sachets. Suddenly it began to rain, and they had to scramble for a leather couch inside.


They decided on another bottle of wine, and halfway through, she became almost inexplicably mad. The rain poured and poured outside, beating against the windows. She angrily got up for the bathroom and knocked over the empty bottle with her leg.


Embarrassed, hot, and red.


He was talking about love?


She returned to the table. He was evasive and full of lies and lines and meekness. Her heart turned to sickening stone. This was his rejection; the time had finally come. He was confused as to why she was suddenly crying, and he suggested they leave.


She jerked her body blindly from him and made a mad dash for the tube. He caught her arm and tried to understand. She urged useless words and victimized stories at him through her tears. He embraced her on the train as she shuddered with sobs.


"If you weren't so vulnerable... you could have me in the palm of your hand. I'm just so afraid of crushing you," he told her.


"I knew it. I never should have been myself. You don't see me, just like everyone else!"


Of course she was vulnerable. The whole trip had placed her on a jagged edge, teetering between reality and insanity. And there she was unmistakably and unbearably in love with someone who wasn't in love with her!


She seethed, brimmed with rage. Her breathing became rapid, and she flinched and pulled away at his touch.


Don't tell me what is wrong with me when I have just been being honest about who I am!


When they reached home, he prattled excuses about another girl. Insane, out of place delusions that best would have been revealed months and months ago.


Fool fool fool!


She thrust her anger and her rage into fixing their bed. She shoved him out of the way and drunkenly struggled to pull the corner of the sheet taught. As she lifted the mattress, her foot slipped. The sole grazed along the jagged edge of the broken lamp. A long, thin slice, like a paper cut that doesn't bleed. She didn't cry out or tell him. Of course she had been cut. Of course he had caused her pain and suffering and an injury like a stone in her shoe. The thing she had most feared had come to pass, and the supple white was flooded with crimson.


That night, she longed for his hand on her neck to crush her, strangle her, or snap her sternum in two.

Honey

Anne exhaled then inhaled into her cup of tea. The swirling, sweet scent of honey and herbal warmth filled her lungs.

She was. In love.

She imagined what he would look like crossing the street before her. How he might turn a door handle. Or the page of a book. How he would squint and half-smirk into the New York sky.

She could barely imagine what it would be like for him to touch her face. Or for her to touch his. The prospect was too great and full of too much ecstatic euphoria. The interweaving of their fingers alone would achieve unfathomable erotic satisfaction.

She longed to cradle him with his ear against her heart. And listen to all his secrets. Her little fingers would travel a path behind his ear and through the forest of his hair as he spoke. And memorize she would the formations of his lips and the things he told her.

She was. In love.

But the night air grew colder by the minute, snuffing out the warmth of her tea. And his arms were masked by a gaping void of distance, time, and starless night skies.

Still, he was there. As if he had always been there. Sinking and nestling a seed into her heart that had grown around her in an enveloping embrace. She had known him since the beginning of her beginning.

Each fiber that comprised him was of gossamer thread; so gently would she turn the threads over, examine them, until she had voyaged her way across the dew-dropped web of his shimmering soul.

She was. In love.

Remarkable

Anne stuffed her wet curls entirely under a gray cap and grabbed her keys. She was late for work.

Each strike of her boot on the pavement rang out a syllable of his name.

Tra. La. La. La.

Why did she feel this way? How could she feel this way? Impossible!

The subway rattled downtown, and she wondered with unprecedented anticipation what she would do if he were to enter her train car. 42nd Street? 33rd? Would he appear at 28th?

Across from her he would slump. And shove the earbuds back in his ears. His lips would part in an exhale of breath as he ran his fingers through his hair and cast down his eyes. Those lips that were tinged with delicate sadness around the edges. And those downcast eyes and lashes that revealed to her an unfathomable poignancy of character.

And just as her heart was breaking...

He looked up and met her gaze. And saw her. Everything she had been waiting for washed over her, shimmered up her shoulders and sunk down into her chest. She did not know how she knew or why she knew, but he was the elixir. The solution to the nightingale.

Anne got off at Bleecker and walked to work with the violet hour closing around her.

Tra. La. La. La.

The dusky clouds were lined in portentous grays, and for the first time, Anne knew that all that had come before was reasonable. The riddling and riffling of their bodies was merely a preparation for each other.

As she neared the bistro, the lowering sun revealed the approaching night sky as a shroud of incandescent sapphire. The expanse was a luminescent version of her mother's blue velvet bedspread, and Anne wanted to rest her cheek and spread her arms out wide.

She smiled.

Wynn

Symmetry and perfection were abhorrent to Anne. Especially in regards to teeth.

Wynn had the kind of teeth she liked. Close together, partially overlapping. Not glaringly white or straightly braced. Teeth that gnawed delicious food and drank red wine and smoked cigarettes and lived life.

He appeared.

She put on a languid look and pretended not to notice him deciding whether or not to speak to her. Finally, she eased his apprehension with a shift of her gaze...and they were talking.

He stood with his elegant arm draped over the motorcycle helmet that was resting on his hip. His skin was covered in graceful colors and cursive scrawl that she wanted to examine with her fingers and her eyes.

Her mind traveled up the stairs to his apartment...

There, his sweet dog was sleeping. His bed was a clean and made. Anne was showered and finally moist with coolness rather than heat. The stark, white blankness of her back looked beautiful juxtaposed with his tattooed skin. She balanced on her elbows and took his palm between her hands. She pressed her thumbs into the fleshy center until his fingers curled around hers.

* * *

Out on the street, the stars were not visible through the trees. Anne watched a 6th floor light turn on and off.

Fruit

Daniel squinted one eye to the midday sun and reached up to pick an apple from a tree; a line of sweat rolled down his arm as he released the apple into a basket. A flickering image of Anne's blushing shoulder and lowered lashes played in his memory.

Anne first observed him on a train to Brooklyn. There was something about his white t-shirt above and his youthful sternum beneath. His skin was healthy and brown and glowing. His long legs were braced by a canvas duffel bag and his hands were busy with a novel. Anne craned her neck to read the title, but she could not. She was sure it was something good, however. (They don't publish crummy novels with ribbon placeholders.) In a plastic bag by his side rolled two mangoes and a peach.

The skins of Daniel's apples were honey bleeding into rosy hues. He polished the curve of the fruit with his thumb and took a bite. Leaning against the shade of an apple tree, he gingerly stretched his legs along the orchard floor. Caterpillars had grown fat with their hole-punching of leaves, and some of the fallen apples were bruised and rotting.

In Manhattan, bricks and concrete sidewalks attempted to tame the roots of trees. But New York green was rebellious. Anne enjoyed how carelessly tree roots disrupted, dispelled frail cement, cracked and formed impassable sidewalk mountains and crevices. She placed her hands between the small of her back and the tree and pointed her converse towards the bistro.

He was young, vibrant, alive and in the sunlight.

She felt more like skimmed milk.

Until they kissed. And his lips spread a honey-glow through her limbs.

Impossibilities

"Come here to me," Aidan said and pulled her onto his lap.

* * *

In a high-backed, red velveteen chair Anne sipped her vodka desperately and tried to think of things to say. He clutched the neck of his beer and furrowed his brow at a destination past her shoulder. His knee shook in nervous compulsion.

* * *

They passed a furtive bottle of white wine back and forth on the subway. She liked riding next to him and fingered his sleeve and he called her "Tugboat." Anne folded her hands back in her lap but smiled nevertheless.

They raced aimlessly through Port Authority.

"This way!" he exclaimed and grabbed her wrist. Somehow they were on a bus. The correct bus? They wedged between strangers, as close to each other as twinned popsicles. She giggled on his shoulder and he said, "We fit so perfectly together."

Again, they raced aimlessly through the deserted streets of Hoboken.

In a club. In the back of a drummer's van. Ducking under the turnstile of a train station. Finally in the refuge of a pizza parlor. They had forgotten to eat dinner and ravenously split five slices of cheese.

"I love you."

* * *

"Are you two married? Your children would be very beautiful."

Haloed by stained glass, an elderly Irish gentlemen sipped his Jameson neat in an obscure 2nd Avenue pub. Anne and Aidan felt close under his preening eye.

* * *

As quickly as fingers are snapped, Aidan turned cold. He lashed an icy tongue in jealousy. At something he had seen in Andy's eyes. At the way Anne had turned her head at the bar and let Andy kiss her cheek.

She quietly ran her fingers across his back and waited for him to forgive her. And need her.

His affection was a varied, flickering flame, but soon her collarbone was back beneath his hands because he couldn't live without her.

"My love. Tell me you've never loved anyone like you love me?"

* * *

She promised nothing and pretended to sleep. Over and over again, he said her name into her neck and hair. Then he was gone.

Still, together they could only be covered in snow...

Rain

In his bedroom, he said, "Let me give you a stock of kisses so that you can save them up." And took her face in his hands and kissed every inch of it. Kissed her eyelashes, her jaw, her mouth, her nose, her cheeks, her hair, and the errant tear running along her upper lip.

The rain pummeled the trees outside her late night window, threatening to conjure a Cathy to her eagerly awaiting Heathcliff. Damp, cool gusts invaded her bedroom and crawled across her sheets.

Anne stuck her head out the window to greet her beloved thunder and lightening. She opened her mouth to collect the rain.

Tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow she would meet him!

Soon she would clamor beside him on cobblestone streets. Together they would finger the spines of used books in the basement of a shop. Or stretch their bodies across green grass and squint up at an English skies.

But New York didn't want her to leave.

"Don't go," it pleaded, wrapping its rain-soaked arms around her and wringing at her heart. "It is here that you belong, alone."

Bed Scenes

Anne owned six white Hanes undershirts with the necks cut out. She liked the way they freed her spotted collarbone and billowed easily around her waist.

That night, her wet hair felt cool and confident as it flirted with her neck and brushed the frayed edges of the shirt.

"I think you're crazy... maybe," Thom told her. And she agreed.

But she felt happy to stretch out her bare legs and tuck her red toenails under the blankets at the end of her bed.

The spider on her ceiling made perfect figure eights without exhaustion.

She imagined that he was there with his smile that turned up one side of his lips. For there would be much to explore if he was. On his shoulder, resting beneath the angel's mandolin. She could draw circles with her middle finger and then travel down the riverbed of his arm and come to rest at the vulnerable pooling patch of his wrist. She would raise that vulnerability to her lips and restore strength with tenderness. If she dared.

Oh, but where was this going?

She looked back up at the ceiling, and the spider was gone.

Gatsby

Daisy


Daisy


Daisy.




The heat of the impending thunderstorm was oppressive.

Barely. Breathable.

4am

Anne's phone lit up, "Meeting you has become pure torture. I'm ready to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge."

Sigh.

"Can I come lay eyes on you? Please?"

Halfway through a response, she flung her phone under her pillow. No.

"My heart is ailing so much right now..."

How his heart could be ailing after spending only one night with her, she did not know. Absurdly histrionic!

After a voicemail of incomprehensible whimpers, Anne's heart softened and she cast off her pretense of having gone to bed.

She let him upstairs.

Sam sprawled his long body across the foot of her bed while she folded her legginged legs amongst the pillows at the head. He watched as she rubbed lavender lotion on her hands.

"Now, what is it I can do for you, my dear?" she asked with a wry smile.

Sam's eyes filled up with tears as he mumbled something about drinking her breath...

He asked if he could have something that belonged to her, and Anne told him to choose a novel from her shelves. Without knowing the theme, he tugged down her ancient copy of The Great Gatsby. The book was filled with purple scrawl and the answers as to how Anne would cast off her infatuated Jay.

Daisy Buchanan shuddered at her guilt as Jay Gatsby flipped through her pages.

* * *

There was something frightening about him. Something volatile and dangerous humming beneath his surface. She could feel the anger emanating from his body.

Sam was frightening, but there was something incredibly tender in his touch. In a scummy Lower East Side bar, she cupped her palm over a shot of tequila and asked him not to take it. He placed his hand over hers for the first time. It was the gentlest caress she had ever felt; it was as if nothing was touching her at all as he softly turned over her palm and cradled her fingers. She placed the tips of her fingers on his cheekbone. The skin on his face was unrealistically soft and flecked with infinite, infinitesimal freckles.

"I'm a bad person. But you're so good. There is an aura of goodness around you! I'd do anything you asked me to."

She wasn't good, though. She didn't feel good. She thought of the bizarre, awful things that came out of her mouth sometimes. Of how angry she could feel.

"When I saw you across the street, I wanted to pick you up and take you away from that place. You didn't belong."

She was so small in his adoring hands, and for the evening, she would let him say what he liked. She would let him believe that he could take her away. From the way he touched the back of her head, she could tell what a wonderful lover he would be... if she allowed him to love her. And for only a split second, her shoulders trembled.

She would not tell him that she was a fettered and immovable Buchanan. She did not tell him that he would spend his nights gazing at the green light across the water.

He stood in her doorway and pressed his nose into the binding of her book. She pretended to sleep.

Gatsby Gatsby Gatsby.

Brooklyn

Anne sat in the open window of the hottest apartment in Brooklyn. Nothing that could even qualify as a breeze crossed the aperture of her dwelling, but still, she felt her post more bearable than most and she was loath to move. Her exposed, white legs were stretched across the sill, and her little head rested against the sticky frame. She had plaited her long hair in a french braid, knotted at the nape of her neck, and a turquoise headband attempted to tame the loose curls that misbehaved in the insufferable heat.

As sweat gathered in the supra-sternal notch of her neck, Anne allowed the party's conversations to flow around her like ebbing Woolfian thoughts. She knew that Cameron was watching her from the couch, and she let her ice-skating fingers circle one knee and then the other.

Condensation from her PBR can dripped on her thighs.

Anne was scared to go up on the roof; the ascent required the treacherous scaling of a rusty fire escape ladder and nothing to catch her fall. She was deathly afraid of winds and precipices and those spiral stone steps in old European castles. Dizzying heights and unsure methods of reaching them exhausted her mortal terror.

But it was hot.

She reached the top of the ladder with the lip of a solo cup between her teeth and a wondrous view of Manhattan before her eyes. It was beautiful, beautiful! And romantic...but she quaked in the emptiness of being alone.

Rachel was already on the roof with her lover. And talking in that calm manner that suggests security.

A breeze existed up there, perhaps blowing from the fairyland of twinkling lights in the distance, and Anne loosed her braid with her fingers and let her hair fall around her shoulders. For some reason, she thought of vanquishing dragons. And how she'd like to do it with wisps of hair escaping her armor. She would be drenched in sweat with a nasty gash bleeding into her right eye. Her fingernails would be caked with mud. She might be perched at a precarious height, and her sword would probably be heavy to wield, but vanquish she would.

Still, there was the matter of getting down from the roof.

Aidan

It had been snowing all day. Soft flakes blanketing the city.

Night fell and she knew that his plane would never make it. She leaned back against her pillows and stared at the ceiling. This one time that he was coming to her... he would be deterred. And never come again! Her heart had stirred all day at the sound of his voice on the line. Calling like a normal person from the airport, as if he was some changed human who communicates. Shouldn't he be after eight years?

At last it was 11 o'clock. Everything was quiet and still and white.

Buzzzzzzz.

She yanked the door open.

There he was: tufts of khaki hair sticking out from under an olive green sky cap and a tweed jacket. His bag was strapped across his chest and covered in snow. There he was is her New York. And there Byron wasn't.

Theirs were the very first tracks in the snow as they trudged to the all-night diner. They were the only customers; he slouched to a booth in the back. Anne stretched her legs under the table and rested her feet next to his hips.

Her eyes still made him uncomfortable. She was mad that his hands were still so unrealistically soft.

On the way back to her bedroom, she tried to take his soft hand in her own. He turned away. He wanted to hold her hand and he wanted to taste the white snow in her black hair, but he could not. Yet.

Anne's heart burned with anger and desire.

She buzzed around her apartment in a state of agitated emotion, arranging things and casting pillows about. He was still, and eventually her monologue quavered and her eyes filled with tears. Then he gathered her up in his arms in a quiet embrace. Her breathing slowed to a normal pace at his neck and he bent his head to kiss her. Her hand reached up to touch the jaw that she had known so well.

If only to be covered with snow... always... always...

Paris

Anne had had a rather Dickensian birth. Her mother wept with sorrow when she discovered she was pregnant. And when Anne's father brought home a pink rose because they were going to have a little girl, she wept again at the misfortune of Anne's sex.

It was only natural that Anne had determined to die datedly and dramatically in the flourish of consumption.

But not yet.... not yet....



She cut the nails down on her left hand and tuned the little black guitar in her lap.

"Shattered by your weakness/Shattered by your smile/And I'm not very fond of you..."

She stopped singing and perched the tip of her thumb nail between her teeth. She would have to join up with a band of bohemians who would travel with her to Paris where she would drink wine and sing in cafes until the gray night sky turned to the gray morning sky and the flowers fell from her hair and she was whisked away to bed. Yes, that was it.

"Move over, move over/There's a climax coming my way."

It would be cold red wine out of a glass carafe, but it wouldn't stain her teeth and lips; they would still be white and pink when she opened them to laugh and sing and kiss. And the flowers in her black hair would be the same color as the wine. He would want to untangle one stem and crush the petals on her pale shoulder and kiss the naked spot in her hair. But he would be too scared to touch her. Until she asked him to take her away from the smoke and the din and fell asleep with her cheek between his heart and his shoulder. Then he would touch her lashes and the corners of her lips that turned up so slightly even when she was not smiling.

Anne had a headache and the New York sky refused to rain.

Quite Contrary

Van convinced Anne to climb the stairs to his fourth floor apartment after her work. She was dreadfully tired, but the offer of red wine and a touch for her ailing back could not be rejected.

He settled her on the floor of his lair with a stemless glass and her shoulders between his knees. As he caressed her neck and back with his golden brown hands, he told her a tale of India. The room smelled faintly of flavored tobacco, and Anne closed her eyes and imagined elephants and beautiful bright colors and even Mistress Mary quite contrary.

Van's hands moved to her hair, and she was afraid that he would crush the feathered butterflies she had nestled close to the nape of her neck. But his touch was ginger and expert and harmed nary an ornament. He gently tilted her head back between his hands and freed her forehead of its bangs. She felt cool and exposed and vulnerable. Seamlessly, her naked face was softly grazed by his lips... lips that carried on to claim one side and then the other of her neck.

Anne's eyes shot open and she turned to assume a catlike position facing him. His long lashes and smooth skin were treacherous. His supple, smirking mouth was treacherous.

"Do I taste of soy sauce and mingled sweat?" she asked diffusely.

"Maybe a little bit. But I haven't tasted your mouth."

Figurative feline hairs bristling, she let him take her chin in his hand and kiss her lips, for she was like Scarlett and "should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how."

...

But though his tongue was sweet and soft, Anne knew she shouldn't stay in his land of sun and dust and ivory and blue bottles of gin. Before he could open his eyes, she was out the door, escaping north to the wuthering moors of midtown.

How did her garden grow?

The Game

"Dear Irish 3d..."

Anne recited her clandestine, romantical missive (on the trials and tribulations of Manhattan bathrooms when in the skilled hands of Jim the Super) to a skeptical Amber.

"You're really going to put that under his door?"

"Pourquoi pas? If he doesn't understand it then he isn't funny and I want nothing to do with him!"

Anne's brazen Frenchness began to quiver and fade as she flitted down to the third floor and heard multiple Irish voices roaring from the environs of apartment 3d. Gulping, she patted down her hair and applied her lipstick, lest anyone should happen to peer out of the peephole. Assuming a ridiculous yet clearly necessary posture, Anne crawled along the hallway towards Irish 3d's door with her clever note in her clever mouth. At last her destination was reached, and Anne thrust her vessel beneath his door with particular gusto and abandon. The voices inside the infiltrated apartment came to an abrupt halt. They were undoubtedly silenced by the sudden Trojan Horse in their living room.

Clamoring to her feet, Anne guffawed back up the stairs and into the open arms of 4c. Seeking prostration on the futon, she told Amber of her near scrape with detection.

And they watched the space between the door and floor with anticipation.

Weeds

Anne pressed her forehead against the windowpane and looked into the night. Their front-seat murmurs were barely audible. So she closed her eyes on the black and thought of him. O, how wrong to think of him! But the glass was cold and the music was swirling around her ears and her heart longed. Her wrists were in his hands and he could do what he liked.

He came up behind her and placed his hand on her neck. He was desperate to have her. And she was trembling in expectation.

She opened her eyes in the garden, and he was not even looking at her. He was intent on his article and his cigarette and his tea. She shifted miserably on her lichened bench and tried to plunge into her diary. She couldn't stay in such close proximity to him, and a circular walk brought her to an isolated seat hidden from his table and the chicken.

Singing under her breath, she began to craft a daisy chain out of a patch of weeds. Before long, he came striding around the corner almost angrily.

"Didn't you hear me calling your name?"

She wished she had. She loved to hear him say her name.

"I hope you're not over here in a mood."

Of course she was melancholy. But wasn't that her own business?

"No, just making you something."

She placed the crown of daisies on his head and proclaimed him King of the Garden. He was charmed and really looked at her for the first time that day. What a curious little child she was. What was her mood about? The sun reflected off of her black hair, and she looked almost radiant in her innate sadness.

He was suddenly hot and tugged his sweatshirt off in a violent motion.

"Ohh!" Anne let out a small but pitiable cry as her crown of weeds was crumpled in the action.

"Oh no, I forgot I was wearing this! Well, it would look better in your hair anyway," he stammered, thrusting the ruined flowers back at her. He awkwardly turned and walked back to his table, leaving her standing alone with the crown in her hand.

That night he slept again on the train, and she held his head in her arms.

Sam

Sometimes Anne fell in love twenty times in a day.

On the subway to work, she felt the warmth of a sleeve resting against her bare arm.

"Don't get any big ideas/They're not gonna happen," Thom told her as she closed her eyes and rattled along.

All of this. All of this. All of this. The first night, he held her on his knees with her head curled against his chest like a child. Then he took her face gently in his hands and looked into her eyes. "All of this just because you got silly one night and decided to talk to me." All of this. All of this. All of this.

But Bleecker Street came and she opened her eyes to the world around her. Directly across the street from her menu board were three European men in the pub window. French, she was fairly certain. They soon abandoned their post for a smoke outside, and she saw more clearly the third man who had been hiding behind the molding. He was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that sent a painful tingle through her body and limbs and fingers and made her heart hurt.

Tall, straight, and limber, he looked up at the sky. A cigarette perched between his red lips and a cloud of smoke circled his head and climbed up towards the clouds. His jeans were rolled up beneath his knees, exposing his calves. How Elizabethan it was, Anne thought, to notice those calves. She imagined herself a Phebe in the forest..."His leg is but so-so...." His head turned and looked her directly in the eyes, halting her prattling imagination.

The French re-entered the pub and Anne returned to her work of flitting about and laughing and pushing tables and doling out menus and pretending to notice them no more. But she saw them talking, she saw them watching her, she saw them finish their drinks, she saw them pay the bill, and she turned away because she couldn't bear to see him leave.

But when next she turned around, Beauteous had crossed the street and was upon her. Towering over her. And looking down at her with fantastically icy blue-green eyes. He was not French.

"All three of us fell in love with you from across the street. But I loved you the most," said Sam-from-Boston.

On the second floor fire escape, Jordan Catalano leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair. On a fire escape three stories above Jordan, Van's golden face glowered down at her from a ring of hookah smoke. The man with black hair and perpetually too-short pants passed by on her right. The man who had Aidan's chocolate eyes passed by on her left.

And there was Sam before her.

Walking

It was a three-cigarette walk.

She passed some sailors dining outside of Pescatore.

Then there Andy was through the opened windows of the pub.

"Hiya, Anne!"

Then she turned the block with dexterity, dexterously poising a cigarette between her second and third finger. There was Roberto outside of Ashton's.

"Hola, Mommy! Hola, Anneceta!"

"Yeah, si, hola!"

The outside tables were filled with American suits who lost their words, their train of thought as she walked by. Gutless suits who lost their words and wished they could be strong enough to challenge her. Smoke in their faces and a knowing turn of her lips was enough to set them off for a week of confusion.

La-tee-da.

Cameron

Anne stood with her forehead against the glass, looking down at Times Square. Thirty stories below, the entire city was sprawled beneath her both in glittering illuminations and black corners. There were the marquees on which she would never be. There were the margaritas she would be drinking if she weren't so hungover. There were the tourists she once was. There were the New Yorkers she now was. She knew that he was changing clothes behind her and she didn't dare turn around.

With her thumb, she rubbed the smudge her forehead had made on the window.

Click.

He was safely in the bathroom. She walked around his bedroom (a cubicle made almost entirely of glass), running her fingers over every object. There was an Eliot novel on his shelf. She sat down on the edge of his bed and tried to imagine him reading Middlemarch. She couldn't! Lying back, she tried to imagine her head on his chest and his hand in her hair. That she could imagine. Oh, what in the world was she doing in his bedroom!

Thud.

The sight of a recumbent Anne on his bed with her eyes closed made him extremely nervous. But she was on her feet before he could entirely process the feeling. He pulled on his navy suede shoes.

On the subway downtown, they held onto the same pole. He looked down at her, she up at him.

In the movie theatre, they sat close together, almost touching. It was like being in Jr. High again. She could feel the heat off his sweater and she didn't dare move her elbow. He never shifted to his left, she never to her right. Several times he spoke to her and kept his eyes on her as she remained glued to the screen. "Are you alright, too scared?" he asked.

As the credits were rolling, she accidentally touched his shoulder. It was almost painful to withdraw her hand.

He suggested they walk across town. Her sensible shoes and the welcoming night air agreed with his plan. As Broadway and 5th Avenue and Madison were conquered and left behind, her dread of his feelings, fears that he might not like her, melted away. The buildings were beautiful, the sky was beautiful, sidewalk detritus and the Kmart window display were beautiful. Talking to him was simple and funny and even joyful.

She whirled away out of the night and down the subway stairs before he had a chance not to kiss her.

Maggie the Cat

Anne sat with her legs stretched straight across the sofa, her hands underneath her thighs. The trees outside her window danced violently in the golden sun of afternoon...their leaves like fluttering petals on a sequined dress. But the low drone of the window unit AC drowned out the sound of the botanical Charleston-in-double-time. How wretchedly clinical it was to stay cool.

Click and the AC was off. Anne returned to the sofa, stretched her legs out straight, and tucked her hands underneath her thighs. Resume thoughts.

Resume.

Thoughts.

She had none. Besides those sort of cloudy, sultry Tennessee Williams kind of thoughts. The kind of thoughts that make you appreciate the beads of sweat on your collarbone and wish that there was someone else around to lick them off.

No, those thoughts would not do.

She freed her hands and examined her wrists. Fragile and delicate. Perhaps her most snappable feature. The white skin was almost like gossamer tissue paper or the pages of a pocket Bible. With pronounced blue veins crisscrossing just below the surface, like tributaries flooding porcelain banks. She had always feared the transparency of her skin. Being forced to see that death was eminently possible since life was made possible by such fragility alone. It made her heart pound in her chest and it made her cry.

No, those thoughts would not do either.

She didn't really smoke, not really, but she needed a cigarette and a walk and an introduction. The need to feel his hand on her neck was too overwhelming and required eradication by yellow cabs and small dogs and subway grates and gathering clouds.

Fire Escape

Anne rested her cheek against the wooden menu board and gazed at the second floor fire escape across the street.

Come out! Come out! Come out!

Usually he would appear... once, twice... or maybe three times in a night. Out he would crawl from the window, drink in hand. And then he'd light a cigarette and knock on the window next door. Pudgy-boy-next-door-who-is-always-watching-TV might stick his head out in response. Or give a protective pat to make sure his sad herb garden is not being tread upon.

He never seemed to look down--only exposed to Anne the underside of his dirty white socks. Only once had she seen him on the street. And then it was such a flurry. Before she could even take in his level proximity, his bike was saddled and he was flying off downtown, leaving her to suffer the night alone.

And what did he do? Did he work? He was never in the office. Always up there writing something. And smoking. And drinking. And having friends. In his early-nineties blue jeans and tee-shirts splattered with paint. Were they paint-covered or did she just want him to be an artist?

His body was agile though, like an actor's body. Like he could easily touch his toes. Like his own tension was shed so that he could take on the tension of a number of roles. Like he was relaxed in a way that she never could be.

Come out! Come out! Come out!

She kicked nothing in particular with her black high-top sneaker and then itched the back of her knee.

Ah! At last, up came the sash! It was dark, but she knew his outline well as he silhouetted in the window. He was alone, and his face was ignited to her as he lit his cigarette. He leaned back against the ladder, Jordan Catalano-style...and ran his uncigaretted hand through his longish hair.

Delicious.

Andy

Andy was so Irish, in a way that reminded her of her childhood. And of all the things she had promised herself she would do. Of course he had lived in Camden town. They had probably passed on the street. When she had escaped and wandered the maze of stalls alone and purchased her first pair of Doc Martens at fourteen (which she proudly slung over her shoulder in a bright plastic bag.) Or when she had escaped again at nineteen and bought her first piece (which she guiltily wrapped in tissue and stuffed in her pocket.) The bowl was white porcelain, etched with black paint, and it would later seek its demise on a Bostonian sidewalk.

Then, again enslaved, she rested her chin on top of a half-pint glass in a Camden beer garden and watched three Irishmen in the sun. The words of her enslavers floated (or rather jabbed) over her head, ignored. The Irish were shirtless and pink from the sun, talking loudly and gesturing dramatically. And really more boys than men. Their bodies were yet impervious to gain, their tattoos and pale blank spaces taut over sinewy flesh.

Andy reminded her of being ten-years-old in Cardiff. Watching an Irish band from behind her brother's elbow. No, watching hooligans watching an Irish band. Irish hooligans, she assumed. But they could have been Welsh. But all she saw was skin and mohawks and legs wrapped around shoulders.

At any rate, there he was behind the bar. Anne clutched her knees and her vodka tonic (she forgave him for giving her the wrong drink.) He rested his hand dangerously close to her as he obtained a drink order from a German tourist. His hands were feminine and white, and his fingers spread over the mahogany bar elegantly. She wanted to touch his rings but she did not. Instead, she turned to Sarina and prattled about something. But there was that ringed hand again, caressing an India pale ale.

"Have you got a cigarette, lovie?"

Anne fished through her bag and pulled out an empty carton of Marlboro Lights. Fucking typical.

But Andy served last call. And Anne bestowed a lipstick lip-print on Sarina's forearm and put her in a cab. And then Anne collected Andy off the street and scooped up his piercings and his tattoos and his dreadlocks. He was lost.

All his years were written on his face in an appealing way. There was India, there was London, there was Dublin, there was New York. She rambled on, pretending not to watch him performing her favorite male activity of rolling a joint. Her knee hit the coffee table and caused the record to skip. There was his strange laugh. She wanted to stand up and trace the lines on his forehead with her fingertips.

But then he looked at her. And in the light of her living room, his blue eyes seemed candidly earnest. And that exposed look of maybe-wanting-to kiss her couldn't have been right. It was innocent. It couldn't have been right.

There was something about him that made her excited about living life.

Leaving

Aaron climbed the stairs to her 8th floor apartment for the last time. He opened the door and found Anne standing in the middle of a tower of boxes and tissue paper with her hands on her hips.

"Hi."

He approached as she backed away, until she was trapped against the window. His coat was wet with rain and she pealed it back from his shoulders. It fell to the floor. She pressed three fingers into the middle of his heaving chest. Her eyelids closed, squeezing silent tears down her cheeks. Aaron followed the tributaries softly with his lips.

Goodbye bye bye. She scratched "New York" with black sharpie on box after box.

And she suddenly felt relief that she was getting out.

Apt 3d

Upon concluding her twelfth hour of serving pasta, Anne climbed the stairs to her apartment on a Sunday midnight. There was a clamor from the third floor, and she peered around the wrought iron railing with trepidation.

Jim the Super. Always a nightmare apparition at that hour.

"Young lady, young lady... you goin' up to 4c? Uh, I'm doing a little work up there. There has kind of been a bathroom emergency."

"Emergency? Can I use the shower?"

Jim chuckled and rubbed his palms together. "Um, you could maybe wash your hands if you wanted to.... but that's about it. You see, the commode is kinda in the middle of the floor."

Behind Jim, the door to apartment 3d opened and produced a light-haired Irish man. He stepped into the hallway and put his hands in his pockets.

"You can come use my shower."

Anne reddened. Though she stood three steps above him, they were practically eye-to-eye. She didn't respond.

Jim preceded her into the bathroom. He crouched over a hole in the floor where the toilet had been and shouted down to the plumber in the apartment below.

Anne guffawed. The commode certainly was in the middle of the floor, resting on a wooden plank. Large chunks of tile were stashed in the bathtub for safe keeping, along with the trash can and myriad electrical equipment. Still crouched, Jim wheezed and wiped his brow on his shirtsleeve. He appeared to Anne as lankly perched at death's door amidst a war torn Gaza Strip.

"Well, what did you think of him?"

"Who? 3d?"

"Yes, my man, 3d! He asked me if you were seeing anyone. I said I did not think so, I did not think so!"

Delightful. Simply delightful to be set up by the Super.

As water washed over Anne's shoulders in a vacant shower down the hall, she mentally composed a note that began, "Dear Irish 3d."

Alone

His middle finger touched the long scar on her forehead.

"How did you get that?"



She couldn't feel the pressure.

Anne opened her eyes. He wasn't there and the snow was falling heavily outside.

Still, as she turned over, he kissed her between her shoulder blades.

No. She extended the liquid liner past the end of her eyes. She pulled on black leggings and a sweater.

She was the only soul on Fifth Avenue at 4am. She opened her arms to embrace the darkness and shouted, "I want to Play Doh wave forms in the hideaway!"

Sometimes New York was exhilarating. When it was her New York, observed between her finger and thumb. When she was in love in her bed or on the inside of a window and a latte or propped up in a train. When she pulled out purple flowers from the bodega. And when she could see the clouds in the darkness, above the juxtaposed old and new buildings on Second Avenue.

MacDougal

It felt like Europe down on MacDougal Street.

No, rather oddly, it felt like a stylized set for A Streetcar Named Desire. The street was so narrow and the opposing apartment buildings were attempting to steal kisses from each other: leaning either in poverty or sexual necessity. It was balmy and she could almost see Blanche crawling onto to the fire escape and wiping her brow. Or Stanley Kowalski approaching her from the pub across the street. If only Stanley Kowalski were approaching her from the pub across the street...

"It looks like so much fun in there," she accidentally said out loud.

Didn't matter. No one was listening. She sang to herself as she rocked back and forth on her heels.

"What ya got got got to lose..."

The breeze ruffled her skirt, exposing two skinny, stockinged legs.

Anne dreamed another dream with her eyes open.

Dry grass itched into the exposed bit on the small of his back. He didn't mind. It was one of his favorite feelings. It meant that it was warm enough to sprawl outside under a blanket of sun. A knee had displaced his hat so that it fell at a loose angle across his forehead. Suddenly, it was her knee that his head rested upon. And she swept off his hat. Linking her hands under his chin, she blocked the sun and kissed him upside down.

"Well, hello."

She traced the line from the top of his forehead down his nose to his lips. And there her fingers took a right turn to the edge of his mouth. Where she lifted them and kissed where they had been.

"Anne!" A couple of sticky menus were thrust into her hands.

Right, she was fishing for customers. Fishing, fishing, fishing.... ugh, accidental eye contact with an unsavory man. She frowned and flattened her bangs with her palm.

The illustrious King of the Kebab Carving (donning his customarily bizarre hat) placed his massive hands on the windowsill and hollered across the street to a trash vendor (Doner $5.50.) Three Irish men poured from the adjacent pub and lit cigarettes. The sky was a false pink and purple technicolor.

Pippin

Something of interest would inevitably blow in behind Anne and Summer before midnight. When the tightly private conversation of an earlier evening was extended to the length of the bar and their rolling eyes had been checked. Then would something good appear.

"Here they go," muttered the bartender.

"What's your name?" Summer extended a hand in the direction of a James Mcavoy face while Anne buried her nose in a Stella glass.

Pippin. His name was Pippin.

Anne flushed crimson and rearranged her knees on the stool. She narrowed her eyes at the Scotchman and began to diatribe Great Expectations.

Observing that her work was done, Summer clutched her vodka, soda, and orange and angled for the jukebox. She was quite beautiful. Though small, she squared her shoulders and walked with confidence. Her mile long divine wine and black hair was pulled up in a knot at the top of her head, and she looked like she could be a dancer.

Summer's face was delightfully complicated. But her eyes defined her beauty. Inconceivably large and thick-lashed, they flashed and commanded and sympathized.

"The Drifters... The Drifters..." She flicked through the album pages and punched in "Saturday Night at the Movies."

Turning on her sequined heel, she saw Anne off her stool and backed up to the bar in a questionable embrace. A lusty Pippin had silenced Estella's Dickensian mouth with surprising dexterity.

"It looks like our friends are getting along quite well."

An entirely bald, Irish Mr. Clean placed a large hand on Summer's olivey bare neck, and she accepted her wingman duties with grace.

Mr. Clean owned a pub on 52nd street, and he promised Anne a real live full pint.

"Come on!" Anne grabbed Summer by the hand and dragged her outside. In the exit lights of the bar, she saw Mr. Clean's face smeared with red lipstick and she doubled over with laughter. Summer tried to light a cigarette, but Anne required both hands to dance her down the sidewalk. "Look what you did to Mr. Clean! Pippin, that's his name right? Yes, great expectations Pippy Pip won't tell me what he does! Don't you think he's James Mcavoy's brother?"

It was only too delicious to hide from the snow behind stained glass windows and a beer. Or ten. Their bar was transporting and touched upon an insatiable nostalgia for any time but the present. A euphoric vision of New York City.

Martin

Summer grasped Anne's collar and hissed in her ear, "The man behind us is staring at you."


Anne shrugged. Doubtless disgusting.

"No, he's truly adorable. Completely your type. Go to the bathroom and I'll start the conversation."

Anne rearranged the black curls over her shoulders in the luminescently complimenting light of the bathroom. After staring into Summer's complexly beautiful face all night, her own eyes seemed small and insignificant. And her little nose perfect for a patronizing finger tap. Wretch.

She craned around the jukebox. Tall and slender, there he was willowing over Summer. A black scarf was tightly wrapped around his neck, framing quite a boyish face, profusion of dirty blond hair, and strangely dark eyes that called to her mind Romeo's Ethiop ear.

The conversation happened in a dreamy haze of barroom bliss. The stool became a nest which she nestled into while looking up at a bright face. Anne was filled with an insatiable warmth of glass mug grasping and cool grays and greens and porcelain whites.

Martin's friends left. He asked her if she would mind if he stayed. He touched her apparently supplicating lower lip with his thumb.

Most moments he seemed more French than German. She found herself abstractedly wondering if she could ever love someone who wasn't defined by the English language? Through translation... she always felt that she must not be reading what was intended. Those couldn't have precisely been Dostoevsky's words. Was she reading Tolstoy for plot instead of nuance? She could not express herself or experience someone else as plot. No, no indeed.

Their arms intertwined as he walked her home. He embraced her and her tired neck collapsed for a kiss. His palm on her cheek and his fingers in her hair made her feel quite small.

"I want to show you where I lived when I studied in Paris."

She let him in.

"You really do have Goethe and Mann on the shelf over your bed. You are not what I expected to find tonight."

Anne surveyed her find. He sounded funny in the quiet.

Start

Nestled between precarious shelves of cascading poetry volumes, Anne stared at the bald head of her professor.

"I'm moving to New York after graduation. I've decided."

"Well. Good. Is that good? How do you feel about it?"

He adjusted his glasses and put his finger tips to his lips in wait of her response. It was her customary agitated reflex to cross her arms over her chest and clutch her shoulders.

"Are you cold?"

"No... no."

Un-clutch.

"Yes, it's good. I think. I don't know."

Clutch.

"I'm hoping, thinking that I will grow to love it. But it's not London. I tried to make it feel more like home the last time I visited. It didn't. But maybe it could be. I don't know. If I can't be in London, it's the only other place I can be."

He frowned. And then recommended Sylvia Plath's New York memoirs. She nodded while immediately mentally vetoing the idea; she didn't need a like-minded companion under her bell jar.

It was, at least, raining as she climbed the hill to her apartment.

Once safely sequestered on the 8th floor, she sank into the doorway of her bathroom. There she could best hear the rain rattling the metal air vent above the shower. But it was never loud enough, never! She was always craning her neck, resting her head on windows... and the rain was never loud enough!

Anne's eyelashes were already wet. She didn't mind crying.