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.