The mansion was full of dark mahogany and aged leather. In the center of the library was a circular fireplace, its ringed mantel threaded with 19th century daguerreotypes of honored ancestors and american heroes. Dressed in graceful balances that stopped just short of formal, the party-goers glowed fabulously in the orange mood lighting striking down from three swan chandeliers.
Thirty minutes in I was losing the nerve to socialize and found myself staring at the small television on the kitchen counter. A grecian couple was adrift in a blue dingy. An unstoppable swashing of lagoon flowers rustled in sync with acts of survival inside the surrounding woods, hunters and their prey, quick shrieks and sudden quiet. Triggerfish-lamps tocking, oars up, as their lips meet, music cued.
An attractive woman was on the verge of handing me a cocktail, but retreated back into the brightness. It took me a few minutes to reconstruct what happened. She set the second drink down on a stool. I pulled off a fast joke; I distinctly recall her giggling. She suggested we dance and so we danced to David Bowie in the empty alcove. I made a move that dropped my eyes shoe-ward and by the fourth beat when I looked up the drink had vanished and I was dancing alone.
I rested my bloodshot eyes whispering round and round to myself “Stay calm, talk, no one is out to hurt you.” as the room slowly pin wheeled. Trying to wipe the images from my mind, these confident grins of men more deserving than I and me melted around the bamboo fingering a long fragile ash. My right hand danced on needles; the sensation quickly began to spread up my arm and across the heart in panic.
Why did Ellen caress my hand and fake concern; weren’t we damaged beyond that years ago? I wish she hadn’t done that, returns me to the morning it all fell apart, crumbled on the floor in a tremor. Since then the senses had grown numb, as ex-lovers do, erased, was the preferable state, but the pathetic wonder-suck was now stirred and she closed ranks surrounding herself with friends.
Behind the bathroom vanity were some strait razors in paper envelopes; I slid one onto my fingers, sat down on the edge of the tub rolling up my left sleeve and began to slice vertically from wrist to shoulder careful not the damage a vein. Blood immediately welled up in a fine red line. I began once more this time pausing at the bicep and pushing the steel corner in deep; I winced releasing the stimulated breath out slowly.
Inside the owner’s bedroom was an imperial japanese painting, on the shelf next to it, pottery fragments dating from the third century. My mind debated whether I should slip a few artifacts in my jacket, eyes cataloging what other valuables could be had and there were many. In the underwear drawer was a silver pistol, I swung it round in the air aiming at my shadow, until the stairs knocked with four soles.
Cornering Ellen in a hallway I wrapped my arms around her, kissing the corner of her mouth, rubbing her shoulders like a dog. She tried to excuse herself to the ladies room, pulling away her elbow. I squeezed harder softly laughing on nerve, spurring the hurting words from my lips that I love her, painfully ricocheting off the sides of my skull, filled with total frustration and let her go.
The party adjourned rapidly. On my bike I followed a car for a mile or two that was on my way home carrying a drop-dead women. We came to rest in front of a brownstone. She entered, turns on the bedroom lights, tousling her strawberry hair free from the bow, closed the blinds and turned off the lights. An early winter front hugged the ground. I unbuttoned my stow-a-way hood teasing it over my head and cinched the collar tight.
That was some dream....you had me riveted