Scattered amongst the cultivars and water features and permanent installations, the sculptures, the hedgerows, the mazes, the follies, scattered amongst them on the public squares are lawns: small white tents where jewelers and coopers and watercolorists and sculptures and coutouriers and haberdashers and all manner of craftspeople and artisans are demonstrating their craft or playing their wares. By the reflecting pool, a classical guitarist picks out one of Bach's lute suites on his guitar, the ornamental surety of the baroque pieces a perfect counterpoint to the groomed order of the botanic gardens. There is a biergarden, rather makeshift, and an Apothecary selling all manner of edibles and pure, raw bud and a hare krishna in orange robes handing out literature and a hippie cultist rolling paper beads from strips of magazines and there is champagne to be had and strangers picnicking on the lawn and it is late in the afternoon, not yet twilight, a golden hour, heading toward sunset, full of that inevitable melancholy and a sort of pollen-drunk sweetness -
and there is amongst all these people and amidst all things things a certain pathway with a certain round gate, surrounded by a profusion of greenery. The gate feels like a secret, doesn't it, an anchored sort of secret, a place that does not speak, but simply is.
On the other side of the gate is a bench, shaded by an arbor. The wisteria is not yet in bloom.
Two people are curled on that bench. One's a tall guy, blond hair and a blond beard, tattooes covering his arms. He's sitting upright, long legs kicked out in front of him, crossed at the ankles, an arm wrapped loosely around the torso of the other person, who is a girl, with long blond hair, half-shaved, a solid dozen silver hoops through her left ear, a tangle of bracelets on her wrists, wearing a lovely - transparent white sundress over lacey black lingerie, a matched set, from bra to garters and everything in between.
They are sharing a joint.
There's a bottle of champagne nestled on the ground by his left foot.
DelilahHere is the round gate. Just by the green. Here is the Ecstatic and the Ecstatic's devotée. Just by the round gate. Here is a pair of people whose conversation sounds like the chirruping of birds, twittering as they pass through the gate and sideglance toward that now-common (never uncommon) earthy smell and pause that sideglance because don't they make a nice picture those two curled on the bench. Behind the pair of people a solitary young woman.
Here is Delilah, rolling seven paper beads in the palm of her hand because she stood by the hippie cultist and watched her make them in a 'plash of sunlight tinted that late afternoon gold that breaks the heart because it's dark with sun's blood and she chose not to resist the urge to have them. Their neat little spirals. Their tight little colours, their secret origins: who knows what article that green and blue and black one belonged to. There is one bead which has a thread wrapped around it and Delilah, when she stops rolling the seven paper beads in the palm of her hand to pocket them instead, puts the one bead with thread between her lips because it is an urge she wants to indulge.
Here are things about Delilah. Delilah has hair that is longish and blond, but it is the kind've blond that soaked up dawn's pale sort of gold and now flings it back regardless of time like dawn's a stained glass halo all full of light and it's the kind've blond that where it is shadowed it darkens quite suddenly to a barbaric and brassy colour. Delilah has skin that has a gold cast too, a broad brow and broad cheekbones and a broad nose too but a mouth as neat as a valentine and pale without makeup. Delilah is not wearing makeup, and her eyelashes are that darker barbaric brass colour, and her eyes are water, and she has a paper parasol in case of rain but it is dangling from a string at her wrist.
Here are more things about Delilah: Delilah, who like a smoker who smokes so often and whose clothes will always stink of ash and nicotine carries with her this hint of shying radiance [the spangle-skid skimming of gold a-shining through dew a-spreading all new new bright first gold] threading into a brightness, has an expression that is both guilty and sorrowful on her face, even though she is sucking perhaps ill-advisedly on that bead, pausing at the round gate after the chirping couple has moved on on on like a round gate is a suspicious thing or like the shadow, or maybe like somebody who just likes hanging out in or by doorways, and then she ducks through and
Here is one more thing about Delilah. Maybe two more things. She has her ipod earbuds in her ears, so she does not hear the world around her; also, when she notices the two blond people smoking a joint on the bench her first thought is oh
it's that beautiful girl from the gallery
and oh!
it's that guy? the guy with the beautiful girl from the gallery
and the potato chips.
Recognition chases the guilt and sorrow away; makes her swallow the bead so it clicks against her molars and she thinks, why, you have just swallowed that paper bead, Delilah, and then she thinks
I can see that girl's underwear
well, maybe that's the point
And then she gives this half little wave; one couldn't call it uncertain. It's not uncertain; it's just a half little wave.
Serafíne"Hey." This is Dan, that guy from the gallery, the guy from the gallery and the potato chips. He is distinctive, isn't here, all buttoned up in a short-sleeve check-flecked collared shirt with a real bowtie in a sharply contrasting color, blue and orange against pink and gray, his arms covered in tattoos so thorough and intricate they become, from a distance, a distinctive sort of brocade.
Delilah is waving so he gives her a flash of a smile; white teeth inside the rough, bristling edges of his curling blond beard.
There's no recognition in his eyes, no singular spark-of-it, just a general willingness to say hello to anyone who says hello to him. Call it: an openness to the world and all its wonders.
Then, see. Just as she swallows that bead, a different sort of spark, a broad note of spreading recognition, "Oh hey! The chip-girl.
"Tell me you stomped them like grapes."
And the girl, head cradled in the guy's lap, her own hair (which is golden but see: a borrowed gold, for it is natively dark and Delilah can see those roots beneath the gold, or in the fuzzy bristle of new growth from her right temple to the base of her right skull) spilling in long, looping whorls right down to the grassy sedge, is holding the joint with a marked delicacy, the way a great lady might hold her teacup, mouth open but just, as if she sipping at the smoke.
Instead she is exhaling, this delicate coil that spirals upward, dissipating slowly into the shadows of the low-hanging wisteria, which is not yet in bloom.
And turns, too, a moment later, as if she were a little bit unmoored from time, refusing, absolutely refusing, the tyranny of the now in favor of the yes and the when and the then.
Sera holds out the joint: invitation, offering.
That's how it works.
Delilah"I have never known a grape to stomp," Delilah says, the cant of her chin sedate, demure, the slope of her shoulders a crisp line of elegance; at odds with the sudden daybreak crack of a grin which follows after like a surprise. "Though perhaps one day they will rise up to revenge themselves for the martyrs who are taken to the stomping vats and made into wine." A beat; then as if remembering that most people would find that statement odd, she adds absently, "More likely than chips rising up I think."
Beat. "Hey."
Delilah has paused, right? Has stopped by the round gate [welcome in] into and out of the green [it's both; that's the thing about gates; now farewell] and isn't she steady, isn't she solid, a white-throated sacrifice on an altar- dignified. Delilah has stopped and she grinned but her attention does seem to drift more often to the striking girl-around-her-own-age whose head is in Dan's lap; this has nothing to do with Dan, all to do with Serafíne.
The bead clicks against her teeth and she covers her mouth, the gesture dainty, lady-like, and spits the bead into her palm; she is not abashed- as if that was the politest thing to do.
And her pausing becomes less a moment's rest and more a hesitation when Serafíne offers her the joint. "I have never," she tells them both, a thread of apology twisting through her tone.
"You guys are artists. Right? You've got to be." Stubborn.
SerafíneThe girl with her head in Dan's lap makes a noise, a quiet noise, a noise beneath-her-skin, and that noise seems somehow both livid and lived-in. Delilah has never and Serafíne gives her a slant-eyed glance, takes that in, the apology and the revolution of grapes and withdraws the offer of the joint and holds it up to Dan instead,
who waves it away,
so she keeps it, all to herself, shifts her grip on the paper from that pinched hold to something rather more loose, holding it not like a joint, but rather like a cigarette, allowing that arm to trail down and away from her body.
The long, pale strip of her inner arm interrupted everywhere by small scrawls of dark ink. And Dan's about to answer her with something when Sera smiles, see -
this grin. A kind of visceral bemusement that she wears like a string of lights inside her body.
"Why do you say that?"
Delilah"Because I," and she wavers, not out of uncertainty, but out of a desire -
and it is not even remotely difficult to see; Delilah is transparent; Delilah is a rim of water over some gold-gleaming treasure of a thing, but if you look you know the exact shape of the treasure; can mark its outline, call it a chalice or a key without difficulty; read the shape of the submerged door. Delilah is not a paper lantern because paper lanterns only show the shadows
- to be as truthful as possible. Because I - she says, and then - " - think it is true." Of course. The best reason to say anyting. This is not said helplessly, mind: just stubbornly, with the curl of a smile that wants to be coy the shape of it is coy but her eyes are so far removed from coy that there is nothing to it. The coy shape of her mouth becomes the possibility of mischief in her eyes; there is that.
"You're both inked. You're curled up together like a spotch of melody on paper. Uh, you shaved half your head."
"Even if you don't do something artistic with your time I bet you're - " a pause; not stricken, but quite suddenly conscious of perhaps saying too much. There is no point in talking talking talking just to hear yourself speak and she already said the true thing:
She said it because she thinks it's true. She doesn't need to really know why she thinks it's true. All the little signs.
SerafíneSera is beneath the arbor and while the sun remains in the sky, its light is slantwise, see, and she and Dan are in a pool of shadow, a puddle of it. Brightness all around, so Sera's eyes are dark and there is something reflective, which resembles a knife though - it should be noted - a knife with neither handle nor blade, just an edge, but she's smiling, taking another drug from her joint, though this one is easier, less intent, see.
There are secrets beneath her skin.
--
"I'm a producer and a songwriter," Dan tells Delilah, with another flash of a grin, his right hand settled in a thoughtless, protective caress the crown of Sera's head, smoothing her curls beneath his rough hands. "Sera, she's just magic."
Sera tips her head back, then. Looks up at Dan, and smiles.
Then back to Delilah.
"Would you like to sit with us?" Sera asks, a note of errantry hooked into the shape of her brow. Please do note: she has not yet made any move to uncurl herself or sit up to make room for Delilah, no.
DelilahDelilah curls her hair behind her ear; uses her whole hand to do it and her hair whispers against her knuckles. The gesture is eloquent as it is the shape consideration takes, the shape readyness takes; a director's choice.
"Yes," she says, and if Sera is - we have noted - not yet making any move to uncurl herself or sit up or make room for Delilah, if - as some might suspect - that may fall to Dan if it falls to anyone - and some who suspect promptly begin to argue themselves out of their suspicions, citing past generousities - well. It need not be necessary; Delilah is not exactly shy.
She ducks around the arbor; comes at the bench from the green side, comes at it from a dappling - a glissando - of slanting light; of dusking gold, and out of this she drops to take a place. That dusk light: doesn't it pale where it strikes her, however briefly, and become more fine-spun and more tenuous. The leaves rustle, the vines too; and around the corner she pulls herself up with ease to sit, mother fucking gracefully, on the bench's back. Or if there is no back, there is a cement pot with climbing herbs and she seats herself on that.
"So your name is Sarah? I'm Delilah."
Delilahooc: grr, c&ping the last line should be
Her eyes go wide; thinkthinkthink.
SerafíneSera issues the invitation and makes no move to make-space, leastwise, not until Delilah curls her hair behind her ear and says,
Yes,
And then Sera lifts her long legs, the sweet layers of the sundress all trimmed in eyelet lace like a froth around her knees drift like clouds. See: Sera is not sitting up, precisely, so much as making room for Delilah to hold her legs the way Dan holds her head, cradled in his lap. Perhaps Delilah still circles the arbor, climbs over the back, sits, quite neatly, on the spine. If so, Sera turns so that she is laying down on her back, looking up through the dark-falling leaves of the wisteria, through the trellis, all shadowed, to the last points of brightness in an impossibly blue sky.
Smiling up into the blue,
"Serafíne. Everyone calls me Sera. This is Dan.
"Everyone calls him Dan. You've seriously never gotten high before?"
DelilahDelilah: she does still circle; does still sit, so precisely; looks pleased with herself for finding that perch, indeed, and sets her ankles together and her feet too (in ballet flats, tapestried with browns and greens and pink-throated drab English countryside birds) so that they are just beneath or beside some part of Serafíne who everyone calls Sera. Her eyes still go wide; she still thinkthinkthinks and reaches into her pocket. A stutter of hesitation; read it in the jerk of her elbow, the drop of her head, hair uncurling from its place behind her ear to brush against her jaw.
"Nobody calls him," and here, her neat little valentine mouth curls coy again although she herself is not coy but does it matter when her mouth is such a coquettish thing? The expression in her eyes a mischief but not a tease?, "Daniel? Biblical names. And ummmmmm," because people make these sounds when they are thinking. "Yes. Seriously I have never gotten high before. Some guy - "
Her expression skips; her mouth twists, wry.
"Almost once. But it wasn't my idea so I didn't, you know? Do you guys want a ... would you like a... Do you like colorful things?"
SerafíneSera has one arm trailing off the bench, down to the mossy ground, and the other arm tucked neatly against the spine of the bench and then abducted across her body, forearm golden (she was made to soak up the sun) against the white sundress, a neat little query across her stomach, and she lays on her back and bends her legs at the knees and draws her feet up so that there is room for Delilah's feet beneath the a-frame of Sera's legs, and the hem of the dress tumbles down to puddle around her upper thighs and here are her stockings, Sera, her garters, her skin.
"His mom calls him Daniel, sometimes," Sera's gaze has tracked back to Dan, she is seeming him upside down and framed against shadow, by a background of light. She is seeing him, and she smiles. " - when she thinks it has been too long since he went home."
The way Sera needs him, one imagines he may never get home.
"You should try it sometime, then.
"When it's your idea. Course I like colorful things," Sera says, though she is wearing - see - black and she is wearing white, and so too are her tattooes, written into her skin in black and white, so is her make-up, dark around her eyes see, more black than anything else.
DelilahSo Delilah pulls the beads, excepting the one she did not swallow, out of the pocket of her jeans, and she leans forward. Expectancy defines the shape of her; expectancly informs the muscles under her skin. Expectancy and a will give it away; she holds her palm down low although with Sera leaning perhaps she'll need to sit up or pull Delilah's hand lower or -
The point is Delilah is the kind of person who is at her most expressive when she doesn't say anything, so the beads on her hand are a gift. Take one. One one one one one.
"Why should I?" Delilah asks, curiously. She rests her elbow on her knee and cups her chin in the palm of her hand. "Why do you?"
SerafíneSera does rise, see. Lifts her left arm from its protective curl over her belly and pushes herself just a bit more upright and holds herself there, all inverse curve, as she reaches out to take one, take one,
one one one one.
Listen, Sera takes two.
She always wants more.
Dan, though, takes none. Sera will keep his gift. Isn't that the way it is. Isn't that the way it always is. Isn't that the way it is always supposed to be.
Sera's gaze drifts up to Dan after she takes two beads. She holds them neatly folded in her palm, while still holding the joint negligently between her middle and index fingers, like a cigarette. Then she glances up, back at Dan, lifts her hand still holding the beads and hands off the joint. He takes it, pinches the ember off rather expertly, waits a moment, then tucks it away in a half-empty box of clove cigarettes he is carrying around for Sera.
"Sometimes it makes me feel like there's a stone beneath my ribs and the stone is neither heavy nor light, but it is stitched into the skin of hte ground beneath me, and sometimes it makes me feel like there is a slow current of light traveling up my spine, see, delicious.
"Sometimes it makes me feel like someone is unzipping something from the crown of my skull and opening me up and sometimes it makes me feel so damn languid I just want to lay in a hammock and have a long, lazy fuck. Sometimes it helps me slough off my skin and sometimes it helps me tear it open.
"That's why I do it. To get me closer.
"These things - " she means the beads. " - are so cool. What are they?"
Delilah"Paper," Delilah says. Meticulously adds: "The lady from the farm, the one that might be a cult, she is rolling them further up the path. I just like them," that coy smile again, and her see-everything-in-them eyes full of emphasis. She does just like them because they are so cool. Delilah: if someone was mean to her, you'd see it. Punch. Bruise. Wound. Or maybe you'd just see the flinch and she'd weather it well, hardly bruise at all.
Quietly, "I don't think I'd like to have someone unzipping something like that. I like my skin."
Delilah does, too. She is comfortable in it; she is possessed by her own body, and her own body is her possession. She knows exactly how to move it, and if sometimes it betrays her what relationship is perfect? And if sometimes she bumps into chip bowls or doors, that has more to do with her imperfect awareness when it comes to the rest of the world, and doesn't happen too too often anyway.
"But have you ever jumped out of a plane or gone underwater base diving?" A pause, and: she can't even pretend like she did the second one; it creeps into her expression, this still-not-abashed yet-confessional quality, "I've never done the second," see? Honest. "I'd like to, but I haven't. But I do like anything that is high up and then you fall."
Serafíne"So do I," Sera returns, lifting her arms above her head, and reaching, reaching, giving Dan the beads the same way she gave Dan the joint the same way she gives Dan everything she receives, so that he can hold on to it for her while she's flying high or coming down or in between. "I like to feel whatever it feels. However it feels. Sometimes when I'm high, I can feel every cell, just breathing, and if I close my eyes, they're all there too, a thousand million iterations of the self, in a slow-descending spiral, smaller and smaller and smalleruntil smaller loses meaning and they are, in any case, growing and growing and growing and I remember that I'm made of anything,
"and everything. And I like it all.
"I gone underwater base diving. I haven't jumped out of a plane. If I did, I'd want to fly, not fall."
Delilah"Hmm. Flying might just be like walking," Delilah says, but with the air of somebody who thinks that maybe they have flown instead of fallen but they were the same thing, weren't they, the feathers of light and the radiance glancing out, they were the same, and it was walking, and it was walking until it was falling and rising and, Delilah.
"I don't think I'd like that," studious, this coming to a decision about feeling whatever it feels however it feels; it's less the words she uses, and more the cast of her expression- you could bronze it.
Shift.
"You're really beautiful," she says, wide eyed; "I mean, really really gorgeous. You're cool too," she tells Dan, so he doesn't feel left out. Pulls her knees up, her feet away from where they'd come to rest on the bench, and sets them on the ground.
"I need to go, but thanks for asking me to sit with you. I don't really," here's a sudden flare-up of that shying-away, a surprised moment of self-examination, "know anybody in this city except my sister, you see."
Serafíne"Yeah? Well," this sunny, summering smile, she was made to be in the sun, "now you know me. Have a good night, Delilah."
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