by Gann, Myles
She held eye contact for only a little before zoning away and mumbling quickly into her drawers and closet. He gently pushed in the kitchen chairs as he passed and noticed the coffee pot running. “Are we drinking coffee?”
“Oh yeah, I’d like a cup.” She emerged from the room and dashed in front of him. “I’ll get it. I must be a proper host. Have a seat; we have time for a quick cup. How do you take it?”
Caleb pulled out the chair again and sat lightly. “Um, I don’t know. I’ve never had any.”
“Good, it’s a bad habit. I only drink some when I have company and they want some, except now. I want some now and obviously you don’t because you’ve never tried it before, but it’s okay you seem like the type to try something new every once in a while.” He watched her pull two cups from the cabinet and add two scoops of sugar to each poured brew. As they were carried by her balanced hands, Caleb noted her blue jeans and replacement white shirt. She set it down in front of him and stepped back. “Some sugar for you and me.”
Caleb smiled at the scratched marks surrounding the faces all over both mugs, and let his smile drag into a calm grin. He looked back to her as she was turned towards the counter. “It needs sugar.”
She whipped around. “What? I put two scoops in.” The cup steamed alone, full of every holdable liquid droplet and vacant of Caleb’s hand, both features going noticed by her humming eyes. “You didn’t drink any…,” she looked ready to mumble incoherently again until she looked at him; his eyes carrying a conceited message over the short distance between them. Her cup was set on the table as she smiled and walked towards him with her hand out-stretched. Caleb took it up before she curled into his lap with her eyes and his ending inches from one another before they kissed; slower, with the lips of each a mimic of calm embrace that enveloped small areas with warmth and a sweetness they’d both discovered an inherent desire. They continued for a few minutes in such an embedded fashion until he pulled away.
“Coffee’s getting cold.”
She smiled with her eyes closed. “You can make the cups tomorrow.”
“No, I like the cups.”
“I told you I like faces.”
“I’m beginning to see the extent of that now.” He gently lifted her to her feet before standing himself. “Museum?”
She nodded her head slightly while smiling. “Get the truck started.”
“You know we don’t have to travel by road.”
“It would be a little weird to see a guy carrying a girl over rooftops. We can go the slow way this time.”
He floated the keys from across the room towards him at the door. “As you wish.”
---
“Kissing, wow.” Alice picked up her jacket, and threw it down again. “You won’t need it you’ll be inside all day. With him. Him again. Everything I think about now can take me back to him. I live with him now. There could be more kissing for us later then…I feel like I just met him and I kissed him. I’ve never done that. That or anything like that. We kissed, why? He never pulled me in to it or pushed me towards it, and it’s not like our lives depended on us kissing, but we did it. We did it more than once. Forty-nine times I leaned in to kiss him. He only did it once. The first time last night. I feel like I needed to kiss him; I needed to be near him and beside him and touch him, and kiss him. I never needed that with David, or Benny, or anybody else ever.” She closed the door behind her. “Look at me now: I’m walking towards him. I know he’s by my car and we’re going to a place I love, and yet I’m babbling and thinking about him and his kisses and his charm and his wit and his brain and his blue center. I feel like everything that comes from inside of him comes from our kisses. He wants to kiss me, to be with me, to hold me, to help me, to be with me, and everything in his eyes tells me that.” She stopped and waited for the low rumbling truck to pull to the curb. “And he kisses me to show me that. He asks me to forget everything I’ve ever known for the chance to be happy with him. I will as he holds me gently as it all slips off my shoulders and forgotten forever, and that it’s with him will make all the difference.”
---
He swung the driver’s side door open for her before scooting over the console and into the passenger seat. Before his body could settle into the mediocre cushion, Alice was around his neck, a loud thump resounding as her head struck the roof before she was able to fully connect with his surprised lips. Caleb laughed with her a little but still treated her tenderly by taking her into his arms. She lay on his chest groaning and laughing in a delirious mix of painful embarrassment. ‘She’ll love mumbling about this soon.’ “You poor thing what were you trying to do?”
She grabbed at the back of his neck and pulled herself up, kissing him lightly at first before giving him several more deeply conceived embraces. “That. Time to go. I’m driving? Of course, because you don’t know where you’re going. All right. Adventure time.”
Caleb was slow to recover from the passionate embrace. “Thank you for the kisses.”
“Don’t thank me silly. I should be thanking you.”
“We’ll thank each other.’
She laughed as they pulled away. “Are you excited?”
“Yes ma’am.” He resigned to the view out of his window for a bit, letting the world pass before his eyes. “What did you and it talk about last night?”
“What you didn’t mention to me yesterday. About David being mean to you.”
“Because that didn’t matter. It is trying to get us to mistrust each other the same as David. They’re both just spinning wheels in the mud.”
“I know. I know you trust me.”
“Do you trust me?”
“I’ll let you know after I tell you something. David wasn’t lying.”
“I know he wasn’t.” He looked towards her. “I can tell when he lies too, and when you lie.”
“Be nice. Anyways, yeah, I first dated Stewart when we were still in New York, then Benny when we first came here, Andrew for maybe a week, and David for the past few months. I saw that they were alone and I know they were in some really dark places, and I wanted to help. So I actually dated them. I only held hands with them. That was as far as any of it went.”
“Why hide that?”
“Because it should bother you.”
“It doesn’t bother me. What would bother me is if you were doing the same thing to me just to cheer me up.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
She turned on to the highway. “No, why would it?”
“You’re into right and wrong I thought? That’s why you threw those guys out.”
“If you did it today I’d be opposed to it, but it’s in the past it’s irrelevant now. I’m hoping you wouldn’t do it again. To anyone.”
“Not just to you?”
“So you are doing it to me?”
“I didn’t say that. I didn’t think that either.”
“Synonyms to you.”
“Don’t be mad.”
He looked up to her completely turned face. “What you can tell my emotions too?”
“Don’t distract me. Just don’t be mad; I’m not doing that to you. I’ve never actually let someone stay over my apartment, or kiss me. You do look desperate though. Well, you did.” They got off an exit and a large cathedral-type building caught Caleb’s eye. “But you don’t now.”
“How do I look now?”
‘Edgy.’
They pulled into a space quietly. ‘I don’t like being told how I feel.’
‘Was she wrong?’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘You can never tell when she’s happy or sad? You should become a doctor with all this Hippocratic styling.’
Caleb went to open the door only to see Alice on the other side of it. She opened it gently and stopped him from emerging. “You look like you’re torn three different ways and don’t know how to sew yourself back again, but I know you’re whole again when it’s just me and you and you’re out of your head. So
, let’s try that for a while.”
“It’s a lie if it’s like that.”
“Then we’ll make it the truth. You’re smart, and I’m…talkative. Between us, we’ve got it solved.”
‘Two defaults don’t make a right.’
Caleb smiled and slid out of the car, but couldn’t shake Alice from his sight. “I don’t know if it works like that. If it does, we’ll find out.”
She smiled a satisfied shine of teeth before wrapping his arm in her embrace. Caleb looked towards the building, and felt less inside. ‘She is going to phase you completely out.’
‘I’m a lot louder than her.’
‘She spreads to me like a gentle mist.’
‘Like a slow acting poison.’
‘As opposed to you being a tumor?’
‘I secrete truth, more like a cyst.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘I’ve found an outside source.’
The grand entrance was both asymmetric and new-age; a wide doorway with a metal gate pulled into itself off to the side while various, angelic children were frozen in rock and time to the left and right. A short step led to a rotunda that was wide at the sides and sharpened at the ends. A large banner screamed “New” in fluorescent pastels above a display in the center that Alice and Caleb naturally travelled towards. “The Three-Dimensional Man: on loan from a museum in New York, comes from an artist that never signed his work.”
Caleb approached the work but kept his distance, walking around to see all faces of the project. The painting was split into three parts that connected triangularly; the first faced the doorway they entered and depicted a visaged man with no face or features. His skin had a bluish-green hue while the background shown a vibrant white ground—‘A beach of white sand,’—and an even cut along the horizon that opened to a peach bouquet across the shades of orange—‘Twilight across a plain sky.’ The man’s feet seemed small in comparison to his upper body, which shown outstretched arms and hands cupping a blue orb that lightly illuminated along its edges. He walked around to the opposite portrait. A small village watched as the orb, now substantially larger than before, fell upon the man from a nearby cliff. From the lofty view, a few peoples in tribal uniforms watched as the orb battled against the man before them, the horizon, and the heavens. Caleb noted the slighted man before the large globe crashing upon him, his shade only slightly darker. “When was this painted? Does it say?”
Caleb walked around to the side with Alice scanning the placard, “They say the paint testing suggests it was sometime around Nazi Germany. The New York people say some soldiers found it in a town outside of where Auschwitz was.”
The third painting stood before him on the right of the opposite two: the subtly outlined orb from the first now conquered the painting with the large man from before nowhere to be found. From behind, the painting projected the orb as big enough to nearly eclipse the earth, but largely unthreatening. There were no lines of movement, or ravenous dark intent; dark space wafted along the background with stray planets seeming too far off to be interested. ‘The man’s still holding it.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘That’s the point.’
“Do you like?”
Without turning to Alice, Caleb smiled. “It’s perfect.”
- - -
“Perhaps it would be best if I sat and watched for now. Have them go about their usual business, David.”
Caleb listened from across the room at their whispered conversation. Power retracted as his will induced, and yet it waited and lounged against the receding line until it was next to Alice’s body. She spoke to Angela and Christopher in a low voice with a smile on her face as Power surrounded her with its clear cloak. He smiled and let Power out a little further as Alice pulled her arms closer to her body and looked around, feeling the warmth created with its encircled form. Alice walked away from the couple with Power following suite; her look traveled to Caleb. It listened closely as she mumbled. “Is this you around me?”
He felt the vibration of her voice across his slightly distorted extension. Caleb allowed Power to gently whisper back to her. “Yes.”
“They’re going to see.”
“You think I care? It’s chilly in here.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“He wants you to be better than fine, remember?”
“You’re doing his bidding now?”
“We see eye-to-eye on an inconsistent basis, but it does happen.”
She walked quickly to her recliner next to him and snatched his hand while leaning next to his ear. “I think he’s starting to warm up to me.”
David finally joined the circle. “Welcome everyone. Benny, let’s go ahead and get your story going.”
Benny stood up with a regular outfit on and a long piece of paper in his hand. “This is called Chaotic Cake. The wedding cake in the middle of the room: a reminder of what has been, would be, might’ve happened, never dreamt. One moment within a moment, muddied with life times of moments. A tethered moment of memory, epicenter to a room of majestic chaos with fluffy frosting. Any of its many features tugging, reeling all people and eyes; forcing the chaos to stop, just a beat, in remembrance of moments passed.”
Caleb was amongst the first to applaud. Benny glared at him. ‘It appears as though he wants you to begin the critique.’
He cleared his throat. “To thine own images be true, noble Benny, and scribe only ever what is known. Allow my speech to trickle in a way most pleasant, and to reveal a most troubling of vises. Amongst the fielding of imagined caravans, thine mind creases more stupendously amongst the bestial, but not along the sculpted landscape. Perhaps the fairness of an entrenched nun would strike against your palate savory?”
Alice smiled sideways at him as he shared eye contact with Benny, who looked down and up repeatedly. ‘You may have flustered him.’
‘I didn’t mean to.’
“I think it was pretty good, but Caleb’s right. You always focus on everything at once Benny. Why not focus on one thing that you love?”
Benny looked hurt. “Words are the filling to all the world though.”
“All the world does not fit into a poem, much as a beating heart cannot always clock the world’s spin.”
“Perhaps there is a beat that pumps to the rotary grind of Earthling spin?”
“That’d be a question for him.” Alice nodded to Mr. Dyllo, who was scribbling along a small legal pad.
“Your feet hasten to jump before the walk. Bring about the winking eye before the setting sun.”
“I think he wants you to focus on something you love before going as broad as you usually do.”
Benny nodded his head and sat down with his eyes darting across the ground. Alice gave Caleb’s hand a squeeze before standing as David announced the small group time. Caleb looked around for a free partner, and Christopher’s movement revealed Lacey’s tiny frame with writhing hands at her waist. He pulled around a chair as she slowly approached and made sure it was a comfortable distance away. She finally sleuthed into the chair. ‘She’s so curled into herself.’
‘So was Alice, and now you’re twenty minutes and an alcoholic drink away from culminating a sloppy union.’
‘I’m positive I won’t be doing that. She’s just afraid.’
“Alice talks a lot about you.” ‘How can you hear that tiny of a voice?’ “It’s good stuff.”
“I’m glad you’ve heard of me a little then.”
He tried to refrain from looking at her face. “What do you think that man’s here for?”
“I don’t care, honestly.”
“You don’t?”
“No, but I do care why you’re here.”
She smiled a little. “I’m here like everyone else is.”
“Almost everyone else in the circle has a highlighted day. Benny does his thing every day, Andrew does his thing some days, but you, Joy, and Stewart barely ever talk, and I’ve only ever talked with Stew while I’ve been here out
of you three.”
“Did you ask them why they’re here?”
“I will once I get the chance. I don’t think Andrew likes me too much, but that may be my imagination.”
“Joy likes you.”
“A lot, I know.”
She pursed her lips and thought. “Why do you want to know why I’m here?”
“Curiosity.”
“It’s not more than that?”
Caleb couldn’t help but read. “It means more than that for you to come here, doesn’t it?” She seemed to be on the edge of answering but didn’t. “Reciprocity, gotcha. When I first came here, there was a deeper reason,” he looked towards Alice’s back, “but I’m not sure now. Maybe there still is I just can’t see it.”
“You seem smart. I’m sure you’ll find it.” She rolled her head to the other side. “I need to be here. Outside, people can be happy or sad, and I panic when they’re sad. People are always happy here.”
“That’s your focus area?”
“I guess if I had one that would be it.” She looked towards Alice. “That’s why I had a crush on Alice.”
Caleb chuckled. “You’re lesbian? Or bisexual?”
She rolled her head back and glanced at his eyes momentarily. “What sexuality do we really have?”
His lips snapped back. ‘A girl that feeds off happiness having a crush on the never-ending-happiness-volcano.’
‘More than that. Look at her eyes when she observes Alice. There’s reminiscence in that gaze.’
“You two dated?”
She smiled again. “For a little, yeah. I think it was to make me feel better. Even so, I hold on to it.”
Caleb felt his heart tug. ‘Alice lied to her. Told her that she wanted to be with her and that they’d be okay forever.’
‘Sometimes it has to happen. People cannot survive on the truth alone.’
He shook his head. ‘We can try.’
“Don’t.”
Lacey rolled her eyes towards his bouncing legs. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it wasn’t real. She lied to you, no matter how good her intentions were. You can’t live in a lie.”