by O. L. Casper
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is fine.” There was a harsh click of the phone and three beeps to indicate the end of the call.
“Jeez, I don’t know how I’ll stand that conceited bitch,” I said, my gaze landing on Julie who had just entered the sitting room. What she was wearing immediately caught my eye—a sheer halter top and a short silk skirt. This was not altogether unusual as we often traipsed around the house in various states of undress, but something about her dress combined with her manner made me feel there was some intention involved.
“You got it!” she said. She raised a bottle of Champagne and shot the cork in my direction. I turned and ducked but it was too late—the cork made an unabashed direct hit on my chin, leaving a mark.
“That hurt, Julie.”
“Do you want me to kiss it to make it better?” she asked. “Come in the kitchen, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
I followed her into the kitchen to the table whereupon I found a chocolate gateaux—my favorite—with burning candles on it. She poured the Champagne into flutes next to the cake.
Tears formed at the corners of my eyes as I surveyed the scene. I couldn’t help it. I was deeply moved by the love and consideration of my dear friend.
“There’s salmon on the stove too, but I figured we’d have the cake first.”
She looked at me in a curious way she had in which she seemed to be able to look right through me. I shook the uncomfortable thought and suggested we get started. After dessert followed by dinner, we went into the upstairs master bedroom—her room—and snuggled under the covers as a blu-ray played. Lightning flashed in the forest without and thunder ripped through the air. Rain blew sideways in pockets. Onscreen, red candles burned next to the title: “Hammer Studios presents.” The somber and haunting melody of a solitary violin came over the soundtrack filling the room with hi-def surround sound. Hammer films were a shared obsession with Julie and me. I often saw my life in the stark contrasts and romantic imagery of the Hammer horror film. The soft Playboy magazine style of lighting, the beautiful actors, the threadbare storylines. There was no coherent story to life anyway so why should a film have one? The slight sense of unease produced by the mythical vampires or werewolves, or in the falsity of the Hammer film sets, more closely reflected the sense of unease given by the horrors of the real world than did any serious dramatic film. The shifting sense of unease I felt about reality came in part from what I felt were false technological advancements. Of the Henry Ford school of thought (not believing in the existence of any kind of world or history before my birth and that there will be no world after my death), I felt that all technological advancement was really a sort of deceptive magic with convenient miraculous explanations like the idea that there were satellites in space which transmitted our text messages and phone calls, or that there was some invisible “internet” which transmitted our emails and suspended websites floating in “cyber space.” These ideas were as absurd and ridiculous to me as the theory that humans came from apes or the theory behind Hitler’s eugenics and the practice of social Darwinism. Why should I believe in a bunch of nonsense merely because a group of self-proclaimed “experts” tells me it’s true? Invariably what’s held as sacred truth today is disproven tomorrow and new views come into vogue. The earth was flat and the sun and the stars moved around it, then it became round and revolved around the sun, tomorrow it will no longer be round or revolve around the sun but something else entirely will take its place.
These thoughts and the questioning of conventional wisdom was an integral element in the longest lasting friendship of my life, that with Julie. And that night, though it was unsaid, we felt that perhaps we were losing one another. I watched Julie as she watched the screen. The light of flame from the hearth in her room gave her the appearance of constantly changing form as the fire twisted and pulsated behind her. She took on an almost reptilian look at times. Snakelike eyes.
She turned her head and caught me looking at her. At first she smiled, then she looked quite serious, almost longingly. From the depths of my soul came the desire to give expression to this tremendous sense of love rising in me. In my mind it was not a sexual desire but more a deep-seated need for increased intimacy and greater depth in our unfulfilling lives. Next to this vast sense of unity, of sharing the same universal soul, the circumstances of our lives seemed far away, like remote villages so far on the periphery of this all-consuming lightness of being that they seemed nonexistent. We lost ourselves in effervescent radiant jubilation.
In the physical world, she removes her short skirt and sheer halter top and I remove my top, leaving only my panties—I had taken off my rain-soaked jeans before we ate. She looks at me languorously as if overcome by desire. Her movements are hypnotic like those of a snake charmer. She climbs on top of me and her perfect round breasts loom over me. I touch them, at first one then the other. She leans in for the kiss. Touching my lips briefly once and swinging back up before swinging down again and connecting. Our tongues meet. An electric current of pleasure passes through us. Seconds translate into eternity. Her lips move away from me. She looks down into my eyes. For the first time I see a luminous violet hue in her eyes, lending the scene a supernatural, transcendental quality it did not have before. I feel at once that I have met my first soulmate, and in this act we have reached a summit—a form of completion—by traversing intimacy as far as she can be traversed in every direction. There is nothing else to do now with this beautiful girl, we have reached the heights of ecstasy together. With this sense of finding an end comes a vile intruder, an integral part of the experience of this world—the part called time.
I put on the 1978 horror classic I Spit On Your Grave (original title, Day of the Woman) while I packed my suitcases. I packed the essentials: a week’s worth of dresses, pants, shirts, and so on. I packed some films and books. Occasionally, I glanced at the screen to see Camille Keaton running nude through the forest or sitting astride a man in the bath, parading her glorious tits in full view—furry muff—about to kill him. Many of the original viewers of the film found it contemptible but I found it liberating, a pro-feminist statement in the extreme. Keaton was a towering image of a woman scorned and crazed into the ultimate course of vengeance.
Julie was gone when I left. I had made sure of it. If she was at the house as I was leaving I wouldn’t have been able to go. Already doing my best to put despair at bay, it was all I could do not to lapse into tearful remembrance of times past with her. Of course she would come visit me and I would visit her, but distance always puts a stick in it to some degree and I was not consciously ready to detach myself from her. I left in a hurry, without looking back. Though as I write these words it hits me and I can’t hold back the tears any longer. Perhaps I’ll send her this journal at some point in the future, though I don’t know when. She’s the only one I’d let read it.
In the SLK I plugged in my iPod and played “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye and Kimbra. With the wipers on high I rolled onto FL-20 Eastbound and punched it despite the heavy downpour.
Along Cinnamon Beach it was near hurricane weather, palm trees bent low by high speed winds. I hydroplaned for several seconds on that road and had to slow down. Lightning struck off the coast over the sea. There was no one in sight for miles and I felt alone. I felt that I was crossing over. Not in the sense of physical death but it was a kind of death and there were the early pangs of rebirth, of landing on a new shore. There was a high electrical charge in the atmosphere like that which accompanies the transmigration of souls. A new life hung in the balance waiting to descend upon me, a product of the feelings and ideas I held at that moment like an undeveloped photograph in my mind. There was nowhere to go from here but headlong into a new life as an explorer, into the lives of Mark Stafford, Isabella Gardner, and Baby Savannah, whose soul was as pure and translucent as her father’s smiling eyes.
I saw that the gate was open at the Stafford dacha and assumed the storm must have
knocked out the power. I parked under an overhang near one of the mansions, left all my belongings in the car, and hurried inside. The sound of a large generator whirred without and I saw a few lights on inside. I had picked the right mansion, for Anna was there and she took me immediately to Mrs. Gardner. The old maid, standing at the top of a winding staircase, looked down at me with an expression of rigid consternation and bewilderment. I could only think she knew I was coming and wondered what it was all about. Was it about her husband? A kind of portentous jealousy? Was it nothing to do with me but rather in reference to some abstract thought? The more time spent with her, the more I learned that I would probably never get close enough to the woman to know something of her. If I spied on all her communication, I’m sure I would know nothing about her. Why not? Did she have no sex life to speak of? Was she mortified by life in general and all it entails? Or was she merely an extremely simple woman—an ox? No, since she was married to Mark Stafford there must have been something to her. Or was there?
“Welcome, Sophia. We are so happy to have you,” she said in a way that reminded me of the classic film actress Agnes Moorehead. “When the storm clears, Anna will help you move your bags to a guesthouse. Until then you may do what you like, have a look around, enjoy a cup of coffee.”
“And the baby?” I asked. It seemed to catch her off guard.
“Savannah is asleep.”
I found myself in a great, chalky catafalque of a room with flat screen televisions on every wall, a bar, and bay windows to one side looking over the great mass of sea. Wind and rain ripped through the palm trees, the bud shafts of which I was on the same level with, and lightning struck in the distance. Anna brought me tea. She sat across from me and drank coffee. She was a Cuban immigrant who looked like a Hopi Indian with large widespread eyes. Her physique, which I hadn’t at first noticed, was impressive with hourglass curves and an ample bust.
She smiled seductively and glared at me as though she was reading my thoughts—or at least trying to. “I’m happy you came,” she said at last. “When I first saw you, I know you are not like the others here. You have a very—let me say, natural way. You do not put on acts. Your movements and—how do you say?—expressions are so pure that I would say I almost can know what you think.”
“What do I think?”
“You think like the lioness, ‘How can I control? How can I take over?’ like a panther. You are strong—unbreakable—like the Amazonian woman. The myth. You are indomitable—is that the word?” She was very forward in her analysis, perhaps something of her native culture. I must say, I liked her from the start.
“Perceptive.” I laughed.
“Do you smoke?” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone.
“Cigarettes?”
“It depends on what kind of cigarettes you mean—grass, weed, I mean.”
“Sometimes with friends. It’s been awhile, really.”
“I have the AK-47. Come.” After shaking the thought that she might actually have a Soviet assault rifle, I followed her. I thought of all the reasons I shouldn’t have done it: first day on a new job, a promising job at that, it’s unprofessional, I’d probably have to learn quite a few new things—but I didn’t really care, I didn’t like the people, other than the baby, and now Anna. At worst, I’d end up going back to my old nanny job in Gainesville and to Julie, whom I was painfully missing already.
In a supply room no larger than the couch I slept on at Julie’s, we huddled together around a small glass pipe bearing a few buds of the AK-47 variety. After we blazed through those, Anna packed the bowl again, and, after repeating this experience a few times, I lost count of how many times it happened. Plentiful coughing ensued. She sprayed with apple-scented air freshener, we each took a stick of gum from her pack, and went out of the dank air.
She took me out on the balcony and pointed out certain landmarks on the property but I’m afraid her words were lost in the raging gale. The rain was blowing sideways, and it was difficult to make out anything as a sort of eerie mist clung to the grounds below. What I did notice was the way her dress clung to her shapely form as it got wet. I felt something surge from my legs upward as I watched her thighs, then her hips.
Next to a raging fire in the chalky, great room, Anna and I bonded over more tea and coffee. As she spoke to me about trips with the Staffords to the Bahamas and the Florida Keys, or England and France, I felt that she was painting pictures—great landscapes and portraits of the family. One moment I was in that room by the fire, the next I was on an island in the Gulf of Mexico with white beaches, crystal water, and skies of the deepest blue. I felt the granules of sand beneath my feet and caked between my toes, and the balmy air mixed with the warm, clear waves of the tropical sea. I heard the Creole voices calling to me and saying something which normally I could not understand, but which, in this state, like lucid dreaming, was easily decipherable.
Then it hit me; the Afghani bud we had teleported to closet space to partake of. I was conscious of the room as one might be conscious of a golden bubble she is floating in above some bejeweled tower in a futuristic city among the clouds. The kind where all the inhabitants are hermaphrodites, worshiping statues made of dark matter while walking sideways on the walls of catacomb tunnels. I conceived of the whole universe as the grooves in an immeasurable vinyl, while consciousness was the strange sound produced by the gargantuan needle of the record player scratching its endless surface. I was conscious of ants racing in dust storms as far west as Texas. I swear I could hear the scuttle of their feet across the desert floor. I felt extremely ill-at-ease in my skin while simultaneously sensing what I thought was the perfection of the world and this life in it. The sense that everything was exactly the way it was supposed to be. That there was an all-conscious, singular mind manifest in all things—universal consciousness. It was similar to the feelings of ecstasy in my liaison with Julie the night before. I was at the edge of ego-consciousness, pushing outward into something sublime and unknown. The unease was fear.
Anna spoke to me with increasing speed and I watched two Annas: one that spoke with growing interest in her subject, and one that was silent and watched me. I was terrified of the first and fascinated by the second. Or was it the other way around? Next I had a feeling, at once natural and strange, of the fundamental splitting and doubling of all things. The dual nature, the world of light and dark, of opposites. It was somewhere in this expansive and muddled thinking that there came the voice of Isabella Gardner. Calling from some lost corridor, I heard my name and Anna’s echo into our room and our fireside chat.
There was a conscious effort to “straighten up,” to put my intense, passionate feelings for wonderful, divine Anna into a box where they temporarily belonged so I could focus. It was like I was floating in a harsh wind, above the clouds, with a lasso fastened around one ankle, and, as I looked down, I saw myself, miles below on the beach, vainly attempting to reel me in. “Sophia,” I called from below or was that the voice of Isabella Gardner?
The stern woman with the saturnine glare peered into the room, cradling her baby in her arms. Beautiful Savannah, I didn’t want the pure little soul to see me in such a state. I knew babies of all kinds were sensitive to the mental states of others, and, as if in reaction to this very thought, the baby began to cry as she first set eyes on me. I tried to comfort her and made an effort to exude positivity, but Savannah began to cry harder and buried her head in her mother’s bosom.
“I’ll be taking Anna with me to run some errands since the storm has died down.” She did not look at me as she said it. “I’ll need you to prepare little Savannah for bed, give her a bath, and put her in her crib. One of the maids will show you where it is. Once she is down you may go about unpacking and settling into your rooms. Fortunately, Savannah is one of those magical babies that sleeps through the night without a stir till six a.m. Every night, she sleeps soundly from nine p.m. to six as she has done from the age of three months.”
Isabella unce
remoniously handed me the baby in a way that suggested she felt Savannah was more of an object than a little human being. Savannah smiled as I held her. I began to bounce her as Isabella took Anna off into the maze of corridors.
I held Savannah still and admired her big happy eyes and ruddy cheeks. She was a fat baby. As I sat with her, she fell asleep in my arms almost immediately and I carried her down the labyrinthine corridors till I found a maid who took her to her room.
At first I moved just an overnight bag into the quarters allotted to me. It was a pleasant three-room house with a bathroom and laundry room to boot. The house was as tasteless in layout and décor as all the others, but, with a little work, I would make it my own. There was a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape on the kitchen table with a ribbon around it.
The last red rays of the evening sun spread themselves in shafts like fingers across the walls in my bedroom. I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, making shapes and faces out of the finish. I mustered what energy I had left and got ready for a shower. I removed my vest and skirt in front of the mirror, unhooked my bra and slipped off my panties, placing them in a pile by the door. Note to self: buy a clothes hamper at first opportunity. Standing before a full-length mirror, I gazed on my body in all its full-frontal glory. My hair was a mess, mostly because of the storm, and I had a five o’clock shadow over my sheath. There was some trimming to be done. I was not Lady Anais, though I respected her for the way she wore it. The shower was refreshing, though I felt like I was being watched through the steamed glass. I sat down on the bed, opened my MacBook Pro on the nightstand, sipping a glass of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
I checked Facebook—nothing worthwhile there—and Twitter for the news. It seemed a storm had killed some people in the Midwest and Europe was in trouble economically again, if not in many other ways too.
I found a note from Julie in Gmail.