at the seagulls picking garbage off the bins by the beach.
Each seagull - a flash of blue and white dipping in and out of the neon crimson filth. She remembered the night on the terrace so many years ago. There is a clear line drawn between that moment and this one. Paul's understanding, his eyes, the strength of the clan he belonged to. His unwillingness to compromise in the bludgeoned face of sadness, weeping rain into sewers on busy continental streets, lipstick traces on hotel bathroom mirrors, the coffee smell and pieces of smiles in between fresh sheets pillows thrown on messy beds. No, Paul did not succumb to the sensuality of the quotidian. He was stronger than she. His narrative, superimposed, was bold and ancient.
She wrote faint calligraphy of sentimentality on the backs of napkins and presented them to him late at night between sessions of shared secrets.
We are not connected to our people by an unfathomable energy. We simply invite ghouls to haunt our wavering between two fixed points of choice. It is true, the narrator will accept, that in this respect Jocey proved to be more cruel than Paul. Jocey summoned the Paul ghoul and, because she could not confront Paul proper, held onto the ghoul during what ought to have been a lonely trek of choice.
*
In the spring, it would be decided that Jocey was taking the time to decide where she would stay with so much hanging in the balance for them both, for Paul alone or for the sake of Jocey's happiness. They both decided the weakest of the two and gave each other space.
Paul stayed in the city to tend to his affairs and Jocey kept traveling between Maine and NYC. It was clear that Paul would not be in the position to be as mobile as she. Even this thought irritated her. Paul would inherit an incredible amount of wealth and responsibility, but this did not excuse him from being an enthusiastic participant in the fluidity of love.
Jocey walked by the glacial shores every morning and understood how resentment could set in as quietly as it could lift.
Birds filled the sky again.
*
She took the train to New York and waited for him by the offices on Park Avenue, wearing her awful Maine clothes. Her dreary sets of office hues, black umbrellas in arm, black eyeliner all over her beautiful green eyes. Just an ashy apparition on the blossoming New York street, she scoffed in the face of cosmopolitan spending. Musing at the tall beautiful ladies clad in tweed and red lipstick like modern Greek goddesses, she chain smoked her Marlboro lights in awful moods. By the time that Paul appeared on her emotional doorstep, she was angry, livid and exhausted.
Boyish and occupied, he did not pay attention to the singularity of her essence. This bothered her tremendously. He decided to invest in her, he surprised her with gifts of exquisite taste and little use to her. A fur coat, a beautiful french copy of Botticelli's paintings and of his contemporaries, a marble jewellery box, rose candles, candied raspberries in a turquoise hippopotamus figurine brought from Madrid and orchids of various sizes and colours stashed like Christmas presents beside their hotel bed.
"Yes, all art is quite useless", he said at dinner, thinking of himself the most clever of the boys. The mighty star atop the dusty Christmas tree.
She rolls her eyes and asks when they can go to the Met this week. She would be staying in town for three weeks this time as her due dates had been extended at the newspaper.
"We can go together tomorrow. I remember our first time at the National Gallery in London", and she knows this is one of his favourite stories so she lets him give the long performance of this well-known adventure in their circle of two.
In the first year of their tiny small world where the edges were tender, this story happened in trains or at the zoological gardens or when they were once lost in the gorgeous green mazes at Versailles. He would begin and she would complete her favourite parts screaming them out. Like colouring with her favourite pencil in between well-defined lines. A lilly, or perhaps a gorgeous lion. Yes, Paul, we saw giant paintings we would want to step into together and explore.
We stay with our chosen ones because our most beautiful years were spent loving them. We believe, with all our might, that youth will wash over us in our time of vulnerability if our chosen people become our angels, not understanding the illogicality of this exercise.
She has a cigarette outside the hotel before dinner. The smoke makes a screen out of the landscape of the city. Muted hues like a Gaugin.
She remembered a small episode a few months after Paul had moved into Manhattan. They were at the Met and she was looking at the Two Tahitian Women by Gaugin. She had been staring at them for an hour at least.
This was one of her favourite paintings because it looked half real life made into dream, half dream made reality. She always told Paul, "You could step into it, or they could step out to you"
and he'd always joke, "Well, if they do step out, could they make me a martini, please?"
*
Adam was having nightmares. Somewhere on his route to Mississippi for some building work, he remembered his first New York months. The familiarity, the Brits flowing in and out of the ports like vermin. He missed her scent, those flowery moments of literature.
Honeyed architecture blasting through his mind and leaving him impoverished, leaving him empty-handed in a world without Ada.
The New World had been a burden until the roads opened to him, and he found balance in the unknown.
In the wilderness of unknown, where you could step into it, or the wild could step out and into you.
Each seagull - a flash of blue and white dipping in and out of the neon crimson filth. She remembered the night on the terrace so many years ago. There is a clear line drawn between that moment and this one. Paul's understanding, his eyes, the strength of the clan he belonged to. His unwillingness to compromise in the bludgeoned face of sadness, weeping rain into sewers on busy continental streets, lipstick traces on hotel bathroom mirrors, the coffee smell and pieces of smiles in between fresh sheets pillows thrown on messy beds. No, Paul did not succumb to the sensuality of the quotidian. He was stronger than she. His narrative, superimposed, was bold and ancient.
She wrote faint calligraphy of sentimentality on the backs of napkins and presented them to him late at night between sessions of shared secrets.
We are not connected to our people by an unfathomable energy. We simply invite ghouls to haunt our wavering between two fixed points of choice. It is true, the narrator will accept, that in this respect Jocey proved to be more cruel than Paul. Jocey summoned the Paul ghoul and, because she could not confront Paul proper, held onto the ghoul during what ought to have been a lonely trek of choice.
*
In the spring, it would be decided that Jocey was taking the time to decide where she would stay with so much hanging in the balance for them both, for Paul alone or for the sake of Jocey's happiness. They both decided the weakest of the two and gave each other space.
Paul stayed in the city to tend to his affairs and Jocey kept traveling between Maine and NYC. It was clear that Paul would not be in the position to be as mobile as she. Even this thought irritated her. Paul would inherit an incredible amount of wealth and responsibility, but this did not excuse him from being an enthusiastic participant in the fluidity of love.
Jocey walked by the glacial shores every morning and understood how resentment could set in as quietly as it could lift.
Birds filled the sky again.
*
She took the train to New York and waited for him by the offices on Park Avenue, wearing her awful Maine clothes. Her dreary sets of office hues, black umbrellas in arm, black eyeliner all over her beautiful green eyes. Just an ashy apparition on the blossoming New York street, she scoffed in the face of cosmopolitan spending. Musing at the tall beautiful ladies clad in tweed and red lipstick like modern Greek goddesses, she chain smoked her Marlboro lights in awful moods. By the time that Paul appeared on her emotional doorstep, she was angry, livid and exhausted.
Boyish and occupied, he did not pay attention to the singularity of her essence. This bothered her tremendously. He decided to invest in her, he surprised her with gifts of exquisite taste and little use to her. A fur coat, a beautiful french copy of Botticelli's paintings and of his contemporaries, a marble jewellery box, rose candles, candied raspberries in a turquoise hippopotamus figurine brought from Madrid and orchids of various sizes and colours stashed like Christmas presents beside their hotel bed.
"Yes, all art is quite useless", he said at dinner, thinking of himself the most clever of the boys. The mighty star atop the dusty Christmas tree.
She rolls her eyes and asks when they can go to the Met this week. She would be staying in town for three weeks this time as her due dates had been extended at the newspaper.
"We can go together tomorrow. I remember our first time at the National Gallery in London", and she knows this is one of his favourite stories so she lets him give the long performance of this well-known adventure in their circle of two.
In the first year of their tiny small world where the edges were tender, this story happened in trains or at the zoological gardens or when they were once lost in the gorgeous green mazes at Versailles. He would begin and she would complete her favourite parts screaming them out. Like colouring with her favourite pencil in between well-defined lines. A lilly, or perhaps a gorgeous lion. Yes, Paul, we saw giant paintings we would want to step into together and explore.
She has a cigarette outside the hotel before dinner. The smoke makes a screen out of the landscape of the city. Muted hues like a Gaugin.
She remembered a small episode a few months after Paul had moved into Manhattan. They were at the Met and she was looking at the Two Tahitian Women by Gaugin. She had been staring at them for an hour at least.
This was one of her favourite paintings because it looked half real life made into dream, half dream made reality. She always told Paul, "You could step into it, or they could step out to you"
and he'd always joke, "Well, if they do step out, could they make me a martini, please?"
*
Adam was having nightmares. Somewhere on his route to Mississippi for some building work, he remembered his first New York months. The familiarity, the Brits flowing in and out of the ports like vermin. He missed her scent, those flowery moments of literature.
Honeyed architecture blasting through his mind and leaving him impoverished, leaving him empty-handed in a world without Ada.
The New World had been a burden until the roads opened to him, and he found balance in the unknown.
In the wilderness of unknown, where you could step into it, or the wild could step out and into you.
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