home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
-
- 1. Honey drips slowly from the edge of the jar. Emma takes the knife and
- catches the falling stream, feeding it back into the jar's mouth. I have
- watched her do this, not this exact thing, but this sort of thing, for almost
- an hour now. Either the honey falling, or the wind through the screen door
- blowing papers onto the floor, or else the newspaper catches when she tries
- to fold it back on itself. She fascinates me, in a humiliating sort of way.
- I could watch her for another hour, unseen.
-
- 2. She gets up now.
- From my bedroom window, I can't quite see her face when she stands up,
- and just like on the tabloid shows where they replace the faces with a
- featureless blue disk, I expect her or her body to betray some terrible
- secret. Maybe she suffers from scoliosis, or psoriasis, or possibly some
- horribly disfiguring congenital defect that now and then allows her navel
- to grow as large as a football.
- I wait, watching for the telltale swelling in her abdomen. Surprisingly,
- it never happens. No, her body remains perfect, just like yesterday.
-
- 3. ``Where's my Pepsi!?!'' she cries to no one in particular, staring into
- her refrigerator. ``All I wanted was a Pepsi \ldots'' Well, I have to
- laugh at that. Just what I'd thought about all day. But when I looked in
- the cabinet, all I had was syrup of ipecac. Revolting, but hardly sufficient
- for the job.
-
- 4. She walks over to the sliding glass door, opens it just wide enough to
- slip her slim body through, then closes it. I can see her dress now, a sort
- of twopiece summer outfit, leaving her midriff bare. God, I want that
- midriff. She can have the rest of her body, but I'll take this perfect,
- smooth---
- Was that---? No, she just took a deep breath, that's all.
-
- 5. She lies down on the lawn chair, reclining nearly all the way back, with
- a Pepsi in her hand (she found one after all). Emma, Emma, Emma. I repeat
- her name like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose name I see in front of me as the
- answer to a Trivial Pursuit question. I shake my head, annoyed, and the
- mantra returns. You may have the alpha and the omega, but in between, there
- always lives Emma, sweet Emma, a pretty little Greek figure in the middle of
- all that Roman nonsense.
- Still wondering? I only took Greek to decipher the sorority house names.
- Imagine my disappointment when all the letter combinations appeared random,
- rather than producing lurid, lascivious names, such as \ldots But I digress.
-
- 6. Emma sucks Pepsi through a straw. Sounds vaguely like some sort of
- childhood insult. Your mother rides a vacuum cleaner. Your father has a
- nose like a rubber hose. Emma seems mostly unconcerned about this.
-
- 7. She puts down the empty can on the cement patio with a hollow clank,
- and closes her eyes. They do not like the sun, after all. I scratch my
- legs.
- I want to fall on her. Fall on her, like a Georgian flower, unfolding,
- pressing petal to petal, surrounded only by the echoing sound of soft
- waterfilled fibers. In my mind's eye, the Pepsi takes on ambrosial
- proportions, linking me with a divine nature. I see all the things I should
- not ever see: every unicorn that ever ran, my hands held by someone on the
- street, bells I never heard ring, and besides, the reverent smile of a little
- boy and a blue blue sky.
-
- 8. I shake off my reverie to find her gone. I let out a hmph. The orchid
- has fallen into the pond to meet its reflection with open arms, only to see it
- disappear as it sinks slowly beneath the water. Shh! and goodbye.
-
- (c) 26 Apr 1993
-
- --