Walking

Walking along the river-walk, the lights over the distract, dancing like low stars, flickering and blinking the way my flashlight used to on the ceiling when I hid under the blankets to read books and eat cookies, the brighter and closer version of the diamonds in the night sky, both now reflected in hazy, formless, black water below.

As I reached the bridge and stopped to ponder the paint speckles and bits of trash on the churning canvas, I get her text, "We're going to a party. Meet me."

I stop and light a cigarette and watch the murky stars dancing on the wind down below, each roll, smooshing and stretching the glitter, creating in segments kaleidoscope like swirls. As the smoke burns my throat, I blow out a ring and watch it float into the night, growing larger and larger and dimmer and dimmer. How many hours have I sat in a cafe, watching smoke rings, throngs of passersby and prostitutes, walking cautiously or boldly through the doors of those types of hotels, going to meet their clients. One can set a clock by their arrival and departures. It was curious, one afternoon, to see a stunning and young red head enter one hotel at fifteen pass three, her hair and dress almost respectable, only it was three in the afternoon, hours before cocktails would be served. I noticed these things, my gaze fixed on Number 17 Rue du Lorile, like a sniper.

Less than 25 minutes later, she leaves through the yellow door, I had expected 35 minutes or even a good hour, even girls who are a tyrant about the clock in these matters, need a few minutes to right their clothes and smooth over their hair. The spell of the daydream behind my eyes had been broken. I had been imagining this girl, coming to my room, in that dress, and enjoying the luxury of pristine white sheets and the bubbles of a passable champagne, all the while the sun begins to tuck behind the velvet comforter, streaks of pink residue of a day truly lived or of time broken like sticks on the side of the road.

Boredom does breed a dependence and an appreciation of lunacy, even fantastically so.

She walks up the street and bleeds into the crowd at the corner, gone from my sight, her emerald green party dress, faded from my view, into a throng of black suits, dark jackets and clouds of exhaust.

Snow begins to fall, small compact flakes, like cocaine, wafting in the air, as a dealer cuts open a key, careless, in front of a buyer, as if to say, this stuff, this stuff is the best, and therefore I am willing to waste some to prove to you I am the man, let others come tomorrow, hungry for the white madness and lick it from the floor.

Her text beeps. It is an address. I feel like a foreigner in my own life tonight only it is my life and yet perhaps it isn't, even now I am just not that sure, perhaps this is what the song meant, "this is not my beautiful house, not my beautiful wife." For tonight, as the kaleidoscope moves and morphs like a slow-motion ballerina and the smoke rings widen and dance on the gentle breeze, I get the sense that this is my life, but the house is not beautiful and the woman I am about to meet is most assuredly not my beautiful wife.

As far as I can tell, I am walking into a slaughter, as I get closer to the house, near the river, a short walk from the bridge. The thought occurs to me as I knock on the door and it opens, if I could turn back time, I should go back to the bridge, spend the evening watching the glitter on the murky canvas, until the pack is empty and I am distressingly sober, but only half so.

Instead, just like the woman in the green dress, I enter through the open door, entering a party, the great unknown.

 

You can go to Elisa Phillips' blog at: www.elisaphilips.blogspot.com