Maelstrom in the Mind

She was standing at the bay window in the study, watching the sky. All of a sudden, the colours changed from a nuanced, still blue to a raging, roiling slate, and a low, rumbling discontent sounded across the drum of the horizon.

The thickening shadows in the room needed some light. The small candle nestled in the window pushed through into yellow warmth as she slipped away. Slipped away into a blue-purple-white dream of nothingness.

Everything's a gentle, blue haze, shaded and stark... It is a peaceful place, this one... That's curious... shaded and stark! My pen needs refilling... As does the refrigerator... Let us go then, you and I, Where the evening is... Why should I cry for you... Something stirs, in the east, everywhere... What was that?

The real world is reeling me in like a marlin in the death throes of its defence.

As she crosses into the living room, a faint hammering rises louder and louder on the roof. Inside the room, he was sitting at the table, under the light of a cane lamp hanging by a finespun weaving of blue-green threads. He seemed like he was both working and irate.

Peculiar, familiar interdependencies... but then he's a peculiar, familiar sort of person.

"It's raining again." he said, a sigh in his voice.

"What of the movie?" she asked, resignation in hers.

A new whisper unfolds through me, sits up and streches its arms and takes breath. Looks around at everything. At the unaccountability of checks and balances that is my life.

"You cannot possibly want to go out in the rain. I won't get parking, the traffic will be crazy, and you don't have to drive. I do."

The indignation emanating from him was magnificent. Nothing short of it. She replied, "Yes, I suppose so. It does seem like too much effort."

It watches me breathe, as if to remind me not to forget how to.

He looked at her suspiciously then. Very suspiciously. After a moment, he started to speak, changed his mind and bent his head once more. She kept looking at him though.

The time is nigh to put together these scraps of wholeness and be unbound... from me.

She moved to the window, and while settling into the armchair with the rain and the book she was reading, she said, "No, don't worry; I am not mocking you. I think... I understand."

He looked up at her. And although he looked straight at her, it was sideways; a look you could call doubtful and distrusting. She didn't see but felt it instead. She smiled sweetly at her reflection.

Seek and ye shall find.

Her feet lowered gently to the ground. Her smile only rose as she picked up her anorak and slipped on her sandals. But he didn't register anything until the latch clicked open.

"Are you going home? The rain's still heavy; you could spend the night here."

"No."

"Where then...? NO! No and NO! In this rain? You have to be mad!"

"Did I ask you to come with me?"

I need no one else to appreciate this moment but me.

The door shut behind her. His confusion followed her from the house, like a cabbie dogging a potential fare. When she turned the corner onto the main road, she could still see him staring after her, wondering and questioning if this was, in truth, her.

The roads are indeed terrible and the traffic crazy. He was right. Maybe I am crazy... but maybe not...

And so it continued for the twenty minutes the theater took to arrive. The ticket line was serpentine enough to convince her that there were some others plucky (or foolish) enough to venture out. The line also seemed to take an interminably long time to move.

My first movie alone. No monster under my seat, drooling or otherwise. Sweet Jesus... the missed movies...

Her turn was suddenly up. She asked for "one ticket, back row, near the aisle, please."

"I trust you enjoyed the cab ride." His voice was dry... and unmistakably proud.

He looked far more wet than she did. There was a stub in his hand for a spot in the private parking lot around the corner. It would cost him twenty bucks an hour and this was a three hour film.

She turned back to the booking attendant and said, "Two tickets, back row, near the aisle, please."

After he bought popcorn (since she bought tickets), he looked her in the eye and said, "Thank God, you're not my girlfriend. You're not my headache." He smiled sweetly, almost falsely.

"Amen."

The strangest déjà vu... I have said this somewhere else to someone else in some other lifetime.

****
I must mention S, soul sister. With my thanks for the "scraps of wholeness." I must also mention both the elder sibling and the reviewer. Thanks for your patience.