Camera Stills

I sit here in the rented room, smoking, wondering, how do I come to be here? Next to me, he snores in fitful dreams, stretched upon the ragged couch of some designer's torment, swathed in the heavy folds of my old spa robe. His delicate pale hand clutches thinnly at the cloth, gathering it into some sort of Roman swag with effortless nobility, and together, his white hand and the dark fabric, rise and fall upon his breast in motion with his awkward breaths. He has been out all day while I have been here, at home in the clutches of my nightmare hours, my mind swinging from thought to thought, fighting and raging my eternal battle of truth and self-doubt, with God's angels, some fallen, some Not. I wonder how can I be; be here? A milk bottle half-filled with change. The mop resting in its bucket of dirty water. The cardboard box of Christmas trims still open, the strings of many colored lights spilling out above the cat, as she eats dry food from a beige glass plate. The laundry, washed, lies folded on the table and the chair is piled with coats un-hung. He sleeps on, Endymion? I wonder if that place his consciousness has found is better than this, our spot of dismal colors? Black actors perform a drama on the television, a story of black and gay and white. "Who can we trust!" an actor blurts. What can we trust, I wonder? I lift another Camel from the paper packet, roll it in my fingers, lift it to my lips, then stop; stop and take my sterling case, its sapphire cabochon heavy with an inner glow, and fill it with the pearly rolled tobacco. Now, taking the cigarette again, I tap the case; lighting with this smoke the world in which, wide and awake, I am to be. A soft and hazy gilded place of shimmering black crepe suits and starched white collars and patent shoes; of chiseled faces, black flint eyes and locks of ebony. Masculine and sensual, he is here and brilliant, tete a tete with so and so; he deftly holds his smoke, his wrist enrobed with crisp white cuffs and white gold knots. Exquisitely, his watch sheathes him, as unique to him it's drape as is the time now rendering the room alive with his sophisticated ghosts. His phantoms, whom I never meet but wander with us in these rooms, upon his arm. A television ad blairs out and wrenches at my specter suite, screaming of some credit card a "time to redefine"; but I here do choose this time, defining. I grip tightly and that fine ol' lady jazz artist blooms again into her song and still, I'm on his arm, still. And the floor rushes up and whirls and the clinking of leaded crystal and old silver sparkles as a soothing background, glowing platinum and sheer. We shimmer in his public, my perfect partner and I, dancing, Dancing 'til his pale hand unclasps the dressing gown, and in wrenching breath unevenly, he asks, "Have you got drugs out, honey," while he struggles up, half sitting, expecting his medications and I fade in again, to this unreality, this space in all it ugly color, smiling, "You'll need the pain pills first, darling?" and I close my eyes never shutting them and for a moment, stop. Stop and take another smoke from my fine old case of silver gilt, and lifting the cigarette to my lips, to light it with my Cartier, I see him, smiling. I see him, flushed of youth, his tousled golden hair above his delicious wicked blues, his luscious gleaming lips lean in across the cabaret to me, to me saying, "Darling, allow Me"; and as he cups his great warm hands 'round mine, and steadies the flame, I am off, not to some medicine chest, its drab color grasping, but slipping, like mercury quick silver to the proffered light, and into his arms I fall, still, yet always dancing; into his luster, still, of jet black silk and white gold studs, still, and dazzling. Still.