Inspiration is everywhere and most certainly lives in the most storied building in my little town. The Red Brick, once a school, now houses the Hatlen Theatre, home to all local drama troupes and host to Chautauqua, a council of music aficionados whose dedication and fine ears bring a collection of eclectic musical genres to town every season.
Last week I attended Chautauqua (I'm a season's ticket holder, dontcha know) and was struck by the energy alive in the old Red Brick. Partly it was the setting - they say theatres are most certainly possessed and perhaps this is true; theatres are a place where we willingly allow time, identity and even geography to shift - so why wouldn't something ethereal choose to be there? Partly too it seemed energy crackled from the patrons themselves. There were lovers and seniors (who are not, incidentally, mutually exclusive groups). Sages and sourpusses. There were the married, the divorced, the single and the searching. It seemed to me, sitting there waiting for the curtain to rise, that every body was really just a walking story - and from that I envisioned what a vast lot of characters might have to tell me if they were patrons of Chautauqua in the old Red Brick School.
Please allow me to introduce two of them (and a smattering of others) to you now....
Jazz & Roar
Chautauqua One
For
well over half a century, Jasmine Gavin had worn a crisp
scarlet dress coat like it was her own stroke of paint. Fine wool, cut to the ankle, and
with a shock of black buttons marching down its front, the coat matched her ebony
boots with the stiletto heel. So did the calfskin gloves, a new addition. She spanned her fingers, considering both them and how ironic it was that
leather, of all goddamn things, was now softer than her hands had become. Gnarled
and twisted, it looked like her knuckles played tic-tac-toe with veins that were once faint
blue lines but now had popped out and were ropey. They reminded her of the tree roots emerged
from the walking trail coiling 'round the outskirts of town.
Sixty
three years ago some of those roots had not even been there yet, but she recalled one,
buckling the earth, and as she’d nimbly dodged it, a man, green eyes and a
softly shorn ink spill of hair, had rounded the corner toward her. Rory Gavin
had made her knees weak that day.
Not
that she’d ever admitted it. Not even on their wedding night when his tie was
undone and her white cloud of dress was half off and askew between them. “Tell
the truth,” he poised over her, delighting her by being already breathless. “You
loved me from the start.”
She
flicked this away. “I lusted for you
from the start.” Her hands searched, discovered, and made his eyes wide. “That’s
how it was.”
“You
lie, Jazz. You curse. And you never speak but when you do you purposely shock
everyone with what you have to say.” He flipped her then, put her on top. “And
that’s why I’ll never leave you.”
Yet
he did leave her. Tonight, like decades of nights gone by, she was coming to the
Hatlen Theatre in the old Red Brick School alone.
The crowd outside parted as she approached even though she did not, and never
had, expected them to. “You have no idea how you impact an audience, Jazz,”
Roar had once said and he’d been right—but that didn’t mean she’d ever understood
it. Why would she, a lover of art, of solitude and, later, of Roar, command this
sort of unwanted attention? She was an observer to and critic of convention, someone
who intentionally avoided forced interactions and unnecessary conversations…so why
would she intrigue the imaginings of
one single soul?
“It’s
not their imaginations you rouse, Jazz, it’s their intimidation.” Roar had
laughed when she’d asked him. “You scare them because they don’t understand you.”
“And
they never will.” The reply was not arrogant, just fact; for while others did not
belong in her world, neither did she fit into theirs.
Not
that that had ever stopped many locals from trying to cajole and convince her
to be part of their lives.
And
not that she’d ever stopped dodging and hiding.
“This
spot,” she’d once told Roar, turning in an arc just off that walking path
ringing the town, the scarlet skirt of her dress coat billowing. “Let’s live
here.”
Roar
had surveyed the small clearing, hugged and hidden by forest, thoughts calculating
behind his green eyes. The land was zoned as a green space, yet somehow he’d
purchased it, and the cottage they built had been all Jazz, all Roar, and for thirteen
perfect years nothing outside had ever been needed.
Until
that Sunday when she’d had to call the ambulance.
Those
paramedics had been the last visitors to their cottage. For the fifty years since
only her feet—sometimes in these stilettos, other times in moccasins—had ever crossed
its threshold.
An aortic aneurysm. What did that even mean?
A
nurse had tried holding her hand. “His heart exploded for you, Jasmine.”
For her? Like some sort of gift or a favor? Unspent profanity
had blistered her tongue and her fingers, still soft then, had recoiled, pressed
tight to her heart. Yet she’d wondered….had Roar loved her so much his heart
burst?
No.
If
that were true it would mean he’d felt the same combustion and lust and longing
she’d felt whenever their eyes met and that…that was impossible. No one loved
anybody that much. No one should love
anybody that much. It scared her then and now that she did.
Afterward,
and numbly, she had cleared his closet, and when the empty hangers clanged together
like wind chimes she’d screamed, the sound ripping a seam in the silence. Her
old Nana once insisted that wind chimes were the trap of the Devil and Jasmine had
believed it. She still did. And she could still feel the flash and fury of her
arm as she’d swept those dancing hangers from the rod. They’d burst into a startled
bit of song then clattered to a heap on the floor, silent.
She
too had crumpled, not silent. The sobs tore her chest out and fifty years later,
tonight, she could still feel the ragged, phantom hole over her heart. I miss you. That empty pit ached. I still miss you. Time, in perhaps some macabre
retribution for her own innate preference, had punished her with decades of the
solitude she’d once craved like cream, back before she’d been on that footpath,
met Rory Gavin with his green eyes and ink-spill of hair.
And
heard wind chimes too. She shivered. They’d pealed that day, chimes, and as they’d continued
on the trail, stepping newly in tandem she had heard them, around another crook in the path, a caress of song
against the sky. She had stopped, searched, but the stiff grays and browns of barren fall
branches camouflaged them until she’d gasped, gaze landing. The chimes were bits
of dried bone, hewn together with what looked like (yet she’d hoped wasn’t) sinew. Her feet, arrested in the
carpet of leaves, could not move and Roar—then new to her and still Rory—had cocked
his head, eyes following the path of her gaze. “Ah.” He’d approached the chimes
while she froze there, heart in her throat. “A sinister effigy. Or maybe just a
bad joke.” He’d swiped a finger against them, sent the bones dancing.
The image and sound had been ghastly.
Roar had smiled. “Is this windsong the chink in your armor, Jazz?”
The
abbreviation had shaken her out of fear. No one had ever called her anything
but Jasmine (or Ms. Brophy) yet on that day and every one after, her name, from
him, was Jazz. ‘Jasmine’ had not left his tongue even during the only fight they’d
ever had—ironically, and chillingly— about wind chimes. They’d been headed to berry
pick, using the private path they’d forged in the woods. She’d
halted before a set of glass bells hung from one stretching poplar, feet grasped
by the overgrowth of hemlock and creeping ivy. “What the hell?” she’d said and the chimes sang. She fixed Roar with a look
she hoped captured the wound. How could he?
“They’re
beautiful, Jazz. They sing even though they hide here in the woods with no one
to hear them. Or…maybe that’s the reason they
sing.”
Was he crazy? The damn things weren’t singing. They were calling. And beautiful? Of course they were beautiful. All evil things were. But she knew better than to employ an over-used and misunderstood word like evil with Roar. So instead— “They’re…other-worldly,”
she’d said.
“Yes.
Like you.”
What the hell did that mean?
“Can’t
you see that?” he said. “Listen.” He caressed a piece of glass and the chimes
trilled, as though they liked being touched.
She’d
wanted to bat his hand away from it, keep him safe. “They…they trap your soul,
Roar.”
“Yes,”
he replied, no shortage of rue. “I’m aware.”
His heart exploded for you.
Had
Roar been saying that he loved her in spite of, maybe even because of, everything
she was? It confused her. Sort of scared her, and when he’d compared her to those
goddamn wind chimes it out and out terrified her. “I…I want these damn things off of my property!”
“It’s
my property too.”
“I
want them buried in the deepest patch of muskeg you can find!”
“Then
you’ll have to do it.”
He’d known she’d been too scared to touch them. “You…you did this to hurt me!”
“I
did this to love you! To show you
everything that you are!”
Bones jingling on the wind? Cut glass dancing on air with the song of a
siren? Was that what she was? Her mouth spluttered, scarlet sweater flapping.
Roar
got near her then, body heat and scent; musky adrenaline. “Swear at me, Jazz.
You’ll feel better.”
Mockery?
How dare he? “Fuck you!” she’d
shouted. “Fuck you and whatever the hell you’re trying to say! So I like
privacy. Hate mediocrity. Despise small talk and small towns and small minds. That’s not evil!”
“You’re
right,” he’d agreed. “It’s beautiful.”
And
with that the wind chimes remained, a tangible détente of one story interpreted
two different ways. To date they still hung there, sun-bleached now, broken,
yet intact enough to still cry out with one or two notes of song when the wind
was right.
In
fact…she hesitated upon the cobblestones leading to the Red Brick School. Were
wind chimes trilling right now? Her gaze scoured the two maples flanking the sidewalk,
searched their branches. No wind chimes. Instead someone—maybe the Chautauqua
council itself—had netted the trunks and branches with blue lights shining ethereally
and turning her scarlet coat into amethyst. She gazed at it a moment, enjoying
the altered state the blue cast created. Hadn’t she always adored things that
shifted reality?
“Ms.
Brophy?” A patron waited, behind her. “You okay?”
For
God’s sake. When you were old it was a fact that your slightest anomalous movement
made people think you were about to drop dead on the spot. She wheeled slowly
in the direction of the speaker but when she spoke she shocked herself for sounding
soft, not sharp. “Mrs. Gavin,” she corrected, then resumed moving, nimble on
her stilettos yet knowing she wasn’t; even back home in their cottage and shed of
shoes her gait routinely surprised her these days with
unpredictable stutters. Not tonight. As stately as the Red Brick itself, she
traversed the wintry sidewalk. And as the building swallowed her it occurred that
perhaps it was the only thing in town older than she was.
The
foyer stairs to the lobby were gleaming. Chautauqua nights brought out the best
the old building could be and she of all people had seen it; Chautauqua had started
back when Roar had still been alive and, hearing of it, they, the town’s most mysterious
recluses, had purchased season’s tickets on the spot. Music was their lyrical literature
and they drank deeply from every genre, dancing on their cottage’s waxed
hardwood, drunk on the huckleberry wine they bottled themselves from berries picked
in a private patch undiscovered by greedy locals who tended to hoard all the fruit.
Back then it had been such a boon to have an arts group committed to bringing
acts into town who weren’t the same cookie-cutter boot-stomp two-step tedium
hired for every local dance she and Roar never
attended. The progressiveness was something neither of them had ever dared
hope for and they lost themselves in Chautauqua, never missed a performance, Jasmine
always in her scarlet coat, and Roar wearing his charcoal fedora, a paint
stroke of his own paired with jeans, suits, or sometimes crisp button-down
shirts. He’d never walked out the door without his signature hat and Jasmine had
worn it every day since he’d died—including tonight.
A
compere offered a playbill and she took it, gnarled hands still hidden by calfskin.
The Red Brick was cold tonight, unusual. Though aged and with a soaring ceiling
and doubtless fissures allowing winter to pour in, the theatre itself had
spotlights and mashed-together seats. Sitting within the stifling cluster of
bodies typically felt like a sauna. In fact last season Nettle Moran had passed
out from the heat.
Although had Roar been alive she’d have speculated to him that perhaps
Nettle had just heard her juiciest bit of gossip to date. And he’d have shushed
her, reproached her, yet laughed. She moved in the direction of her seat,
muscle memory prompting her toward the spot she’d occupied for decades. Last
season as well, and unbeknownst to her, the Chautauqua committee had started the
show by honoring its longest-standing patron. The spotlight, alighting her seat,
had been appalling yet she’d stood, gracious and with her scarlet coat smartly
buttoned and Roar’s fedora covering hair he would not recognize. Shorn and coiffed,
white, it was no longer the spill of sable silk she’d once let fall to her
waist and that, for some inexplicable reason, had set a sadness down into her
soul. Did she grieve the loss life had handed her? Every day. Did she grieve a
long life? Never. Not a single trip ’round the sun had been in vain and she cherished
every book read, every song heard, and every piece of art viewed—even the bad
ones. For poor art only amplified the truly outstanding stories and paintings
and music she’d been so privileged, in her lifetime, to hear and see.
Regardless of the fact that she’d appreciated the vast majority of them
all alone.
She
took off Roar’s hat, stroked the scarlet feather she’d long-ago tucked into its
band. I miss you.
“Mrs. Gavin.”
Wren Lasting, Chautauqua president, folded his hand in the crook of her arm. “Allow
me.”
And
she did allow him this atypical familiarity. Chautauqua council had always been
exempt from her embargo on social niceties for she genuinely, and quite simply,
enjoyed them. In her estimation each member was a walking summation of the
books, art, wine and music they loved. Embodiments of their own brands of culture,
each wore their paint strokes unselfconsciously the way art devotees often did.
Their very existence celebrated every soul who’d ever dared to color outside of
the lines. She adored them. Adored their keen, beautiful ears that brought nine
different doorways into her life every year, two hours of sound rich and new and
sometimes surprising. Like that harpist two seasons ago whose grating giggles
dissolved once her fingers touched strings and awoke angels. Or that black vocalist,
hair a tribal riot, who’d crooned in a language life had never given her the
opportunity to learn.
Wren
parked her before her seat. “Thank you,” she said and touched his hand, a
gesture she’d never offered. Affection became meaningless if overused and yet…a
sharp certainty had just occurred: she and Wren would not indulge in one of their
critiques during intermission tonight, there would be no quiet discourse while
everyone else escaped to the hospitality room and she remained, blessedly
alone, in her seat.
But why that made her throat close she had no idea.
Wren
remained, not hovering as if over some old person, just standing, a gentleman
for a lady, until she sat down. “Enjoy your evening, Jasmine,” he said, and for
a flicker it seemed something predictive drifted across his face and that he felt
it too, her inexplicable melancholia. “Goodbye,” she said.
He looked startled.
“Goodnight,” she corrected. Christ. Maybe she really
had turned into a dotty old lady,
finally at one with the masses.
“Goodnight,”
he replied and she sat, took her gloves off, folded them over the playbill on
her lap so that tonight’s show would remain a mystery. It had been a game she
and Roar played, wanting to be surprised by the music, their anticipation adding
to the magic of each Chautauqua evening.
Overhead
the house lights flicked and patrons replied; bustling to their seats, shedding
coats and ceasing their bee-buzz of chatter. A loud silence descended once they
all settled down, the sound of expectation.
Then
the curtain rose and Jasmine’s gaze followed it, always followed it, watched
the arched beam over the stage swallow it in one velvet gulp.
When she lowered her eyes the scene on the stage
locked her throat in a scream.
Wind chimes. Everywhere. Every style. Seashells, bamboo, cut glass and…oh,
Lord, were those bone? Her hand flew
up, covered her mouth, the other following as insurance. Beneath her fingers her
skin felt like tissue paper and the bones—my
bones!—really did feel knotted
and lumpy.
On stage the wind chimes began trilling and she
wondered—what would her ruined bones
sound like as wind chimes? The accompanying image was all the more shocking for
not being morbid and, in memory’s ear,
she heard him again—“They’re beautiful, Jasmine.
Like you.”
No. She shook her head. That wasn’t right. These
wind chimes…they were neither beautiful nor ugly. They’re instruments. Just instruments. Percussion. Like a pulse.
“Yes.
A pulse,” she whispered, shaking. “The Devil’s heartbeat.” Shivers wracked her.
The Red Brick was so cold tonight.
No
one else seemed to feel it. Goggling the stage, sometimes clapping, other patrons
appeared to love the way the wind chimes sang to the air. Jasmine, though, welded
to her seat and with Roar’s hat on her lap, stared at them, heart thundering. Don’t listen! Be careful! Was there some
way to stop them?
How? It would take a dozen set of hands to stop
these wind chimes from trilling.
Eternity
passed before the curtain fell for intermission.
Then
she breathed. Let her hands slide off her mouth and down the front of her coat,
the backs of them catching on the wool and leaving miniscule tufts of scarlet behind
on her fingers. Winter skin. Dry. She’d saturate her wrecked hands with lotion later,
the lavender cream she’d picked up when she’d replenished her Revlon lipstick, Scarlet
Siren, at Switzer’s. She liked Switzer’s, appreciated its utilitarian directness;
plain metal shelves and sparse selection sending a message that was clear: we
are not going to dress up all pretty to please you. You either want to shop
here or you don’t. She respected that. Made every cosmetic and pharmaceutical purchase
there. In fact tonight when she got home (and right after she soaked herself
with lavender cream) she’d make a list of things she needed from Switzer’s. She
nodded, decisive and grateful for thoughts plain vanilla and mundane. They kept
her gaze from darting to the stage to try and peek behind the curtain, see those
goddamn wind chimes.
“Jas-mine!”
Her
gaze snapped to the right.
Nettle Moran lumbered up the steps to her row, feet staggering on the
risers. Jasmine at once pitied her clearly bawling knees. “Good evening, Nettle.”
She fixed her face with a smile, polite yet dismissive.
And
how many years would she try this expression before she learned that it did not
work on Nettle?
“Hello!”
Nettle panted a bit, the exertion of the steps way too much. Why the hell didn’t
she ask the committee to seat her in a spot where she needn’t climb?
Because then she’d no longer be first row and centre, of course. Jasmine
closed, then opened her eyes.
Nettle was smiling and bobbing her head—gamely, as though she were
cajoling a particularly precocious toddler. “How have you been keeping?”
Oh,
for Christ’s sake. She wasn’t a cucumber dunked into brine. (Though Roar may
have made a case for the vinegar bit being accurate) “Very well,” she replied. “Thank
you.” The lack of reciprocation—‘And how
are you?’—was both obvious and purposeful. But nosy people never picked up
on that cue.
Nettle’s
head continued to bob and it struck Jasmine that all this cajoling cheer teetered
close to desperation. Nettle said “Well that’s good, Jasmine. Real good.”
Mrs. Gavin. What would be ‘good’ is if you’d
call me Mrs. Gavin.
“We
worry when we don’t see you.”
‘We’?
Who were they? And what bullshit. They didn’t worry. They wondered.
“How
are you filling your days, Jasmine? Do you keep busy?”
No. I piss myself and eat cat food. Isn’t
that what old people do? It was galling to even consider sharing anything
she did behind the mutton bar windows and scarlet front door of her and Roar’s
magic cottage.
More
galling, though, to imagine what all those who wondered would contrive if she didn’t deliver some sort of answer. So
she replied—and surprised herself with the truth. “I watch shows.”
Bait
gobbled. Nettle beamed as if she’d just watched a handicapped person struggle
from a wheelchair and walk. Again Jasmine closed, then reopened, her eyes. Oh, Roar. Where are you when I need to mock?
Nowhere. Everywhere. Time had not just punished her with solitude. It also
tortured her with memories. And for what?
Because she’d dared to prefer her own company to those with whom she shared
geography? Because she’d had one, exquisite, love of her life instead of
settling for monotonous monogamy that left her longing for (or indulging in)
others—such as she’d seen play out in this small town, over and over, new
players, different decades, same story for years?
“Pardon?” she said. Nettle was still prattling. Wouldn’t shut up.
“I
said what sort of shows do you like?”
Very
few, actually. The sitcoms rewarmed one joke every episode and most of the dramas
were cardboard; stock characters and predictable problems, the preference of a viewing
audience whose attention span was short and expectations shallow. Some programs
though, were outstanding. Complex. Colors outside lines which embraced her into their
shifted reality. “Backstage,” she said.
“What?
Where? Backstage? You mean here?”
No, you nosy twat and stop salivating. I’m not
senile. I haven’t lost the train of this conversation. “Backstage is a show,” she said clearly. “It’s violent. Graphic. Full frontal
nudity and sex so vivid it’s downright pornographic. It’s disgusting.” She
smiled. “I love it.”
Shock
folded Nettle’s face into scandalized disapproval, and Jasmine knew
that Roar would have been exasperated by this deliberate provocation yet his eyes,
underscored with delight, would have silently cheered. And back at home he would
have said: “Once again you’ve convinced
the masses of your incorrigibility.”
“And what bullshit,” she’d once told him,
rolling on top, feeling instant heat and hunger. “What’s a mind worth of one cannot
speak it?”
“Nothing.”
His fingers had woven themselves into her hair, his touch as exquisite as that
harpist with her angel strings. “Nothing’s worth more than your beautiful mind,
Jazz.” Their kiss had been every symphony, every ballad, every delicate clash
of cymbals. Pornographic? Her heart swallowed a smile. She supposed so.
“Jasmine?” Nettle’s tone teetered, uncertain. “You
don’t look good.”
Jasmine blinked. Was this busybody for real? Who said things like that? “I assure
you, I’m fine.”
The lights flicked once, twice, and Nettle straightened,
clearly reluctant. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I…I guess I’d better get back to my
seat.” Yet she moved away slowly, tossing looks over her shoulder, searching Jasmine’s
face.
Jasmine’s brows hopped and her mouth twisted, wry.
Maybe I should have double-coated my lipstick.
Or gone a little darker with the rouge. She regarded Nettle. Lonely. The word struck
her and she knew it was accurate. Nettle was lonely. Spoken to and included only
because she was always the one who had all the latest news. Find a hobby. The thought was not unkind,
in fact it was more like a benediction, and it made her shudder a little as the curtain
rose.
Again chimes drenched the air, sweet seduction
paralyzing her anew in her seat. It was impressive, she tried telling herself, that
the damn things had been orchestrated in such a way that they played recognizable
songs. Ignoring the performance, she focused instead on Chautauqua council, down
in their spots centre-theatre. Trust them to have discovered such an unusual, fascinating
act. She shivered. Trust them also to have their heads in their lovely, artsy clouds
and not realize that one of them must have forgot to turn the heat on in the Red
Brick. She exhaled and was appalled (and embarrassed for them) that her breath came
out as frost. Poor Wren. He’d be besieged later, by complaints.
The temperature seemed determined to drop, plummeted,
really, and on stage the wind chimes at once fell to silence. Uh-oh. Had the artist
become too cold as well? If so it was a Chautauqua first; a performer halting mid-act due to discomfort. She felt sick for the council yet…the theatre
had succumbed to a deep, penetrating silence. She exhaled. Uncomfortable artist
or not, it was over. Thank God the damn
wind chimes were over.
Then lightly,
slightly, they began pealing again.
Her eyes ripped opened (and when had she closed
them? Why was she suddenly warm?) and she took in the music with a fresh sense of horror. Their
wedding song? Those goddamn wind chimes had pirated their wedding song. Indignation,
and hurt, seized her. Their wedding music…the score of that long-ago day still sang
her to sleep when the wind howled, stretching the night into something far darker
and longer than she could manage to sleep through alone.
She shut her eyes but the chimes played on, ruthlessly
caressing every note of their song. Stop.
Please. Just stop. Tears gathered, leaked down her face, and when she raised
her hand to brush them away it was jarring to see that the stage lights had gone
dim. What on earth? First that queer (and
deep) silence, now no spotlights? What was wrong? She glanced around but no one
else looked the slightest bit curious. Yet why? The spotlights never dimmed when an act was on stage.
Aha! Down a few rows and mid-theatre, a man (a
silhouette, really—it was so dark!) stood.
Part of the tech crew? Was he going to fix
things?
The silhouette turned and faced her.
Stunned recognition tore sound—mewling and small,
yet nonetheless louder than the chimes—from her throat.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” said Roar.
Jasmine rose as if lifted, feet not nimble in her
stilettos but not because she was old—more because shock, and disbelief, were shaking
her to the core.
And how was it—why was it?—that Roar regarded her face as if it was the most ironic
thing he’d ever seen in his life?
Life? He’s dead.
My husband, my love, my every walk after dark, my every star in the sky, he’s
dead.
Yet nonetheless he shuffled, politely past knees and over handbags, until
he reached the end of his row. Then he moved down to stand at the foot of the stage and
beckoned her.
She could not move. Was frozen.
“Jazz,” he said. “I’m waiting.”
She did not think she could do it, yet she floated down
the stairs, heels somehow meeting the risers and moving of a volition that was not,
could not be, her own.
Roar faced her, that ironic light still gleaming in his
eyes. “Did you catch me in the sound of these goddamn wind chimes?”
The
mimic of her rhetoric should have awakened her tongue, yet when her lips moved no
sound came forth. Still—Is that where you’ve been? She longed to
ask him.
He
held out his palm. “Take my hand, Jazz.”
What is
this? Still, she reached with no hesitation—this was Roar!—and was stunned to see that her
wrist was smooth and unmarred. Veins a mere whisper of blue beneath skin restored,
soft and firm.
“And
give me my hat, you sneak-thief.”
She
removed it from her white coif of hair, stunned when a mass of sable silkiness tumbled
onto her shoulders.
“Dance
with me,” he said.
Dance?
She glanced. There was no room between the apron of the stage and the first row
of seating; what the Hatlen Theatre held in charm it had always, sorely, lacked
in space. Besides… ‘Dance with me.’ That had only ever ended one way—and they were
in public.
Roar
hiked a droll eyebrow. “Really, Jazz? It’s not like you haven’t scandalized
this entire crowd before just for sport. Like tonight. ‘Pornographic’? Really?”
A
grin twitched on her lips.
Exasperation—and affection—lit his green eyes and though it shocked her (so
familiar! Exactly the same!) she still managed to say “It served her right.” God!
Her voice was unrecognizable. Lighter, and with no gravel pull of spent vocal
chords. She swallowed. “W-what’s a mind worth if you cannot speak it?”
He
considered this and irony melted away, left him looking melancholy, like Wren and
she had when the evening began. “I used to say nothing was worth more than your
mind, Jazz.” Roar held her hands. “Now I know that your mind is worth being
trapped for.”
On stage wind chimes pealed and trilled. She whirled and faced them,
horrified. “Is that where you’ve—”
He
pulled her close, kissed her, and it was again—still— every symphony, every ballad, every delicate clash of
cymbals. When he lifted his head she was breathless. “And for the record, Jazz,
yes: I really did love you the way you loved me.”
Oh! “Y-your
heart exploded.”
“Yes.” He nodded, looking sad. “But tonight it
started again. See?” He opened her hand, placed it on his chest.
The whole theatre flooded with heat and “Jazz,”
he said. “I’ve been waiting so long.” He flicked a gaze to the chimes, alight with old
rue. “May I trap you with me?”
Wasn’t that where she’d been? For fifty eternal
years wasn’t that just where she’d been? Her head bobbed and it struck her that
maybe the gesture made her look a whole lot like Nettle. She winced and Roar laughed,
the sound loud enough to shake the ceiling.
Yet not one patron so much as blinked. Although…Wren,
front row. Was he smiling?
“Dance,” Roar reclaimed her.
She spun, scarlet
coat catching air and floating ’round her ankles.
Roar kissed her. “And Jazz never, don’t ever,
take your windsong off my mind.”
Bonnie Randall, 2015
