(this is still in progress. any comments are appreciated!)
It wasn’t that her eyes glowed so much as that everything else in the room dimmed when she looked at me. Even the sounds of the party, the tinking of glasses and forks on hors d’oeuvre plates, the subdued cacophony of small talk, all became attenuated when her gaze locked with mine. I was instantly entranced, like a snake dancing with an Egyptian’s flute, watching her watch me.
Darlene, a friend from college with large engineer’s glasses, was standing next to me telling our friend Rory about some new movie currently playing at the art house theater downtown, and Rory, as usual, was quite happy to carry the bulk of the conversation. I merely had to smile when they smiled and I could appear to the world at large as if I were involved in the conversation. In actuality, I was transfixed by the woman in the red dress ensconced on the far side of the room, waiting for her to steal another glance in my direction.
“Where’s Karen tonight?” Darlene asked suddenly, jutting her chin toward me.
“At home,” I said after a slight hiccup, “She’s studying for her exams.” This was a lie. She was at her parents’ house “visiting with them,” which meant she was in actuality discussing her dissatisfaction with me and our relationship. We had been arguing more and more frequently as of late, the price for moving in together prematurely, I suppose.
“That’s a shame,” Rory remarked letting his own glance travel around the room, “She never comes out anymore. I do hope she graduates soon.” He and Darlene kept talking, lamenting over this and that regarding Karen’s absence and her extraordinary insight into Italian cinema, but my focus was again across the room, meandering the curves of this mysterious apparition.
Her crimson dress, cut low enough to entice without being too provocative, clung to her youthful form like the scales of a ruby crocodile. I took her in slowly, lingering on her sleek sumptuous legs, the type of legs you imagine sprinting effortlessly through a jungle—Amazonian legs. She turned to me and caught me admiring her, but only cast me a sultry smile and tilted back the final sip of her martini.
I don’t know why I moved in with Karen when I did. It just seemed like the right time. I’m getting older and had been thinking about settling down. We had met at a party like this and hit it off more or less right away. I was ready to fall in love, had been actively looking for it, and when our conversation took all the right turns without crashing I found myself unwittingly sizing her up as wife material. I suppose I had been drunk too, but this is the method by which many of my friends had acquired their spouses. Karen and I weren’t married yet, but the topic of engagement had arisen once or twice and now hung about our apartment like a pesky poltergeist.
The Crocodile Princess had disappeared while I was in my reverie. I quickly scanned the room hoping she had merely migrated to a new circle of friends and conversation, but she was nowhere in sight. Darlene and Rory barely acknowledged me as I excused myself. On my way to the kitchen, I downed my drink so that I would have an empty glass to fill should she be in the bar area. She was not, but I refilled my glass of Pomerol regardless. Swirling the wine under my nose to savor the aroma, I was considering to where she might have retreated when Trevor appeared from out of nowhere.
“Hey Jack!” he said, shuffling up in his dumpy way. My name is
“Hey Trev,” I responded with a sigh, looking past him, still pondering the mystery woman’s potential whereabouts.
“Hey, where’s Karen? I haven’t seen her all night. Is she sick?” Trevor was short and built like a pillow with legs. He spoke the way an old soccer ball might talk if it were given to conversation. I don’t think anyone really likes him.
“Yes,” I said, not really caring to commit to any specific lie at this point.
He sucked some beer from his can and shook it absently. “Must be that bug going around. I think I just got over it too. Had me laid out for a week. It was horrible. I swear I musta gone through six boxes of tissues I had so much snot comin’ outa my face.” His snicker vibrated through his arm fat and plump jowls, and I felt the slightest bit nauseous.
“Yeah, she’s pretty bad alright. Listen, can we talk later? I’m looking for someone,” I said, moving away from him.
“Who are you looking for?” he asked, opening another beer. I pretended not to have heard him as I stalked toward the back of the house and into the yard.
Living with Karen has been a learning experience. I had never lived with anyone before her besides the obligatory college roommates. Compromise was something that I was accustomed to choosing whether or not to accommodate, but Karen already had me seeking out her opinion regarding the most minute decisions. I was especially bothered by the amount of artwork I had collected over the years which she absolutely forbade wall space in our apartment. Her excuse was that most of my pieces lacked frames and were therefore inelegant. I told her that was how I liked them.
In the yard, guests were grazing in clusters around a luminescent swimming pool. Tiki torches were planted intermittently along the edge where the cement met the grass, their orange citronella flames barely keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Though there were at least five conversations going on in the yard, I knew that everyone was ignoring at least one other person; it was just that type of crowd.
I wove my way though them, careful to avoid eye contact with anyone lest I get sidelonged into another pointless talk-off. Stuart, tall and loud in an ugly shirt, barked at me to back him up on some inane point, but I just laughed and kept walking. Finally the glow of a lone cigarette in the periphery caught my eye. For a second I just watched the cherry bob in the shadows, but when she took a drag and those eyes ignited once again staring directly at me, I began my cautious approach.
She was standing just outside the immediate glow of the Tiki torches. As the distance between us narrowed, the scent of her cigarette smoke mingled with the citronella creating a primitive musk. Stepping into this new realm, I could feel my heart beating as if I had just chased her down through a wide plain. “Hi,” I croaked.
“Hello,” she said without blinking. She took a pull from her cigarette and exhaled rain clouds.
“What are you doing out here?” My voice sounded distant, the world around us fading as I let myself be consumed by her unwavering gaze.
“Smoking,” she replied, a tiny laugh flitting into the air like a phantom butterfly.
“So I see.” Talking to a woman is always a balance of confidence and nerves. I ran my fingers through my hair attempting to conjure some of the former.
“Someone here told me you were with Karen,” she said. She pulled on her cigarette again and held it for a long moment before blowing out the side of her mouth.
“You know Karen?” I asked, feeling my eyebrows perform an impulsive dance across my forehead.
“I know of her,” she said, raising her head slightly so that I found myself sliding down her neckline to her shoulder.
“Uh, yeah. We live together,” I said, taking a big gulp of my wine.
“So you’re with her?” She was relentless. I was transfixed. We were standing close enough that I could smell the soft powdery scent of her perfume; I wanted to drink it off her, I wanted to drown in it.
“Yes. I guess for now I am.” I said, watching her closely to gauge her reaction.
Her smile flickered a barely distinguishable transition as she took another slow pull from her cigarette absorbing the implications of my wording. “So what are you doing here?” she asked. Her voice was suddenly sharp and cold; it gutted me.
“I don’t know,” I said, breaking eye contact and looking down at my shoes. What I had thought was grass was actually Astroturf, spongy and artificial, surrounding me in all directions. I caught myself wondering if any of the plants in this garden were real and alive. When I looked back up her, she was already looking past me to the beasts around the pool.
“Maybe you should figure that out,” she said, dropping her cigarette and crushing it into the synthetic earth.
