The Blue Bottle, Part Five

Frank steps foot on the dusty red dirt, his boot leaving its imprint as he starts toward the old farmhouse. Rosie, following along behind, is suddenly aware that the clothes she’s wearing are those of the ’60s, not the clothes she left the house in. She wants to tell Frank but follows, hanging onto Frank’s jacket, her breasts heaving with anxiety as the sun, low in the sky, extinguishes its fiery body. Franks pauses and is still. Rosie wants to tell Frank about her clothes, Frank forefinger presses to his lips. A breeze becomes a gust, picking up the hem of her polka dot dress, revealing the tops of her nylons.

The hairs on Frank’s neck feel the same gust, telling him everything why children run away from that which they don’t know. “Lorenzo is here, Rosie,” he whispers. Slowly, they edge silently closer to the porch. Franks smells rosewood, and the dryness of the red earth rising from a discarded pipe, still warm. Curtains in an open window move, stained with gold. It seems welcoming, like the scent of grapes in wine invites one inside, lingering. Frank, again motionless, hears a clock. He knows it ticks his time.

“I think maybe Lorenzo isn’t home,” Rosie says soft as a sigh, urging him to turn around with a slight tug.

Somewhere close by, Frank senses a dribbling lip, and knows Lorenzo’s eyes are focusing on a valley of milky softness. It’s Lorenzo’s squatting desire, waiting his chance beyond this porch, sniffing the closeness of a woman.

“He’s here, Rosie. He’s left all the clues.”

“Clues?” Her face showing a contorted bewilderment.

“You think that gust of wind was nature? No, Rosie, Lorenzo is a voyeur, a poet, a man nosing his way through prayer books, dreaming in yellow and gold, and desires to traverse the indentations of women till his knowledge of her is microscopic.

“But what clues?”

“Never mind, stay close. Lorenzo will adore your runny, rag doll eyes.”

“You make me sound like some gangster’s moll.”

Frank winces at Rosie’s humor. “Be calm. When we enter, Lorenzo is waiting. His breath is slight, his heart slow. He eats the poetry of women, writes it down like a bolt of lightning, and he’s inside wondering whether you have the faith. It is a question already on his lips. ‘Rosie, do you have the gift of faith?’ His hand will reach for your vagina’s lips, Rosie. Your body is being sniffed, lusted after, and licked.

Rosie steps closer to Frank, and at the same time, stops breathing. “Frank?” her voice, like a dry leaf underfoot.

“It’s okay, Rosie. Com’on, let’s get to the door. Stay behind me and keep hold.” Nature feels split. Poles of magnets alternately repel and pull, attracting their curiosity as they spin in and out.

In one window, the closed one, the candle’s light flickers, but there is no candle. Instead, it is an unnatural aura of nothing and everything, emptiness and wholeness. “Stay close, Rosie,” Frank says again in a voice that wouldn’t wake a mouse.

The door creaks as it is slowly pushed. It is the sound of non-maintenance, or the trickery of someone using a sentry that requires no batteries. Frank pauses; a hand is trembling on the tail of his jacket. Then, leaning one hand on the door, Frank eases the door wider. He feels a gust of breath. It has the grace of a dancer twirling on balls of feet, weightless, leaving the dust on the hardwood floor unmolested.

“We’re going inside, Rosie. Remove your shoes,” Frank whispers.

“But… I’m wearing nylons. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

“Rosie, just do it.” She balances on one foot, holding onto his arm, and removes one shoe, then the other, her red toenails wrapped in nylon.

Stained curtains forbid the last of the sun. The door is ajar; an eye is watching from within. Frank leans his body forward, reaching back for the hand of Rosie, who is feeling something else — a caress that blushes her cheeks, soft as the word forgotten. Inside, the smell of hands that have freshly picked strawberries pushes up against her bra, a pleasing touch of the suitor’s caress. It is a moan, a wound, an ache, something she is not aware of in her consciousness. More like a calling to follow, be unafraid, leave behind a poor wretch wanting more than faith.

“Frank, I feel something…?” Franks is too intently listening for clues. She whispers again, carelessly louder.” I’m saying I feel something.”

It is Lorenzo’s trickery, Rosie. He’s offering you a lost passion, a reverence so pure you will feel gratitude enough not to leave with him. Frank stops, turns to Rosie, “whatever you do, do not let go of my hand, do you hear me? Lorenzo is trying to steal you away.”

Frank wants to say more, but he hears a sound from the closet. The breath is that of a woman, and hers is his. Lorenzo is one with the both of them, as surely as seawater spills from a hand when lazily dragged along the sea’s surface, in droplets going back into itself again.

“He is here,” Frank repeats. “Wanting your ear, more than mine. In this room. In these walls. In the curtains. In the soil. In this time, in this….” Frank breaks off; a clock has stopped ticking. On the dashboard of the Thunderbird, the second hand is standing still. It is ten minutes and ten seconds before ten o’clock.

“Rosie, the next chapter is somewhere here. We have ten minutes to learn what it is.”

Rosie nods without saying anything. She isn’t dreaming. They have returned to a before time, here and now. Frank moves through to another room. He hears his heart beating in time with Rosie’s. There’s a dining table, a closet, and the window is open, blowing pages of a manuscript, first one way, then balanced, softly falling back to the opening of another chapter. Frank’s finger bids the pages are still. The answer lies wrinkled before him. A page, torn free and reinserted.

“What’s it say, Frank?” Rosie tries to read over his shoulder but only sees the page filled with letters as if a printer were buzzing away.

Frank would have answered had he not seen footprints on the dust of the floor?” He points to them. A man’s shoes are going into the closet. None is coming out.

“Frank, if he didn’t come out, then where… ?”

“Everywhere, Rosie. Remember, do not let go of my hand. To do so is to lose you, do you understand?” Rosie doesn’t respond, other than to grip Frank’s hand fiercely tight. Frank turns his attention back to the torn page.

“Unforgettable Hemingway books,” he mumbles, running his finger across the text. For Whom The Bell Tolls.”

“What does it mean, Frank. Who is Hemingway?”

“It’s a clue, Rosie. A clue to where we need to be.”

“It is…where?”

“Havana.”

“Where?”

“Never mind, Rosie. We need to get back to the car.”

“Listen to me, put on your shoes, then caress your legs.”

“Caress? I don’t think this is the time, Frank,” she says, blushing.

“Lorenzo is here. He wants you, all of you. He can’t have you while you hold on to me. With one hand, pull on you shoes, let your hand smooth your legs.”

Rosie does as instructed, setting shoes on the floor and wiggles a foot into one, then the second. Finally, Rosie smooths her legs up to her thighs. “You were born with some ancient charm, Frank,” she says with an eager smile.

Frank picks up on a deep sigh, erotic, full of lunacy.

“Do you hear that, Rosie?”

Rosie concentrates. It’s coming across in small whiffs, the whirling blue smell of Havana.

Frank’s chest is unmoving, hardly a breath taken as he walks through to the sitting room. The carpet is brown, threadbare, edged with once-bright yellow flowers. On the mantle is a large clock of black wood, with columns. On either side of the clock vases of roses. In the corner of the room sits a small table on which a letter, scribed parchment.

‘Old friend,’ it begins, ‘we became very close to the conversation. Never so close since the times we were together on the streets of Paris, selling our poetry for a smile’s ransom. There is no one here, and there is someone.”

“What does it mean, not here?” Rosie asks.

Frank holds up the flat of his hand, ears tuned, and moves quickly to the closed window. Too late, the power of the white Ford Falcon’s breathing, noiselessly departs the barn, disappearing in a dust cloud beyond that which glances cannot see.

Frank returns his eyes to the letter. ‘You were always so difficult to be around. You had the heart of a song-maker. Me, well, I was merely the magician. Our fates headlong to meet destiny. I magic away sobs, invent new flowers, create entrances for storytellers. You are a wave, it seems, starting out mid-ocean, rushing toward a shore, happily knowing nothing can keep you from leaving, relishing only the foaming froth of your being? I remember wondering what galaxies of women are out there, but I knew you would lead me to her, to the one. You know where I’ll be. All these years in friendly arms, the hissing hellfire of loves, the stinking sighs after laughter and wine. We will meet again, my friend. Have faith, old man.”

“What does it mean, Frank…is the ‘her’ he talks of…is that me?”

Frank sits Rosie down. “When you were seventeen, you fell in love with a boy,” he explains, “he never forgot you; never a day in his unnatural life did he forget you. He has known both of us and loved us. But glance-to-glance you were the one he sought, the one he calculated to arrive. The one he couldn’t lose, and in torment he lost himself, his breathing, his body, his light of day…but not his heart.”

“Me, seventeen, in love? What did he mean? Why did he thank you for bringing me to him?”

“Because he feels Raven’s presence in you. Enjoying the closeness but fearing it, too?”

“Raven is here…I don’t see him?”

“There is no one here…but there is someone in you, Rosie,” Frank explains.

“I’m confused! It’s so hot in here,” she complains, unbuttoning two of the buttons at the top of her dress.”

A sighing breeze sweeps through the cobwebs, it could have been from the plains of Africa. Or a baptism. The clock of life has stopped. Something unseen is pulverizing the weak soil, wanting to caress the taught, innocent suffering of the earth.

“I feel fai….” Rosie collapses. Some ferocious tongue is licking at her, a God-forsaken impulse reaching out and wanting its way. Lorenzo teasing them into believing he left before his scarlet heart desires a milky treat, a creamy perfection with which to lie. With Rosie slumping in his arms, Frank looks up. “You’ve found only yourself, Lorenzo, in these thousand wicked enchantments. Yes, I’m here. I’m a thousand faces of an inferior race, a nation without a science. Did you genuinely believe you could kill me? Of course, but then you have the advantage of knowing the chemistry hidden inside the Blue Bottle. But I understand the treacheries in the world, all the cause of your doings. Look at her, Lorenzo, don’t you want her? Don’t you want to work for your idle hands? Isn’t she the lost love of history, ready as an August poppy, asleep in future dreams? She is Raven’s love, Lorenzo, not yours. Never yours.

Shivering’s mutter and rise, new clothes form on feminine bones. Then, finally, a happening, a night’s last brilliance. The red T-bird’s rumbling tires roll over geological faults, a signal that the past is falling forwards.

Coming, Part six, Earnest Hemingway