Scenes of Love

Scenes of Love
By Andrew Larson

He sees her from across the room and is drawn into her orbit, slowly circling her and steadily moving closer, his planet craving the warmth of her sun. He finally walks up to her and showing no regard for her conversation moves her hair, the color of spun gold, away from her ear and whispers, “When you walk, it looks as if you’re dancing.”

He releases his hold on her strand of hair, letting it peacefully sweep back down, trapping his endearment within. And he turns to walk away. His wrist is, however, caught in a gentle grasp that sends his pulse racing. She looks into his cool grey eyes and unafraid says, “I can see poetry when you speak.”

This is how it started. At a gallery opening during the coldest winter on record. It was magic for both of them. It always starts with magic.

Right After
The First Night

They lay in bed together. Under mounds of down blankets they make their own home. And like a pair of foxes they are curled up together, using each other for warmth as much as anything else. The only vocal communication between the two has been laughter and moans for hours; finally after the sun had risen did one of them speak.
“So, does this make it our second date?” she asked. Which only sent them back in to a fit of laughter.

The Lover

He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to. There were worse things to think about then a stunning blonde, he told himself. His preoccupation with this woman had quickly and quietly leaked into every facet of his life. Now having made him miss his stop and walking several blocks more than necessary. Not that he minded the walking. The early fall weather suited him and his inclination to wear his one suit as often as he could, its color fading turning its once perfect blackness into a color more reminiscent to soot. His preference for his dark suit and ties gave him a formal look that went unmatched with his mannerisms. He was a young man of stark contradictions. He routinely wore his dusk colored ensemble with a finely pressed and ironed white shirt which had once shone brightly under the midnight of his topcoat but now only furthered the discolored look of his outfit. He looked as if he had stepped out of an old black and white photograph. Someone’s young grandfather come to life. And yet in his breast pocket he kept a plethora of brightly color handkerchiefs. He used them frequently and for anything ranging from wiping off a table, to blowing his nose, to wrapping up leftover food. When pressed about why he kept so many with him at all times he simply responded, “So when I encounter a woman in distress and I lend her my handkerchief I can say ‘No, no, I insist that you keep it’.”
His fashions sense aside, his demeanor was something that perplexed many and vexed a few. Mainly his co-workers at the University student newspaper. He was a late addition to the staff of the paper. So he was given the leftover advertising accounts; which consisted of a local shoe repair shop, a small diner that had left their menu unchanged for the duration of the last three presidential administrations, and the local burlesque house.
None of his fellow advertising students employed by the newspaper would go near the burlesque account. The establishment was named The Black Canary, and it was an account that had been with the paper for some years. So it fell into the hands of the young man of stark contradictions, who did not so much as blink when first handed the account. Of course he was under the assumption that it was nothing more than a simple bar. It wasn’t until his first trip to negotiate the price of their ad did he learn why no one else had taken the account: It was the newspaper’s booby prize. The irony was not lost on him.
It was coming out of the Black Canary for the first time in which he had his first encounter with her.

The Start of it All
The First Encounter

He had just left the burlesque house and was quite pleased with himself for closing the deal with the manager, a Ms. Dinah Lance, so easily. He was in a hurry to leave however. Being in the presence of so many women that were in only a matter of time planning to disrobe in front of others made him rather uncomfortable. He was still looking at the ground, as he had been for the duration of the time he spent inside the place of business, as he left. While his eyes were studying the intricacies of his shoes he failed to see what was in front of him and collided straight into someone. All she would’ve had to do was bat an eye and he would have collapsed; it didn’t really require full body contact. Upon regaining his footing his loss of words was apparent as well as an understatement. In that moment he forgot his native tongue and reverted back to something that even his cave dwelling ancestors would have struggled to comprehend.
“Ugh. Oh! I me-. Sor. I wan-. Ah….”
“Sorry is truly the only acceptable response.”
And with that, she gathered her scattered books that littered the sidewalk and with movements so fluid you’d swear she didn’t have a bone in her body, turned and walked in the opposite direction.
His mind was frozen. He stood there still looking straight down, averting his eyes for fear of them being burned out by her radiance. He stayed like that for years, a human statue; a marker of his time. Future civilizations will see him frozen there and assume that the people of his era found entertainment solely in footwear. At least it felt like it was years.

The Realization
Flaws

It was like finding out your parents can’t always come to the rescue. Like finding out the Wizard is just an ordinary man behind a curtain. Small things began to ruin what was once perfect. They muddied up thoughts that were once azure pools of perfection.
She didn’t use a coaster.
The first time he saw her dog ear the page of a book he had to suppress a scream.
The brand of cigarettes she smoked.
The way she would drop a slight hint that she might, maybe, be free at an undisclosed time in the future and she would like him to reserve that time for her.
These were the new things that kept him up at night. They slowly started replacing images of long walks and late nights in candle light.

Before
The Huntsman Gives Chase to the Doe

After he finally regained control over his motor skills, he made his way back to the newspaper’s offices. Quickly forgetting his victory in the burlesque house, his senses were still caught up in the brief encounter he had with that miracle of a girl. Upon returning to his colleagues he attempted to describe her. He looked for his copy editor, a man a few years older than him, who, from what he had heard around the newsroom, knew more about women than any other man on campus.
“She had the most luminous eyes I’ve ever seen. They saw through everything. They shone like twin moons in the night sky.”
“I think a color might be more helpful, you know like green, if we ever want to find this girl”, responded his copy editor.
“Oh, blue,” said the young lover, as if the simple word blue held any real meaning to him.
The copy editor could tell this was going to be difficult and by the end of it all, after all his profound images, they came to the conclusion that he was looking for a blonde, blue eyed, red lipped woman. He laughed, “Ha! Yeah, good luck with that.”
“What about all that description I gave you? Surely it must be of some help.”
His editor bluntly responded, “Save up all those adjectives and write a poem.”
And that is just what he did. He wrote poems. Dozens and dozens of them, all about her. The way her brow furrowed or how delicate she looked. He filled notebook upon notebook with his poems.

Towards the End
A Fight

“I just don’t understand why he would be calling you.”
“We’re still friends. That’s it. I wish you would get past this whole jealousy thing, it’s really unappealing.” And with that she rolled away from him.
“What do you two talk about? That’s all I want to know,” he said to the back of her head.
“What does it matter what we talk about?”
“It just does. Trust me.”
“Trust you!? Ha, I can’t believe you can say that with a straight face. I’m supposed to trust you, when you can’t trust me to make a simple phone call?” she said, turning back around as to unleash the proper amount of venom.
“Fine. I don’t care.”
“Good.”
They lay in silence for a few seconds, each one picking a different object in the bedroom to stare off at, anything to avoid making eye contact.
“You,” she whispers, “we mainly talk about you.”

Earlier
Poems

With the help of his copy editor he started to publish his poems in the school paper. They ran one a week, in hopes that she would read them and realize that she was the topic of what seemed like an endless supply of poems.
“You don’t even know if she’s a student here,” his copy editing friend protested at first.
“Ah that is where you’re wrong, good sir, on our chance encounter I noticed she was carrying textbooks.”
“Ok, so she is a student, do you have any idea how many colleges are in the area?”
“It matters not, I kno-“
“Seven, there are seven colleges around the city,” he interjected, “and all of them issue textbooks”.
“Do you ever wonder why I’m the writer and you’re the editor?” he posed.
“You write ads, ads for shoes and scantily clad women. You’re hardly Keats.”
“It’s because I know things you don’t. The world smiles on a young man in love.”
The young man’s poems ran for months, they attracted nothing but complaints from readers. However they stayed. He may have been a copy editor but he wasn’t heartless and he saw something that he admired in his romantic friend. So, he stalwartly opposed the poems being removed. Although they did shrink in size over time, to the point where it would have taken a magnifying glass to read them clearly. Until finally his outpouring message was received.
Ad space had been bought in the paper for one week only. It was placed next to the ad featuring the Black Canary, and it read: The Rayner Gallery opening. Nine o’clock. Buy a new suit.
“Who placed it?” he asked, shoving the ad under the nose of his friend.
“Oh, that? Not sure, some blonde, blue eyes maybe. A real looker.”
He ran towards the door in a flurry of excitement.
“Hey kid, where’re you off to? It’s only four!”
“I gotta see a man about a suit!”

The Start of the End
Silence

Their meals were eaten in relative silence. Words were spoken sparingly and only when necessary. “Pass the bread”, and “Salt please” among other single syllable words made up the bulk of the conversations.

The Beginning of Something Good
A Place to Call Home

“And over there,” she gestured to an empty area of the unfurnished apartment where the sun came perfectly through the window, “There I could set up my easel and canvas.”
“You could paint all morning and into the early afternoon while I dutifully made you breakfast and coffee,” with this sentiment he moved closer to her and slowly, in a expression of pure contentment wrapped his arms around her waist, deftly sliding his fingers into the belt loops of her jeans. Closing his eyes he nestled his face into the inviting nape of her neck and whispered the rest of his ideal morning into her clavicle, “I would find you sitting there basking in the sunlight. Draped only in one of my old dress shirts that I let you use as a smock. Venus personified. Patiently waiting for me.”
“Ha! You wish!” She then burst free from his tender embrace and twirled about the apartment, unhindered by furniture or inhibition. Her smile and laughter brought life to the bare one bedroom apartment, giving them a vision of their futures here. Their mornings of coy smiles over coffee, and afternoons spent in different rooms. Her painting, him studying or writing, and yet they would both be so attuned to each other they would feel the other next to them. Their evenings would be spent laying on the hardwood floor together. Him playing with her hair, her humming along as he softly sings to her from her favorite songs, “Ring of Fire”, “Friday I’m in Love”, “Division Day”, each one dedicated to a different part of her body.
When the landlord came in she found them already sprawled out on the paneled floor, laughing and wrestling. It took her several mock throat clearings before she could successfully rouse them.
“So what do you two think, could this be home?”
She was gazing up at him; a smile seemed a permanent fixture these days. Without needing to look down, he kissed the top of her head. His way of saying, “This is home.”

The Very End

“I can’t lie to myself any more; being with you is the worst thing for me right now. I can’t paint, I can’t work. I feel trapped with you. I’m leaving.”
The look of surprise on his face was obviously forced.
“This can’t be coming as a surprise.”

The First Time

“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”

The End Again

“No, not a surprise, it’s just…I don’t know, not what I was hoping for.”
“I don’t think this is what either of us hoped for.”

Way Back At the Start

They are walking hand in hand, leaving matching footprints in the fresh powder snow behind them. The snow had just fallen and had yet to cover everything with its fresh start. Leaving the gallery together, during the coldest winter on record, the falling snow was magic. It always starts with magic.