Original Love. J.J. Murray

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СКАЧАТЬ spaced here and there around a small, empty in-ground pool. I hear a voice singing to a guitar and smell the oregano beginnings of an Italian or Greek feast. As I shut the gate, the wind dies down, and some amber accent lights begin to glow along the path. I’m almost to some stairs when I notice a man watching me from the roof high above.

      “What are you—prophet, priest, or inventor?” he asks, his voice rising and falling like a seasoned poet. I count the syllables in my head—ten exactly. This must be the poet Henry was telling me about.

      “Writer,” I call up to him.

      He rolls his eyes. “You must be one of Henry’s many friends.”

      I move up the stairs, smiling at him while once again counting his syllables. Ten again. Normal people do not speak in blank verse.

      At the top, I find myself on a patio with a brilliant view of Great South Bay. “You must be a poet,” I tell him. “Do you always speak in blank verse?”

      “Alas, it is one of the dying arts,” he says. He wears a white headband, loose green sweatpants, and an oversized white New York Jets jersey. He is also as tan as burnt toast, lines of white skin leaking out in squint lines around his eyes. “Welcome, Henry’s friend, to Elysium.”

      “Peter Underhill.”

      He nods. “You can call me the Poet, Coleman Muse.”

      “Nice to meet you, Coleman.”

      “Let me give you a tour of Cherry Grove,” he says, still speaking in blank verse. Coleman must be no fun at parties. “Over there’s where people drink to forget.” I see a pub or bar named Le Lethe. “Yonder lies the Great South Bay, shimmering.”

      “Do you live here year-round?”

      “No, because none of us has a fixed home.”

      He’s good at making up blank verse, but this is getting creepy. I look to the south and see the waves of the Atlantic tapping the shore. “How’s the weather been?”

      Coleman pauses a beat, probably to count his syllables. “Calm, cool, and serene, and Cherry Grove sleeps.”

      Spooky, strange, and weird is this Coleman Muse. Geez, now I’m thinking in blank verse. “Uh, where’s Henry’s place?”

      “I will show you if you will follow me.”

      I don’t speak to Coleman on the way to Henry’s door for fear of another ten-syllable blast. I wonder if there’s therapy available for recovering blank verse addicts. He stops in front of a white door facing Great South Bay. “This, Henry’s friend, is Henry’s bright white door, and if you like we can parley some more.”

      Now he’s speaking in couplets. I thank him, open the door, and see—Geez, I have died and gone to a blizzard in Alaska.

      Henry’s studio apartment is bright white and all the same eye-blinding bright white. Henry could have had the decency to at least do his moldings and baseboards in antique white. I might get lost in here! White indoor-outdoor carpet. I didn’t know they made such an irrational thing. A white sofa, a white coffee table in front, a white library table behind. White curtains and shades, pulled down, of course, to keep all the other colors safely outside. A white bookcase filled with white seashells and unpainted Hummel figurines. A framed copy of the Beatles’ White Album. How tacky. A white dinner table with two matching wing chairs. A white kitchen counter and appliances, cabinets filled with opaque white glasses and fine china, drawers filled with white utensils.

      I rip open the refrigerator and—Here’s some color. Lots of beer, soda, condiments, salad fixings. His pantry has color, too, each shelf covered meticulously with white contact paper and teeming with boxed goodies of every flavor of the rainbow. I search through the house for anything else visibly nonwhite and come up empty. Even Henry’s soap, soap dish, and shower fixtures are white.

      I have entered a rubber room on the funny farm. I am in a snowstorm in Buffalo. I am buried under the surface of the moon. I will have to leave all the windows and the refrigerator and pantry doors open at all times or I will go blind. I cannot be Ebony Mills in a completely Caucasian apartment.

      After moving the dinner table to a window looking out on Great South Bay, I set up shop. I boot up the laptop, which is gloriously black with glowing green lights, then litter the table with stacks of research notes and outlines. I make a cup of dark brown Earl Grey tea, using brown sugar to sweeten it. I slide Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life into the laptop’s CD tray, “Love’s in Need of a Love Today” breaking the silence. I am tired, but I am ready to write. I look at my working outline for Chapter 1 of my novel:

       I. Back story: history of the Underhills

       II. Back story: David and “Hel” Underhill

       III. Back story: 1963–1975 (life with the Captain and “Hel”)

      I sift through my notes on my family history, my fingers eager to begin my dissection of the hallowed Underhills, but nothing comes.

      Nothing.

      I start on the back story for my father three times, but I fail to grasp his essence, his character, typing then deleting “The Captain was a” three times.

      Maybe it’s the light salt breezes blowing off the bay that I’m allowing inside to spoil Henry’s antiseptic apartment, maybe it’s the long day with the flight, the drive, and the ferry ride, maybe it’s me singing along with Stevie Wonder instead of writing, maybe it’s the fact that Henry’s apartment is one huge blank page haunted by a blank verse poet doing iambic pentameter jumping jacks on the roof above—

      I can’t write tonight. I can’t latch on to any of the winged dreams and nightmares swooping through my mind. Edie, who had a classical private school education, used to call me the Fisher King whenever I had writer’s block. “You’re as impotent as the Fisher King,” she’d tell me. “But I guard the Holy Grail,” I’d reply.

      I am the Fisher King. Again. It seems fitting here as I look out over the calm waters of Great South Bay.

      But when I curl up on the couch and think of Ebony and how fine she would look in Henry’s apartment, how her dark skin would blaze shadows on to these too-white walls, I smile.

      Good night, Ebony, wherever you are. I’ll write about you tomorrow.

      Promise.

      3

      I wake up several hours later in complete darkness, sweat dripping down my back. I can’t be sleeping! I have two novels to write, and Henry wants his sassy-ass novel as soon as possible.

      I scratch the sleep out of my eyes and boot up the laptop, searching old files for five years of the fits and starts of Desiree’s other novels. There are a lot of starts, but few fits for what Henry wants. But after a few hits of brown-sugared Earl Grey tea, Stevie Wonder turned up as loud as the laptop’s little speakers can handle, I start to click the keys…

      …as a black woman.

      A WHITER SHADE OF PALE by Desiree Holland

      Prologue

      I’m СКАЧАТЬ