Seeds and Other Stories

by Ursula Pflug

  One night when I was alone I turned on the radio and heard the fire song we’d written together a few nights earlier and had been singing together every day, as we cried or laughed at our plight, or more likely, just made strange love again.

  Of course that was impossible; Rudy hadn’t recorded it yet. The music was very beautiful. I wished I knew more of music so I could sing him the melody when he returned from seeing Lou (my euphemistic name for his Purple supplier, which I shared with him—he didn’t get the joke) and he could write it down, because it was far better than the one he’d written.

  But the words were the same, word for word.

  What is time? What is creativity?

  I felt like we’d been sent out on a space probe, the two of us, to bring back the unearthly answers to those portentous questions, but who could survive that?

  Still, waiting for him to come back, I tried to tap it out on the room’s piano, but I have little ear for music and I never got it right. When he eventually got back he said, “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard you play; it captures so perfectly our eerie trajectory.”

  “It’s a quarter of the original, if that, and many notes misheard. It’s the melody to ‘Fires Halfway.’”

  “‘Fires Halfway’ already has a different melody. What do you mean, the original?”

  “This one’s better. I heard it on the radio.”

  “You’re a technology-based Coleridge,” Rudy said. “I know you said you’d wanted to be Kim, and I said I’d be happy if you could, but now you’re pushing it.” Still he madly scribbled notes, and the lost portions he replaced with accessible poppy riffs, not nearly so frightening. It was a good collaboration, the one and only between ourselves and the Sirian extraterrestrials singing to me and only me from the radio. Or so I joked. Rudy winced. I could say things like that and still remember to pick up the dry cleaning; it was before Fan came. Rudy was concerned; he had a lighter grip that week than me. Kim, whom he’d conjured, strange wise beauty, was turning out to be a little more than he could handle.

  “How was your meeting with Lou?” I asked.

  “Not very productive. Possibly a good thing as I have to play tomorrow night.”

  “They’ll love you,” I said. “I was going to go shopping with Katie to buy a dress. Want to go out? We haven’t been out for days, except for shows. I’m kind of glad you couldn’t get any more Purple.”

  “Where is there to go? We’re past Pluto, Kim.”

  “You’ll have to get back in time for your gig tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” he sighed as if he didn’t like it much. “I could spit on them and they’d love me. Why do people worship celebrities?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, wondering whether he was ready to hear me say he wasn’t much of a celebrity compared to Lou but thinking I’d wait.

  “Where is there to go? We’re past Pluto, Kim,” he said again. “And the bars have closed.”

  “Die Ruine’s private and open all night.”

  “You’re not kidding.” Rudy laughed a little bitterly and took two dry-cleaned silk jackets off their hangers: one black, one mauve. At least the cuts were different.

  sss

  A blonde with dark circles under her eyes told us she loved Rudy’s song about Kim and introduced herself as Fan. I recognized her as part of Leni’s group from the first night and when she asked us to join her we agreed; the place was standing room only. The three of us drank rye, which is odd as I generally hate it. We were glum and silent, maybe because of the whiskey.

  I went to the bathroom; the atmosphere at our table was so claustrophobic I had to escape. There was a hole high in the crumbled wall. I stood on the toilet and looked through, saw two stars like eyes looking back at me, the eyes of God or perhaps the Devil as the tarot reader had said. One of them must be Sirius, I thought. My home planet. I half believed it; we were that far gone. It was an interstellar distance Rudy would have to take on stage tomorrow night but I figured it was almost a requirement in his profession. Lou had likely played from much farther out in space. I got back and told Fan and Rudy.

  “There’s a dark twin to the Dog Star,” Fan said. “Want to go?”

  “That’s where we’ve been the last week, since we arrived,” I replied.

  “Ah. You must mean you have some of the new Purple. I’d like to join you,” she said.

  “We’re lonely explorers. The arduousness of our journey through uncharted territory has caused us to go from love to hate in less than a week,” Rudy said.

  It was true I wanted more than anything to get away from him; the problem was Purple impelled us toward one another: tiny electric trains about to crash, derail, explode. It always seemed worth it until afterwards. When Fan reached over and fondled Rudy’s thigh, I was thrilled at the possibility of dumping him off on her but she had other plans for the three of us.

  sss

  Two days later, waking up, curtains pulled against the glare, I glanced at my watch.

  “Shit,” I said, noticing the date, “we have three hours to catch our plane.”

  “You go,” Rudy said, reaching over and cupping Fan’s breast in his hand. “I think I am going to stay here, with Fan.”

  She nodded solemnly, extricated herself from his fondling, leaned over and submerged his unlit cock in her small mouth. Her long blonde hair veiled the act decoratively.

  I put a few things into a suitcase, feeling neither jealousy nor even curiosity. I didn’t remember when she’d arrived, or why, and wasn’t sure I cared.

  “Don’t forget this,” Rudy said, reaching over to the night table to pick up a silver choker we’d bought in an expensive jewellery shop on the Ku’Damm.

  “Oh thanks, I almost did forget it.” I popped it into the suitcase. What had we been doing for the last forty-eight hours? The memories came, a little at a time. More or less what Rudy and me had been up to, only there’d been three of us.

  “Oh no,” Fan said, “you should wear it.” She got up, having finished her job, and clasped the choker behind my neck. “Zo baby, you don’t think you will stay here with us?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You find me beautiful, no? You seem to like it with a girl. I could teach you…”

  I looked from her to Rudy, a statue in repose. A naked prince. A young lion. Purple did little for my vocabulary. It had seemed a good thing, once. “I think maybe I have had enough of beauty for awhile, you know?”

  “Ah,” Fan said, “I never have enough of beauty. Never never never.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why you’re a junkie and I’m not.”

  She laughed instead of taking offence, whispered in my ear. “I sense that you are a little bit tired of him and I understand. I have a girlfriend, Lucerne, who would be only too happy to take him off our hands. The thing is, we would have to take the credit card. You made him put it in your name too, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “But you can make his signature, yes? A girl could be a Rudy.”

  “His name’s Rudolph,” I said, giving away his worst secret.

  She sighed. “No good. How much cash then? And of course, we could sell the dog collar for quite a bit, that is unless you’re very fond of it.” She was forgetting to lower her voice but Rudy didn’t seem to hear, or maybe he didn’t care.

  “Well, I’m thinking it will make a great memento of this bizarre chapter.”

  “What? I do not always understand your Canadian English. I lived for a time in London but it is a much different accent.”

  “Not worth repeating.”

  “Between two women there is always all the time in the world.”

  “It’s not personal.”

  Fan wasn’t offended. In retrospect I’m not surprised. It was her job, after all, to understand such things. “You get sick even of
the best sweets if you eat too many,” she said by way of analysis. “Now when we do Purple it no longer fulfils each desire like liquid light.”

  “Did you write that down?” I asked Rudy. He didn’t answer, paging through a magazine.

  “I know,” Fan continued, packing her own little patent leather case, “we get bored. Too much of the same is not good. There are many things I could teach you. Many different and new games you have not experienced before. We play to amuse ourselves.”

  “Like dolphins,” I said, “or maybe dogs.”

  She didn’t hear my sarcastic undertone, beamed widely. “Genau! Dolphins’ sexuality is so spiritual, no? Like us.”

  I had to admit it had occasionally felt like that, playing like dolphins in a flooded old hotel room, sporting a baby grand and drawn mauve curtains. What is it about mauve? It was the only colour I wore then, if I wasn’t wearing black.

  Fan took off one of her many scarves and pulled it tightly around my breasts. I moaned, wondering whether dolphins ever moaned. “Lie down,” she whispered. “Just once more.”

  I complied.

  Lying there, my eyes closed, I heard her charge Rudy two hundred and fifty dollars. “American,” she whined. I heard her get up and fish through the wallet he’d left on the night table. “What is this? Don’t tell me you don’t have any American?”

  My eyes slammed open. “You’re paying for this?”

  “Well, it’s actually the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “Not true. You agreed to pay me before I came up, and you did pay me half last night, remember?” She winked at me. “It’s been amazing. Think of it this way, it’s half my regular rate because Ich finde sie beide sehr cool, very beautiful. Beauty always pays a lower price, in all things.”

  Fan and her damn beauty obsession. She was slated for a lot of face lifts some year, that was for sure.

  “Are you really going to go?” Rudy asked, looking forlorn. I covered him with a sheet.

  “Get a grip, kid, you need it. Although I have to say it’s been a ball. If a very strange ball, doesn’t bounce like other balls, obeys physics from another dimension.”

  “It’s not my fault, I didn’t know. I thought she was a groovy pick-up, just like you did.”

  I figured him for a liar. And what was wrong with paying a groovy pick-up? Fan had a plane to catch, just like I did, only hers was next week and to Paris.

  Still haven’t been to Paris.

  “You wouldn’t have to pay if it was just you,” she whispered, lasciviously. Rudy glowered at her, overhearing. “We could make a lot of money. We could go anywhere, travel the world. I have great connections.”

  “I’ll bet.” Watching her pack scarves. Would she wash them out in tonight’s hotel room? Where did she live, and with whom? Do women like Fan “live” anywhere? Do they have kitchens, or only restaurants? I’d buy her drinks and ask about her life but I knew I wouldn’t get to hear her stories unless I joined in them. You hear the best gossip only when you give people something to gossip about. I’d have to earn her trust, she wouldn’t give it away for free.

  “Well, if you gotta go, go in style.” She gave me her black lace shirt to wear, a rubber miniskirt, and net stockings. They fit perfectly.

  “I guess you’ll be wearing my jeans and T-shirt out,” I said, unzipping my suitcase to dig out clothes for her.

  She took them and held them up against her long slim body, delighted. “They are a very nice jeans and T-shirt. They will remember you me always.”

  “Cool,” I said and kissed her briefly on those soft soft lips. “Take care. Don’t get hurt. There’s some crazy people out there, some bad bad drugs.”

  She smiled, so happy I stopped to think she might be endangering herself. “I am the craziest,” she said. “Is no one badder than me.” She laughed delightedly, including me in her big secret, the one she depended on to keep her safe from harm. I hoped it would, even if she was the devil.

  “No doubt,” I said, glancing at Rudy before I left. He was asleep. Would they spend another few days together, Fan steadily emptying his wallet of traveller’s checks, or was it over between them too? Who knew, and more importantly, who really cared?

  sss

  Katie drove me to the airport, shrugged when I told her Rudy had changed his flight, would be staying on with Fan. When we got to Tegel, I asked whether she’d supplied the Purple. Maybe there’d been a lot I’d missed. Maybe Fan and Katie had cooked it all up together, right from the beginning. She didn’t reply, not really, and who could blame her? Katie was way too slick to ever implicate herself; in that way she and Fan were of a type. Instead she asked, “What’s with the clothes?” Giving me the once over.

  “I’ve been in Berlin,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Did you go to the other side?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it like?” Katie asked.

  “Strange. But good to see it, I guess. To know what’s there.”

  “But you wouldn’t want to live there, right?”

  “No,” I said. “But then, that’s what everyone from this side says, don’t they?”

  She nodded, smiling. “The new song. No one will ever forget it.”

  Hamilton Beach

  OUTSIDE THE DOOR water continues to run. Wraparound workbenches, on every wall but this one, stacked to the ceiling with piles of doll faces. Piled one on top of the other, faces look out of faces like layers of masks. They still have their eyes; blue eyes with flecks of light in them.

  Staring up.

  I’ve never been here before.

  There’s no one else in the room. I stay in bed, looking at the doll’s eyes. Sacrilege, those fake flecks of light. Like faking orgasm, only worse. Faking Life.

  Who’d I come with? Why don’t I remember? Like other wickedly hungover mornings I know it’ll return to me. Machine-heads. Virtual sex junkies. They’ve discovered it’s pheromones that keep your memory sharpened. Kids get it from hugs and kisses. Why there’s so much more ADD now; people don’t get laid any more, and kids cuddle with virtual pets, not their parents or puppies. But I only did it once.

  Water runs. My head hurts. Not only do I not remember how I got here, or where here is, I also don’t remember where I live, or what I do with myself from day to day. What do I remember?

  Martin, my boyfriend. He’s not here with me now, although it comes to me that’s not unusual, for him. I told Martin about the machine-heads, and he said he’d run with them too. Once or twice, he said. Of course, he’s lied before.

  I’m wearing my clothes, which gets rid of at least one uncomfortable possibility.

  The sound of running water. Maybe Martin’s having a shower—a nice thought. If he was trying to duck out on me again he wouldn’t be spending so long in the bathroom.

  Beside the bed on the floor there’s rumpled clothes. A soft old cherry-coloured corduroy shirt. Black jeans. Pointed shoes. Expensive once but beat-up looking now. No underwear and good cotton socks. Are those the kinds of thing Martin wears? What’s he look like? What do I look like? What’s my name? I look at the work benches, the stacks of doll-faces, glazed eyes staring ceiling-wards. As dumb as them, but a little more mobile, I get up out of bed.

  The hall is empty, so empty, and the building is filled with silence. The water is still running; I open the door. A young woman is standing at the sink, painting her eyelids. Her blonde red curls are tied back in a ponytail; the red is dyed. Her mouth sticks out under jagged lipstick, soft like a little kid’s. She jumps, ever so slightly, keeps applying purple on purple as if I wasn’t there. At last her eyes meet mine in the mirror. Mine are brown; my hair’s brown too, short. I’m wearing black jeans and a grey hooded sweat-shirt, look about twenty-three. Am cute in a dishevelled gamine-like way.

  But I knew all that, I just forgot.

  She give
s me a dark look, as though I’m not playing by the rules. I don’t know what the rules are, yet. I only just woke up, in a strange building with no coffee machine. “Is there a coffee machine around here somewhere?” I ask. “Like in the lounge or something?” She doesn’t look at me. She just paints and paints. “D’you have any Tylenol?” No answer. Her eyelids are getting very thick. “What are you going to be for Carnival?” I try, leaning back on the paper towel dispenser, watching her in the mirror. Funny I didn’t forget Carnival.

  Bull’s eye! “Sleeping Beauty,” my girl says. “You?”

  “I was thinking of being Darth Vader’s girlfriend. Kind of a spin-off, like Bride of Frankenstein.” Saying it, I know it’s true. Maybe if I talk enough, I’ll remember more. Seems to me it’s happened before.

  “Han Solo had a girlfriend, not Darth Vader. Don’t you remember?”

  “I thought Darth Vader had a girlfriend too, only they just left that part out.”

  “Left it out of what?”

  “Star Wars was a story before it was a movie, too. You see, I have this theory that all the movies were stories first. And before that, just pictures written on an invisible wall somewhere, waiting for someone to take them down. Kind of a Plato’s cave thing. And now they’re pictures on a screen again, just like they were in the beginning. But a screen on this side, not the other side.”

  She turns around at last. It’s always different seeing someone outside the mirror and not in it. Like seeing a different part of their personality. “You seem to know a lot more about stories than you do about television. That’s very unusual. I’m Louise,” she says. “What’s your name?”

  “It’s Louise too,” I say glibly, because I don’t remember that part yet. “I’m looking for my boyfriend but I’ve lost him. Again.”

  “You seem pretty mixed up,” she says, measuring me with her eyes. “You better watch out: Carnival isn’t a game; it’s dangerous. That’s sort of like Sleeping Beauty though, that show about losing your prince.”