by Paloma Meir
“Why has it taken you so long? Nobody cares that I’m leaving. I’ve been texting you all day. My bag is stuck. Danny left this morning, so he wouldn’t be tired for his first day back at school. Can you believe he did that? Why couldn’t he be tired for one day? And now Anthony wants my room, and I have to pack up all of my things and send them to my storage unit. I won’t have a home anymore. Nobody cares.” She threw her hands up in the air.
“Zelda could you put one of your robes on?” I hadn’t noticed in the hallway, but she was wearing a long t-shirt that must have been washed hundreds of times because it was transparent. It was too much even for her. “Here, I’ll help you with your bag.” I made a move to pick it up, but she continued with her hysterics distracting me.
“Why? It’s too hot in here. Anthony keeps turning the heat up.” She pushed past me to the doorway and yelled out “Anthony, turn down the heat.” She turned very quickly to me. “He can’t hear me. That’s why he shouldn’t have my room. It’s too cut off. No one can hear you down here. I don’t even know how they heard Danny and me that one time... Never mind. Anthony isn’t like how he used to be. He’s always getting into trouble. They should put him in the guesthouse.”
“You’re not making any sense. The guesthouse is across from the pool. He’ll be even...”
“You know the worst part, Serge? You won’t even believe this.” She moved back to her bed and folded a sweater, “My lipstick. I ordered the color a month ago. I can’t believe they did this to me.” She threw the sweater back on the bed and turned to face me. I was having problems not laughing at this point.
“They sent me the wrong color. It’s pale pink like I wanted, but it’s a warm pink, not the cool pink. I can’t wear warm colors Serge. Look at my skin. I would look like a clown. Can you believe they did that to me? I’m going to have to travel across the world homeless with the wrong lipstick.” She screamed, back to waving her arms, her ridiculous t-shirt lifting up to lengths shorter than one of her mini-skirts. “I’m just not going to wear lipstick.”
I thought of Carolina telling me how Danny had tapped her shoulders making her fall backwards all those years ago as she stood ranting about her inconsequential problems. I lifted my arms up, pointed my fingers and poked her very lightly on the shoulders. She fell onto her bed, and I jumped on top of her, shushing her.
“Zelda, calm down,” I allowed myself to laugh. “You don’t need to be so nervous. You’re going to Spain. You don’t need to be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” she yelled while thrashing around beneath me.
“Really? Your lipstick is the problem?” I ran my hand through her hair and decided to be serious with her and not mock her make-up problems. “You’ll be safe,” I paused overwhelmed by the beauty of her face, the large dark eyes, the delicate rounded tip of her nose, the defined cheekbones that almost had a masculine quality, and her lips the same color and shape as mine.
“I’ve never been alone before.” Her body relaxed under mine as she turned her head away.
“You’re not going to be alone. You’ll be with your friends and busy with your fabrics.” I moved her head back, so she was looking at me.
“What if I get scared again?” She moved her head away, “I haven’t had any problems in at least a year but what if...”
“You’ll take your breaths like you always do, and then you’ll be okay again.”
“What if it gets really bad? What if I can’t be alone?” she whispered.
“Then you’ll call Danny, and he’ll go get you.” Not ideal, but true.
“You don’t understand. I don’t want him to have to save me.”
“Then I’ll come and get you.” I calculated in my head. I had a little over sixteen thousand dollars in my bank account saved up from summer jobs and part-time tutoring in Boston. I assumed I could find a round trip ticket for less than eight hundred dollars. I could stay in her room. Food couldn’t be that much around the University. I got excited as if I were planning a trip, and not going to help a friend. “That would be great. I’ve never been to Europe. We could get a Eurail Pass and travel around. Head up to Cern, see the LHC. Every summer a group from school go for the internship, but I always have to work. The particle accelerator...” I stopped talking because she was laughing.
“I don’t want anyone to have to come and get me.” She moved her hand across my face, and I realized that I had the beginnings of an erection and rolled off of her. “All my therapy, Danny making all of my decisions. Sometimes I feel like I can’t even think.” She rolled on top of me, not helping me with my problem. “I could send you to Cern. You don’t always have to work so hard.” She leaned up on me making me very aware of her breasts pressed against my chest. I had a full erection. I rolled her off of me and stood up and tried to think of war and famine.
“Call me whenever you want, text me all the time, okay? Anytime you feel nervous.” I ignored her offer. “Let me fix your bag, and then I have to get going. Movie with Marianne.” I picked the bag up and zipped it closed easily. “Fixed.” I turned to her door.
“Serge don’t go, wait.” She picked her purse up off the floor and took out a tiny rectangular box. “Give the lipstick to Marianne. She can wear warm colors. She’ll like it. The brand is very hard to get. It's from England, and it’s made in small batches.” She tried to it hand to me while I thought of The Battle of Okinawa.
“That’s sweet but no.” I leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, but she shook away from me.
“Give this to her.” She thrust the package into my hands. “It’s very exclusive. I want her to have it.” She was getting that wild look in her eyes again, so I took the box.
“Okay, bye Zelda.”
“I’m leaving for five months.” She grabbed my arm forcefully. “Why are you acting like this?”
I gave up and pulled her in for a hug, making sure to keep my hips far away from her. She was having it at all, pulling me very close to her and rubbing her cheek against mine.
“Serge," she lifted her face away from mine, looked into my eyes, placed her hands on my cheeks, pressed her lips against mine, and that’s how we stood for either one minute or a hundred years.
I peeled her off of me, almost mad at her and all of her innocence. I could have opened my mouth, and we would have been kissing. She was right, not much thinking going on in her head. Easier than zipping up the bag, I could have taken her to her bed, taken off her t-shirt and done things to her I didn’t even want to think about.
I looked into her eyes and wanted to reprimand her but saw nothing. She looked at me the way she always did. Everything had been my imagination. There was no lust emanating from her.
“Have a good trip. Call me. I’ll call you and don’t worry. Danny...” I didn’t know what I meant to say. I walked out her door and did not look back.
“Good-bye,” she called out.
I held up my hand, waved and ran home.
Marianne sat on the bed playing with my computer. Her plump body that had only improved with weight was hidden in her olive military style pants and oversized mustard cardigan. Her golden brown hair in two long braids, the cat eyes that looked up at me with a little smile on her face. Her hippie look I never really liked was in that moment seductive, enticing.
I let her know that we would be going to a later showing and went at her with a fury. She loved it. She liked the lipstick too.
An excerpt from Trashed by Paloma Meir
Finished with breakfast, I told my mother I was going for a bike ride. It was not a lie. I did ride my bike four blocks down the road to Serge’s house.
I did not plan on burning any part of his house down but Q had given me a good idea. I would wait for him to come outside. I could pretend I was just walking by, on my way to down to Sunset to get something to eat.
He would see my newfound sparkling mental health, be impressed that I hadn’t bombarded with crazy, angry messages and we would be in love again, happy forever or until
we went off to separate colleges.
Or maybe I would go to school in Boston too. I had hoped to go to Stanford as my parents had but I was sure Harvard would be just fine too. My mind spun fantasies of our life together on the East Coast as I stood in the middle of the street staring up at his house like a lost dog.
The heat pounding down on me, making me perspire, woke me up to the fact of the ridiculousness of my position. He could look out his bedroom window and see me. Mentally healthy people didn’t do what I was doing.
I did the only sensible thing. I hid my bike behind the overgrown bushes of the house I stood in front of. It didn’t look to me as if anyone were home. Even if they were, our street was overrun with kids leaving their bikes and sporting equipment around. I was a little older than the most of the kids that did that but passable.
Bike taken care of, but I didn’t know what to do with my presence, so again I did the only sensible thing. I climbed up the tree in their front yard. That would be harder to explain if the occupants of the house noticed me but I had faith that I could come up with a plausible story.
An added benefit of being in the tree? I could partially see into Serge’s room. The day was hot, his window and shades were open. I could only see the back of him sitting in his chair at the desk but sometimes he would lean back, put his hands behind his head and run his fingers through the front of his hair in a way that I always loved.
I spent three uncomfortable hours in the tree that day. I did consider for a moment that what I was doing was stalking, a possibly dangerous and illegal act but I didn’t really care.
I had always been a bit of a skulker, spying on people, eavesdropping on conversations, so this new activity, hiding in a tree for hours on end seemed a logical, almost natural continuation of my previous activities.
It was boring. He didn’t leave his room and he didn’t get out of his chair. His mother and sister came in a few times. His mother to bring him food, pat him on the head. I could see she doted on him, that he was the favorite based on the one time all three of them were in the room together.
His sister was annoying to him, coming in waving her arms around. I wished I could have heard what she was saying, such an animated girl. At some point in their talks she would make him laugh and it would travel across the road to my ears. The sound made the cramped position I sat in on the tree branch worthwhile.
This went on for three days, I was about to give up, not because of how very wrong what I was doing was but because I didn’t see him ever coming out of the house.
Cursed by what I saw or lucky, I don’t know but this is what happened.
“No, Carolina,” I heard Serge’s voice from their front door, “I’ll take her home. No, no, no.”
I looked down towards the front of his home. I was angry with myself for playing a word game on my phone and missing Serge leave his room.
But he was coming outside. My plan had worked. I wanted to sing a song from the treetop, descend slowly like an angel onto the road.
“Come on, Zelda, I have to get back to my work.” He said to the girls inside the house as I brushed the leaves out of my hair and tree dust off of my t-shirt and shorts.
I could see them walk three feet out the front door together but then the branches of the tree obscured my vision. I counted to thirty slowly and climbed down, to see them a half a block down the road.
I landed on my feet without much noise. I stared after them not knowing how to follow them without being caught. I decided to walk in the street, keep the same distance. I lived on the canyon too. It wouldn’t be unheard of for me to be walking down to Sunset. It was a part of my original plan anyway.
Zelda was not part of my plan but I was curious about her. I had never seen her before. Serge had never described her beyond saying she was a very pretty girl but that was when I had thought her and Carolina were small children.
I could hear them talking but couldn’t make out the words. I slightly closed the distance between us as silently as possible, by running on my tiptoes. Absolutely silly but it worked.
As I drew closer to them, I could see that they were holding hands and my heart stopped for a moment. I calmed myself by remembering that he thought of himself as her older brother, a very protective older brother and he infantilized her. I accepted the handholding.
What I couldn’t accept, and at this point I could only see her from behind, was her perfection. She was a hair taller than him, willowy, and when she walked you could see the peach-like shapes of her tiny backside. Her hair was white, like soap, shiny, healthy, halfway down her elegant back.
I didn’t want her to turn around. I didn’t want to see how Serge had lied to me by saying “she was a very pretty girl.” I knew it would be an inconceivably deceptive understatement and his obsession with her was not brotherly. I seethed and it was only going to get to get worse.
They stopped walking. He dropped her hand and went to a garden on the side road and picked a Gerber Daisy. I worried that he would see me, because I no longer wanted that to happen. But no worry, nothing could distract him from Zelda.
He walked to her holding the flower in his hand. The two of them stood in profile. It wasn’t until that moment when I noticed what they were wearing. She wore a long white Victorian dress that was transparent in the sun, showing her camisole and boy-cut shorts like Cara had been wearing a few days before. For a slim body she had full breasts. I rolled my eyes to no one not believing that a girl like this existed in the world.
Serge for some reason, and I had never seen him dress like this before, was wearing slim white shorts, not baggy ones that the boys of that time preferred and a white short sleeved button down shirt. The two of them looked that stepped out of a Jazz Age photograph.
He was so dark, with his coffee colored hair and deep olive skin, and her so purely white. They didn’t look alike but they had an aura of twins as they stood together in the middle of the road.
“What’s lovelier, Zelda, you or the flower?” He smiled at her, half joking, half serious.
I almost vomited in the road.
“Serge…” She lowered her head and looked up at him.
Ridiculous, I could not believe what I was watching take place.
He leaned in to kiss her. I didn’t think I was going to survive but it was just a kiss on the cheek. I could see from where I stood based on the pucker of Zelda’s lips that it hurt her even worse than myself.
Serge was torturing her. I almost laughed. He could be so perceptive of others but so oblivious to what went on in his own life.
He took her hand in his again and they walked down the road. All I could hear was his voice talking non-stop. He sounded excited. I thought he was probably talking about his project. Whatever it was, she was his captive audience staring at him while he led her home.
They turned into her driveway. I hadn’t realized the house was hers. Serge had never pointed it out before. It was easily the most glamorous of the stately homes on the road. Of course the princess lived in a castle. Where else could she possibly live?
I hated her, and I wasn’t too fond of Serge anymore either.
An excerpt from Vee & Addie (A Short Story) by Paloma Meir
One upon a time on an island very far away, The Immortals lived, cast out from the heavens, their memories of their origins hazy, forgotten.
Venetia, the most beautiful of the Immortals, with her long flowing golden hair, and supple rounded body with skin so fair, the cupid’s bow of her soft red lips walked along the edge of her pond. She held flower seeds in her hand and sprinkled them back and forth as she gazed out into the clear water. A world-weary sigh escaped her lips as she considered how boring her life of beauty and wealth had become.
Although she was as old as time, she appeared as a girl of twenty-one, and that was all her memories allowed.
A cough echoed through the valley from her home high up on the hill. She shuddered at the thought of her husband Heph, an old man, grey and hacking
with ill health.
She cursed the gilded prison with an ailing husband her father had left her with when he had gone away, forever it seemed. He had left without a word to anyone, not even his most prized daughter Venetia.
A plaintive cry came from across the pond distracting her from her sorrows. She followed the footpath searching for the source of the noise that as she drew nearer was like a song.
She saw a baby, wrapped in a white blanket, placed carefully in the center of a Gardenia grove Venetia had planted the summer before. The sweet milk like scent of the infant overpowered the odor of her favorite flowers.
She picked it up. The baby instantly quieted in her arms. She held it close to her chest. The foundling’s golden hair so much like her own. She breathed in its scent and peace filled her body.
“Grace.” She called out to her handmaidens. They girls had individual names, but they were so similar in every way, Venetia found it easier to treat them as one.
“Grace,” She called out again as she heard their footsteps approaching, “Bring the car around, the Silver Shadow, bring it around now.” She added warmly because the inhabitants of this world, and even the Grace’s had this peculiar kindness and trusting nature, annoyed her. She knew in her heart that in the true world, the one she could never grasp, the inhabitants were not this way.
Venetia longed for that world.
“Venetia,” One of the Graces rounded the corner of the pond and asked questioningly, “Is everything all right?”
