Flame Angels

by Robert Wintner

  She disrobes casually as an anecdote, peeling away the clingy dress now wet and more clingy, perhaps intentionally displaying the truth of the situation so the parties of the first and second part can dispense with foolish speculation, wonder or disappointment. With no inhibition or doubt, she demonstrates the French and Polynesian approach to what is normal after all, which is merely and ultimately logical — and natural, but of course. Wet clothing must be removed, mustn’t it? Thoroughly naked, she faces him as directly, honestly and politely as she first faced him and chats easily about how well the place sleeps, and how they’ll walk back up to the hotel in the morning for his picture so his family can stop worrying and see that he’s having fun. She plucks a towel from the wall, and while gingerly dabbing down her arms and legs she explains that she’ll be walking back up anyway for work, so it’s not a problem and no extra effort, so don’t worry about imposition or anything, because really, it’s no trouble at all. She tosses the towel to him. Then she crawls under the sheet, taking only half the bed, as he stands like a statue first erected on entering.

  Coming back to life, he follows here too, disrobing but turning slightly to hide the awkward truth of his own difficult relationship with the world at large, including extended family members and well-wishers, which is not sexually motivated but merely a chronic burden of youth and vigor, hardly diminished by liquor but rather rendered out of control, which is not to say reckless but warranting an extra dash of patience. And tolerance. What is a younger man to do after such pleasant stimulation throughout the evening, then presented with a naked woman? She should be flattered on one level, but the converse potential feels damning. Is she staring?

  So he crawls in carefully alongside, struggling to shrink the pup tent on this, her private sleeping space that was offered in good faith, decent hospitality, friendship and a warning against funny business. Is this a civil response?

  They lie in silence again, this one either as natural as the last or way more strained with flagrant trespass. Submerged in darkness, difficulties are easier to bear, though he wishes to countermand the obsequious obtrusion and be a grateful, well-mannered guest. No thoughts can bring it down — not the meatball, not the buffet, not his room across from Taverua, not the long walk home avoided, not, not, not, till she rolls to him, gently rubs his arm and says, “Go ahead. Tell me.”

  Her touch is warmer still, her hands the softest implements of pleasure. He would rather close his eyes and have her fingers walk about, effusing their magical release from one square inch of tension to the next. But then he’d fall asleep, which would solve the problem of obtrusive behavior, but this rare companionship might be a long time coming again, so he says, “I’m not exactly sure when it began...”

  He sighs heavily, realizing that he is in fact exactly sure of its beginning, and so he opens the book on his recent blight, in which the fates darkened his world. He lets his story pour out, gulping and glugging here and there, but for the most part getting it out, harking back to the innocent outing one night a few weeks ago, which seems like a long, long time ago, on which he felt something, call it synchronicity, which is an airy-fairy word popular in Hawaii but also holds true in a way Carl Jung may not have imagined.

  In simpler terms, call it happiness stumbled onto by chance, which is serendipitous and then some, when you look back on the prevailing influences and what might have been. Or just call it an evening of profound relaxation and insight on which he was able to map his future with clarity and certainty, which feels very good, in case you haven’t had similar success in planning things out. But then the plan got permanently derailed when a beautiful woman turned his daily routine into an unbelievable heaven on earth, till his golden path to the future became a living hell, starting with her jealous ex-boyfriend who came around shooting his gun, leading to the next day and deportation by the federal government in an unrelated chain of sordid events. At least it seemed unrelated at the time, but now...

  As if the pudding weren’t thick enough, that situation too was followed by a round of kidnapping and attempted murder by the deranged boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, whose friends tied him, Ravid, with ropes and put him in the bottom of a little boat and took him way offshore and threw him overboard, out past the aggregation buoy at night in medium heavy seas, from where he swam in — swam — four or five miles, at night.

  He pauses here, breathing long and deep like a distance swimmer given a rock to stand on for a minute to try and catch his breath, underscoring the poignant point of his recent adventures. Now he gushes forth, telling this angel of understanding, whose ear is a receptive vessel for his turmoil, that he’s only human, and though every life is beset with challenges, he’s had a short run that feels very wrong. Buried alive in the rubble of what had been a lovely life of days, thank you very much, he was surrounded in mere hours by imminent death in a ghastly, relentless presence, orchestrated from somewhere else to test something or other, or maybe just to kill him. He doesn’t know what or where from or by whom, but the magnitude and nature of his duress seems designed, yes, designed to challenge his capacity and will for life — or his acceptance of death, and frankly, he has come to feel wholly indifferent toward either one and both.

  He feels like a foil in a basic plot, with survival turning out to be the greatest delusion of all, leading to nothing — nothing, as in a total vacuum, void, without happiness, without hope, with predictable and overwhelming loss and regret on each and every rise — proving that the design is only for death, and the game plays out, because he’s still trying to keep things going among the living but feels like a very small mouse being toyed with by an egregiously mischievous cat. That he’s merely evaded the inevitable beheading and eating for a few days doesn’t mean that he can cheat the reaper indefinitely. Everybody knows that. Even the mice. Don’t they?

  Yes, he survived the phantom-riddled depths, crawling out and onto a sandy beach with his pulse intact, but without the soul he’d enjoyed the day before. He was not the same man who was thrown overboard, as no man should be. He’d changed from the inside out, not for the better. How could it be for the better, with horrific death suffered each moment as life beat stubbornly, perhaps foolishly onward? He has lived outside his body ever since, like a divided spirit, the troubled half watching from a distance as the functional half fails to meet minimal social standards.

  So he left his house and home — his job and friends and everything that had been familiar for years — the following day, or two days after, anyway, because of the bureaucratic gauntlet. “Including my cat, Skinny, who I may love with unusual devotion, because she’s only a cat, but she knows me so well and loves me and understands me, and we have this routine together, and it’s painful to think about her, and I think what she represents to me is what I miss the most.”

  He fairly sobs now, with heaving breaths bringing the tale up to the moment, with a flight out for Tahiti, where he honestly can’t tell down from up at this point, which feels like vertigo, because of so much in so short a time, which is why anyone could see fatigue and confusion, especially a woman gifted with logical vision.

  He rolls toward her as might a child rendered safe from harm, stifling his whimpers, relieved now that such a burden has been shared. His own hand lights on her shoulder and moves back and forth as if seeking the source of its silky softness, or maybe taking comfort. She absorbs his grief and lets it bend her own smile to sadness. The darkness hints her sympathy and sense of inadequacy in making it all better; she can do so little to ease his grief and loss. He feels her arms, her neck, her ribs and up to her breasts, perhaps hungry for more of a silken something in contrast to the harshness so recently borne, or maybe from a childlike curiosity to examine the softness from coast to coast and border to border. She tenses when he reaches the nipples, and he braces for the scolding, but her admonition bears insight yet again, not with chiding but with guidance. Grasping his insistent self with tactile precision equal to the softness of her skin, she te
lls him as promised of what else she sees: “This is up. Come here.” Grasping the back of his head she introduces him to her womanly essence. “This is down. You haven’t been with a woman in a long time. You are not a mouse, but you must eat the cat, before it eats you.”

  “Mmm,” he acknowledges, careful to distinguish the figurative cat from the beloved Skinny, realizing that the last perfectly playful woman he encountered does seem like a lifetime ago. And this one seems restorative, like the perfect aperitif; call it liqueur de frangipani avec citron. Make that lime. How’d she get citrus in there? No. Wait. Maybe it’s frangipani and nitrous oxide. Or, what the hell; maybe it’s just pussy...

  “What does nitrous oxide smell like?” she whispers, unless he only imagines the hoarse inquiry.

  “Juth one hit an’ it doethn’t even mather...”

  “Mmm...” she seems to comprehend. “How did you know?”

  “How thith I dow wha?”

  “Mmm... I wanted your lips...there.”

  “Lucky gueth...” Yes, well, many women would agree, and from a hard-worked waterman’s perspective, a certain snug harbor has solid appeal for the shelter sometimes available there.

  Next thing you know it’s an easy up and in, natural as tiddlywinks into the cup, for the most grounded hospitality in Ravid’s recent memory. No, it’s not like hot cocoa and pound cake served up by none better than his own, dear mother. Not at all, except perhaps for that unmistakable smidgeon of extra goodness, beginning as ever from the skin and effusing forever from the heart. That is, a feeling of love transcends the physical, a feeling characterized by comfort, not like a plush sofa but more like a plush sofa with cushy pillows, a sweet scent, no concern for gaffe or grace, no inhibition and no rules.

  And maybe a nice bowl of chicken soup into the mix.

  No, scratch the soup and the mother’s sofa. Here again we are behooved to view this pussy for its simple goodness, as just plain pussy, because this may be the best pussy a man could experience; not to dismiss pussy as a generic pastime or casually discount its engagement in a pejorative sense or make light of the difference between this and, say, your average pussy. Because any man will tell you that there is a difference: diameter, musculature and the like, not to burden the specifics with clinical detail, but in general the content and feel of the thing, right down to the most difficult, most challenging test of all, which is the comparison to perfection as it was recently known.

  And yes, we have a winner!

  Some men at the same juncture would freely concede that the difference is one of association, that an association of love — make that the greatest love any man can feel — that turns to dire hazard and fear, will pale any time to an association of care, understanding, safety, protection and, again, love.

  One man’s pussy may be another man’s one-and-only, to have and to hold, for better or worse till somebody dies. Which is also pussy for another year or two, but in trying his hardest to imagine enough of a particular pussy and failing, a man may be struck by love also unimaginable — and unanticipated. Which is why men often agree to marry. For some men it’s so good that they seek the marriage; some even rush into it.

  Did I mention that I was married?

  Never mind. This is not that or like that in any way. This is — not to discount the hospitality, the warmth and heart of the woman or the essential timing of the rejuvenation — simply great pussy. Okay, it’s the greatest pussy ever felt by Ravid Rockulz, which is not to say it’s better than or comparable to Minna Somayan’s in any way. It simply restoreth the soul to former levels of happiness, contentment and peace in the world.

  Now is not the time to assess its affinity for love or to bear any thoughts whatsoever of Minna Somayan or the whacky woman from San Francisco — or Basha Rivka, her sofa or her soup. No, just let it be, to have and to hold till sleep do us part. This is the gift that is; the gift that makes pain incidental in this veil of tears no matter how much time is left to endure.

  This is the fulfillment of manhood, youth and health.

  And gratitude and in and out.

  Perhaps seeing his struggle with letting go of one thing and another, she facilitates comfort further with casual aplomb, as some women can do when making a man feel welcome. Easing him over and rolling on top she towers overhead like a giant in the land of the little people. Dominated and eagerly subservient, he caresses as she rules the summit. No tensing or flinching here, she reaches the peak in loping strides, laughing or crying, he can’t tell which, though he’s fairly certain that she’s pleased with the pace he’s been able to maintain, as she’d fervently hoped he would do and likely believed that he would but a woman never knows with a man so severely tested and so recently drunk but nonetheless so firmly rooted in the age of viability; not even forty, and he can still take a punch.

  She rolls again till he’s on top, where he casually catches up, strolling over the line like an urban gentleman out for a promenade. Then she surely cries. He doesn’t ask why she’s crying; some women do at odd times. He caresses her face and says, “Thank you, Here... uh... Herea...”

  “Hereata.”

  “Yes. Hereata. Thank you for your help. I won’t forget you.”

  “Forget me?” She sniffles and wipes her nose. “You just met me. How can you forget me already, after what I have shown you? Me. You never met anybody like me.”

  “No, I haven’t. You’re right. I only...”

  “Sh... I know.” And she pulls him near in a soft embrace that makes him shudder and recoil with the old claustrophobia brought on by clinging women and breaking seas, till he stops resisting and eases in to home-sweet-home in a sensation unique to his experience among women.

  Then she finds his lips for a sweet goodnight kiss, their first.

  Where the Sky Meets the Sea

  Ravid dreams of a scraggly little cat who shows her age but still has a cute, puffy face that presses nose to nose on his own face with insistence. “Meow!” The urgency is for snacks and affection in the wee hours, but affection alone will do for a while, if administered just so, softly and consistently with a finger stroke under her chin. She returns the stroke, forcing her chin onto his finger, marking him as her territory by putting her scent on him as well, giving their interspecies exchange a perverse, or at least unnatural, characteristic. Or maybe it’s only a characteristic common to the so-called “wild,” where communion and instinct are most balanced, and therein most natural. Besides, no matter what the context, this isn’t just any old cat but his old cat Skinny, with her same old demands taking on new dimension, since today is her birthday.

  She wasn’t seventeen, if you know what I mean... She’s only nine today, but she’ll be seventeen one day, and she’s mine all mine.

  So at one a.m. or two he hoarsely whispers, “Happy birthday, my skinny little pussy,” which is kind of a private joke between the cat and the man, so he laughs; she’s so cute, with such an active sense of humor. In a lovely zone as soft as slumber yet watchful as waking, he has no doubt that she senses his birthday wish. He thinks it not at all odd that a man so far from home or any semblance of stable bearing could remember his cat’s birthday, of all things, but then he’d be hard-pressed to forget. She purrs approval, affirming her stable bearing in all things. Or was that a moan from the firmer, fuller lass nearby? Maybe it’s a subconscious, interspecies communication, in which the one of skinny, furry essence uses the other as the medium for the message. Why not?

  But then Skinny chirps and purrs louder. “Meow,” she says at last, making him smile on his way back to the depths, noting on the descent that she’s nine but in her tenth year. Ten years old! Not bad for a cat. He doesn’t worry that his birthday greeting and rumination on numbers relative to age have aroused his manhood. Nobody can see or hear his thoughts, and even if they could, who cares? It’s nobody’s business but his own. He loves his cat with no sexual delusions, and if that’s not okay with anybody, they can step right up and chob’m’n tuchas. Or kis
s my ass if they’d prefer. At only seven pounds, she has none of the physical attributes he seeks in sexual liaison. He loves her dearly and gets a boner when he scratches her chin.

  The End.

  So what?

  Besides, here comes another lovely dream, of Hereata sensing reality as it logically unfolds below the surface, and just in the nick of time, not even turning his way but reaching behind herself and taking him with the precise dispatch of a medical practitioner into the perfect docking all watermen strive for, in the middle of a dream no less. This too is an exercise in love as it relates to familiarity and beauty in simplicity, though this process is uniquely, perchance blessedly, human. Here all needs are met in the warm and dry with special dispensation to the warm and wet. Not that humanity is the only species to relish the sexual exchange, but it may well be the species most driven to genital contact beyond the procreative motivation. Which is enough to make a man wonder about humanity, with its unique penchants for both killing and fucking, each act common to this species alone when in the context of sporting gratification.

  Also blessed is the brevity of this strained analysis, the distraction at hand preempting all points of focus other than what’s before him. Her back is a plain of sweetness with a sweet softness and scent of flowers, even on the lightning bolt zigzag tattoos found at cross angles on her shoulder blades. He saw them in dim light and now feels them in the dark with his fingertips, like a blind man reading Braille and seeing the picture. Like strangers in the night, these two humans engage in the more fortunate behavior unique to their species, requiring no formality or protocol or dominance in their shared comfort and shelter. They simply default to the etiquette of human kindness, courtesy and needs met in a rhythmic, rolling groundswell on the open sea.