Archive-name: Miscell/8prelude.txt
Archive-author: Byron Elbows
Archive-title: 8-preludes to stories


1.  Honey drips slowly from the edge of the jar.  Emma takes the knife and
catches the falling stream, feeding it back into the jar's mouth.  I have
watched her do this, not this exact thing, but this sort of thing, for almost
an hour now.  Either the honey falling, or the wind through the screen door
blowing papers onto the floor, or else the newspaper catches when she tries
to fold it back on itself.  She fascinates me, in a humiliating sort of way.
I could watch her for another hour, unseen.

2.  She gets up now.
    From my bedroom window, I can't quite see her face when she stands up,
and just like on the tabloid shows where they replace the faces with a
featureless blue disk, I expect her or her body to betray some terrible
secret.  Maybe she suffers from scoliosis, or psoriasis, or possibly some
horribly disfiguring congenital defect that now and then allows her navel
to grow as large as a football.
    I wait, watching for the telltale swelling in her abdomen.  Surprisingly,
it never happens.  No, her body remains perfect, just like yesterday.

3.  ``Where's my Pepsi!?!'' she cries to no one in particular, staring into
her refrigerator.  ``All I wanted was a Pepsi \ldots''  Well, I have to
laugh at that.  Just what I'd thought about all day.  But when I looked in
the cabinet, all I had was syrup of ipecac.  Revolting, but hardly sufficient
for the job.

4.  She walks over to the sliding glass door, opens it just wide enough to
slip her slim body through, then closes it.  I can see her dress now, a sort
of twopiece summer outfit, leaving her midriff bare.  God, I want that
midriff.  She can have the rest of her body, but I'll take this perfect,
smooth---
    Was that---?  No, she just took a deep breath, that's all.

5.  She lies down on the lawn chair, reclining nearly all the way back, with
a Pepsi in her hand (she found one after all).  Emma, Emma, Emma.  I repeat
her name like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose name I see in front of me as the
answer to a Trivial Pursuit question.  I shake my head, annoyed, and the
mantra returns.  You may have the alpha and the omega, but in between, there
always lives Emma, sweet Emma, a pretty little Greek figure in the middle of
all that Roman nonsense.
    Still wondering?  I only took Greek to decipher the sorority house names.
Imagine my disappointment when all the letter combinations appeared random,
rather than producing lurid, lascivious names, such as \ldots But I digress.

6.  Emma sucks Pepsi through a straw.  Sounds vaguely like some sort of
childhood insult.  Your mother rides a vacuum cleaner.  Your father has a
nose like a rubber hose.  Emma seems mostly unconcerned about this.

7.  She puts down the empty can on the cement patio with a hollow clank,
and closes her eyes.  They do not like the sun, after all.  I scratch my
legs.
    I want to fall on her.  Fall on her, like a Georgian flower, unfolding,
pressing petal to petal, surrounded only by the echoing sound of soft
waterfilled fibers.  In my mind's eye, the Pepsi takes on ambrosial
proportions, linking me with a divine nature.  I see all the things I should
not ever see: every unicorn that ever ran, my hands held by someone on the
street, bells I never heard ring, and besides, the reverent smile of a little
boy and a blue blue sky.

8.  I shake off my reverie to find her gone.  I let out a hmph.  The orchid
has fallen into the pond to meet its reflection with open arms, only to see it
disappear as it sinks slowly beneath the water.  Shh! and goodbye.

(c) 26 Apr 1993

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