Robert Butler - From Where You Dream - The Process of Writing Fiction

We shopped for rings one time, halfheartedly joking but serious in that way that you hope it will be right, that you hope that you are not imagining things, that you are wanted and loved and protected. So, we window-shopped which took us into a jewelry store where I saw the ring that would mean it for me. Like choosing the cup of life or death, it was a test. We walked through the display cases promising eternal love for any price, the greater the amount, the greater the result did not add up in my estimate. I dragged my fingers across the glass cases leaving trails of smears behind. He followed me, rubbing my shoulder and leaning into my back, pressing me into the case until I laughed. When I first walked around, I spotted it. A small band interlaced with weaving. Like serpents braided together in a loop, the lace a continuous Escher connection in a Celtic pattern. He ambled to the other side of the store browsing among crosses and ID bracelets and finally asked to see an elaborate ring made of smooth white gold. Its pale color disguising its value. He turned it over in his fingers and winked at me. The ring had a large diamond inset in the middle with two small emeralds on either side. It sickened me. My stomach felt gassy and my breath lacked oxygen, as if breathing through a filter. He held it out to me and I touched the fold, cold to my finger and hollow and light in my palm.

"Try it on, seven and a quarter, right? It should fit."

I shook my head, hoping my fingers had grown fatter, that it would not slip over my knuckle. This hope left me when he took my hand and gently looked into my eyes and smiled, his cheeks tightening, his eyes crinkling at the edges. I felt the band slide onto my finger effortlessly. He lifted my hand to my eyes and I felt a band go around my heart.

"What do you think?"

"Is this the one that you like best?"

"I came in last week and had it fitted for you."

I thought about the effort that he had put into it, but it didn't fit. It did not fit my heart, my head, or any other part of my body. My finger felt alien to me as I looked at it. I slowly reached up and disentangled my hand, sliding the ring off and placing it in his hand. I smiled.

"Let's look some more, shall we? It's beautiful but I'd really like something simple."

He snorted and then his mouth hung open and his eyebrows raised as he realized I was serious. I absently popped my ring finger, massaging the area where the ring had set.

"Look over here, for instance. What do you think of this one?" I led him back to the small silver case, pointing at the ring displayed in a velvet prop.

"That's just a plain old ring. Why would you want it?"

I shrugged and asked to see it. I took it and rolled it between my fingers, feeling the bumps and holes between the intertwined metal ropes. The outer edge was smooth but I pressed my finger into the pattern. My skin seeped through. I released the ring between my index finger and my palm and I looked at the tiny snake pattern it had left. I tried to place it on my finger but it was too small and would only loosely slip onto my pinky finger.

"I like it because it means something."

"Means what? What meaning is there in a cheap piece of silver? That says a lot to me."

I looked up and stared into his brown eyes. His brow was furrowed and he looked at me with a mixture of amusement and patronizing knowledge that he knew me better than I knew myself. I placed the ring on the counter and let it twirl in a small circle, rattling before I led him out of the store. We went home that night and tried to make love but there was a wall. His skin felt synthetic and his kisses forced. I was content to lie there within myself knowing me and realizing that he did not.

I felt the same chill now. My skin loose and the air chilling me internally as I sat the rock on the ground and rocked it back into place with my big toe. I rubbed my hand across my throat and let it rest on my chest. He had come the closest to penetrating my armor, getting past my skin, my tough hide, and all of the challenges that I placed for him to prove himself. He passed. But after all that he had not reached me. He had only reached someone that he thought was me. And, maybe it had been.

I sat with my knees hugged to my chest and rocked slightly, pushing the rock with me. I tilted it out onto its broken side and let it fall heavily back to its resting place. I could run my entire foot across its top and lift the base by lifting my heel, pointing my toes down when I arched my foot. The black streak was barely visible, showing and then disappearing as I rocked it and stopped as I leaned forward with the rock raised. The floor was hard beneath me and I leaned into the wall beneath the windowsill. With a quick thrust of force from my foot, I pushed the rock against the wall, stuck and exposed, the beautiful black marble visible, smooth and worn. It was covered by the granite, rough and crumbling. Years of sediment piled onto it, covering the delicate beauty hidden beneath the coarse exterior.

My toe rubbed a piece of the black edge and I wondered if I wasn't better without him. The colors of the granite swirl in some areas and the drab colors hide the vivid pure black underneath. The black rock feels powerful, and the rock surrounding it poor and dry. The light granite color was a mask of ugly plain mountain, deceptive and tamed. I stood and left the rock propped upward against the wall, revealing the jagged black design underneath. I walked to the door and opened it. I stepped out into the hallway, the dirty runner cold beneath my feet. Barefoot, I walked outside my building and stepped onto the cement. Stepping gingerly around loose stones and pebbles, I looked across the lot and felt the cool air brushing my skin. Taking a deep breath, I felt the air chill and burn my lungs. I felt the breath in my fingertips and my toes. I stood on my tiptoes, pressing my feet into the cold pavement. I scanned the area and walked over to a large curb. I sat beneath a tree and crossed my ankles, staring at the ground. Amid pine needles and gravelly rocks, there were small pebbles and stones that had blown to their resting place. I leaned over and brushed my fingers through them. I picked up a small red stone. It was smooth and had shades of burnt red and orange swirling across its smooth surface. I rolled the cold stone in my hand and closed my hand over the stone, embracing the color.

Gay Milner

Marzipan

Gunshot. What? I must have fallen asleep; the red patch burns on my thigh against the Naugahyde. It's hot, and the air damp with stickiness that belongs to this landlocked land. The gunshot? — yes— The Virginian, that blond boy Travis, snub nose and cupid mouth on the other side of the smoking barrel. But the grainy black-and-white, the grainy sound (a soup of music) is just the faded image of some more violent dream. I can't hold it. I pull myself hand over hand back into it because I must save myself, or her, or it. What did I need to do? A lump of failure in my chest.

Over the cowboys a cheap cardboard frame sits on the fake wood of the TV set, little gold pressed curlicues around a snapshot of Dogzilla, his rich red hair curly on his ears that hang like a pageboy to his thin black smile. Irish setter as coed circa 1958. And is that my only personal memento, the only photograph worth bringing after thirty-five years? What was that dream? I'm a cowgirl, my dog has been abducted by a rustler; crap. What creature is it that I must save?

I balance myself, pain slicing up from my spine across my right hip socket, unsteady on my feet, and hobble to the front door, swing the squeaky screen. On the porch — knobbled knuckles of my stockinged feet on the red cement — I reach for the post and am overcome with dread. This porch support is a double cylinder of painted metal, held ten inches or so apart by (also painted, rusting white) metal shapes: a series of interlocking tendrils, leaves, two birds in flight. Where it disappears into the clapboard ceiling it has been patched with grainy putty. Its two feet are buried in the red cement. The grain of the paint grates on my fingertips.