Jay Fox - THE WALLS

Daphne continues to sway, her flowing skirt licking the portion of her calves just above her narrow ankles. When she finally turns back around, she looks directly at me. The ability to conjure an adjective to describe the glance gets lost in thoughts that are a bit more prurient than the occasion demands. She begins to stroll over to where I am sitting, and I can feel her eyes growing closer even if they are hidden behind sunglasses, allowed to see by virtue of the soft glow of an accountant's lamp, which sits upon a desk beneath a window.

She takes a seat on a sofa that creaks with age as her weight bears down upon it; Patrick continues to stand as he peruses what may or may not be the book he had found so intriguing. I find a leather chair that burps out a plume of dust as I take my seat. The gray, almost translucent haze lazily floats in the air before commingling with the smoke from Daphne's cigarette. The unified particles languidly make their way for one of the open windows.

“Do you like Bill Evans?” she asks.

“Of course,” I respond.

“Do you know this album?”

“I may have heard it, but I don't recognize this track.”

She nods. “The album is kind of odd. A lot of people overlook or dismiss it. Had it been released in the fifties, however, it would have probably been met with far more acclaim.”

The track continues to play, suddenly with a very fluid bass accompanying Bill's solo. It sounds like Ron Carter or Paul Chambers. Maybe it's Sam Jones or Scott LaFaro. I always forget when the latter died. Daphne removes her shades to reveal eyes of indistinct color. She looks like Evelyn Mulwray.

“Do you know him?” I ask as I remove my glasses, as well.

“Who? Bill Evans? I think he died before I was out of elementary school.”

“No. Coprolalia. Do you know him?”

“Personally? No,” she laughs. “Nobody really knows him — therein lay the heart of the appeal: mystique.” I blink torpidly. “There are people who have dedicated their entire lives to learning about him. It's a shame that they still don't understand him any better than you or I. Even those who have met him barely know anything about him.” She looks to Patrick. “Pat, would you be a dear and get me a beer?”

He puts down the book. “I can't get over how young he was.”

“Who?”

“Sorely. Absolutely brilliant. Killed at twenty.” He begins for the door. “Do you want anything, Maecenas?” he asks as he turns his head in my direction.

“Whatever you get her will suit me just fine,” I respond. The door closes. Daphne lights another cigarette.

Daphne's smile summons up a number of adjectives: mysterious, wry, absent. It's not a pronounced disingenuously; rather, she is merely calm and cautious with her words. It is as though she is creating an acrostic or reciting a tome once uttered by a sober oracle. Her speech habits are certainly a departure from the rantings of Tomas and Patrick, two extroverts capable of making conversation out of everything and nothing, very often at the same time. Daphne just continues to smile at me, perhaps content to know that she need not speak a word. She understands who will be directing the route the conversation takes.

“Everybody loves an enigma, I guess.”

“But you know Willis Faxo?”

“Of course I know Willis. We fucked for a few weeks. Nothing all that serious ever came of it. He can be so immature sometimes, even if he is brilliant. I mean, he’s not eidetic like Patrick, but—”

“Eidetic?”

“Like, having a memory that's better than photographic. I mean, Pat can't remember entire pages of information like Hal Incadenza or anything, but it's still scary to see just how much information he can store. And he likes to let you know about it. Willis, on the other hand, is usually more reserved. He's the type of man who actually wants people to think he's less intelligent than he is. He's afraid of revealing his gift. He thinks it will make people feel alienated.” She looks to me with craned neck. “Why do you care about Willis?”

“Didn't Patrick explain all of this to you?”

“I could ask you the same question,” she says with a laugh.

“I mean…”

“That you want information about Willis because you believe he'll be able to lead you to your artist,” she finishes with a mischievous chuckle. “Well, I hate to play the part of the wet blanket, but the truth of the matter is that Willis didn't even know him all that well — that's one of those myths that Patrick created all by himself. True, the two did live together for a time, but they weren't particularly close. Willis was busy with his work at Cooper Union — before he dropped out, of course.”

“Did Coprolalia—”

“No,” she begins coolly, “He didn't go there. And please stop calling him that. His name is Mordecai.”

“Mordecai,” I repeat. “So Esther and Patrick were right.”

“Who's Esther?”

“Don't worry about it.”

“What did you expect?” she grins. “Were you anticipating some type of entity out of a science fiction movie? Or did you want some huge twist in the plot: a thought-to-be-dead artist, a celebrity, or even — God forbid! — a woman? He's only a man — a little weird, true, but no more so than your typical artist. At least that's what Willis always said.”

“A guy named Mordecai from either Midwood or Bensonhurst.”

“Midwood.” She smiles, distantly. “You already seem to know about as much as I do. He's just a man from Brooklyn who writes on bathroom walls. There's nothing more to it.”

I can't explain why this bothers me. If I had to relate to anything, it is like the abolition of the cherished myth of immortality: the first association with the concept of maturity and the introduction to time as a progression, one as necessary as it is terrifying. Just as easily, it could be thought of as similar to the end of innocence, a bite into that bitter heirloom handed down through the generations; but, really, it is just information that falsifies a naïve assumption. Maybe it's so disappointing because it is too difficult sometimes to step outside of the framework that we create for ourselves, to abandon the belief that something is always looming on the horizon while something else is receding into oblivion. I don't know. This is all new to me. I look to Daphne vacantly for far too long.

“Do you want a cigarette?” she asks finally.

“What?” The thought bubble bursts.

“Do you smoke?” She grins. “You've been staring at mine for a great while.”

I nod, walk over to her, and take one from the pack that she presents to me. Something about her phrase 'great while' seems a bit odd, archaic maybe. The cigarette she gives me is the brand without additives, the same brand that was purchased by a massive tobacco conglomerate back in the early aughts, a particularly busy period of buyouts — in terms of both companies and politicians — for the Oligarchy.

As she lights the cigarette, she looks to me with what could almost be called pity. I notice that her irises are a luminescent shade of hazel speckled with flakes of gold. She blinks slowly as I stare down to her, her eyes: amygdalate, immaculate, serene. These are eyes with which one falls in love while in a lucubratory bistro or a really predictable Indie film. They are almost cliché, but I can't help myself. I've always been of the opinion that a woman is at the apex of her beauty when you stare into her eyes, that moment before the first kiss, the second kiss, the kiss that implores the advance of lips and hands and tongue, etc., etc. True, attention is commonly diverted from the eyes, especially when the first day of spring officially arrives and the number of fender-benders increases exponentially throughout the thawing latitudes; but this is just the work of neurotransmitters, a sort of infatuation that is more chemical than conscious. In reality, there is no nudity more erotic than vulnerability, vulnerability as the shedding of pretense, which can permit a connection with another person without so much as a semblance to anxiety. That's the odd thing about skin: it is both boundary and medium (and maybe when the latter ceases to operate as such, it becomes only the former; and maybe that's when love begins to fade, and sex becomes hollow, but you of course can't let on that you are simply going through motions; and so the skin becomes more calloused, thicker, and you find yourself staring at the ceiling as she pretends to sleep next to you; and you pretend, too, but what you are pretending tickles something in you, and she is left believing that — at the very least — you still find her attractive ).