The Grey-Eyed Girl 3

     The alley way was dark but for ambient light of the city and a naked bulb that flickered over the door she just pushed out of- he following.  A lone cat scampered over some crates and streaked down the alley; the air was permeated with the order of stale beer, urine and garbage.  Through the funnel of buildings, traffic, trucks gasping and sighing could be heard; the incessant honking, blaring of taxis, the squeal of brakes.
     She faced him and pushed him up against the building, made to kiss him but passed her face next to his feeling his stubbled plump face. He turned to kiss her; she felt his mouth and teeth slobbering on her neck his excitement palpable and groping.  
     "Oh, your some kinda freak huh? Good. What do I call you? I mean what's your name anyway?"
     "You can call me Delilah."
    His paw like hands moving over her back and ass, she leaned back and looked him in the eye, ran a hand over the back of his bald head pushing his head down to her crotch. The grey-eyed girl stepped back a little from him and her eyes matched the grey snub nosed Beretta she pulled from her handbag. 
      "Wha...what the fuck? Wha..what d-do...do you want?" staring down the bore hole; black, flat and empty of any solace.
       The girl with the gun-metal grey eyes shoved the short barreled Beretta into his mouth grinding and chipping teeth. 
       "Do you want to live?" the girl with the gun-metal grey eyes said. "Voir ma misère, hélas! Voir ma détresse." she quoted; a tear cold and slow rolling down her check. Her black fingernails tight on grip, but easily and light on the trigger.
    Gun in mouth; Samson jerked his head in shaky yeses.
    "Good....THEN STOP WRITING BAD POETRY!!!"
  There was motion from a fire-escape overhead a figure leaned back into an apartment.
She left Samson weeping and trembling in a heap and out of the alley and into the New York night.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 2

 

     "Samson? Hi- sorry I'm late, did I miss your reading?" she said

     "Oh, yeah, who are you?" he said his bushy eyebrows raised, he was expecting Chanteuse_23 to be some hideous thing that hadn’t seen the light of day for years, but here stood a slim girl in a navy-blue dress, curly some would say frizzy light-coffee colored hair pulled back and poorly tamed into a clasp. She had flat shoes and ribbed tights and a dark gray pea-coat. A green handbag slung over her shoulder.

      Samson glared at her and said." I was expected someone well you know… anyway I can give you a private reading later. You’re much different than I thought.”

       "SHHHH!" a white head whipped around from the seat in front off them. "Do you mind?" he was holding a Pomeranian and had pinkish red eyes.

       "SHH! yourself ya rat!" Samson took an open-hand swing at the back of his head.  The young albino man faded his head back just in time and glared at Samson. He got up with the dog and walked toward an empty seat. The grey-eyed girl looked at the pale young man unsettled; out of the corner of his eye he did the same.

         "Lets get out of here these people can't write anyways. I know a place we can play pool and I can read you my poems. You know you got nice eyes."

        They went to a dim bar; empty except for the bartender cleaning glasses with a rag.   The green felt of the pool table like an oasis, humming green under a hanging light. Samson ordered a rum and coke and she got a bottle of beer.

     "That’s not so lady-like drinking from a bottle like that."

      ‘There are a lot of things not so lady-like about me." She said coyly smiling as she rubbed the cube of chalk on the tip of the pool cue, and blew it off in a blue cloud.   She wanted to get through with this before he tried to recite any of his poetry.  She thrust the pool stick and broke; she sunk the two and three, then buried the six and purposely missed the one.

       "Your pretty good for a girl." he said as he took aim at the twelve and he caught her raising the brown bottle to her lips suggestively for a long drink.  He missed; it was time. She grabbed the pool cue from him violently.   "You have grey rain clouds in your eyes girl."

        “I prefer to think storm clouds."

        "Why is there a storm coming."

"You'll see." she said and sank the eight ball. Turned and re-racked the stick and walked to a door marked exit motioning for him to follow her.

The Grey-Eyed Girl 1

     A fingernail painted glossy, robin’s egg blue tapped the mouse and it was done. The meeting was set; she added some lines from Milton.

"With winged expedition

Swift as the lightning glance he executes

His errand on the wicked, who, surprised,

Lose their defense, distracted and amazed."  (Lines 1277-86)

     Fingernails painted black gripped the handle of the bookstore door and the grey-eyed girl spotted Samson immediately. Samson, the irony of the name was lost on him, not a strand on his furrowed dome.  What he lacked on his head he made up for with hair growing greasy black and thick on the back of his paw like hands, knuckles, and escaping from his shirt collar swallowing up a gold chain and patriarchal cross.

     Samson thought himself something of a poet; he reveled in disbursing his rhymed cliches at coffee houses and bookstore readings the audience always to timid and Samson to menacing for any critiques to be made.   Finding him was easy.  He had a Facebook page devoted to his frothy amateur poetry along with pictures of himself enjoying baklava and other desserts.  Arranging the meeting was easy. She friended him using the name Chanteuse_23 and after holding back her vomit commented on how much she liked his poetry. Samson invited her to come and hear him read, she showed up late to miss his performance. There was no way in hell she could listen too it. That would literally make the grey-eyed girl sick.

     There he was sitting hunched and straddling a backward chair while a tall, ornithological looking women read in a think French accent from the podium.               

The Dream of the Grey-Eyed Girl

    Sitting, reading a cloth bound book under a ginkgo tree a grey-eyed girl is falling asleep. A burgundy silk book mark ripples obedient and languorous in the breeze. Fan shaped leaves shake and fall a bright yellow cascade around her.  She wears a mans sweater; the top two buttons missing she holds it closed with robin eggshell blue painted fingernails, when the breeze turns into a gust sweeping up the hill making the blond heads of the dry, overgrown  grass wave and dance like ecstatic dervishes. Her grey eyes squint and watch a kestrel hovering over her tree and dart back out over the field and back again.
    Back firmly against her tree, her favorite tree atop the hill, she feels the comfort of soil, root, the entire earth. Experiencing the earth pulling her in and letting her go at once as she closes her eyes and nods off.  The grey-eyed girl dreams of her mother; still young, vibrant dark hair, glamorous and mysteriously inviting like an alleyway at night. A promise of something behind those star-like eyes. She senses all the protection and leonine power in the way she embraces her father. Her father handsome; when all the markings of his face were but an outline and map for the deeply entrenched emotions that she would know.  They hold each other tightly, and she hears the kestrel screaming.
    "Charlie, I dreamed about her again." Louise said sitting up in bed.
     "The grey-eyed girl?" Charlie said without turning over.

The Letter

Dear L.A.F.,

      It's getting near to Christmas time and the leaves are falling- they get pushed and scattered by the wind   swirling as I walk the city surrounding me. Everyone races around, the men have taken to wearing hats again and the women their long coats and stockings, I have to hurry from one avenue to the next or get swallowed up. I'm not quite used to it.  I can't help looking and investigating the vertical landscape.   It is in a quiet gaping awe that I gaze at the decorative windows, facades, and the wrought iron gates; here a walk-up apartment house, there a church and again another apartment, townhouses and Tudor revival buildings. Lobbies, all in marble, bigger than the house I grew up in. 

      The city is a Goliath of ponderous concrete, sublime artistic craftsmanship, and continuous motion. But what is this monolith of constant motion compared to you?   I know I promised to write you a poem.  Compared to your eyes on me what is the city, the city awes me but you with just a turn of  your head, a word, or reaching over in your sleep to clasp my hand and hold it close to your breast, there is utter fascination and wonderment. What is a city compared to your beguiling, I'm bewildered by you at times; the city in comparison is predictable and dull. I think of your hair like a dark waterfall flowing. Rushes over me and crushes me and I drown in perfumed delight in bountiful sensuousness. I am suffocated in locks like blackbirds wings fluttering and beating against my face but it feels incredible to be under and I take big gulps of you.  

     I read a scientific article that said some women can see an extra color on the visible color spectrum (that might explain some fashions we see today) they are called the tetrachromatic women. That's what happens when I look at you a whole different spectrum is revealed- things look brighter and better.  Maybe that is what love does; it brings the whole world to life in different colors.

    I am running short on time I hope everything is well with you my love.  I wrestle everyday about rejoining you. Not having you by my-side at times is too much.  I want to leave but I know what is best for us both. With that, here is to the hope we will be reunited soon, until then I will continue to see the world in this new light and know you are still in my heart.

With love always,

C. Farmer

 P.S. You have to see the wonderful parks, in the next letter I will tell you all about them. I even saw a kestrel eating a pigeon last week.