Nameless, but in Love
Friday, January 30th, 2009
Her bed stand was a half-rounded display table split down the middle by a smooth edge that fit against the wall. The design cut the surface space in half leaving room for a few small items: a picture frame, an alarm clock, a modest-sized jewelry box, a votive candle and a reading lamp. Once, the frame was roommates with dusting magazines. She sat it on the stack when they first moved in and it stayed there while cutlery and panties other more important items were put in drawers and art work was hung. Then the magazines were removed and the lamp was placed by the frame only to be switched out frequently depending on her taste and reading habits. The alarm clock was never a fixture. She chose to use her husband’s for a few years in the new house until they began keeping different schedules, and then a small digital one was added to the stand. And so many candles have been burned there that the wall nearby has taken on a cloud mark. The frame, though, was always a fixture. The greeting card it contained was a reminder of her near-flawless courtship and the slight moments of clumsiness on her suitor’s part that managed to be somewhat charming. Over time, its contents were faded by the sunlight, either directly or by the flashes that snuck in at the edges of the curtains when the breeze pushed them open, which was perfectly acceptable as long as the love never wore off.
They waved – the long, eight-foot sheets of material – floating like ghosts out toward her side of the bed. As soon as the breeze were gone, the ghosts deflated, pulling back against the wall, sometimes trying to steal away the love from the bedside. The dancers matted in the frame were too overcome with each other to notice.
Pressed flatly against the glass, the couple was dancing in a reproduction that had stripped the painter’s brush strokes from the canvas and stolen the smell of the paint and a visible signature. All that remains is the essence of what was made some almost a century ago. Locked hand in hand, they moved around the ball room. He wore a tux. She wore a roaring 20s jazz dress that seemed to reveal more than it does roar. In the background somewhere, above it all was somebody pretending to be Gatsby, too intimidated to come downstairs, but conscious and reveling in his guests’ fun.
Her husband sat by her pillows and studied the card he’d given her. The more he took it in the more he felt the energy and the room’s physicality. This dancing couple was the furthest thing from alone, but by their faces, expressions he and his wife had both seen and experienced for themselves, he knew the dancers were oblivious to onlookers. They were lifted up above the music and the motion and the hollow sounds of dress shoes and heels against the wooden floor. Outside, the evening was starting to come down and the bush bugs just beginning to rub their legs together. The time was still early, though, for neither dancer was worn down from the motion or the liquor. Their faces were vibrant and passionate. The man did not appear to be tipsy. Nor did she. But that might have helped break down the preconceptions and formalities.
Together, they moved in and out of the other partners, fast enough for them but not moving so quickly as to draw attention. Their eyes were locked. Open at the top, her dress exposed much skin that lead up to a long neck, which was the part he found most attractive. At the risk of sounding forward and slightly redundant, if the moment would have allowed him to speak, he would have told her about the glow – how if her skin were any more vibrant, he would have to bring a hand over his eyes.
Barely aware of their feet and yet entirely cognizant of the deterioration of space between them, they had come all the way from one end of the dance floor to the other. He turned his back in the other direction and the twirl began again, rolling along the lip where the wood gives way to marble. He was careful not to misstep, taking his eyes off her only momentarily, in total and complete love, as if the words on the opposite side of the card seeped through and brought real living to these characters.
Nameless, but in love, they were trapped on this bed stand in the moments before a kiss. The lean forward toward her, the titling of the head, the finding of the lips … the first touch of lips never to come. For them, the kiss will be suspended – between – forever.
The husband bought it for her and wrote the note inside because their necks are the same. Unlike the man in the painting, he had been buried in all that skin. In his world, love was not set in stone or given to particular moments. Like the curtains, the light seeped in or got swallowed whole by the drapery. His love could be postponed or forgotten in the the run of the day. Rain-delayed. And he could stay upstairs while it happened beneath him. But it was the unpredictable highs and lows that brought it to another level, lifting he and his wife above the dance floor, whether it knew their names or was completely careless they had them at all.
