1
Lustra looks in a mirror: Sensation of water rushing. Lightning flashes outside her window. She spins toward it. Silver streaks against the big, black night. Back to the mirror she spins. From mirror to mirror she travels. Trying to see in, trying to find a way in.
The evidence is shallow. The evidence is grave.
Does he does he does he love me?
Is he is he thinking of me?
Too faithful, she hopes for his invasion, longs for his intrusion.
Tonight: Clean sheets, sleep; no music.
Hunted by his absences, she thrashes in muffled rolls of loneliness. Though sleeping, she digs thick nails lacquered metallic blue into her palms. Though sleeping, she pictures him in some other girls' arms, pictures him with boys with big pricks, pictures her mind blank of him, pictures herself standing by her window, wishing to see the sea.
A dream/vision starts to take her over. So familiar: the sea through iron bars. Memory? Dream? Seeing through someone else's eyes: dolls again...stairs again...broken glass again....
The vision flies off, and though sleeping she doubts she'll see her boyfriend, her fiancé, again. She tries to let go, tries to hold on, to expire fast her need for him and draw in a thick curiosity to replace it. She's digesting the questions, predicting the answers. Then she crashes into a steeped and limited calm. Then dreaming:
She collides underwater with him, with Harry. They rise to the surface of the sea, crystal blue and steaming, believing now, hearts bursting in the froth, fed by the sun, washed and charmed by the salt tang.
The sky flashes pale lemon. A blink. Shock waves run through them. Lustra smiles at Harry, then goes underwater. Everything is deep and red down here, this time.
She goes into a spinning pool. A coldness. A silence. Complete like a stifled moan can be so complete. Deeper she thrashes, weighted by an escalating desire to find out why.
It's a long way back to the surface. She can't feel him anymore. She comes out cold. The clouds leak a cool, muted, green color into the sky. Under it the sea is jade and ebony and flat. Except for a strained murmur, a streaming echo, sound has stopped.
She sees him just beyond her, floating with his arms spread out, face up. Blood seeps from his neck and spreads in the water; wanting to scream, she's trying to reach him. She looks up. Rolls of negatives swirl in the air. Photographs fill the sky. Black and whites and colors. Like rain or wishes: a perplexing downpour.
She's bouncing to try to reach the pictures that elude her and melt in the sea, giving off steam. She goes still, her arms outstretch, palms go up. Eyes close, and she hopes for just one picture, for just one picture to fall in her hands.
She feels the smallest weight added to a palm. A picture. The All The Way Motel. Its aqua neon blinks at her holographicly from the photo.
She closes her eyes again. I don't know where I am anymore, she thinks before she wakes up.
Lustra wakes with her heart beating too fast. She's holding the picture.
Standing in front of the window she lets the heat of dawn fill her head. Ticking, she forces herself to watch gray clouds blush the sky.
She looks at the picture for a little time and then slides into a creamy silk slip of a dress and creamy, metallic blue pumps that match her nails. With a picture of her boyfriend and the one of the motel she goes to the street. Flashing heels click on cool pavement. She peers into the air, saturated and pretty with mist.
Lustra looks up. Spare, bleached out bricks against graying sky. Aqua neon blinking The All The Way Motel against it. Darktinted glass door with a steel frame. A funny man, as tall as wide, dressed in a red suit with white dots that matches his shoes, opens the door from the inside. She walks through.
The air is thinner in here, buzzing with artless shocks, twisting with ripped insinuations. She takes the picture of her boyfriends out of the bag.
Zippy, dressed in a baby blue suit, cuts into her perception: a funny tall man, too pale, eyes too glassy, all angles and cords, his chromed out desk a shield for a blinking, triggered sneer. He's talking to her. "You look like you've just run out of time," (she's straining to hear) "and into something even worse."
She holds up the photo, moving too fast..."Have you seen this man?"
"I've seen him, recognize him, recognize that smile. Room 3."
"Can you let me in there? I think he might have drowned. Or be drowning."
"I don't like water!" he screams, or rather gurgles, the sound prowling his throat, blanking out his face. A greasy sound slides out of his mouth, making her revulse. "Take it. Here. Take the key to Room 3. See something pretty, pretty."
Verging delusions slice her through sanitized hallways and up and down dead end stairs. Clinging to suspect shadows (avoiding the preprogrammed elevators) she locates Room 3. Seizing, gripping the photo, she puts in the key, turns it, opens the door. She steps into the room like stepping into something large pressed into a pinprick.
Smell of juice, blood. She sees him there. Oh, Harry. The blood around his neck is dry and bad against his skin, rotting as she weakens. She lays the photo over his eyes. Everything swims in and out of focus.
Smells like rain in here... Water water everywhere!
She hold up her arms and the room floods with a wave that carries the living and the dead back to liquid.
2
How can she love me and stay away? How could she just go so easy? If she doesn't love you she is gone. If she doesn't love you it has never mattered. She doesn't know what love is and neither have I ever. I have to stop throwing the word around – stop using words I don't know the meaning of. I'm on the beach now, by the way. Pacing, standing still, being dramatic, the bluesy tones of The Truth helping me stretch the angst. Time passes and she is still gone. Why do I care? Her heart is like nothing and I felt nothing for her, and I've never felt anything for anyone. Twinging, weary, wide awake, can't decide.... She went willingly. There is no question that she had the power not to go. I kissed her and a kiss can mean nothing less than nothing a kiss can mean hatred disgust power revulsion nothing all nothing a creeping unease filling a vacant space in the atmosphere. "This is for you Daddy," they said, pushing me backwards; they could have been Dolly and Dare. But their mothers had not possessed that quality of gleam in the eye (Could girls like this have mothers? And didn't I watch them die?) I smelled my own blood coming up from them, and what happened flashed in my brain. Look, I want to reach out to them. Discovery on discovery: I want all three of them back.
"She wants to sing, Daddy. Around you she can't even talk, much less sing. Can you help her, Daddy?" Shrieks and whirlings and the three of them gone in a reek of sea and sex and blood and perfume.
Could I have stopped her? Did I have any right to? Look, I steal emotion and turn it into something that's part of music, and then I give it to The Truth and he does the rest. I know what I said before about facing the past, but I don't really care. I don't really want to go back, don't want to go deeper. All I want now is her (and to see my daughters again) — this is the depth of the depth. The pain I know. Also: The Price, The Intimate Complexity, The Resultant Mutation, and the Ecstatic Leaning. I know the gore of the gleam and the twist of the seam.
But faith, trust, truth, hope, love love love love...I really don't think so. And anger? Yes. Loneliness? Maybe. If so, I think I like it. She'll never know how much I want to try now to forget her for going so easy, for making me wish I had hardened my grasp. That's a feeling isn't it? That's not nothing. Right?
I fall asleep on the beach, and I dream of Quench with her eyes closed and me trying to pry them open, and then of her blending with falling rain.
3
Lustra lives with the wave all night. Her dead Harry and her pictures are lost in the transit. The wave washes her with secrets, and she starts to understand more about her visions.
The wave rolls Lustra onto the beach. She hears The Truth singing. She smiles.
She's standing here, dripping water on me, waking me up. The sky is bright lemon, flashing with a brighter pink. I rub my eye and stand up, jolting a little with new energy. My body shakes some with the rawness of it.
"My name is Lustra. My boyfriend, my Harry, is dead, is drowned, and I need you to help me find out how and why. I know there are pictures and I need you to help me find them."
"You've got the wrong guy."
"Our destinies are intermingled. I've had dreams and visions. The wave told me things. I have some of your answers. Can't you feel it? We're twisting and buzzing with each other's answers."
"I don't need answers," I tell her. "I need a way out." I cross my arms and wish her away.
"The dead girls' ashes. The screens. That's what did it. Look at me with it. The wild eye. Please, just look at me with it."
I wait just a little and then slide back the patch. I spin my wild eye at her.
"Let's get out of here," I say after that. "Wait." I go back to the house, grab Quench's suitcase. Vint is in the chair reading again. "Just go, and come back soon," he tells me.
The day is sparkling and waiting to contain, the sky a clear blue kiss.
If only the beauty of the day could be enough. The Truth is taking us to Island City.
Lustra sees Quench reflected in my eye.
"How can you love her? It's like loving the rain or mist. She's only a manipulation of the elements. That's all we all are. Bits and pieces of the big screen called Forever. You will never hold her."
"You're like this because your love is dead."
"I never loved him. I only wanted to know what he was made of."
"I could tell you something about love," I lie. Now I'm telling her about Dolly and Dare.
