Reservations

Rosy, smiling peacefully, her eyes half-open, her face bathed in bright sunlight, lay curled up on a small sofa, half-covered with a blanket, her arms around her knees.

"She pretends," she thinks, "to be no one, contented just to drift, night into day, relaxed and happy, with no memories and nothing to do."

The smile disappeared as her eyes opened wide. She snapped her head up and squinted at the brilliant sunlight she turned her face into.

Bright sun glows in sheer curtains dissolving the window away.

She snapped her head in the other direction.

The clock on the wall showed five to ten.

Rosy jumped up, spilling the blanket onto the floor. Staggering out of her den, she hurried through the kitchen and the living room and up the open staircase to the second floor. As she ascended, without stopping she reached down and gathered her long T-shirt into folds, pulled it over her head and flippantly tossed it over the railing into the dining room below. On the landing at the top of the stairs, she looked back over her shoulder, turned and looked erratically around. Grabbing the railing with both hands, she leaned over against it and scanned the first floor thoroughly.

Absolute stillness filled the house.

Quickly she turned away, looked up, stopped dead, gasped, and immediately let out a short quiet laugh. The look of recognition of her own reflection in the full wall mirror at the end of the landing stared back at her staring at herself.

Walking along the balcony, Rosy, an attractive, thin, shapely woman in her late thirties, squinted her eyes and curled her upper lip at her image. She paused, examining herself, approaching the mirror in starts, slowly strolling, twisting her torso right and left. As she neared the mirror she looked quickly down to the first floor, then down to her midriff, where she pinched a thin layer of skin.

She looked up, directly into her own eyes.

She said, "Rosy, why did you stop exercising?"

"Skin," she thought, "that used to be taut shook as she walked."

She glanced over her shoulder, wheeled, and bolted into the bedroom.

Across the room, Rosy bent over an open bottom dresser drawer. She pulled out a blouse and tossed it behind her toward the bed, but it fell far short of it onto the floor. She opened the top drawer and disarranged it, searching, came out with panties and bra and turned around quickly. Moving fast across the room, kicking the blouse up onto the bed without losing a step, she rushed into an adjoining bathroom and slammed the door.

Sunlight that illuminated the first floor through windows burst upon Rosy through the doorway and flooded the living room as she swung the front door open. She pivoted her head away, squinted her eyes, shielded her face with her hand.

Outside, exiting, pulling the heavy oak door behind her, Rosy reversed direction and threw herself against the door just before it closed. She raked through her purse and came out with keys, flung the door open and slammed it shut, forcibly shook and twisted the handle.

She walked rapidly away along the front of the house, slowed to a stroll almost as soon as she started, intentionally breathing deeply as she walked in behind the high bushes. She was always forgetting her keys.

Lilacs scented the walkway that stretched out ahead of her.

Years ago she had planted small bushes, bending over in the rain with a sore back, sprinkles gradually intensifying into a downpour that beat coldly on her as she hurried to be done, digging in the rich soil which slowly turned to mud.

She stopped on the walk behind the bushes and breathed deeply and loudly. The smell of lilacs reminded her of her mother.

A framed photo of her mother, slightly older than Rosy now but very much resembling her, sat high up on a mantle then, where Rosy could always look up at it.

Now the bushes wildly overgrew the walkway, almost like trees, blocking much of the view from that side of the house and blocking, especially, the early morning sun. They should be trimmed down, but she never wanted to have it done. Rosy stood in a daze among the lilacs, sandwiched between the bushes and the house, hidden from the street, and from the sun. She hardened her soft facial muscles into a firm resolve and started off again, walking quickly. She turned the corner around the lilacs onto the driveway and almost ran into her red three-year-old Lexus, avoiding it with a reflexive side step. It gleamed brightly in the sunlight. She had forgotten, again, to put it in the garage for the night.

Wind blew at her in gusts. It whistled through the carport between the house and the garage where no obstruction blocked its path, no house, no bushes to protect her. The weather vane in the middle of the expansive lawn rattled without turning.

Rosy opened the car door and flung her purse onto the seat. She looked back toward the house rubbing her upper arms as the keys jingled in her hand. She got into the car and started it.

Bright sunlight reflected into Rosy's face off the polished hood. As she rummaged through her purse with one hand, she shielded her face with the other. Suddenly angry, she tossed the purse back onto the seat, jammed the car into gear, froze, took a deep breath, and drove off down the driveway. At the mailbox she stopped and got out of the car. The road glistened as if it were wet, or as if it were a hot summer day instead of a cool spring one. With her hand above her eyes, she looked over the shimmering concrete to the nearest neighbor's house, a twelve room Tudor. Her house seemed small to her by comparison. Still, she felt, it was more than enough.

She noticed, as she turned away, one small dark cloud beyond her house to the west, the only cloud in an otherwise brilliant sky. A sudden loud metallic squeal startled her. The great iron weather vane in the middle of the yard halfway between the house and the road, the ugly black hawk with its beak open in a silent scream, its talons extended as it posed in an eternal downward plummet toward some unseen unsuspecting thing on the lawn, that bird that she heard nasty in the distance at odd times during the day when it inevitably broke free of the forces of rust and inertia and, begrudging and complaining, made its adjustments to the wind...that thing had to go. She wearied of oiling it. She never liked it. She was sorry it had ever been installed.

Rosy opened the oak mailbox and removed a handful of mail. As she closed it she heard a far off rumbling. It grew louder, coming at her quickly, resounding in the air around her. She froze in place in front of the mailbox, looking toward the house, fearing to turn her head. Rapidly, before she could prepare herself, the motorcycle pulled up behind her. It continued to quietly rumble. She didn't want to turn around, but she did.

"Hello, Rosy," the rider said. The wind tried to blow his shiny black hair, too short to do anything but vibrate. She took a step backward.

"Roy," she shouted above the noise. "What are you doing here?"

"I just came to..."

"You're not supposed to be here," she yelled. The wind angrily tossed the short locks of her hair around her head. It rattled the mailbox and the door dropped open. She started at the noise, turned to see what it was, slammed it shut, turned back at Roy, turned, and walked toward her car.

"I just wanted to..." Roy said, but she turned back toward him.

"Roy," she shouted, still walking, backward, stumbling as she walked.

He shut off the motorcycle and swung his leg over the seat. In the silence Rosy heard his black leather jacket creak. She reached for the open car door behind her back, felt her way around it and put it between herself and him. As he approached, she watched the wind whip the antenna on the back of his motorcycle. A long black and white feather hanging from the antenna's tip spun around in circles, tethered by a silver chain.

"Rosy..." he said, but she interrupted him again, shouting, "Roy," over his almost pleading rendition of her name, stepping on his line, stopping him short of the car door.

Stretching into the car, she got her purse, forced her hand deep into it, violently raked the inside until her fingers found and tightened around the tiny plastic box. She pulled the purse from around it, spilling most of the contents onto the seat.

The compact cellular phone snapped open at her touch. She held it in front of her like a handgun and took a prolonged breath. As she pushed a button, once, definitively, imagining the device pulsing silently in her hand, she said with a practiced enunciation that made her seem calm, "I'm calling security. You're not allowed here."

Roy looked at her for a long time. He didn't move. She looked over at the motorcycle, back at him, down the street, back at him, across the street, and back at him. Each time she looked back at him, his eyes still fixed on her. Several times he opened his mouth as if to speak, but instead he held his breath. Each time something in her attitude, her stance, prevented him from forming words. She watched him closely, determined. He took a deep breath and exhaled, saying, "Rosy, I just wanted to ask you..."

"I don't care what you wanted," she screamed. "Get out of here!"

She held the phone between them on her side of the door. Her fingers wrapped it firmly, rigidly, joints locked at the wrist, elbow, and shoulder. A car speeded toward them. They both turned their heads and watched it approach and screech to a stop next to the motorcycle. The driver got out immediately, cautiously. His eyes darted around them as he cornered the front of his car, his gray suit coat hanging awkwardly from his shoulders, as if he had worn it too long and had lost a lot of weight living in it.

"Sir," he said, his left hand tentatively feeling the distance between them. "I have to ask you to leave. This is a restricted neighborhood."

"I know it's a restricted neighborhood," Roy said. "I've been kicked out before." He made no attempt to move and looked back at Rosy.

"Sir," the man said more loudly, feeling his right hand toward the opening in his suit coat. "You must leave, now."

Roy looked back at him, then turned back to Rosy. "Rosy, I..."

"Roy," Rosy shouted at the same time the young man shouted, "Sir."

Roy looked up at the sky and turned his head from right to left, as if expecting rain. He looked back down at Rosy, turned and walked to his motorcycle. "I don't understand," he said, "why I can't just talk to you for a minute." He threw his leg over the seat and kicked the starter in one motion. The motorcycle came to life.

"I should remind you, there's a helmet law in this state," the younger man shouted over the roar as Roy gunned the engine. A helmet hung from the side of the motorcycle. Roy looked over his shoulder, his face squinted, his eyebrows furled, his left eye almost closed. The sun shone on his face, absorbed by his ruddy complexion. Rosy stood back behind her door with the phone in her hand. Roy took his sunglasses out of his jacket pocket, meticulously put them on, and rode off.

"Thanks, Frank," Rosy said as the sound of the motorcycle trailed away. The hand that grasped the phone began to shake. She closed the phone, threw it onto the seat of the car, and tried to deepen her shallow breathing. But she could not.

"Yes, Ma'am," Frank said as he walked to his car, his loose gray pants flapping behind him. "I'm really sorry," he said over his shoulder. "I don't know how he got in. We'll be more watchful. Sorry."

Rosy got into her car and backed it up the driveway to the garage. She fumbled with her purse, stuffing the contents that had fallen out back into it. She gathered up the mail and got out of the car, slamming the door. As she rushed across the walk, she fumbled with her purse again, looking for the keys she had tossed in among everything else. She found them, got the door open, closed it behind her, locked it, and leaned back against it briefly. Then she crossed the living room, dropped her purse and the mail onto the small phone table, walked over and collapsed onto the oversized living room sofa.

Rosy sat slumped and motionless. Her arms lay limply at her sides, palms up. Slowly, her breathing deepened. She stared into the kitchen at the clock high on the wall above the sink. Ten forty-five. She didn't want to go. She didn't even want to walk over to the phone. Sunlight streamed or filtered into the house through every window. She never lived in a brighter house, when it was bright outside. She would hate to live in a dismal place after having lived here.

Eventually, slowly, she got up and walked across the room to get the phone, carried it wearily back to the sofa, plopped down, and pulled out the antenna. Her gaze fixed on the keypad. Her fingers probed it, tracing the spaces between the keys. She hesitated, switched it on, dialed a number. A woman answered, "Hello," her voice revealing her breeding in a simple greeting.

"Hi Angela, it's Rosy." She swung her feet up and lay down along the sofa's full length. Angela said hello again, and in the tone of voice Rosy detected concern. "Yeah, listen," Rosy said. "Is it possible we can do it tomorrow?" Tall bookcases lined the wall Rosy faced, sparsely filled with neatly patterned books, decorator pieces she bought at closeout prices, surrounding the wide screen television in the largest middle section.

"What's the matter, dear?" Angela asked. Her voice pulsed, as if she spoke out of a fog, fading in and out.

"Oh, I'm having a bad day." She scanned the book titles. She had read each one, not as idle items of decor, but as curious thoughts.

"That's a shame, dear. Where are you?"

"I'm still at home." The sunlight coursing through the window, shielded from her by the back of the sofa, hit her in the face as Rosy sat up. "I got up late, and I've been trying to get ready, but I'm not feeling well." Rosy stared, squinting, at the front window with her arm draped over the back of the sofa.

"Are you very ill?"

"No, not bad, just, you know. It's Monday. If you really want to do it today, I can come over." She turned her face away from the window, grimacing.

"Not at all, dear. I wouldn't dream of it. But I would like to see you soon. I haven't seen you in so long."

"How about tomorrow?" Rosy turned squarely around and sat in a normal position on the sofa facing toward the kitchen.

"Tomorrow would be fine."

"Great. Same time?"

Lilacs in a vase sat on the counter to the left of the sink.

"Of course, dear. I hope you're feeling better."

They looked sad. They drooped.

"Thanks, Angela."

The water in the glass vase looked yellow and cloudy, refracting light from the kitchen window up in a hazy glow around the lilacs. They said goodbye to each other, and the pleasant smile on Rosy's face faded to an expressionless pallor.

from Reservations
One Horse Press, 1995
� jai jackson

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