The Wish Mechanics

How to Make Love an Not Turn to Stone-1

HOW TO MAKE LOVE

AND NOT TURN TO STONEMichaela sits on the cliff listening to the waves crash on the rocks below, near where the basilisks crawl. The eight-foot reptiles do not like to climb the three-hundred-foot jagged rock wall, although occasionally one does and finds its way into Francois’s garden, leaving a trail of tail tracks and petrified deer and squirrels and field mice. Mostly the basilisks like to lounge in the cliffside caves during the heat of day venturing out at night for reasons of their own. Michaela knows the lizards’ habits, and immunity to each other’s gazes must serve mundane purposes, but she doesn’t know what and can’t help but assign a mystic significance to their behavior, although she can’t put her finger on what that might be either. Francois keeps the stone animals as lawn sculptures, sick f**k that he is, which is part of why she loves him so. She’d very much like to go down to the beach with him and take him in the soft, white sand, basilisks and all, but for now sitting atop the cliff waiting for the bats will do.

“See any yet?” Francois asks.

“No,” Michaela says.

Dusk’s last light is almost gone and the sky’s evening blues are darkening in a way they both find beautiful.

“Maybe they’re not hungry,” Francois says. “Or they feel the storm coming.”

The folding chairs they sit in are close enough that they could touch hands if they wanted to. The sleeves of Michaela’s plain white T-shirt are rolled up so her tattoos show. The shirt and her jeans accentuate her breasts and hips and waist, a shape that too many men mistake as a license to stare or act stupid or worse. You have the body of a goddess, Francois said, more to himself than to her, through a flurry of kisses in this very spot the first time they had relieved each other of their clothes and conceded they were slaves to the depth of their passion. After childbirth and years of stress, gaining and losing weight and gaining it again, she hadn’t felt like a goddess—just another tired woman in the city until she saw herself through the lens of his desire. Francois Avram Chevalson. Tall and lean as a swimmer, though a stranger to the ocean that surrounds his island home. Even now in the same pressed slacks and white shirt he wore in the morning to court. His long salt-and-pepper hair still tied in a ponytail. Francois who makes her feel beautiful even on the days she hates her pale skin and thinks her lips are too pink and thin. Francois with his deep-set green eyes that change color in the sun and indicate his capacity for lust that she knows only see her, no matter what other woman, rock star or refugee, is present.

“Oh look there’s one,” Francois says and she yearns to feel his close-clipped beard on her neck.

One of the creatures they call a bat, a thing more like a mad cross between a bird and a firefly, spirals from the seaside caves into the coming night. Foot-long, black wings extend to catch the wind and the “bat” bursts into golden flames. The bio-luminescent halo of light does not consume it as it glides leaving a glowing trail of its path through the sky that lingers.

“Why do they do it?” Michaela says.

“I don’t know. It must feel right. Small brains. Bad eyes. They don’t navigate by sight or reason.”

“Is that true?”

Francois is one of the smartest people she knows and expert on monsters. But also expert on making things up. Even when he doesn’t think he is.

“Think so,” he says.

“Sure you’re not projecting on it?”

Francois shrugs. Michaela realizes maybe she’s the one projecting. “Feeling right” was how she’d navigated her way to him. When she had first seen his photo in the newspaper she didn’t even think he was handsome. Intriguing, yes. What sort of a man represents monsters, she wondered. Her feelings drew her, but weariness of cruel city life and its drama was what kept her, that and the warrant for her arrest waiting back in the city. She had to lie low somewhere. Why not with him? At a time she cannot pinpoint, lust and convenience and intrigue turned to love. Painful, all-consuming, all-encompassing, inconvenient love.

They had met at a gallery show one of Rockstar’s protégés was curating. Michaela was there looking for money. Looking for help. Francois was dragged there with a client, a handsome devil, who introduced them then disappeared into the debauchery going on in the buying room in the back. She was fascinated how this man could have the name Francois yet not speak a word of French. He was fascinated by how she had no plans to show up for her court date. But he didn’t judge. He was interested. Even a little turned on by her troubles. A lot turned on but he didn’t act on it. Not then. He called her the next afternoon and brought her groceries and was kind. He informed her about police methods and taught her how to be careful. For her birthday he took her to the Coney Island aquarium and they held hands, safe from the July sun and the pressures of their lives in that tourist refuge, watching tropical fish circle round and round.

The first time she traveled to Francois’s property, the warrant for missing her court dates had been issued. She worried the police would pick her up at the ferry terminal. Francois reassured her that it was too soon for that but admonished her to “take care of her business before it took care of her,” which struck her as an unromantic thing to say but didn’t lessen her desire to see him and to take a break from her life—to spend time with the intriguing, kind stranger who was obviously so very hot for her and trying his best not to show it.

As he was showing her around she was most drawn to the guest house that overlooked the cliffs. He went to great pains to avoid letting her near, at first. The guest house was where his ex-wife had stayed during their split. All her things and clothes were left behind and he hadn’t cleaned the place out nor ventured in since she had left. Michaela found this equally strange and exciting. After dinner that night they sat on the cliffs. The bats were out, filling the sky with golden fire.

Despite the rare display they could do nothing else but breathe into each other, unable to keep their lips apart even as they undressed. His skin on hers was charged with the excitement and comfort of remembering something lost in a dream, something vital yet somehow its absence had been forgotten.

“You know Rockstar called,” Michaela says, unable to stop thinking of the heat of that first night.

“Oh? What’d she say?”

“She’s doing a gallery show soon. In the city. A good job’s waiting if I just say the word.”

“Good. You should do it. I know you’re the best and so does she.”

“I’m not going to. You know why?”

“I know what you’re going to say—”

“Why won’t you f*****g just help me?” Michaela says.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Francois says. “I’m helping you by not helping you.”

“It would be so easy for you. I don’t believe any part of your twisted theory.”

“It’s not my theory. And it’s not a theory. It just is. If you don’t take care of things you got yourself into, yourself, the same sort of things are going to keep coming at you, only stronger and stronger until you learn what you are meant to.”

“Why is it so important to you to teach me a lesson?” Michaela says. “Why don’t you just love me?”

“I’m not teaching you anything. I’m not even certain what the lesson is. But I know for sure that you are meant to take care of the trouble you got yourself into and the lesson is in doing that. If you continue to ignore it—”

“f**k you. If you really loved me, the way I love you, you wouldn’t let me suffer.”

“Are you suffering?” Francois says. “I’m not interfering in this because I do love you, why don’t you see that?”

“Interfering? Is that what you think? No. No. No. I would do anything for you.”

“I would do anything for you,” Francois says.

“Except help me.”

“I am helping you. If you keep ignoring the knocking at the door the universe is going to break the door down. It’s the natural order of things. This is your wake up call. Take care of it or it’s going to take care of you.”

“You help monsters all day long. But not me. For me you have this gibberish.”

“You aren’t listening to a word I’m saying, are you?”

“I’m asking you to represent me in court. Help me fix a mistake I made so I can get on with my life and you’re saying no. What is it I’m not hearing?”

The first night she had asked for his help she was lying in her bed in the guest house. He said she could stay there until she got strong again. Until she found her way, while she was taking care of her business. It made perfect sense at the time. She lay in bed that night watching for the bats but they never came. Every night since, she lies there watching for them through the window. Sometimes she sees them in her dreams. If he loved me, the way I love him, he would do anything, she thinks. Why doesn’t he understand? If only he would just understand.

“I love you,” Michaela says.

“I love you too.”

He stands and walks behind her chair and drapes his arms around her. Her body comes alive with chills as his hands find her waist. She stands, knocks the chair down and presses against him.

“I want you. Now,” she whispers, then bites his ear.

Together, embraced like this, they both believe that nothing is wrong. At least nothing that can’t be overcome.

“Come inside with me,” Francois says.

“No, come with me to the beach. I want you down there. On the sand.”

“It will be the death of us,” he says.

“If it is, then that’s how I want to go. Turned to stone. With you inside me.”

They undress each other, reaching for the passion of that first night. She tries to drag him to the path to the beach, then succumbs to desire, pushes him down and mounts him. For a few minutes, before the mask of physical ecstasy wears off, they believe everything is indeed okay, and their troubles can be overcome.

On his morning walk before work, Francois finds his old neighbor Mrs. Grant on her side of the rock wall that divides their properties, watering her flower garden as she often is at this time of day.

“The girl still here?” she says.

“She has a name.”

Mrs. Grant goes back to watering as if it requires the utmost concentration. Her wiry hands grasp her copper watering can and she blows wisps of her stringy gray hair out of her face. She doesn’t comment on the hot morning sun or his growing moonflower vines or even the young basilisk sunning itself on the rock wall a dozen yards away. So Francois knows she’s cross with him.

The lizard cranes its head up, red and orange skin catching the light in bright contrast to the patches of mottled black on its back.

“Out with it, Mrs. G,” he says.

“You’re being reckless,” she blurts, not missing a beat after his cue. “Again.”

“Reckless?”

“She’s using you?”

“For what?”

“For shelter from her storms,” she says.

“Isn’t that what love is?” Francois says. “At least part of it?”

The young basilisk crawls along the wall. Its claws scrape on stone.

“Could be. But not for her,” Mrs. G says. “This one, when she’s strong enough to fly, she flies away from you.”

“And how did you come up with this?”

“It’s written all over her. All over both of you. You don’t find it curious how the girl’s problems perfectly match your professional expertise?”

“What’s so curious about it? She wants me to represent her in court and take care of a mess she made.”

“See, I told you.”

“But I’m not. She got herself into it, she has to learn to get herself out of it. It’s not about the money or my time. I wish it was that easy. She’ll find her lessons in cleaning up the mess. Herself.”

“Her? While she learns her lessons? The only lesson I see is for you.”

“And what lesson does the universe have in store for me?”

“Such an adorable boy you are. Who said anything about the universe? The universe has nothing to do with this. Or with anything. The only lessons are the ones we make up. The only meaning, to anything, is what we put there. I just hope you remember you’ve been used like this before.”