The Wish Mechanics

How to Make Love an Not Turn to Stone-2

“By who?”

“Claudine,” she says.

“That was me,” Francois says. “I didn’t know what love was.”

“You protest so quickly.”

“How old was I? I didn’t know how to give. To be selfless.”

“That’s how you see it?”

“I didn’t know compassion, yet. Poor Claudine was caught in my wake.”

“She was a sweet girl, that one, yes. I do believe she truly loved you. She would have waited for you to come around.”

“She would have waited and waited. And crushed herself with the weight of years.”

“And what about Esamae?”

“What about her?”

“You really don’t see what I’m saying? You took her in, too. And as soon as she became strong enough, she left you.”

“I haven’t taken Michaela in.”

“You haven’t?”

“She’s just staying here while she learns to take care of things.”

“Just like Esamae.”

“No. That was…something else. It wasn’t personal.”

“It wasn’t? Seemed personal to you. How long until you stopped hurting?”

“That was the past and—”

“Go ahead, child. Tell me the past doesn’t equal the future as you are so fond of doing. I know it doesn’t. But do you? Remember what I taught you. Take care of your business. Resolve your issues or you face them again and again. This time it looks like your unresolved business is poised to really take care of you good.”

“Might look like it from your side of the wall. But that’s not what’s happening here, Mrs. G.”

“I hope so. I like you. You’re a nice boy and you take care of people. I want you to take care of yourself.”

“I’ll be fine, Mrs. G. I am taking care of myself.”

“Does the girl know about Esamae?”

“Why does my ex-wife matter?”

“She doesn’t. I guess. Guess she matters so little there’s no reason to tell the girl?”

Something metal clangs and there is a hiss, then the sound of something scraping against rock. The young basilisk has walked into one of Mrs. G’s bear traps she has left on the wall. The steel-toothed manacle has clamped shut crushing the young creature’s body. It rubs its head and tail on the rock as it dies.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Mrs. G.”

“They eat my flowers,” she says.

“There are other ways.”

“I know you think the young things are so pretty,” she says. “But they grow up deadly. And faster than you think.”

Michaela puts the goggles on and stares at the young basilisk chewing on Francois’s morning glories. She makes sure the goggles are on securely even though she knows the young thing’s gaze will not gain the ability to petrify for years to come.

She found the goggles in a hatbox in one of the storage sheds and just knew the box and its contents, two pairs of midnight lenses, belonged to Francois’s ex-wife and what they were. Midnight lenses. What professionals use when dealing with phantasmagorical entities and creatures like basilisks. The best s*x shops sell them too. They’re worn when one wants to make love and not turn to stone. At least not fully. Or irreversibly. Francois is a sick f**k but his ex must have been even sicker, Michaela thinks and for the first time is jealous. She puts them back in the box and puts the box on the floor when she hears Francois is home and walking toward the back porch.

“Rockstar called again,” Michaela says. “Invited me to a warehouse party.”

“We should go,” Francois says.

“No. That’s not how it goes with her. She invited me.”

“Then you should go.”

“You think so?”

“Of course.”

“You’re not jealous?”

“I want you to do what you are meant to do,” he says. “Being in their world. Around them. Going to their parties. Curating their shows is what you say you are meant to do and I agree. You have the eye for it. You’re one of the best.”

Michaela wants to tell him she loves him but instead says, “I only wish my court date was just taken care of.”

“So why won’t you?” he says.

“Why won’t you?” she says. “Not tonight. I can’t have this fight tonight.”

“Why won’t Rockstar or one of her protégés take care of it if they need you to work and want you around?”

“That’s not how it’s done,” Michaela says.

“Exactly. This is exactly what I’ve been saying all along. That’s not how it’s done. You need to take care of this. In all the details you’ll find the—”

“Lesson, right? Lessons again. What is this big lesson that I’m missing that’s so important to you?”

“I don’t know. But you do. You will.”

“I go back to the city I could go to jail. Is that part of my lesson?”

“Maybe,” Francois says.

“You’d let me go to jail?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s a change. I thought you’d say ‘of course.’ Maybe you love me after all.”

“I’d miss you in jail.”

“Such a romantic, my man. Even when you’re being incorrigible,” she says and kisses him.

She can’t bear the feeling of his lips and beard on her neck and tugs his shirt out of his slacks. They free themselves of their clothes, their only thoughts being breath into breath, the thoughtlessness of passion fueled by each other’s touch. Michaela backs up, off the porch leading him down the stairs onto the lawn without breaking their kiss.

“Come on now, at the beach,” she says.

“What?”

“Take me. On the beach.”

“Down there? We’ll turn to stone.”

“I have the lenses.”

“What?”

“From the box in the shed.”

For a second she thinks he will stop kissing her. Stop touching her and react with outrage. Or questions. Or just stop. When he does none of these things she asks again.

“I really want to,” she says.

She doesn’t care about the danger. When they are kissing like this there is nothing else. All the pain. All the unfairness. All the loss are just things. Things outside her that no longer have to be dealt with. Things that no longer have to be overcome. Sometimes she thinks her life is already over. That it ended on the day everything happened. To spend forever without pain. Without care. Even the temptation of such a fate is the biggest rush she can imagine.

“The lenses will only slow it,” he says. “We’ll turn to stone.”

“Don’t you want to feel yourself turn to stone? Inside me? Kissing me, like this. Forever in this moment?”

“No,” Francois says and pulls her on top of him.

For a second she thinks of fighting the pleasure. Of fighting him. Then leading him, luring him, teasing him down to the beach. But with a shudder, her logical thought recedes to bliss and she is tired of fighting.

Michaela is up early to see Francois off to the ferry for work. Court actually starts on time in the summer so Francois does not have the luxury to walk the rock wall and chat with Mrs. G as he would like. Michaela has convinced him to go to Rockstar’s party in her place. She said if he went he would understand her, and everything she’d been asking and he could not refuse. They’ve decided to move her into the house over the weekend. Another grown basilisk made the climb and almost surprised Michaela. The main house will be safer. Farther from the cliffs. In the house they will be together but Mrs. G’s words echo in his mind.

Rockstar’s warehouse is across from the docks in the seaport, not far from where Francois catches the ferry. Francois figures he will go for an hour and still have time to catch the last ferry home. He thinks about Esamae. One day she stopped being herself. Life and the pretty illusions she and he and the world had created were no longer good enough for her. She felt compelled to leave him, to sail into the darkness in order to continue being her. And it didn’t matter to her if she ever came back or if he or their life would be there if she did. Mrs. G thought she knew it all, but didn’t understand it wasn’t that Esamae didn’t love him. She couldn’t. She was no longer meant for this world anymore, she was no longer a part of it and had to go, go to a place he could not and would not follow. That’s just the way things go sometimes, he thinks. The thought is the product of a lot of painful reasoning and the distance of time. He doesn’t want to be without Michaela but he knows if she wants to throw her life away there is nothing he can do to stop her, even if he tries. Mrs. G just doesn’t understand that.

Rockstar’s people are waiting for him at the door to the warehouse. His name is on their list. The bouncer, a tall thin woman with short gray hair, wears a silk black dress that reminds him of one Esamae used to always wear. Esamae had always wanted to go down to the beach. On the last night he ever saw her, she did. He wonders if she is still down there. On the sand. With the basilisks. Her last expression of rage, of indifference, frozen forever in stone. Or if she just finally left like she had been threatening to do and went to the shores beneath the cliffs and sailed away. He’s never checked. At first because of fear, then later on indifference. Whatever her fate, it no longer matters, he tells himself.

“You okay, Mister—”

“Chevalson,” Francois says.

The bouncer hands him a black handkerchief and motions to his eyes. Has he been crying?

She leads him inside. The ceilings are three stories high. In some places wooden crates, some large enough to hold elephants or full wall paintings, are stacked to the top.

A few dozen people have gathered in an empty space between the massive rows of crates about fifty yards away. Seven or eight paintings on easels ring the boundary of their makeshift party space. The group’s clothing styles are an eclectic cross section of what one sees in the city. One bunch are wearing evening wear suited for a night at the opera. Another are dressed in business attire like Francois. A few others flitting about from group to group are clad in jeans and leather and worn black boots, despite the summer heat outside. One woman is the center of gravity of all their orbits. Michaela’s Rockstar.

Rockstar watches Francois approach, ignoring the chatter of those around her and says, “Michaela’s beau,” as soon as he is in ear shot.

The people around her fawn over him when introduced. They exchange pleasantries. Small talk. Complaints about the weather. They coo over Michaela’s beauty and profess to miss her. They coo over his job and recent photograph in the newspaper. He recognizes them as sycophants but Rockstar is different. She allows them all to spin around her. She feigns to be a diva but Francois knows she is listening. Taking it all in yet ignoring it at the same time. She’s taking him in and sizing him up.

“Let me show Mister Francois my paintings,” she says.

The crowd shifts so Francois can see the one displayed on the nearest easel. It is abstract and reminds him of the red-orange and black mottled pattern of young basilisk skin.

“Not these ones,” she says and leads him out of the crowd to an avenue between two massive skyscrapers of crates. “This way, dear,” she says.

As she leads him through a maze of turns she coos over Michaela. Her talent. Her eye for good art. Her beauty. He wonders if they have been lovers.

Rockstar stops and adjusts her white button-up shirt. Too many buttons are undone and Francois spies what he thinks is bright green ink in the center of her flat chest. Then he sees the leaves and thorns. Heartvine.

Rockstar scratches at the plant symbiotically bonded to her body.

“Congratulations,” Francois says. “I didn’t peg you for the monogamous type.”

“There is nothing else but love,” she says. “No higher purpose. All this. It’s pretty. It’s fun. It pays the bills. But it is show. Surely you see that. Surely you know that. I was so happy when I heard sweet lost Michaela landed someone like you. I can tell. You love her. You are good for her.”

“How can you know?”

“I do. I have an eye for these things. You don’t get to where I am without seeing things as they are and acting accordingly. The one question I have is why you haven’t yet taken care of her court dates, Mister Francois?”

“Why don’t you?”

“Why it’s her business,” Rockstar says. “She’s meant to take care of it. If she doesn’t it will only come back to bite her ten times over. I can’t have any of that kind around me. What we don’t take care of takes care of us, you know?”

“I think I know what you mean,” he says. But he is not pleased to hear words he has said so often from her. They feel predatory the way she speaks them and it has triggered something defensive inside him.

“She really loves working for you,” Francois says. “And she’s the best at what she does.”

“I know that, darling. You wouldn’t be here giving me an update on her if she wasn’t. But most of all I love her for her mean right hook.”