food for the bees
Two a.m outlines the figure of a pale, slender beast, a vicious riot of sinew knit around the graceful arch of a spine, sitting at a desk in crumpled slacks. The low lamplight burnishes the hollows of his body, sends them black and feral, and the Sefirotic sprawl of vivid green, edged in blue and haloed in gold, seemed to breathe in his skin, to undulate, living ink.
The girlfriend-accessory, a girl in black tights and an unlaundered sweaterdress is named Mona Dahl, but at present, he has forgotten she was there. Never told her she could start spending nights here; in fact he'd told her not to, several times, and that's probably why she started doing it, taking advantage of his lengthening laudanum binges, his fractured attentions, the fact that he spent enough time in the throes of alchemical trances that he lost track of time, and it became midnight, it became two a.m, and Mona Dahl is still here.
"Your eyes look weird," she tells him. "You should have another dose."
And he ignores her; he knows, and doesn't particularly care, that she is engineering her own fortunes now, jockeying to end up on his pillow in the morning. Knows and doesn't particularly care that she has co-opted his Tarot deck again, and is playing with the cards, just playing with the faded little pack as if she were inventing solitaire.
The alchemist is writing a letter, and it is taking him some time, and Mona blames his soporific stupor. He's so strange, so dissasociated late at night, with insomnia, with his medication, with all of it, and when he says things like Mercedes in his restless sleep, she pretends that he's just speaking nonsense.
"RK," Mona reads over his shoulder, sibilantly. "I'm sorry it's been a long time since I've written. You know sometimes I don't feel well because of work, and I've been especially busy."
Brande pauses with the pen on the paper, and looks at her as if he's only just realized she's there.
"You've been busy?" She says, smoking. "Can't you put something about me in the letter? Can you write, 'I'm seeing this girl, Mona?'"
"I'm seeing this girl, Mona," he says dryly, as he writes what he is instructed with a certain breed of hollow obedience; it's a venomous tone that Aden Brande has cultivated as a skill, and it gives Mona no quarter.
He doesn't write anything further about the reality of Mona Dahl not because he is too kind to do it in front of her, but because he is too tired to fight with her, and after all, he has a reason for writing.
RK,
I'm sorry it's been a long time since I've written. You know sometimes I don't feel well because of work, and I've been especially busy.
I'm seeing this girl, Mona. It is very much a non-story.
I imagine Marius must be officially a father by now. Have you heard anything? I haven't spoken to him about it since he found out, and it's not exactly a sowing ground for joyous news. My cousin has certain ideas about family, and having what is for all intents and purposes his first son arrive to a woman he feels betrayed him is not likely how he was hoping it would go.
It's not my intention to be especially sympathetic for Marius. How a man who's as smart about people as he is could have gotten in this mess is beyond me.
Speaking of my cousin's family, there was something I wanted to ask you about. Do you have any memory of Marius' mother, my aunt Luciana? When I was working on Eurydice, I brought her to see Luciana; I was interested in seeing her response to maternal figures.
Luciana called me by my father's name, which is not especially surprising given how mad the poor woman is after the life she's had. She called Eurydice Mercedes, too.
But let me just imply that since I saw the way she tried kissed reacted to me, thinking I was Marshall, I have been wondering several things related to the parents of Marius and Antoinette and me.
And so I ask, do you remember Luciana? Do you have any thoughts of her?
As an aside, I don't expect you to be especially sympathetic to Marius, either. I'm sure you'd love I would ask about your situation, but you and I have an understanding that I must remain dumb and blind to it, with all respect to you and your wife.
All the respect, and whatever I can muster that resembles love. There isn't much of that left, I confess. Sorry, Mona who's reading over my shoulder as I write this.
Fidelis,
AMB
"You didn't say anything at all about me in the letter," says Mona, now sitting in his lap, somewhat placated, however, by the glimpses she gets into the life of Brande, into the equally intriguing Vega family. Just a few lines in the letter have given meaning to the dusty insignias she occasionally finds when rifling through his moving bozes whenever he loses consciousness late at night.
"What is there to say?" He asks, looking at her for the first time, his eyes wan.
"You're a cold son of a bitch, Aden Brande."
And he knows that sorry would be a worthless thing to say even if he felt sorry, and so he says nothing, and lets her spend the night because he's too tired to fight her.
--
Honey honey out on the sea
In the doldrums thinking of me
Me on dry land thinking of he
Honey honey not next to me
