《ALGAE》


 A Prologue: The Hill

    We¡¯re in a beautiful place, you and I. There are weeds rising resplendent out of every crack in the concrete and there is the slow calm quiet of the peerlessly blue sky. The hush is interrupted, but only by the gentle creaking of a bike as a woman pushes it up the hill. The bicycle¡¯s tires roll over a sparse scatter of brilliantly purple petals; the  flowers are senescing. Somewhere nearby jasmine vines creep over a pitted fence. You can smell their perfume mixing with the scent of her exertion; it¡¯s a heady collision.


    But don¡¯t get distracted, Gabriel. Sun and verdure and the sweet breeze that haunts the trailing edge of summer; they¡¯re nice, but they¡¯re not what we¡¯re after. Keep your eyes open. We¡¯re here to see.


    Watch with me. Listen to the woman¡¯s struggle, see the sweat pinning her violet curls to the back of her neck. Witness the faint path that the woman and her bike have carved into the carpet of petals. It¡¯s one we¡¯ll follow, of course; we will set our feet where the blossoms already lie crushed dark and bleeding.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    She''s a queer person for me to tail, isn''t she? I know. This woman, with her sweet bland face screwed up, naked from her defeat by the slow rise of a hill. This woman. We both know that she doesn¡¯t merit a second glance. Perhaps that¡¯s why I don¡¯t recognize her. Or perhaps she¡¯s just a lie.


    I don''t want to talk about this. I shouldn¡¯t. But I¡¯m here and I¡¯m here and I¡¯m here. I try to leave her; it does nothing. I am always finding myself on this hill, with this meek nothing of a woman and these petals and this bike. So I will tell you how those curls frizz up where they aren¡¯t plastered to her neck. I will recite the perfection of her nail polish, how the delicate bones of her wrists press out against her skin. I can¡¯t escape this ridiculous triviality, so I might as well dissect it.

 Chapter One: Mire

    The forest ahead is still quiet, though the sun has struck out at the canopy with its first crystalline rays and they have filtered down already to fleck the mosses and lichens of the understory. Last night¡¯s heavy rains were the first for months, and now the muted fall of water from the tips of the cedars¡¯ curling boughs is the only sound here. The mist we walk through is dense, but before us the veil burns off with abrupt candor, the thin light of the sun now revealing the delicate malachite leaves of Ceanothus, now pulling the blades of the bowltube iris from the ambiguity of night.


    The student leads us. She picks her way along the muddied path, taking small leaps from one crest of hardened soil to another. Her shadow flashes over the silty pools between. She is careful; with her immaculate hiking boots, it¡¯s obvious that the scientist isn¡¯t the sort to relish the pull of mud around her calf. Our student prefers the forest in the deep heat of summer, on those nights where the moon gleams from the edges of cutting bark and dying leaves. But today she woke in her bed feeling new, feeling the grip of this unshrinking morning at her throat and in her heart. So she sat up and set out, and now we are here with the academic in the near wilderness, breathing the soaking air in that peculiar space between the dawn and the day.


    Her face is terrible in its emptiness; this is not the woman I know. But then¨C today she is out in the woods, on this sodden path. Do I come to know her because of the morning¡¯s grip? Because of the pale clear sky?


    You have to close your eyes as we step out onto the river bank after her: across the water the sun is cresting over the trees, and its reach is sharp and piercing, an unsympathetic revelation of the water¡¯s skin. The steady brilliance makes the current seem still, but underneath there are golden trout and tumbling twigs and vast colonies of algae that struggle to endure the water¡¯s pull, vibrant in blood red and prasine green.


    When you can see again, the woman is kneeling on the rocky shore, her feet bare and her pant legs cuffed. The scientist reaches to touch the surface with the tips of her fingers and then stands, her knees already dark with water. She moves into the current, unblinking. And her face¨C it¡¯s still so blank, Gabriel, though the water is cold enough to cut into our ankles as we stand beside her. Doesn¡¯t she feel it? It isn¡¯t just the cold, either; the rocks that stud the river bed dig into the soft arches of our feet, their edges still obvious even through the slick algal growths that tremble in the current.


    Oh, here! Finally she shows some feeling! Is it discomfort, do you think? Irritation? I can¡¯t tell. Perhaps she is regretting her choice to sink into this sludge; she twists to look back at the shore, at the long pools of rainwater that blaze with the pink and orange of the sunlight that is fracturing itself on their surfaces. Look at her: see the light on her curving lips and the miry current against her legs. She hates this. But she¡¯s here, isn¡¯t she. She¡¯s here.


    So now, with muck blooming up from beneath her feet in a muted rainbow of reds and golds, with the dense riot of greens pressing in along the banks of the river- now, the student uncaps a vial and bends to bury it in the algae below. Silt and scum get under her nails, dye the lines on her palms. Behind her, the forest begins to stir.


    The woman to whom I¡¯m bound isn¡¯t like this. She isn¡¯t afraid of mud, her face isn¡¯t a mask. So who is this frigid automaton who has taken her place?


    Come with me and take a seat: let us play her game.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    The little room we¡¯ve settled into is, of course, the woman¡¯s home. She isn¡¯t here, so you needn¡¯t worry. Can you hear her? She¡¯s outside in the garden, talking to Ivan the landlord. If we¡¯re very quiet, we could listen at the crack of the window. They¡¯re only bemoaning the crabgrass, though, and I suspect we won¡¯t learn much from the way her face contorts and shines with empathy. We must conduct our own investigations without her faithless touch; I may have been naive before, but I will not play the fool twice. Look.


    In any other light, the student¡¯s room would burst with color, but today the sky is flat and grey and the room has been robbed of much of its exuberance. Look how the cobalt of the comforter has sunk to slate, how the violets have died to grey. The greens, though. Alone in this bloodless room, the greens shift and burn. Leaves of celadon unfold in every direction, frenetic color against the ash-dark sky. Leaves of mint. Of jade. They press up against the windows and each other, straining to drink in the anemic light. On the bookshelves, peonies and anemones fight for primacy with their delicate nodding heads, african violets squatting in their ruffled shadows. Pilea plants, verbena, succulents without names: they line the walls and sills, sprawl across the desk. Combined, their verdant breath is dense and wildly aggressive; it saturates you. You can feel it on your tongue.


    The force of their lives would be crushing, I think, if it weren¡¯t for the lofted ceiling. The windows help too, broad as they are and open to the north and the west. You can see a few cobwebs clinging to the outside of them from your seat on the hardwood floor, and not much else except sky. From my perch on the bed, though, I can see only trees. To the north, a magnolia bends low over our student¡¯s conversation. To the west, there is a persimmon tree that is just beginning to bear fruit.


    Not all of the plants in here are real, have you noticed? The woman isn¡¯t the type to mind falsehood, of course; she¡¯s established a pot of fake flowers in a shadowy corner of the room. It¡¯s overfull: the crush of cloth blossoms pushes out over the container''s edge. Sometimes a daffodil or an iris will fall onto the dresser on which the pot sits through some inscrutable shifting. There, they lie among eyeliners and lipsticks and foundations: the student¡¯s art supplies, I suppose. Accoutrements for her everyday costumes; without them, how would the actress slip from one persona to the next? And she is different every day. A grungy academic, a prim aesthete, a pragmatic gardener; which is she? I suppose I¡¯ve never been able to tell her reality from her fiction.


    All these plants are to be expected, aren¡¯t they? The woman is a plant scientist, after all. Look: here on the bookshelf there is an old syllabus for a course on plant genetics. She¡¯s listed as the TA.


    Yes, of course she¡¯s a graduate student.


    I¡¯ve only told you the truth, Gabe. Why would I lie?


    Once you get your bearings, once you can look underneath all of the verdure and see the room as it is¨C well, it¡¯s not a very interesting place at all. The bed¡¯s made, and the floor is clean. It¡¯s immaculate, except, perhaps, when it comes to the jumble of items under the bed. Right in front of you sits a box with a worn down lock holding it shut- I wonder what¡¯s inside it?


    But that will have to wait for another day, I¡¯m afraid. The rattle of the doorknob has broken the comfortable quiet just a little, and our scientist has got a foot in the door.


    The woman moves like she¡¯s got a secret, but all she has is a vial of river water with a clump of algae suspended inside. The student is shaking the vial in short, sharp movements, so you can watch as the algae dissolves to give the little bottle a pinkish cast.


    The biologist begins to pull other things from beneath the bed. The strangest: two sheets of glass that have been cemented together on opposing sides with putty of some sort. There¡¯s a thin gap between the panes. A tank, or a window.


    The pile on the student¡¯s bed grows; stolen lab equipment and crumpled balls of aluminium foil roll off a bag of electric blue fertilizer crystals to abut a disposable water bottle. Finally, the student pulls on some gloves (obviously stolen from her workplace) and begins her craft. First, she mixes the water, the fertilizer, the algae. It¡¯s a finicky task to insinuate the mixture into the rift between the two plates of glass, but she does it without spilling. One end of the tank gets closed off with putty and the other is capped with foil. When she¡¯s done it still looks like nothing. A tank. A window. The scientist leaves it where it will catch the light of some other afternoon¡¯s sun. She leaves the room on quiet feet; she has to get to class.


    We shouldn¡¯t have bothered with this. I don¡¯t know what made me think this woman would give herself away. We learned more about her in the forest. Honestly. Why am I still here?

 Chapter Two: Nulls

    Loosed from a bow, the arrow flies. In every moment, past and future, it is wholly where it is. In one moment: nocked. In the next, buried in its target. Wholly nocked, wholly buried. If at any one moment the arrow is still, neither moving to its present location nor away from it, then when does it have time to fly?


    Or consider the liar¡¯s march up the hill. To summit, the woman must first ascend half the height. To reach the halfway point, she must first ascend a quarter. Half the distance and half and half again until we reach nanometers. Angstroms. Eventually we will reach an indivisible unit, and we¡¯ll realize then that the student¡¯s journey could never have begun at all.


    So says Zeno of Elea.


    The Eleatic rendered movement absurd because he didn¡¯t believe in change. Reality is what is, and nothing more: existence cannot spring from nonexistence, but it struck him as equally preposterous to suggest that one state of being could engender a different one. The universe is whole and perfect and unchanging, like a film strip without end. From one frame to the next, nothing actually moves. We live out our lives in a series of perfect, predetermined stills.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    You might empathize better with Diogenes the Cynic. He found the Eleatics¡¯ view of reality laughable. When posed these paradoxes of movement, he simply walked away. But how many cues should we take from a man dressed in a barrel?


    Zeno didn¡¯t believe in change; the scientist¡¯s disbelief lies elsewhere. She and the Eleatics do agree on the value of doing things by halves, however. And on the merit of playing games.


    Game playing: that¡¯s a common trick for a bored academic, I suppose. Zeno¡¯s favorite was the reductio ad absurdem. It is a good way to win an argument that you shouldn¡¯t. The graduate student prefers the old standby of the sciences: an experiment with a ridiculous hypothesis, with nothing but a beer riding on the results.


    The student¡¯s game is one of observation, or attention¨C  perfect for the psychology class in which it¡¯s set. I did say our geneticist was bored. An undergraduate class in a foreign discipline makes an excellent antidote to an excess of spare time, don¡¯t you think?


    The student and her friend Sybil have formulated a null hypothesis: two people in a crowd of five hundred are essentially invisible, even if they partake in a well defined, large scale ritual. The ritual in question: split the distance between the front of the auditorium and the back by halves. In the first class, sit at the back. In the second, occupy the center. And so on. The subject is, of course, the professor. He¡¯s the only one in the position to notice, you see.


    Neither the student nor Syb believes for a second that they¡¯ll be caught out. But it¡¯s a silly little experiment and even I am convinced that our scientist truly likes those.

 Chapter Three: The Cyclist

    The call comes at 6:43 PM, just after Sybil has pulled out of their laboratory¡¯s parking lot. At 6:46 PM, he is executing a glaringly illegal U-turn and the student¡¯s face has gone blank and alien. They drive. The scientist gives directions, but the worn-down cab of the truck is otherwise silent. Nothing that breaks the creeping tension; the graduate student watches the city move through her window.


    We¡¯re not far off, now. We turn onto the hill on which the hospital sits, and you can see a cyclist barreling towards us. Caught through the window like this, the woman with her bike is just another one of Zeno¡¯s still lifes. Caught, she is red faced and wrecked, her black hair in shocking disarray. She isn¡¯t wearing a helmet.


    Can you feel it like I can, the way the student has curled in on herself at the sight? Look at her clenched fist, the flare of her nostrils. It¡¯s strange, don¡¯t you think? Our actor can call up personas on demand. Why not now?


    Syb parks. At the front desk of the hospital, the scientist is required to provide ID and to sign a visitor¡¯s log. The man signs after her, and they are both issued name tags.


    The man¡¯s chest now reads:


    Guest: Sybil Tao


    Patient: Mika Speyer


    Room Number: ICU West, Bed 11


    The graduate student puts her badge on her shoulder. From the man at the front desk, they learn that the ICU is on the sixth floor. In the elevator they find a nurse, and she¡¯s kind. When she selects the floor for them, the scientist thanks her with a smile. It¡¯s warm and happy. It¡¯s terrifying.


    Watch again, closer, and you will begin to see what has me caught. When the woman smiles, there are seams in its manufacturing. They are small; the expression is almost perfect. But there is something uncanny in it, something lurid that one could be excused for missing, perhaps, from far away.


    The nurse gets out at the fourth floor, and so they are alone when they reach the sixth. The graduate student¡¯s face is blank as they walk through the greyed out green and dingy grey of the hospital halls. Every door is shut. Once in a while they pass a bay filled with easy-to-sterilize chairs. Above, televisions play the local news on mute, though no one is there to watch. The ancient screens flicker through footage of the summer fires that decimate the land to the north of the city. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The students walk the labyrinthine hallways in the digital firelight; time passes. Later, they find the dingy grey and greyed out green of the ICU¡¯s door tucked into a blind corner. There¡¯s a phone on the wall to the left of the doorway, and so Sybil lifts it. He repeats the code that they were given at 6:43 PM to the nurse who answers. The student stands dumbly at his side until they are buzzed into the room and we are all awash in the sounds of the ICU.


    A heart beats in four parts, a round of ventricle calling to ventricle by way of resolute valves. The heart should be quiet; it¡¯s a personal account. In this room, though, ailing hearts beat out their rhythms in a monotonous dirge. Together they are predictable, a canon in a dozen parts that swell to occupy the room. But there are soloists, too, carving out their own niches in the drone. Limping and leaping and skittering ahead, they dissonate. The hearts beat and they beat and they beat and they beat; the unsteady tide breaks time into uneven fragments, the scene between each unanticipated knell stark, one crystalline moment to the next. In one: nurses rushing, their faces livid in the creeping darkness. In the next: one nurse turning to look at the entering students with her lips tight.


    Below the dirge there is the sound of breathing. The feeble privacy offered by curtains doesn¡¯t block out the hiss and drag of illness, doesn¡¯t fade the queer thumping mechanical breath of someone who is not quite present. The dim bulbs of the ICU spotlight the patients and the nurses behind those curtains and so you can watch as they act out their shadow plays to the staticky waves of the breath and the blood of the hospital.


    Bed Number 11 sits with its curtain open to this relentless tide because its occupant can¡¯t hear anything anyways. Mika¡¯s skin is sallow, colored by the bulb but also by the jaundice that has crept under her skin. It¡¯s Mika¡¯s breathing that¡¯s got that mechanical quality; there¡¯s a machine just over her shoulder beeping in synchrony with the disquietingly jerky motions of her chest.


    Let¡¯s sit down back here by the window and give the students a moment with their friend. We all know that Mika¡¯s overdosed on some opioid, and that she¡¯s probably going to die. Our student doesn¡¯t yet know how long Mika¡¯s oxygen supply was restricted before she was found, however, or that the opioid was some synthetic thing from the silk road with a structure so twisted that the blood tests couldn¡¯t even pick it up. She doesn¡¯t even really understand why anyone would say that Mika is dying, since her vitals are all in range of reasonable and all that seems wrong is her inability to wake up.


    A tableau, as seen from the window seats:


    Mika lays spotlit and yellow on top of devastated bedding, her frighteningly bloated arms and legs sticking out from the papery hospital gown. Her legs are strapped into what look like blow up braces. Nothing in Bed Number 11¡¯s alcove is moving except Mika¡¯s chest, that lurching up-down-up-down with no smoothness to it at all. To her left Syb stands framed by the ugly yellow curtain that echoes Mika¡¯s skin, his face pale and unreadable. To her right, the plant scientist, whose lilac hair has been faded to a dull red-brown by the ICU. The grad student has taken Mika¡¯s hand, and with their two hands held together like that you can see the white crescents that the student¡¯s fingernails press into Mika¡¯s swollen flesh.


    ¡°You¡¯ll hurt her,¡± says Syb.


    ¡°Oh,¡± says the graduate student, blank, and she leaves the ICU.


    After a moment, Sybil follows her. He finds her in one of those peculiar bays, curled in the chair in the furthest corner with that bloodless gaze fixed on the television screen. The forest fires shine on her face; she doesn¡¯t turn her head when he sits down. He waits.


    ¡°Cal will be here soon,¡± the botanist says to the television. ¡°As a patient.¡±


    Syb says, ¡°Oh.¡±


    ¡°I could stop it,¡± she says. ¡°I won¡¯t.¡±


    Mika can¡¯t hear anything anyways, so I suppose it doesn¡¯t really matter that we¡¯re all out here with the student instead.

 and what do you see?

    ¡°What do you think of me?¡± asks the professor, and it isn''t rhetorical. Nobody wants to answer, of course. It''s the third week of classes, and even a freshman can spot a loaded question. But when the doctor repeats himself one of his students remembers that he was a clown in high school.


    "You''re a pot head," the kid calls out, and when the class breaks into surprised laughter Doc Waters laughs, too.


    "What makes you think that?¡±


    The kid isn''t going to answer, but the professor waits with an expectant smile on his lips and so eventually the kid says that it''s the long hair.


    It''s funny; I don''t think I would''ve gone there. Doc Waters¡¯ hair is long, but its curls have been combed out into shining waves, and it''s neatly trimmed. He''s wearing a dress shirt. If I were in this kid''s place, I might''ve been tempted to tell the lecturer that he was a manipulative asshole instead. I can''t think of another sort of person who would ask their class a question like that. He has a doctorate in psychology, though, so I suppose calling him manipulative is a touch redundant.


    You and I both know, of course, that this isn''t about the doctor''s insecurities, though it is an exercise in self-consciousness.


    What the doctor''s really asking: what do you see, and why?


    This kid sees long hair and thinks of drugs even though those aren''t inherently connected at all. But he¡¯s spent eighteen years learning about surfers and hippies and the way their dirty locks tangle and catch the light as they light up, and so he''s inferred a connection between the doctor¡¯s long dark shining hair and cannabis. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    The professor isn''t a pot head. What kind of addict could stand so straight in face of half a thousand students? This kid was running with the desire to make a joke and one aspect of one physical feature, but he brings up a good point. If we are going to argue that the psychologist is an orderly academic, we should perhaps also ask why such an orderly person would bite just one thumbnail to the quick.


    To the point:


    Our students. What do you see, and why?


    I¡¯ll tell you what Doctor Waters sees, because he has seen them. He watched the student lead Sybil down the stairway tonight, and he hid his grin in a hand as he watched them walk past the last row they sat in. And when our graduate student had noticed, she¡¯d grinned back¨C she¡¯d won a beer from Sybil, and only a few weeks into the semester.


    Of course he¡¯s noticed them: it¡¯s obvious that he¡¯s all about order, and their experiment sends new ripples through the auditorium every session as displaced students displace others. This man knows a psychology experiment when he¡¯s in one, so he sees scientists just like him.


    And that¡¯s an easy conclusion to reach, don¡¯t you think? They''re sitting quietly up there, half again as close as they were in the last lecture. Sybil - well, Syb is simple.


    He''s the perfect student: Watch over his shoulder and you''ll see him typing out a flawless transcript of the lecture. He¡¯s not late, as a rule, and he doesn''t skip class. Why would anyone think any further about someone like him?


    You see someone just as harmless when you look at the woman. Don''t you, Gabe?


    I know. You see someone soft and sweet and small, and you think I¡¯ve gone a bit mad. Yes, yes, you can see the mischief in her too, in the way she slouches in her chair and doesn''t take notes. In her little experiment. That''s not enough for this, though, is it?


    It isn''t. But you¡¯ve seen her fabricated smile. She''s a lie. The woman isn¡¯t small and she isn''t sweet; the way she curls in on herself disguises her height and makes her look soft and yielding. But the soft people take notes like Sybil, and they never watch anything with a look like that on their faces.

 Chapter Four: Cyril climbs a rock face without safety equipment

    Magnolia petals lie thick on the ground, drift like snow along the path that curls around the mountain to the south of the city. Fragile white skins belie the lambent fuschia at their hearts, and in the morning stillness that reigns beneath the naked canopy they seem so delicate, don¡¯t you think? Intricate flurries flare up behind the student¡¯s classmate as he goes; the petals bloom with corruption in the woman¡¯s wake. And yes, in our wake too. Of course, Gabriel. Our weight bruises and breaks the flowers, too. I wouldn¡¯t have the gall to deny that.


    The man who is leading the student to the campgrounds is carrying a vine in his hand. Its draconic blossoms nodand gape in unabashed carmine. His name is Cyril, of course.


    No, I didn¡¯t ask if she calls him Cy. It¡¯s irrelevant.


    The other scientist doesn¡¯t turn when he says, ¡°These are delicious, you know,¡± and so the botanist is still watching the petals swirl around his feet when she says, ¡°Magnolias?¡±Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.


    Cyril laughs and drops his pack: they¡¯ve come to the sheer cliff face that marks the camping grounds.


    ¡°I mean, those are edible, too,¡± he says. ¡°But I was talking about the nasturtium I¡¯ve been carrying.¡±


    ¡°Oh,¡± says the scientist. ¡°What do they taste like?¡±


    ¡±Like peppers,¡± says Cyril, and he eats one, grinning. The woman squints at the other doctoral student in suspicion, then takes the vine from his hand.


    ¡°You coming?¡± he asks as he removes his shoes.


    ¡°No. You don¡¯t even have a rope!¡±


    ¡°Your loss.¡± The forager is still smiling as he begins to make his way up the rock face. The student watches her friend for a moment; he climbs like he¡¯s never had to learn.


    When the man has ascended above the gnarled reach of the magnolia canopy, the scientist turns her attention to the plant in her hands. She eats a flower, and the taste of it blooms bright and painful across her tongue.


    She says, ¡°That was horrible! Why would you do that to me?¡±


    Cyril isn¡¯t listening, so high up in the air, and so he isn¡¯t looking when the botanist eats another flower. She eats the vine¡¯s blossoms petal by petal. She doesn¡¯t try to climb.

 Chapter Five: The Club

    A coupe de champagne sits prettily on the table, glowing in the particulate darkness of the club. Each strobing flash of light is a vicious strike, surgical and immediate. It goes red, blue, purple, white, red, blue, purple, white, and so does the coupe, empty as it is. Angular glasses sit scattered across the table, and they are not smooth. They glint out in fragments of color, never showing the same face on their many different sides. Among them is the long, roughened cylinder that Amber abandoned; its frosted surface shatters the incident light into murky mystery. The others are short and faceted. The ice still melting inside compounds those facets into an arcane kaleidoscope that corruscates and fades with each new illumination, bounces off the watered down pink or brown booze still slicking the bottoms of the cups. No matter where you look in this room, pulses of light glimmer back to you, each flat surface host to a hundred glass baubles.


    It¡¯s that time of night.


    In this antechamber the music is blunted, less the catastrophic waterfall roar of the main rooms and more a low, drifting tremor that the graduate student can feel in her lungs.


    And feeling it, the scientist sinks into


    the couch beneath her.


    To either side slate grey cotton rises up;


    she moves her hands in endless tactile infatuation.


    The surface is rough in a way that not much is, now.


    In a moment, she will close her eyes to listen.


    You will, too.


    Above all and below all, the physical force of the music obtains. It stands in the interstices of the glasses. Of our senses. It soaks our breath like humid air. Through this medium comes gliding the razor edge of laughter, clinking, a shouted conversation. And if we feel closer, closely: the paraliminal beating of the graduate student¡¯s anarchic heart underscores the sound, just there, of mouth and mouth.


    Our eyes open with the woman¡¯s, soft slow languid, and though we can see the couple on the couch behind hers, she cannot. She knows, though, how the shorter woman pulled the taller by the hand, the shifting skirt; velvet knees on the rough cotton couch. She can hear the movement of their hair. She leans forward. Amber has been gone, she knows. Long enough for the student¡¯s glass to glow red blue purple white. It doesn''t matter; she has the couch and its rough musical weave. The biologist watches the people dancing by the opening that leads to her den, luxuriates in the synchronicity of sound and sight and her open hand. The beat drops and so do the dancers and so does the light. She is still watching them when Amber¡¯s outline appears at the door.  Her blonde curls a halo.


    ¨C Hellooo, Amber calls as she steps through the doorway. The graduate student can¡¯t hear it, but she can see it on her friend¡¯s painted lips.


    Amber is in the doorway and Amber is flourishing in the antechamber¡¯s empty belly and Amber is smiling and leaning down to press a Sunflower into the student¡¯s forgotten, empty hands. That explains the wait.


    ¡°How much¨C ¡± says the addict, and even though she moves over as Amber sits down there is still a long line of contact that she can¡¯t avoid, silk to satin. She tries again. ¡°How much do I owe you?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it,¡± says her friend. ¡°It was free.¡± Amber is glittering like all the glass in the room. The addict is blinded, just a little.


    ¡°How¡¯d you manage that?¡± She turns her head away, takes a sip.


    ¡°I may have flirted with the girl in front of me in line,¡± says Amber. She¡¯s laughing.


    ¡°And that got you two drinks?¡± says the student, incredulous.


    ¡°We¡¯re both blondes,¡± says Amber. ¡°Apparently that¡¯s worth more than one drink.¡° She¡¯s still laughing and swaying and pressed up against the woman¡¯s side. The woman tilts too, to look at her friend.


    ¡°It was more, wasn¡¯t it!¡± A scandal. ¡°She bought you three drinks and you¡¯re still back here!¡±


    ¡±Well,¡± Amber draws out the word. She takes a sip of her gin and tonic and looks up at the woman through her lashes*. ¡°Okay, it wasn¡¯t three. She bought me one and I was practising, you know? And when we¡¯d finished she wanted to have another, and she stood in line with me but I told her I had to get back to you. So it¡¯s free!¡± The graduate student frowns as she tries to catch at the thread of the story. The women behind them move and her hands are full; the Sunflower.


    She drinks. A golden line runs out from the corner of her mouth and down her chin to fall to her chest and as it falls she makes the choice to leave the story where it is. When it hits the woman leans forward again. The contact, shoulder hip knee, is broken, but our scientist looks over her shoulder and says, ¡°We should go out again, after.¡± Red blue purple white, Amber¡¯s face alight and shifting, Amber¡¯s eyes dark and new. When the shadow takes her again she is raising her glass to the woman, taking a searing drink. She says, ¡°Yes,¡± and smiles at the scientist like there¡¯s no doubt at all about why she¡¯s here. The woman doesn¡¯t know why she¡¯s here.


    The student drinks. Then, there is a hand in her face and Amber standing above her with her golden halo afire with the frenetic lightning of the club and when the student ignores it and stands on her own with her own balance and her own drink drained the room spins and shivers. Then that hand on her arm. A voice in her ear. Amber against her side again. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    ¡°I¡¯m okay,¡± the scientist says bright eyes dizzying dizzying smile. She takes Amber¡¯s hand.


    She leads her out to the dance floor.


    Face lifting to the sky, in the rainstorm press of light bodies the woman shows her teeth and feels all of the shoulders and hips and thighs and hands in their hundred blind ways shred at her brute base edges. Oceanic crash and break and break and break and break while up above on the great iron ring of the second floor the other people watch. The colors of light swing and cut through the air to cut out the faces of the crowd. This is a way of being without one body.


    Our scientist is not dancing as much as she is swaying, her movements dreamy and fluid and set to the time of a beat defined by light and touch as much as sound. A presence at her back and she moves into it, body to body until it moves away. One at her front, this time persistent. Her eyes open to Amber¡¯s shock of hair and so she brings a hand to her friend¡¯s waist. They don¡¯t do this; the graduate student has been expecting it. They drift together. The woman brings her other hand up, brushes the tips of her fingers against Amber¡¯s ribs. Amber twists¨C


    stretches jolting away and none of us really expected that, did we?  A flash of brilliant blue light carves the student¡¯s suddenly sober expression into a caricature. Darkness blankets the women once more, but you can still watch as the liar schools her features back into a clumsy, drunken grin. That¡¯s all Amber sees when she turns back to our actress, and it seems to work. Amber is unconcerned, happy. Amber is back to movements that echo the music¡¯s beat and not the student¡¯s, back to her cautious distance, near enough to touch but too far to kiss. The scientist isn¡¯t looking when her friend is submerged in the crowd. She has closed her eyes.


    The song changes and the student resurfaces to find herself alone. She doesn''t have time to feel abandoned; there is a woman standing on the tips of her toes to speak into the scientist¡¯s ear.


    The Unknown: Your friend left.


    The Addict: I guess that¡¯s what you get when you take a straight girl to a gay club.


    : Her loss.


    The woman pulls the woman into an aggressive grind. Her ebb and surge; the sublunary deluge. She is demanding. She is demanding. It¡¯s that time of night. Neither woman hesitates at the kiss, at the slipstream slide of wandering mouth to wandering hands. When the other woman sets her teeth into the botanist''s lip, the graduate student has to fight to lie still on the bed. She has been dancing around Cal for months now, each touch and text and call a tentative foray, a hasty retreat. It wouldn¡¯t do to startle her now.


    Because Cal is such a delicate little bird, isn''t she, always on the edge of flight. But she wants to trust the plant scientist, she is willing to trust the plant scientist, though she is so skittish that she bolts even when she wants to stay. But now, in the thin darkness of winter, Cal strokes the length of the student''s side, slips her hand up into the addict''s hair and so lightly down the skin of her neck. Has been stroking her side for an hour. If the graduate student didn¡¯t know any better she would say that Cal has been teasing her for an hour, even though they¡¯ve never so much as held hands before tonight. So the kiss is blinding, an assault on the woman¡¯s already seething nervous system, an onslaught so calamitous that the addict can do nothing but submit to Cal¡¯s whims and hope that her self control has enough steel to it. The scientist wants to show Cal that people can be good. The scientist can be passive. The scientist will be good. Cal¡¯s teeth are at her throat and ¨C


    ¨C the timer¡¯s going off, her alarm is  going off, she needs to leave for work. She pulls herself up and says, ¡°Okay, I really have to run now.¡± Cal is still lying there, the wan spreading spring sunlight washing out her rumpled clothes into faint grays and violets, and now her face is contorting, horrible,  and now she¡¯s screaming, a wordless, wild, stunningly primitive sound. The woman doesn¡¯t quite know what she is supposed to do here; her girlfriend is shockingly far outside of bounds but perhaps this is part of her wounding too. Cal has been so mistreated. The woman goes back to soothe her, expects a bite and a punishing grip but ¨C


    ¨C the kiss is so gentle and diaphanous that the addict isn¡¯t quite sure what she is feeling in the late spring breeze. Cal¡¯s lips are not allowed to be there anymore, aren¡¯t allowed on the student¡¯s neck, aren¡¯t really allowed anywhere near the student so maybe it¡¯s all about plausible deniability. The woman thinks about vomiting, heaves herself away and ¨C


    ¨Cfinds herself in a club. She¡¯s got her arms up in front of her chest and her hands held like cages, like she wants to protect both her eyes and her ears but she can¡¯t decide which she should prioritize. Maybe it¡¯s her neck. The other woman is laughing.


    Into the ragin, glimmering night, the scientist says, ¡°I need to get some air¡±. Her pace is sleek as she moves through the crowd towards the courtyard outside of the club. She¡¯s lost her connection to everything; the booze, the beat, the people. Amber. The bench she chooses is sheltered by the rich red floral spikes of a rhododendron tree. Let¡¯s join her. Beside us, opium poppies sway, their heads heavy and their petals fluttering downwards at the lightest touch. The addict presses her fingertips to the fat fruit of a poppy and finds that her hands are steady and so she takes the fruit in a fierce grip. A painted nail dug into its flesh draws its white latex blood; she watches as the viscous liquid that took Mika down drips onto dirt. The woman licks her finger clean. It¡¯s disgusting.


    The botanist spends a long time with the flower. It¡¯s different than her research subjects, curvaceous and deadly where they are narrow and reserved. She doesn''t know much about this kind of being. When the addict culls the flower it¡¯s with the entitlement of a scientist. She cracks the crown of its seed pod open with a twist; thousands of tiny seeds pour out. The scientist isn¡¯t sure if she is hearing their impacts or feeling the cascade strike her hands and her body, but in either case she knows it is like rain.


    She is rolling the seeds between her fingers when Amber appears in the courtyard, a glass of clear red wine cradled in her interlaced hands. A curl has been caught in the ivy framing the doorway. Amber doesn¡¯t seem to notice, but the students eyes are caught on it as it stretches past endurance and finally springs back into shape. Amber might be stumbling; the graduate student can¡¯t tell one way or another. I think, though, that that girl is stone cold sober, and that stumble is a put on.


    Amber: Oh, no!


    Amber moves inelegantly to the bench beside the botanist, pressing herself against our student¡¯s side.


    Amber: She didn¡¯t really look much like Cal, did she?


    Amber* brings her arms around the graduate student¡¯s shoulders and the graduate student, reflexive, brings her own to cover her chest and face. Amber¡¯s eyes harden. Her lips thin.


    Amber: What did she do to you?


    The woman is silent.


    Amber: I wish I had been there, I could have helped. But I couldn¡¯t find you, you know, since you left me to get with her. It was a little jarring! I even went to the second floor to try to spot you, but your hair is so hard to find in this lighting. I texted you a few times too. Your phone is probably in coat check, though, isn¡¯t it. I don¡¯t really like being left all alone in clubs.


    The woman¡¯s face is lowered. Her eyes are on the hundreds of poppy seeds littering the ground.


    The woman: I¡¯m sorry


    Amber: I¡¯m here for you, you know.


    Amber¡¯s eyes have glossed over with unshed tears and her voice has broken and failed. Her arms have fallen away from the graduate student to wrap around her own body. The graduate student responds without thinking, pulling her old friend into a rigid hug. Amber¡¯s face presses into her shoulder. She is not crying. She is saying, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I must have had too much to drink,¡± but the scientist still pets at her hair, keeping up a gentle murmur of apologetic comfort. As she does this, the woman looks up, and, oh!


    Is she looking at us? No, she can¡¯t be. She can¡¯t see us. We aren¡¯t a part of this story. But that is anger on her face, unconcealed under the wash of her apologies and the bright moon. Look. Her face in the night. It is brutal, and cold, and white.