mattlaneydotcom

It is my considered opinion that the Kama Sutra is pure fiction based on lurid dreams and outsized nostalgia.

And so Marcel would state with authority at the few parties he attended. He was noted for his expert analysis of “all things.” And if put to the test, all experts would agree. 

And although this day will be different from all others in his fifty-one point six seven years, his smug demeanor will still persist up to his final minute. 

Marcel never married, never partnered.

Never…

Morning. Late spring. He walks the City’s streets still wet from the overnight rains. 

The air is fresh, clean. Blue sky in patches between virginal-white clouds. As if the world is newly formed. Innocent. 

He observes as he walks. His pace, brisk. He thinks of nothing in particular. He savors the yummy yeasty smells emanating from the bakery.

Suddenly and without warning, he stops. The florist’s shop window. Within, the rosa rubiginosa on the other side of the window look fixedly at him. Red and yellow and white blossoms on the verge of opening, pregnant with anticipation of what could and will be.

Or perhaps what should have been.

As if in a dream, her memory calls. Initially vaguely, but then persistently. 

She still haunts him. Her presence, her ghost. 

Especially in his dark lonely rooms during the height of winter when steel gray clouds overrun the sky giving the Sun a respite. And darkness rules all.

Her. 

The one woman who took him on a book signing tour of the Kama Sutra in her bed (and floor, and shower, and on the kitchen counter, and in the car, et cetera, but I digress and if you’ve been in this type of relationship, you know what I mean without going into graphic detail, even though apparently the graphic still sells). 

With her dimples and red hair and jade green eyes and small rose tattoo on her stomach near her right hip (a drunken college abandonment!, so she said!). Her funny laugh. Her snort. Her un-lugubrious snoring. Her love of sardine and peanut butter toasts. 

Her beginning each verbal intercourse with, “So, I’ve been thinking…”

A rose by any other name…

He fell into her even against his better judgement and when he found himself lost in her, he did so willingly with no regard to his own life. His work.

Until such a time when this was all gone. 

Yet, the persistence of the memory of her, the vision: her nude body moving slowly on top of him, her tear-drop breasts and erect nipples, the feeling of him in her…chiseled into his brain forever more. And all in her narrow rickety bed in the heat of a summer afternoon when magic rules and the plight of the world pauses. 

And the two become one. 

Just for a moment. 

A rose by any other name…

And when she told him about the rose tattoo. Its genesis. How, at the time, she became familiar with Catherine Howard. At university.

That’s when I knew I loved her.

He looks away from the window now. Catches himself. Recovers. 

In his pocket, he fingers the spine of his worn copy of Romeo and Juliet.  

And doesn’t think of what could have been.

He can’t.

I won’t.

And, without looking, steps into the street.

And into eternity.