Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Post 11: Broussard Arrives

Laurent (a couple of minutes later):
--Wanna get high before she arrives?
Charlotte the reclining actress expands, opening her arms, which had been folded softly against her warm chest, up slowly, as if trying to hug the enormous irritable fog of Brother. Her palms, facing Laurent, empty and addressed to the impossible subject. Brother anticipates a solid "no."
Charlotte:
--Yes!
Martha comes out onto the patio with her tray. Ring the bells for Brother and Sister, for there are more drinks. Tanqueray and tonics pour les enfants. Laurent smiles at the maid and thanks her without having to change his focus, which is drawn at Charlotte. Charlotte bites her nails. There is an immense unknowing.
Laurent:
--Relax.

Martha opens the Yardley doors to Broussard. The Yardley doors are opened to Broussard by Martha, who, despite her small influence and modest sensitivities as a maid, wishes the best for Charlotte this day. Martha steps aside, pressing her body flush against the obviously expensive, but instantly forgettable floral tapestry perpendicular to the heavy French doors. Earlier, Charlotte instructed Martha to bring Broussard out onto the patio for the meeting, because of its idyllic view, so Martha is obliging and leads the esteemed director through the washed out, beige interiors directly toward the back. Charlotte sits outside, slightly buzzed, hoping for an immediate rapport, but, more importantly for her, a brief stage to prove her ferocity and capability. Laurent sits on the edge of his pool with his legs in the water, pretending not to be involved. Broussard walks, looking around the walls of the house curiously, formulating infantile clues as to the actress she has yet to meet.
Charlotte stands up upon the moment Broussard steps foot out onto the cement. Her face stretches quickly into a smile and her hand, just as quickly out toward her potential employer. Martha cannot help but wish everything well for Charlotte. Everyone smiles, Laurent, from the poolside up at the women. His laughter comes from an image of Catherine Broussard whipping out a megaphone concealed behind her back and shouting out orders prematurely. I'm taking over! He imagines Martha coming back out with a tray of concealer, rouge, and cloths, air brushing his sister's face, securing a small microphone, and, finally, giving Charlotte an unprecedented slap on the face. Good luck, Charlotte!  Charlotte is stunned, looking around for her cue.
The introduction, however, works instantly in the favor of Sister. All the more reason for beaucoup des smiles. Brother takes his legs out and stands up in preparation for leaving the two women to themselves. He walks for the liquor cabinet inside, but he is stopped by a courteous Broussard:
--And this is your brother, Laurent?

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 10: Slapstick and Circles

But what about Martha? Yes, Martha, briskly shuffling through the rooms of the Yardley grounds, taking care not to bump out of her assigned place (which is the corner) into the spotlight. Her time is paid for, but still given up to the people whose name is on the check. If Martha does not have the luxury of looking to the future, then her time is now. Now, the time is occupied by the Yardleys; Brother and Sister are in the now and they get all the action. This pushes Martha back to the past, but the past is the past and it lies in the ground, the eyes of its body, black sockets, and its interiors made the land of maggots and termites and dust. Where to go from now? No now means no time for Martha.
Unless we ask Laurent or Charlotte to hold their breaths out in the yard or, when they drift off in their booze-snooze, let them rest undisturbed. We can alot some space and time for the one whose time is documented on paper and receipt. Martha is given a gray hammock in the parlor, swaying a bit above the muck the ones in charge have left for picking up. Prop the flatulent lady up against a pillow or two in her nest and give her a stage prop to occupy her white, spatulate hands. A fashion magazine for her to fan a breeze against her rosy face. She gages the face of time and wonders if she might be able to go into one of the guest rooms, where she might be able to catch a soap opera on the air. Something she doesn't need a spatula for--it is practically fed to her through the larger than life television fuzz and buzz. A doctor to lay out a methodical diagnosis onto his patient's bed or an estranged grandson returning to his grandmother, who will not nag anymore, she promises. She is just beside herself with joy at the sight of her beautiful, wildly talented grandson, remorseful for his crimes (and it is most certainly a crime to forget your grandmother), a prodigal--no, a prodigy of a--boy! Yardleys are her children now. They have been prancing around her feet for several years.
As a lower character, would it not be funny to see her in a slapstick routine? A velvet ghost of the house pushes from underneath into her backside, towards the left, abruptly turning the hammock sideways until she topples out onto the tile floor. Weeeeeeeeeee!!! She has hit the ground elbow and hip first. Ouch! What is this?! Shakes her head, sucks in pockets of air that the Yardley siblings cannot get to if they tried at this point from outside. Martha rubs her elbow with the palm of the unscathed hand. Always, she has to take care of the Yardleys, she does not have the energy now to take care of herself. Can't I just BE for one goddamn second?! I promise that I don't need much--I hardly need anything! During her tumble the clasp of her necklace became stuck in the twisted ropes of the house and the thin gold chain detached itself, now hanging over a knot, a knot she feels in her back, with both strand ends dropping over the sides. Martha proceeds to reach for the necklace, hardly a statement piece, but something of great personal value, passed down from Mother. Marked as the twinkling evidence of her topple, it hangs glimmeringly between the lighting of mahogany urn lamps through hand sewn silk shades.
Unbounded Laughter sounds off from outside. Naturally, it is easy for Martha to think at first the bursts of delight in the distance are had at her expense. Martha forgets her entanglement is off the main set, making it nearly impossible for her to be a point of any relevance for the Yardleys. So, let them laugh. Taking the necklace in her hand, she is even able to laugh at herself breathily. She turns her hand, palm towards her face, and examines the gold chain and traces the bright metal with the fingers from her other hand. Martha communicates through the image back to Mother. Slim sliver of property, soft material, only a thin view to the past, but under the lamplight, it glistens nonetheless. Mother, forgive my carelessness. I must do better a better job of hanging on to you. Although she is tuned in to how silly the gesture might look from afar, she kisses the necklace before clasping the chain back together. Hang on tightly, Martha.

From the interior of the house, Charlotte is seen walking about with her hands slowly twisting in the air, laughing, in a warm panache, diving in and resurfacing these imaginary waves of music, tugged into the shore by agitated, tentacular impulses. Catherine Broussard will arrive today, so there are a few loose ends to Charlotte at the moment. Steps out of the glass doors onto the patio, the babble becomes familiar:
--You know, I think it's really important to know what motivates us, right?
Laurent:
--Does an actress need to know what motivates her?
--Laurent!
--Well, you see, she's always dispensable and it's not because she doesn't know--
--Oh, do not tell me that Brigitte Bardot was dispensable last night--
--Yes, she's a bombshell
Charlotte (her head nodding, smug):
--You see? You're wrong.
--I admit an actress can lift a film from a clumsily written script, if she brings enough to the part and draws from more dimensions.
--My words fall on silent ears--I mean deaf ears!…Whatever, it's a circle.
Laurent (walking into a defensive circle):
--Then she might bring too much into the screen, when the film's a sinking ship anyway, and then she only looks desperate.
--That's what--man! It's all a fucking circle that never ends!
--An actress needs to be able to submit to manipulation.
--She needs charisma! Don't undermine charisma!
--Shelly Duvall obviously didn't know what motivated her. Altman and Kubrick just pointed the frame to something almost "downsy," unknowing of itself, but yielding and so it worked toward an ultimate intension of dream and despondency.
--Bitch, I am not Shelly.
--Never said--
--Take it back. Martha! (shouting belligerently after a twirl towards the backdoors)
--What do you want?
--I want another drink. Christ almighty, won't somebody help me!?!
--Well, make it two. You're incorrigible.
--You're ignorant!
Laurent, ponderously--not torturous, but definitely with a twisted hand crunching in on Charlotte:
--I've changed my mind. One must know what the motivation is--even an actress must. Otherwise, the same choices will keep on being made and, without a shred of any clue, they will be made almost always, somehow, inadvertently against the artist.
--Oh, Laurent, darling, do you see me as an artist?
--No, I see you as an actress.
--(beaming, dancing on her toes) Oh, Laurent. You're the same as me, you know?
--I know.
--You see?!?
--(still walking his own circle next to Sister's twirl) Yes and especially right choices, but don't get so self-aware that you start criticizing your own performances.
--Right.
--That's just bad form, you see.
--Well, I'll never read the reviews.
--That is such an actress sort of response. Broussard is going to love you.
For the first time in this scene, Charlotte takes a seat. What if we come to know what motivates and carries us through to an end, but find it perhaps hideous? Oh, God, circles.

a chair, part 2

I get the best view from the back of the room, with everyone faced forward to the doors away from me. Do not turn around or to your side in the chair, unless it is your knees and thighs I will get to see as you prop your legs upon the adjacent, empty desk chair, the angle of your knees forcing a pull of your jeans down, exposing the larger muscles of your body. Don't turn around, because it is your neck that is the ice to my ache. The way the hair, curled and wispy, dark blonde, at the base of your neck does not fit into the bun you make halfway through shift or that you bring with you from home, that is what I want in front of me. Even better, when it is all let down. You do not have a clue as to how many colors you have running through your hair--all of the browns, golds, and even reds, or how we ache back here, longing to be that chair as your dark blue, sweat-stained, leg prop.

a chair

nothing is as sad and erotic as an empty chair in the parlor. mean, plush, and empty.

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 9: Who has the laughing hand?

Objects are more successfully grasped at than are people; people always seem to manage to slip away. Brother considers the infinite spaces. He tries to see far beyond the horizon, beyond the sharp bits of glass wall that all mirror his gray projection. What will finally conquer him is the composite picture into which these jagged cuts will assemble. Then he will feel monstrous. Not that he has not done his own time in thinking himself to be a monster. Sister, in a way the direct product of Mother, hanging on by a mutual limb of self-loathing and self-adoration, has already become accustomed to feeling quite monstrous at times. It is early evening. We are back to the house, where the Yardley siblings are in their yard, again. A sunset swirled with unspoiled hollandaise sauce and egg yolk, dwindling before the twinkling eye.
Charlotte:
--I feel supremely disillusioned.
Laurent:
--You what?
--Here, right here, my character is feeling very disenchanted with everything onto which she had latched herself, before her emigration from Greece. Then, in the penultimate scene, she does get everything she had dreamed of having in her travels, but it is unbearable to her. I think that sort of irony fuels her feebleness and her own sense of martyrdom when submitting herself to the rape. Well, I suppose you cannot volunteer to be raped...It's sacrificial.
Laurent:
--If I ever become theistic again, it will be because of irony--not that my turning myself back into God would be ironic, but that my understanding of my own bigger ironies and those pertaining to others and of those that overlap myself and others would cause me to affirm a God of some kind.
Maybe God is the reason things do not happen the way the Yardley siblings expect! If they were more supreme, it seems they could bend their reality more to their liking if they tried hard enough. There is money, though, and it keeps flowing across the Atlantic and into their pockets. Plus, the two are performers. So, reality is bending all the time and given new structures as seen fit. Laurent lights another cigarette as Sister listens intently. How quick the two are able to switch from enemies of the midday to Brother and Sister again, obsessed with themselves and with the other!
Laurent:
--Until then, all of irony will be read as absurdity.
Charlotte:
--I've actually thought the same thing several times and have decided that kind of ontological introspection is an ultimately ironic and despairing thing. Absurd? Not quite. That axe never quite drops--the sound of one hand laughing.
Laurent nods his head:
--So is absurdity more brutal?
--I'm not sure. But I think…I think that absurdity sounds like something that can be ignored, dismissed, written off. Something to wink back at from a chair, while keeping with the daily flow and routine. I don't know the true heart of the word, but I do think it's pretty brutal. Do you agree?
--I think so, yes.
Laurent:
--You've given this script a lot of thought. How did the phone call go? You did call, right?
Charlotte:
--In my experience, well, the director has said very little. Communication was in some accord through the medium of casting agents and through the writer. She always seemed to be very brooding, not gloomy, but very introverted. You can imagine how stressed I was as I picked up the phone to dial her number. Surprisingly, she spoke so much she made my head spin. Her mouth was motorized by machine and it was wired to a postmodern, neurotic mind that was short circuited by its own mania and self-consciousness. I believe she's very excited for the project.
Laurent smiles, realizing he forgets how fully-realized his sister can be in her analyses. That is the thing, though, we are much better are analyzing others than we are ourselves. It is not only Charlotte's needle of social awareness, but her eloquence that captivates Laurent. Sister should try to write, just like Laurent, except that this would further stifle Brother's voice. Poetry has been his territory, after all, and he needs territory.
Charlotte:
--She wants to come by tomorrow to chat and get to know me.
--Catherine Broussard coming to our house. Man, oh, man.
--You'll have to be on your best behavior.
--Meaning?
--Don't bore her.
--I'll just act naturally.
--No, don't do that.
--I'll just act very enthused for your upcoming work. I'll also say things, such as "any character who really, righteously embraces her martyrdom is so erotic to me."
Sister dips her head down and purses her lips:
--That sort of remark won't get us anywhere.
As if Laurent and Charlotte want to go anywhere. No, they are much more comfortable here in their little palace. This is not to say that neither of them are driven by want. Boy, do they want! What they both want is to end a scene with the laughing hand.

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 8: Poached eggs, You belong to me!

Laurent zips up his trousers after the last drops of urine are shaken out onto nature and faces the patio where Charlotte has called out to him:
--Is brunch ready?
--Yes, come on inside.
As Laurent is walking across the lawn back to the tea table where he left his writing, Charlotte continues:
--You know who just called?
--Would it be that director?
--(A light scoff) No, I'm to call him, remember? And I will, later.
--Then who?
--Charles.
--Our brother?
--Oui, notre frère.
Laurent and Charlotte pause for a bit. Charles, student of business at Yale University who has remained in America, occupied with his studies and internship all this time, has called. Laurent has the suspicion that Mother and Father are behind this phone call and that they mean for him to go back, but at the moment Laurent has no intention of putting an end to his vacation. Charlotte stands there with her hands on her hips, almost gloating over Laurent's silence. Laurent would like to tell Charlotte how this in unfair to him. That he is being singled out and that it is not as if Charlotte is being so productive herself here at their idealistic retreat. Charlotte would only retort that she has work practically begging for her to pick it up, learn it, memorize it, and transform it into an expansive and rewarding product and that she is not wasting herself away like someone she knows.
Laurent:
--What did he say?
--Well, it's all very unprecedented, but I believe he is coming here.
--To stay?
Charlotte:
--Come inside. Brunch is served.

********************
At the kitchen table, Sister sighs and tosses out leisurely into the midday air in her usual, privileged laugh:
  --Well, as you know, all we ever do is plan total social destruction on these…unsuspecting targets.
  Everything's part of a script. Charlotte speaks while cutting into her poached egg with a new, cold, and calculative manner of a mathematician bent towards the solution of a problem that has eaten an entire month out of her life. Really, she has only had the script in her arms for a couple days.
While it is certainly no longer "morning" morning, the time of day is still closer to the moment of waking from the unconscious, the greatest source of inspiration. Brother and Sister hope that their oeuvre is long sustained after their departure from the stage and that their musical chord is not immediately flattened down by the next generation. What will happen, they both wonder, now? Another party member to contribute to their masterpiece.
Brother and Sister like to perform for each other. They like to wear different personas as they satisfy their ever-changing temperaments. Brother takes to a bowler hat and gives it character. Sister will take the bowler hat and wear it herself. Once one of them finds a role that resonates with a particular mood, the scene is bound almost seamlessly. Here moods are changing rapidly, so it is not very often that a mood, singular and binding of a scene, is carried throughout a whole act, never mind an entire play.
Sometimes they act out against each other and their great acts come splattering down from the swimming pool balcony down to the mosaic below. Sister might throw the bowler hat back at brother's face to hasten the action. Retaliation builds when its execution is passed from one performer to the next. There is only so much stage space and the two of them carry such large egos. The flashes of light from the sky are played--shot down and meant to be seen. They share virtually everything, as if they are connected at their hips from the same, precious cradle of life, their minds erupting upwards into overlapping networks of neuronal processing and transmission, stars that they pretend to spell out above them theatrical frescos of fortune and pain. Both throw the organic outlines of their lives up to the fates. This accounts for the occasional autonomy, which, when it happens, is a marvelous spectacle.
Luckily, the two here at brunch are not joined at the heart, because, as it is, they will too often enchant themselves into believing that it is people onto which they pour their love, when it is, in fact, inanimate objects, heirlooms, trinkets picked up from foreign streets, gifts that have been passed to them from old acquaintances that receive all their affection. Brother and Sister might lend themselves to others, but both fully appreciate the sentiment of giving yourself to yourself. At the heart, the siblings would be all the more reckless. No, they are not joined at the heart. Soon, it will be Brother and Sister and Brother all under the same roof again. Just like old times. Maybe now the audience will get some real heart to heart.
Laurent:
--So Charles is coming next week.
Charlotte pinches off a piece of her baguette and uses it to wipe up the hollandaise sauce and running yolk on her plate. In the kitchen, Martha tells the cook that he has done well and that he can take his leave. Martha comes back out to the breakfast table with more coffee for Charlotte and Laurent. Charlotte grabs a remote off of the kitchen table and points it in the direction of the stereo. She presses a couple of buttons and Jo Stafford starts playing. You belong to me.
Charlotte:
--As I told you. I think it's a fantastic idea.
--You know he's going to give me shit.
Charlotte swallows her mouthful quickly:
--You deliberately think in ways that are self-defeating!
--Oh, please.
--You do, yes you do. He wants a vacation and it's his place here, as well as ours. Honestly, I think he really needs this. His girlfriend dumped him a few weeks ago and he's been real mopey.
Laurent shakes his head after taking a sip of coffee. Brother is finding it hard to act. There is an actress right here, again, again and always. So, making a firm stance is difficult. All of his hesitation is pinching him in the cheek, like sisterly Sister. It will all come back to pinch him again, if he is not careful. Brother takes a few steps elsewhere:
--I want to watch a movie tonight.
Sister bobs in her seat:
--Of course! What sort were you thinking? Been a week since I've been in our theater room.
--Any movie, really. I have--I haven't really given it much thought.
--Some idea, Laurent.
--(through a little chuckle) Yeah, I know. That's me, though, my ideas--
--(with a pat on his hand) I'm only kidding! Let's watch Body Heat. No? Let's watch Vivre Sa Vie. That one neither of us have seen and, so, neither you nor I will be explaining away things that speak for themselves or that you or I would rather discover on our own.
--That sounds good. I actually have not seen a French New Wave film in a hot minute.
--Holy shit, I love her eyes. Anna Karina's eyes. They're just so big and playful and sad...
--I've only seen her in Une Femme est une Femme.
--That is a good film, Laurent. She's so precious in that one. You know what you need? Some Anna Karina to help you get out of this funk. Come on.
Laurent, who cannot help taking a few steps back:
--I just don't want him parading all of his accomplishments in front of us to make us feel trite. Oh, come on, it's likely he will.
--Can't you just be happy for him? It's going to be fun. We should throw a party. No one is going to make anyone feel trite.
--Well, of course we'll throw a party. Does Mom and Dad know?
--We'll have several parties. Who cares if Mom and Dad know anything? I tell you, I'm pretty excited. It's been so long since we've all sat down and really enjoyed ourselves. We can all get high and drunk together.
Laurent cuts into his meal and rethinks his initial response to the news:
--I suppose you're right about-
--Of course I'm right.
--Okay. You're right.
Jo Stafford: Fly the ocean in a silver plane. See the jungle when it's wet with rain. Just remember 'till you're home again: you belong to me.
Charlotte, while taking out a cigarette, lighting its end and placing it in her mouth:
--You're still writing, right? Tell him about your stories, unless you've completely neglected them. Don't you also have a novel you're working on? That's something! It takes time to write and you need time and space to create. Charles can appreciate that you are being creative; our brother has his own literary endeavors, although on the reading end and not the writing.
Laurent breathes in and out heavily while he scratches the scruff on his jaw, which attracts Charlotte's attention:
--(while rubbing Brother's lower cheek) You should shave. You always look your best clean-shaven.
--(swatting away Sister's hand) Right.
--It's true. You do, L.
--That, again?
Sister smiles down at Brother with an antiseptic sweetness:
--How are your eggs? You haven't finished them yet.
--They're fine, but I'm not really hungry anymore.
Charlotte exhales the smoke from her lungs and then puts her cigarette out in Laurent's remains of his poached egg, twisting the cigarette butt back and forth as it punctures through the white and yellow material, its ash mixing with the golden pool of hollandaise sauce and yolk, shamelessly poisoning the flavor and warping the texture.
Laurent:
--That's revolting!
--(chuckling) You were done with it anyway. Look, it had already turned cold.
--I'm going back outside.
Charlotte:
--You put up with so much, L!
--(his voice, exasperated) An egg is a pure thing. Golden, nourishing, and filling, it has the potential to become a new, whole and living organism. This is tasteless--really nasty. It's not natural.
--It didn't suspect to be infiltrated by burnt tobacco! It's not so nasty. Besides, I do not think that this egg was to become anything, except poached and devoured, or not devoured and just left, picked at, like it is there on your plate. This was not a crime against nature. You could say snatching this egg from the mother hen was a crime against nature. I say this is a work of art! Martha, bring my camera from my room, so that I can take a snapshot of the midday that I ruined for Laurent. Laurent, oh, I'm so sorry, don't leave! This was tasteless.
Laurent spits out in mock gratitude:
--Thank you very much.
Laurent scoots his chair back and exits outside as Charlotte slumps in her chair, opening her arms out wide to start singing along with the Jo Stafford track: But just remember, darling, 'till you're home again: you belong to me!

Love Poem for the Pessimistic Pornographers

back dimples were once precious indentations guarding
the base of his spine--of her spine,
moving up and down
with their partnering buttocks for each step of the strut.
now, accompanied by stretch marks and cellulite,
i think little physical defects are sexy, don't you?
they lose their original effect,
soon gone for good.

for example,
take his chipped tooth, her chicken pox scar,
or the hairy mole on his upper bicep.

the guitarist strums his guitar for the strumpet.
years are bearable for both
when they are able to strip bare the body.
the metallic triangular cover of her G-string
is slowly pulled down by the thumbs and reveals another
triangular cover, bushy, of the wet groin,
some like the pull of hair by teeth, grazing the field.
differing textures appease the wet appetite.
unless the audience is rather drawn to smooth loins.
like those of five year olds. that can be remedied
with the ole Venus razor.
no shame there.

history tries to erect myth, set it in stone
--to enforce a nature behind the moving picture
of the woman taking the pound, pound
screaming oh, yeah and loving the crowd.
i like the crowd, it makes me feel alive.
--as if power could be bestowed
from spectators to spectacle.

history belongs to the phallus,
making it a hard force to swallow whole.
this is real interaction between artist and audience;
audience entering and coming
into/inbetween/fullforced
onto canvas.
its milk has long turned sour,
but with a jeering crowd:
"chug! chug!"
the doing it becomes more than doable.

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 7: Coffee, Actressing, and that Dragonfly

Now we go into Sister's playroom. Photographs are scattered across the desks against the walls. On one desk, a pair of sharp, fabric cutting shears rests next to a green Tiffany table lamp. Sister turns the lamp on. Pendant emerald dragonflies with bright orange eyes are spliced with black, smoldered copper that bolsters the glass pieces of the lamp's cone. Under the light of the dragonflies, the cutting shears blush green, glistening at the inner edges. There is a brown paper binder on the floor next to the desk. Sister grabs a couple tasseled throw pillows from the couch and tosses them onto the floor near the binder and then sits down on the floor. She opens the binder and reviews pictures she has collected over the past few months that have been cut out of magazines, art books, and illustrated biographies on actors and artists that are dear to her. She takes a few seconds with each picture. Marlene Dietrich in a white, two-pieced suit, leaning backwards against a stair railing in the street. Catherine Deneuve in a golden seventies' spread for Chanel No. 5. Tilda Swinton, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis.

Sister holds the last two photographs in her hands. "My Mother told me never to speak badly of the dead. She's dead…Good!" Her toes wriggle in her loafers. Davis' alleged icy epitaph, which she so kindly uttered for the late Crawford, sealed the famous actress rivalry in a state of titanic mythology. Two goddesses, one with melodramatically-thick eyebrows and eyes wide on the offense, the other with drunken cheeks, sagging and contemptuous. Their lips! Crawford was said to have had a nervous breakdown from the pressure her costar, Davis, hammered down on her head off-set. Finally, Davis sent Crawford off the stage, her insides writhing while her face worked as hard as it could to conceal the stench of artistic jealousy. No one could ever accuse the stars of being undedicated.

Sister places her hands on the carpet and pushes her body off the floor. In front of the couch there is a coffee table with a small crystal bowl filled with toffee and classic Hollywood Chewing Gum. Sister knows the importance of being good to herself with the occasional unprecedented gift. Leaving her folio open on the floor, she walks to the coffee table and grabs a handful of wrapped toffee bits as she plunges down onto the sofa. Martha walks into the room with Sister's coffee:

--There you are. And voilà! Here is your coffee. The milk is already poured in, as you like it. (Looking back at the open brown envelope on the floor) Oh, I see you have your collection of actresses out on display.

Sister:

--I'm working. I need inspiration.

--So, you will call the director soon?

--(Sister accepts the coffee mug in both hands, as she draws out her response lengthily) I will soon.

Sister wanted a specific way to deliver that line to Martha. Martha gently places her hands on her hips and looks around the room. Sister places the coffee mug on the table. Head tilted back onto the back of the couch, Sister keeps her eyes fixed on the toffee bits in her hands that she drops delicately, one every thirty seconds or so into her mouth.

Martha:

--Where is Laurent?

--Well, I'm not sure. It looks like he went out.

--He went out?

--Outside, Martha. He just went outside, I'm sure of it.

--I'll go make sure.

Sister waits for the maid to leave the room. She then sits up momentarily before leaning into the palms of her hands that are supported by her elbows she has digging into her lower thighs. She lets out a sigh and reaches for the mug to take a sip of coffee.

Outside of the house, Laurent walks around the pool and stretches his arms. He will hold his left arm straight against his chest, pointing to his right for a few seconds, and then he will let that arm drop and do the same with the other arm. The morning miserable, coping with his morning body aches. He reflects on the Cornish’s from last night, who will surely report back to Mother and Father about how wonderful he and Sister are and what excellent, mature hosts they make. It was not quite an invasion, but it was unwanted from his part. Laurent's chest is congested, his breaths, deep and raspy. How much did we smoke last night? Martha comes outside and sets a coffee mug on the olive-green tea table where Laurent's parchment paper and pen lie in waiting. Careful now. To his relief, Martha does not spill the coffee, as far as he can see.

Laurent shouts from the other side of the pool:

--Thank you, Martha!

Martha smiles and walks back inside. Laurent continues his stroll around the patio. Crumbles of speckled gray cement pervade the patio that separates the grass from the pool. They stick to the bottom of his feet and eventually rub off from the friction between skin and ground. At the base of a clay flowerpot several ants operate, disorderly and drunk, off the trail, poking here or there, seeking sugar underneath the sun. In the outskirts of this busy insect gathering, the trail emerges. There is the scent. Mildly intrigued, Laurent follows the insects, keeping a step's distance away from the line.

The ants accumulate at the patio mosaic. Laurent realizes he had been searching with the ants for the dragonfly corpse he left on the ground yesterday after his swim. Edges are now tattered a bit. The ants partake in the sap of the insect. They crawl all over its body, which has been displaced from its original position. Fire underneath everything, partially hidden by the itchy ant carpet, swarming and fuming. Laurent is bothered because he would have liked to hold the insect himself. Maybe take it back over to the tea table for a while. At this point it is better to leave it be and go on.

Laurent ends his stroll back at a lounging chair next to the tea table. He takes two long sips of his coffee and whiskey and then takes the paper to place in his lap. The pen is uncapped and ready, now if only language will just come to him and help him to find a voice. Although the time is perfect for writing, Brother forgets that there is nothing convenient about writing, not that he knows very much about the art. Not that he feels he knows very much about the art. Brother writes the word, "afterwards," at the top of the paper. After words, then what? Spaces:

"In physics, so much is defined by what is lacking, or what might have been there one second but now has moved on in its course." Well, that's true, isn't it? The universe is terribly busy. "The brick wall behind my back is none of the following: a summer breeze, a thick and fuzzy quilt, a point of reference to plot on a Poincare map." In fact, it's wicker and not brick. Why am I defining something by everything it is not? Seems unfair. "A brick wall is defined by time and space, that's why, and as much as I love Dalí, this brick wall is quite rigid. It will never slump forward as I do now with my coffee and whiskey. Only memory slumps forward"

He looks up at the sky and scratches his hair. He needs a cigarette, but they are inside and he is approaching an artistic mania. There is no time for interruptions. He stares back down at the parchment paper and reads everything written down thus far. He waits and moves his jaw muscles, cracks his neck and then relaxes:

"Do you like the color of this stationary? Personally, I'd rather it be more minty."

Absolute fodder. How did this become a letter? I'm not writing to anyone. A few olive leaves rustle against the cement near the pool water. Laurent taps both of his brown oxford shoes against the ground, agitated, because he cannot decide whether it is that language is so expansive and that he is just ignorant or if it is that language is clumsy and unavailing. No, of course we need words to help communicate our ideas. There are loads of things we wouldn't know about without our words. We'd all be complete idiots without language. Laurent, the idiot…"What is it with this obsession with being untouched, unstained? There is a constant fear of alien invasion. How do humans feel about symbiosis, really? Why go on perpetuating these pretended brick walls? Is it really that a clean room makes for a clean mind?"

We've got to mend that crack. Laurent realizes he has been holding off the release of his urine for some time now. He sets down the papers and walks off into the lawn to the side fence behind the cypress trees. In a ritualistic exercise that he himself seldom finds bizarre, Laurent urinates on the grass. Of all the times that Laurent has been outside with the bodily urge of urination in the backyard, they have mostly ended with him relieving himself outside. He thinks to himself how surely this is natural. The product of nature, broken down and filtered and then excreted back into nature. What is not so natural--and even Laurent can admit this to himself--is his tendency to relieve himself in his bathroom sink, rather than walk the extra five or so feet to the toilet. Sister would find this appalling, but who is she to argue with the prick of Laurent?

--Laurent, really? There are ten restrooms inside. You can pick any one of them, but the outdoors suits you better?

Laurent zips up his trousers after the last drops of urine are shook out and faces the patio where Sister has called out to him:

--Is brunch ready?

--Yes, come on inside.

As Laurent is walking across the lawn back to the tea table where he left his writing, Sister continues:

--You know who just called?

--Would it be that director?

--(A light scoff) No, I'm to call him, remember? And I will, later.

--Then who?

--Charles.

--Our brother?

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 6: Theater and Hypnosis

To the young couple hiding away in a bathroom stall of the lady's room in the foyer--the poor damsel being screwed from behind over the toilet, her hair being tightly pulled by her unyielding, sworn protector: cover your tits, Madame, and zip up those trousers, Monsieur. Is your hair frazzled? Well quick, straighten things out--there are mirrors, you know, mirrors in the lady's room. Perform an inspection to determine if you're suitable to walk back out into the foyer. Did you forget your program? Well, there are loads more with the attendees, standing at the doors to the theater. Mr. Stiffnecked-Hadfield, if you would, your doting wife is waiting patiently in her seat for your return from your last-minute cigarette break. Oh, your friends from England are acting tonight in our show? We were not aware of the association. It is a marvelous thing to be friends with an actor! Be nice to Mrs. Hadfield when you come back, for she loves you very much and has fulfilled her martial duties today beautifully, would you not agree? She worships the ground upon which you stand erected and drenched in your own vanity. Speaking of being drenched, does anyone need to urinate? Quite an inconvenience, the burning pervasiveness of bodily functions. You should go relieve yourselves now. If you miss anything at the beginning, your partners are there for you on your return to answer all your questions. But quickly, now. Say hello to the frazzled sex couple coming out of the lady's room! No! You have taken the wrong row, Dubois clan, and now another party has been wrongfully displaced. Each row has a letter clearly marked on the outside of its aisle-seats. How could you be so off? Oh, well here they come. They will show you their tickets and explain that you are all sitting in the wrong row.


Okay, people are returning. The leading oboist, the concertmaster, is sitting at attention to the maestro in the pit. Do not worry; this is not musical theater. There will be no outbursts of song that drag on forever in-between the drama. We will be using the philharmonic as a backdrop, primarily. Be honest. You love the cacophony of the tuning session for its excitement and promise. Here comes the note. The rest of the wind band eventually joins in the musical nonsense.

It is good to see that practically all are here in their seats for the opening of the curtain. The characters on the stage are from another place, so there is no need to worry about any seeming resemblance. You are not obliged to love the characters, just as you are not obliged to love everyone of this world with whom you encounter. We hear that writers should love their own characters--that this affection allows for the story's characters to be fully realized and developed. But you are not all writers, so leave the loving for the creator of the script. Oh, I see that a few of you are. We certainly would not want to be accused of treating any of the characters unfairly. Well then, love away and love them all. Everyone, the ritualistic warming up and tuning of the orchestra is coming to its close. The prelude will come next. Come children, let us open the box and take out the puppets, for our play is about to begin. I will count to ten and the theater will be transported through time and space, across fields with cypress tress and olive tress under a gentle sun to a mansion inhabited by two siblings. Action and atmosphere are both more vibrant and real in a mansion, which does not make its inhabitants any more glib than necessary this evening.

One: You have all been merry making in the lobby and that is a good thing. Our foyer bars are staffed excellently and we hope, consequentially, you are softly buzzed. Although you have left your champagne flutes outside, the music of their social clambering is carried into the theater and it rings in your ears, its fizz slowly dissipating on the outsides of your mouths, tickling you pink. When an actor stands in a spotlight, he or she becomes drunk off of the craft and this helps to carry a scene through to its end and, ultimately, to your applause, which gets the acting crew hammered by the end of the play. Stage and audience become buzzed together and that is lovely. That is real interaction there, between artist and patron-socialite.

Two: You are all falling leaves that ride on invisible air currents, zig-zagging to and fro and occasionally flipping over yourselves. Until you touch the bottom of your descent. Wet with summer pool water. Float here, now.

Three: A man and woman are lounging outside of the pool in wicker chaise lounge chairs. Both are drinking cocktails and carrying on idiosyncratically. Coughing out their private jokes at each other. You are still gliding on the surface of water, pale in size. The chatter of the two is lost on you. It gurgles in your ears. Above where they lounge, another, more squab woman is resting against the balcony railing, smoking the last black drabs of her cigarette. Her attire is quite plain. Uniform like. You understand now that she is subservient to the two sitting below. She attempts to make this time to herself above on the balcony her own time; however, it cannot be her own time if it is being paid for by another. Now, where you float, what looks like a ship is heading en route towards your coordinates. Bells are ringing to let you know the ship is approaching its destination. You all are no longer leaves, but back to your normal selves, only much smaller. You wait, each one of you standing on your own leaf upon the water surface, for the ship to drop anchor. The ship is not a menacing one. Strings of lights, tiny bulbs in blue, gold, green, and red, line its external anatomy. A party ship where there are more bars with bartenders awaiting your next order. What will it be? We hope you do not find the conditions on the ship to be too congested. Climb aboard! Wave goodbye to the poolside strangers.

Four: Further into your voyage, you come near the coastline of a land covered in a thick forest. From the heart of the Black Forest a woman with obsidian black hair walks under the moonlight. She keeps close to a river of gold that is slowly poured from the heavens, holding out her right hand with unsettling majesty. The tree limbs part away from her foot tracks that glow as little pools of fluorescent elixir feeding into the earth. You are bewitched by it all.

Five: You have all been invited to participate in a gangbang. There are two women, two of the same woman, in the center of the room holding each other in their arms, caressing the back of the other and resting their chins upon the other's shoulder. The adagio movement, where the performers are able to collect themselves before the pounding begins again. Men are lined up against all of the walls, beating themselves off, grunting, cheering and jeering for the act. Lines form again from the outskirts to the center of the room. Time is up for you, time for your pounding! A mirror is attached to the ceiling of the meeting place. Both of her, reflected into water snakes. She likes the way her body acts in a mirror; she moves for herself and not for the others. Look, men, at how beautiful woman is when she is stripped! Look at how perfect and docile nature is unsheathed. Both of her are able to stare into each other's eyes. Against the walls, the community of men cannot look each other in the eye. Maybe, they can look each other in the groin. Oh, he is hoping they would have been masked, but that exotic element is already gone. Still, it is good to see woman in her natural state. And you thought woman's special connection to nature was mere mythology. Oh, look: a dragonfly has found its way from nature into the room. It hovers in a corner, watching with its multi-faceted eyes. So much gang and bang! You see the green hills and hear the soft birds of woman. The woman are dying, they love it! Is it not lovely that she is so well tuned into nature? Who would have thought! Time to excrete your bodily fluids onto her, take a piss in her bush during your pit stop on this tour. This is all so natural! You hear that it is good for the soil, good for the ground. It is good to partake in nature. Naturally.

Six: A game of Russian roulette. You see her. She throws her hands at the winding locomotive, circling hap--red--black. Will you take your coffin tomorrow morning black or with cream? How many refills will you have? It is comforting to know you hold a biological clock in your hands, one that you can use to insulate your flesh with steam. The smell of earth rises in outbursts. You cannot pretend that mound of dirt to your right is not from your own shoveling hands. Its base is a cold foundation. The sprinkles on top are light and warm.

Seven: Muses, he groans, then the clay molder morphs the brim of his vase with spit while wheeling the base around. The slightest pressure his finger applies against the body brings vulgar alterations he then fingers with finesse. Love is a crude mold, lubricated and made from the most base of things.

Eight: On the floor of a dimly lit playroom, the woman has returned and is holding a dead Orange-spotted Emerald dragonfly in her hands. She gradually lifts the insect into the moonlight that pierces through the room's curtain-drawn windows. With her left hand she takes a pair of fabric cutting shears and cuts off the wings that glisten like the surface of bubbles drawn out under an ocean of stars. This is the end of flight.

Nine: Out of the playroom you are walking, walking through the hallways of an enormous house you recognize, although you are not sure how. You do not believe you have been here before. The art deco tiling, black and white, is cold. A slow pat-pat is crescendoing towards you all. Down the stairs in front of you a decapitated head is rolling down, wet and smacking each step. A tangle of rubbery purple and blood. You see her above with her hands thrown out in front of her, the room a circling hap. You are transfixed.

Ten: You see a man. He steps foot out onto the ice and slips. The head, so full of romantic ideals and vision, tilts back so the ground can breathe once again. As socio-economical exchange becomes congested, old business and institutions are leveled down to the ground to create new spaces for new ideas and new, younger leaders with bigger and brighter heads for their inherited craft. It is good to keep things fresh and alive! From his spill onto the pavement, from his blood, you will receive the elixir to sustain your life. Come drink (there is enough for everyone) and hear the rumble of the timpani as the stage lights up for your own viewing this spectacular evening.

and you were and you were there

and you were there and you were there and you were there and you were there and he was there and I was there and I was holding his clothes in my hands and you said to drop them and I did but it would have been easier with a cigarette. I never get to smoke a cigarette in my dreams. I dropped his clothes as you said but I picked them right back again. 

Super Bowl 2013

I cannot believe
how, wow, twelve billion dollars(?)
was spent on this shit.

Uproarious Green

Uproarious green spreading over stones; the Landowner's wife demands his attention. He mutters back dry pork chops and returns to his work, eating back at the fields, she, crumbling another sunflower in her hands.

Icons, Part Two.

Evenly spaced out on top of a ceramic tiled-window sill in my bathroom, four candles, scentless, but brightly colored, are encased in tall glass containers with various patron saints printed onto their paper wrappers. There is Mary, well, one of the Marys, and also a Peter. One of the icons actually resembles an angel, but I do not read the description of the artfully depicted, so I am not too sure whether or not the entity is what it appears to be. I do know that a large number of people recognize these magisterial symbols as illustrating a big meaning of some sort.

They are there, perhaps even for me, as I use the toilet, shower, and shave. Sometimes, I even light them, although I am not sure for what reason, as they do not effuse the smells of warm sugar, Bergamot orange, and blackberry, like the other candles in my living room, unsaintly, or at least lacking in magisterial presentation, do when I light their wicks. I suppose I might light the heads of these solemn faces as I necessitate a particular ambiance. At night when I have friends over to unwind and drink, I certainly have the saints brightly keeping vigil over my bathroom. I hope, like my friends and I, that these saints are able to revel when I am away.

At night I sleep on my twin bed, pushed up against the wall that my bedroom shares with my bathroom. While I sleep, I lay with my head just a wall away from my bathtub. For the first hour of my sleep, I am more just trying to ignore the erratic thumping and scurrying away of my two cats. Whenever I have managed to fall asleep, my cats will notice they are no longer being paid any attention and will jump onto my body. Claire will bury her face into mine until I open my eyes. Then, she just keeps staring, or, she will inch back up to my face and lick my nostrils. Justine wills start his therapy session of stretching out his paws and clawing them into my blanket (and my legs), as he sucks at the fabric, missing a nipple from which he was weaned too early in his life. Momentarily, they manage to rest and cause minimal noise on my bed. Some nights they might even fall asleep for a couple of hours before jumping back into their nightly groove, their paws resounding off the hardwood floors. We all love each other, I am sure--they are given food and warmth and I am given the pleasure of their company and observing the lively way in which they interact with each other, but there is also resent in the chords. Resent in the cats for the eternal imprisonment and in me for their stench and noise.

I hear a shattering noise from the bathroom, but I keep my eyes closed. I hate knowing what time I am waking up, disturbed in the middle of the night. Minutes later, another crashing sound. For whatever the ruckus, I am determined not to let my sleep suffer.

The next morning, glass. Bits of glass on the tile floor and large cuts of glass in my bathtub. All but one of the patron saint candles have been knocked down to the floor. Mary, one of the Marys is still on the window sill. Torn shreds of paper are hanging by their glue from the larger, more intact clumps of glass. Jesus Christ, I liked those candles! There are dirty paw prints on the brim of the tub and along the tile floor. In an ocean I cannot collect and certainly will not swallow, I leave the mess for another day.

Of course, I know I have to shower, sooner rather than later. I thank Mary and Jesus both that I am not a Catholic who might read too much into this iconic desecration. In preparation for my shower, I pick up the bigger pieces of glass with my hands and drop them in a four plastic grocery bag-layered sack. One of the candles has been cracked in two. I hold the wax up to my nose and then remember that the wax is scentless, so it is quickly discarded and not considered again. I wet several napkins under the bathroom faucet and sweep them all over the ceramic tub, picking up the smaller cuts of glass. At least the saintly candles are not too expensive. If I care enough, I can always drive back to Walmart and just buy three more. Hell, why not ten more? It is impossible to get all the glass out of the tub. I turn on the bathtub faucet to wash the rest of the glass down the drain, off to be dealt with elsewhere and then take off my clothes. My cats paw at the bathroom door, because they find all separation from me unbearable whenever I am home. I can take my shower now, but I will have to keep in mind that my feet enter the water now slightly imperiled.



"Hail Mary, full of grace, get down on your knees and pray. Jesus Christ, hanging on the cross, died for our sins, it's such a loss. Saint Christopher, find my way, I'll be coming home one day. Saint Sebastian, don't you cry, let those poison arrows fly. Saint Anthony, lost and found, Thomas Aquinas, stand your ground. All those saints and holy men, catch me before I sin again." --Madonna, 2012.

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 4: Marriage and Fabric Shears

Mr. Charles Yardley married Mrs. Yardley, previously Mlle Melanie Clement, on one of his business trips to France twenty-five years ago. She had been modeling for Lanvin's first haute couture collection in 1985 and Charles had a 1985 Porsche 911 Carrera convertible parked outside of the event. Both were bewitched by the other's presentation. Charles Yardley, ten years her senior, made the right choices in life and cultivated quite an astounding wealth. The soon-to-be Mrs. Yardley recognized a tremendous opportunity for financial security. She made the right choice and married Charles and, from that point on, never again had to worry about how she would come to take care of her parents, who, up until then, had been shoved away into a home, stinking and clinging, but more importantly, she would never again have to beat herself over the head on how she would manage to support herself. She got the whole Yardley package. Charles and Melanie purchased a mansion together in the Riviera and in came both Mr. and Mrs. Clement. Charles did not have to worry very long about the complimentary, weighty, and intrusive spin on his new and fragile marriage to Melanie, because Mr. Clement died of a heart attack two years later, right before the birth of Sister, and Mrs. Clement's departure from the mansion followed shortly after due to the stubbornness of her colon cancer. Her body began rapidly deteriorating, her organs, already discombobulated under the stress of Mr. Clement's death, were not for or against her, but they were dying. One day a rigid, iron grip that had mercilessly held Mr. Yardley pinned down to the floor, an inane nagging from the old who can smell their own death approaching, disdainful and made bitter towards all youth and beauty, was lifted; Mr. Yardley's estate--his accumulated millions in capitol--was no longer stretched to cushion what was soon to be a pair of old, pale French vegetables. Mrs. Clement had died. Mrs. Yardley mourned appropriately, but not for any longer than absolutely necessary, because she had her own life. The Yardley's could eat their duck consommé and live.

The Yardley family moved back to America, keeping their French villa staffed abroad in preparations for future trips of business and for other, more frivolous excursions. Then Laurent was born, crowned by his parents as the future continuation of themselves. A boy to grow up and become a man. Perhaps, even to continue in his father's footsteps and build temples with the Yardley name etched into their facades. He would grow up and become the shining cliff of life that Mr. and Mrs. Yardley will attempt to grab at when they, too, begin to shrivel down to their arid roots, their brains collapsing into an acidic mush. Mr. and Mrs. Yardley are not mush yet, though, so Brother and Sister must at least appear to abide by familial code and lend strong, promising hands when called for by Mr. and Mrs. Yardley. Brother and Sister must look as if they have ambitions, so that Mr. and Mrs. Yardley themselves may shine for some years to come....

The next morning the Cornishes take a taxi back to the airport to continue on their return to London. The siblings stand outside the front door, waving as the taxi drives away to the front gate, sister smiling and brother quickly relapsing into a dead pose of boredom. Martha, kind enough to bring the Cornishes' bags down to the foyer, announces to the Yardley siblings that brunch will be served in an hour and then opens the door for the siblings. Sister walks inside and Brother follows. 

Sister walks to her playroom as Brother diverges away to the back patio. Martha heads to the kitchen to assist the cook in the preparation of the Yardley's first meal. Usually, Sister and Brother do not wake up early enough to have breakfast. In fact, Martha might be able to count the times the siblings have woken and had an early breakfast together throughout the past two years on two hands, her two spatulate, white hands. While the lobster hollandaise sauce is being whisked and eggs cracked, Sister will be wanting her coffee with milk and Brother, his coffee with whiskey. 

Now we go into Sister's playroom. Photographs are scattered across the desks against the walls. On one desk, a pair of sharp, fabric cutting shears rests next to a green Tiffany table lamp. Pendant emerald dragonflies with bright orange eyes are spliced with black, smoldered copper that bolsters the glass pieces of the lamp's cone. The cutting shears blush green, glistening at the inner edges. There is a brown paper binder on the floor next to the desk. Sister grabs a couple tasseled throw pillows from the couch and tosses them onto the floor near the binder and then sits down on the floor. She opens the binder and reviews pictures she has collected over the past few months that have been cut out of magazines, art books, and illustrated biographies on actors and artists that are dear to her. She takes a few seconds with each picture. Marlene Dietrich in a white, two-pieced suit, leaning backwards against a stair railing in the street. Catherine Deneuve in a golden seventies' spread for Chanel No. 5. Tilda Swinton, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis... 

Sister holds the the last two photographs in her hands. My Mother told me never to speak badly of the dead. She's dead…Good! Her toes wriggle in her loafers. Davis' alleged icy epitaph, which she so graciously uttered for the late Crawford, sealed the famous actress rivalry in a state of titanic mythology. Two goddesses, one with melodramatically-thick eyebrows and eyes wide on the offense, the other with drunken cheeks, sagging and disdainful of other studio owned actresses. Their lips! Crawford was said to have had a nervous breakdown from the pressure her costar, Davis, hammered down on her head off-set. Finally, Davis sent Crawford off the stage, her insides writhing while her face worked as hard as it could to conceal the stench of artistic jealousy. No one could ever accuse the stars of being undedicated. 

Untitled Project on Sibling Actors, Part 3: Champagne and a Knife

Brother and Sister smile and stroke the rims of their champagne glasses. This is supposed to be a little party. Both siblings deeply inhale the aroma of the pistachio-crusted cannoli on their plates, the fruits of someone else's hard labor. Laurent is wearing a maroon cashmere sweater and gray wool trousers. His sister has a loosely fitted rose-gold dress on with a black dinner jacket she borrowed, without asking, from Laurent's closet that now hangs on her chair. Mr. and Mrs. Cornish find the siblings delightful and entertaining, as if through playing bystander of Laurent and Sister (There are others of a similarly vigorous grain, but these siblings grow out of a most particular earth that can be thoroughly tilled in preparation for a new crop, but will sprout and wither from its own unearthly direction, at its own leisure), they are able to preserve their own lives, much duller and halfheartedly sealed with tarnished silver lids. They are avid fans, albeit generally mettlesome company for the siblings, who have adored the Yardley family for years. 

Whenever Mr. Cornish talks about commerce to Brother, poor twisted and forlorn Brother, Brother, with his head bent towards his drink, fingers his glass to delve into the divine. He hears a choir sing the adventures and moods of Gyrogy Ligeti. The sound is clear, yet there is no clear chord or note. Whenever Mrs. Cornish speaks to Sister about the new street fashions of London that she finds appalling, Sister dips her finger into the bubbly Brut Réserve, looking around the dining room. Ten feet in front of where she sits, behind the chair in which brother sits, there is a stack of magazines strategically laid out, but in some array of incomprehensible order on a glass table against the wall. In front of the magazines, there is an olive-green china ashtray without ash, cleaned by Martha earlier in the day. There is a new Persian blue vase, detailed with tiny painted elephants in a tight, trunk to rear-end line, circling around the vase's pink peonies.  Sister's nose, her mouth--everything becomes an arrow pointing in one direction out of this dinner scene; her thoughts plow through the area, bounce off of Laurent as if to say to him (and herself), "keep moving." Sister longs, as does Brother, to break into the poison cabinet and really smooth things out. The Cornishes, the darlings (friends the siblings have incidentally inherited from their parents), cannot stomach much more than a few glasses of champagne, five tops. Forget spirits. They would not be able to keep up with the siblings. So the cabinet protecting the siblings's absinthe and marijuana remains closed for now. 

Mrs. Cornish:

--This new part you have--such ravishing news. Tell me all about it! 

Sister glows:

--It's a challenge. I'm to work on a Greek accent. My role is that of the friend to a Greek immigrant in France. Yes, France. We're both Greek. It's quite a demanding part to play. The director, as you know, has a way of breaking the actors down to get the most raw and visceral performances--

Mrs. Cornish interrupts:

--No! I do not know any names attached to the film, of course, who is directing it?

--(Mr. Cornish, aside to Laurent) Not that Michael Flasch-Fliescher?

Laurent:

--Fleischer and he is a god.

Sister:

--Yes, very "Cannes," very challenging. Anyway, she's a woman. Catherine Broussard.

--(Laurent, chesty and mockingly, with a critical finger directed at Mr. Cornish who scoffs in response) Catherine Brutal. 

Sister knows that, in reality, out from under Brother's stage pretense, he points at her to undermine her successes. This little display gives her also a generous window into the leaning stack of Brother's jealousy. Underneath the table, Mrs. Cornish rubs her left hand with the palm of her right in her lap. Sister feels this energy rolling over without direction and motions across to Laurent to grab the ash tray behind him on the glass table. 

Sister takes a silver rectangular case out of a front pocket from her dinner jacket:

--Cigarette, anyone? 

The guests thank her and take one from her case. Sister then slides the case across the table to Laurent:

--L?

Laurent shakes his head without word and Sister lights her cigarette, knowing that he would also love to have a smoke right about now. Cigarettes can compliment or change an atmosphere and, because this conversation excludes Laurent to some extent, he needs something to cover himself in to occupy his thoughts and hands.

--(Mrs. Cornish to Mr. Cornish) "Elle?" Is this a new nick name? Oh, you are both so "hip."

The word that comes out of her mouth is a contrivance.

Sister, while keeping her eyes on Brother, expounds on the name:

--I've been calling Laurent "L" for months now. As long as we are here at the house, he likes to go by "L." It's much shorter and doesn't call attention to itself. His full name comes off the tongue so languidly. 

Brother, nonplussed:

--Does not call attention to itself?

Ever since they had moved into the house two years ago, Sister had never once called Laurent by this double entendre. Sister has now played Laurent, but brother will claim this name as his own and attempt, in his best effort, to let Sister know that this condescension has now fallen beneath him and will not be able to move him again. 

Mr. Cornish, with an inelegant laugh:

--You two are so charming that it disgusts me. 

--(Mrs. Cornish, practically nudging Sister) Go on.

Sister:

--Catherine Broussard is a painter of nightmarishly real paintings composed from delicate strokes.

--(Brother to Mr. Cornish) Delicate as any strokes could be made by a knife, or so she would like to pretend she's wielding. (To Sister) Do you even like any of her movies? (After a halfhearted shrug) No, but it's a role that'll put her in a controversial spot light. 

Sister, as she flicks her cigarette ash into the tray:

--A knife, L?