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?