The Beautiful, Winged Madness

If women were sculptures, he could enjoy just sitting and watching this one be, her sensual curves a play of yearning, her essence of intrigue--a question. He liked sculptures, and poems and paintings. They were non-intimidating friends and seemed possessed of purer souls than the life that spirited his world. But she was not a sculpture. She appeared, rather, to be a ghost—a ghost of beauty, perhaps of truth and love. * * * Los Angeles. The night of The Event. He sat in a half-lotus posture, his legs crossed, back erect, and eyes closed, on the gravel rooftop of his apartment building, meditating and preparing his being. The green fronds of palm trees and a cubist cityscape of buildings, everywhere and everywhere, surrounded his silent retreat. Imprints of the city. His eyes opened. The autumn night sky was lucid and black—waiting. A hazy blur of clouds encroached from the east. “Damn!” The always hum of city traffic drifted from neighboring streets. An odor of boiling beef wafted from a Mexican tenant’s window, flavoring the air. Tostadas. The soft whir of a motor. He looked up. A silver blimp floated across the dark void of the sky, magical and surreal, as in a scene from a 1950's science fiction movie depicting a vision of the future. In illuminated gold letters on the zeppelin’s shell were the words: Trompe l’oeil. The name of a cologne. Trompe l’oeil, he reflected. The French term for an illusion that appears real or a reality that is an illusion. Perhaps all things are so, or perhaps not. How could one even know? His eyes again closed. Sounds and scents vanished, his sizable mass gone floating in a clean space of reverberating grays, wonderful pacifying grays he nothing and no one ironically agreeable no harsh ridges and confining walls no complexities or urgent passions. Quiet. Floating. Floating. Then. A dark shape intruded on the purity of his consciousness, on the absence, flying rapidly and erratically toward him. Black wings slashed his spirit space. A screeching caw as real as his mind. Cold gripped his muscles. The form smashed into him, a frenzy of shattering black. His eyes startled open. He saw her, standing at the rooftop’s edge like a fluid, wind-dance shadow. Soft amber moonlight penetrated ghostly veils. Soft within, the form of a woman—tall, statuesque, soft. A contour of soft arcs and flows, soft arcs and flows, and apparently nude. Softly, ghostly nude. The moment he saw her, he was captivated. Her arms lifted from her sides evoking the form of a cross, her veils hanging like dark, prophetic wings. She stood motionless as in a challenge, or a tribute, to the engulfing dominion of the night, staring into its soul. Then she looked down to the streets below. He tensed. To fly? Or to jump? Confusion and fear whirled him. He stood and approached her, his strides cautiously soft across the rooftop’s stage, fearing to come too close lest he fatally impinge on her precarious balance. He stopped. The specter lady turned. His poet’s mind awakened. Yes! Poet mind, now is the time. A verse surfaced, one he had penned fancying the delight of a simple man on first acquainting his true love. Why? In absolute defiance of his reticent nature, in one of the most diametric acts since he, with prophetic cry, was birthed into the world, he spoke the words aloud to her. “Vision, bond not to self, the sleep, too won. Awaken! See what spirit’s this. Beauty. Love. Open deep and hold, space distance fold, and heart be.” The ghost lady looked into his eyes, entering deep and probing gently. “You’re a poet,” she spoke, her voice low and haunting, as if more of thought than words. Who was she? She was clothed in two layers, creating an eerie yet seductive duality. The exterior resembled the cloaks of a woman in mourning, long, loose, and solemn, but the fabric was gray and sheer, a shadow film falling as a spectral sheet from the top of her height to her feet. A separate piece covered her head and a veil obscured her face. Arms and legs eerily floated beneath their phantom shrouds. He imagined her shadowy, gloved hands greeting disembodied souls into their afterlife. “Come with me into eternity. Die to be born!” She suddenly adjusted the veil over her face so it fell more evenly and pulled her black gloves a fraction of an inch higher over her forearms. The precision of her effort intrigued him. “Perfect,” she whispered. Through the garment’s partial transparency, penetrated by his captive vision, he saw an alluring woman, provocative as to challenge propriety, who appeared to be, but was not, naked. She was sheathed from shoulders to ankles in a flesh-hued leotard that created the baited illusion. She appeared about twenty-seven years of age and evolved maturity; her body tall, about five-feet-eleven, strong yet soft, toned with discipline yet gentled by gracing curves. Her legs were perfectly sculpted as would complement any model. The leotard’s top plunged into cleavage offering an enticing glimpse of the robust swells of a guiltless bosom, intolerant of confinement. A narcotic scent, musty yet sweet, as that of a beast in heat, lingered around her.