Authors: Faleena Hopkins
Dani flipped the quarter up into the air. As it flew in
circles and breaths held around her, she saw someone she never in the world
expected to see there. Elizabeth. The quarter fell, forgotten, to the ground to
sounds of disappointment and upset. The groaning group went unheeded and
without ceremony, she left them to greet her maker, her Elizabeth. She didn’t
hear the writer rejoice while the producer objected emphatically, “Ground tails
don’t count!!”
Elizabeth wore heels and a white suit with no shirt, the
buttons of the jacket being the only thing between her breasts and the world.
Her locket rested as usual on her bare skin and she wore her hair the same as
Dani’s, straight and long.
Anjelica and Stewart looked to each other but neither
knew who this new woman was.
They
watched Daniella and Elizabeth warmly hug and talk intimately for a lengthy
moment before becoming self-conscious and leaving to find cocktails.
They didn’t see Julian silently retreat
to a corner to observe the reunion unnoticed.
“I can’t
believe it. It’s so good to see your face,” Dani grinned, taking her in. “You
look gorgeous.”
“Like I
haven’t aged a day?” Elizabeth said. Dani laughed. “You look amazing. Stunning.
Alive!
You look very alive, Daniella.”
“I’ve met
someone, that’s why,” she confided. She couldn’t wait to tell Elizabeth
everything, like always.
Elizabeth paused and feigned ignorance, “Oh? Someone like
us?”
“No. Not like
us. Let’s talk about it later.
I’ll
tell you everything, of course. How have you been?
I haven’t seen you since…”
“Since
Moscow,” she finished, worried Dani might accidentally announce ‘in forty eight
years’ in her excitement, loud enough for human ears. She touched Dani’s hair,
running her fingers through the silkiness of it. “I check up on you sometimes,
though. I like to make sure you’re safe.”
“You do?
I didn’t know that.
Why don’t you say hi?”
Dani’s voice betrayed her attempt to
hide the hurt those words inflicted.
“Our fight…
you said you needed space.
I
agreed. We’d come together after a long separation before, and things had been
wonderful so… I felt it best to wait.” She took Dani’s pouting chin in hand and
whispered, “We’re such independent souls, my love.
You know this. It could not have been
predicted, just as it cannot be ignored.”
“Dani,” he
interrupted, standing behind her.
Daniella’s eyes widened in recognition and she gave Elizabeth the first
look.
Elizabeth took it, sized him
up and smiled as goose bumps covered his body.
She looked back at Dani with an
unreadable gaze.
“Adrian,”
Dani said quietly, turning to him.
“I know
you’re the hostess, but can I steal a moment of you?” he asked. She liked the
way he phrased it. “You’re looking at me like that again.”
Her eyebrows raised and she asked, “Like what?”
“Like a wolf
eyeing a sheep.” Elizabeth let out a light chuckle, drawing focus. “Hey there.
I’m Adrian.”
“Yes, you
are,” Elizabeth said, eyes narrowing ever so slightly.
“I see Julian standing by himself.
I’ll go say hello.”
“Oh um…Do you
want me to go with you so I can introduce you?” Dani asked, her impulses at
war.
Part of her longed to make Elizabeth stay, to talk.
It had been so long and she loved her so…
but Adrian called to her in more ways than she understood.
“We’ve met,”
Elizabeth said as she elegantly left them. Across the room, Julian feigned
interest in a painting.
The way
he’d seen Adrian watch Dani unsettled his insides. Adrian’s manly bravado of
spirit was in direct contrast to the youthful qualities Julian still held, and
it threatened him. Dani watched him look at the approaching Elizabeth in a
familiar yet nervous way and incorrectly surmised they must have met earlier
that evening.
“Come with
me, this way,” Adrian said and took Dani by her gloved hand as he expertly led
her around chairs and people, back to her own apartment. She expertly eluded
conversation and greetings as she passed her guests. Someone put a glass of
wine in her hand so she took it. They passed her agent, Valerie, who caught her
eye and waved, but Dani just smiled and kept moving, grateful for a reason not
to stop and answer questions about her next project and when it would be, blah
blah
blah
.
When they were in her apartment, he maneuvered her
through the packed crowd and stopped in front of the painting that hid The
Safe.
He claimed a small space for
the two of them between a group of debating painters and a small table,
half-covered with empty glasses and used napkins.
The noise of music and people made them
lean in to speak and be heard.
“I love your
place.
And this painting… did
Anjelica do this one, too?” he asked breathing in her ear as he hesitated a
moment longer than was necessary.
She held away the glass of wine and leaned in. “No, I
bought this one in Barcelona,” she said, lingering to eye the sweet peach fuzz
on his earlobe, the vein in his neck below it.
Mmmm
.
He reached for the outstretched glass,
took a drink and handed it back to her.
He found privacy in the crowd and pulled her against him.
One of her hands he held behind her, the other held onto the glass, and her
sanity.
He
tugged playfully at the zipper just above her tailbone, threatening to pull it
down.
Against her baser instincts,
she shook him off with her hips and threw him a suggestive smile. “Nice try,”
she whispered seductively in his ear. He smiled back and leaned away a bit
while still holding her arm behind her.
With his other hand he traced slowly, ever so slowly, her neck, her collarbone,
her chest, but just as he was about to touch her breast in front of everyone
and cup it, she grabbed his hand firmly and stopped him.
“Did you see
that?” he whispered into her ear.
“What, you
molesting me in front of everyone I know?” she laughed.
“No. I was wondering if you could see your hand grab
mine.
Because I couldn’t.”
She froze, her eyes steeling against
him. She clearly interpreted his meaning, knew him to be calling out her
secret, and distrusted him immediately. He saw the warning in her face, but
would not back down, continuing. “I didn’t see your hand until after it held
mine. I didn’t see it move and I was looking.”
She smiled casually, offering with a shrug of her
shoulders, “I used to be a magician. The hand is quicker than the eye.”
“Really?
Your magic skills only return when
you’re upset?”
“I don’t know
what you’re talking about.
What’s
the problem?”
“When you
left me at the bar that night, you literally disappeared. One second you’re
there beneath me, the next I’m naked on the floor in an empty bar, like an asshole.
Your boots were gone and everything. I
had no idea how you’d managed to gather all your things and leave without my
seeing any of that.
I tried to
dismiss it by saying it was because, and don’t take this the wrong way, I’d
never had a girl run out on me in the middle of sex before and that’s a very
jarring experience.
So I attributed
what I saw to my being completely discombobulated. I tried to dismiss it, but I
couldn’t. It stuck. I couldn’t get you, and that super human speed of yours,
out of my head. And just now, Daniella - when I upset you - your hand appeared
on mine, out of nowhere.
But hey -
where did the glass go? Weren’t you holding
that
glass in your
hand?”
He pointed to the wine glass that now sat perfectly still
on the table beside them, wine intact.
Caught. She looked at the evidence, then at him. Why did he have to be
so perceptive? Because he was looking, she told herself.
Usually people were too self-involved to
see the little nuances around them.
They stared at each other. He wanted a confession. It
didn’t matter how much she wanted to tell him because she didn’t like being
tricked and now was not the time or place.
“Adrian,
c’mere
a second,” Brian broke in, taking Adrian’s arm and
tugging him away.
Reading his
silent order not to leave, she stayed put, listening despite the volume
surrounding her.
Brian excitedly
said, “That cocktail waitress is getting off work and she was going to take a
cab but I’m like no, I’ll give you a ride, or rather, Adrian will drive us to
my place and I’ll get my car and take you home.
So we have to go.
Let’s get out of here.”
“No. I don’t
want to go yet,” Adrian told him, taking a drink off a passing tray.
“Man, Adrian,
come on.
She is very cute.
And very into me.
You know I need that right now.
My heart is fucking broken, dude,
and this girl is such a little cupcake.
I am
gonna
jump on that.
Not
her… the
opportunity! You know what I mean.
If I had driven I wouldn’t need you, but you drove so I am at your
mercy, brother.” Brian looked pleadingly at his buddy for back up.
Adrian looked at Dani. The people around her were deep in
a debate about whether or not Warhol painted landscapes before he found his own
style.
She met Adrian’s look and
shrugged dismissively.
He frowned
and called to her over the noise, “Dani! I still want to talk. We’ll talk
later.” She didn’t like how he said it. She didn’t like being told what to do
when it came to her life and her secret.
She didn’t answer as she watched him down his drink and say, “Okay, let’s
go.”
Julian and Stewart stood by the door talking about the
street photographer,
Weegee
.
Adrian stopped to shake Stew’s hand
goodbye on his way out.
Brian
didn’t give him time to be introduced to Julian, and the two men left, watched
by three pairs of eyes.
“Who was
that?” Julian asked Stewart.
“That was a
bartender Dani has the
hots
for.
He’s really got her hooked, but the jury
is still out on him,” Stew said as soon as the coast was clear.
Julian’s eyes fell on Dani, who looked
at the door as though waiting for Adrian to return. Her eyes looked sad as she
turned and walked away, he noticed, and returned his attention to Stewart who’d
asked a question he had not heard.
In the other loft, Anjelica exchanged information with a
couple of buyers as Dani walked over to her. Dani wasn’t as surprised as Anj to
find out that every painting had sold. She smiled at her modest girlfriend and
said, “Well, honey, looks like you’ve got a whole new set of fans.”
“I’m just so
shocked.
I feel really blessed to
make a living doing what I love.
It’s a pretty amazing feeling.”
Anjelica pointed to the piece hanging in front of where they stood. It
was powerful; intense strokes of varying shades of orange, bright yellow
accents brushed with red for emphasis. “I’m going to miss that the most.”
Dani nodded, looking at it. “I can see why.
I love it, too.
It was the one I was most drawn to. What
is it of?”
she
asked.
“It’s the
sun.”
Anjelica answered simply.
Those three small words shattered Dani’s fragilely held
together veneer and she crumbled.
The overstimulation of having so many people in her home plus seeing
Elizabeth after a forty-eight year absence plus Adrian calling her out,
combined with the final blow in the reminder of that which she could never see
again – the sun – all these things combined to crack her façade and
send her reeling. “Excuse me,” she said, and left.
She rushed to the bathroom, cut in front of the line, and
quickly shut the door.
Everything inside her screamed.
The numbness had been a blessing because
it covered a deep and hidden pain she didn’t know she had. Now that that shield
was gone, heaviness and despair descended and threatened to drown her. Reaching
for sanity, she asked for help, for strength.
From whom?
She didn’t know.
And then she remembered. She had a
friend there, someone who knew what and who she really was.
Elizabeth.