John Biscello

I tell her we need three days, alone, uninterrupted, in a pink stucco motel.

She giggles. Why pink stucco?

I don’t know, pink stucco is what I see. It’s you and me and the motel with the pink stucco exterior that looks like something out of Candyland, bubblegum pink in some places, pale ruined pink in others, and there are plants outside our room, and one is hanging from a rafter, I think it’s a geranium though I’m terrible with plant-classification, so for all I know it’s a ficus or a spider-plant–

You’d know a spider-plant–

Would I?

Yes–

Okay, so then this plant that’s definitely not a spider plant is hanging, and its vital green color wonderfully contrasts the pink stucco–

Where is this motel?

Good question. Maybe Flagstaff, maybe Malibu, maybe that locationless place I dreamed of last night–

Locationless places are hard to get to–

True, but not impossible–

Six impossible things before breakfast, she chimed, what had become our mantric refrain of an inside joke.

So, she continued, we’re in our Flagstaff Malibu locationless motel room, and . . . ?

And we stay in that room, for three days, alone, uninterrupted, and tend to each other with inspired vigor and unrelenting attentivness.

I think I like this motel, continue–

The room is our private, shared womb, you understand? We strip ourselves of our histories, we shed malignancies, sing our deepest bones, exorcise curses and haunts, we bare the pinkest of ourselves, the pinkest griefs, the pinkest wants and desires, it’s that  safe place where innocence  has a chance to ripen, flush, tremble, to be itself, fully and wholly without all the fucking inhibitors and cancers that force it back into its cocoon … we will exhibit delicious honeyed sensualism as we give Eden a make-over, because we will be, for the brief time that we are in the motel room-womb, the first and last people on earth, we will be nameless, just scintillating conduits, yes I threw in scintillating there because I know how much you love that word–

I DO love that word, I love saying it aloud–

Well, we’ll say that word and all other kinds of word aloud, we’ll live through the words, aloud, real-action, live-wirey, word and flesh will become one, biblical shit like that happens in the room-womb, and you know what else?

What else?

We will set the machete butterflies free, and they will whirl around in a kaleidoscopic siege, all sorts of bright, bursting colors, and while we make slow, holy love they will flutter above our heads and bodies like prayer flags and colorsoaked amens.

I stopped, my heart pumping, my fingers twitching. She took in everything I said, her eyes sighfilled, lips slightly parted.

You know, I clasped her hands in mine, at first you captured my ego. And then my imagination. Now my heart. You do understand that I’ve fallen in love with you?

No you haven’t, she was superquick to dismiss, though in a sweet voice. You’ve fallen in love with an idea of me, a poetic projection and fictional facsimile inspired by the flavor of my characteristics.

Wow, that was impressive. All in one breath. Almost sounded ready-made.

She smiled, I smiled, then I said–Okay.

Okay, what?

Okay, if you say it’s that, then it’s that.

She lapsed into one of her famous silences, lips pensively pursed.

She laser-gazed into my eyes and blew through the back of my skull, each of its hidden rooms lain to fiery waste by the arson of her gaze, and I, too, became famously silent, a couple of celebrity mutes were we.

Then I saw an unbroken tear-line silvering over and down the ridge of her cheekbone, a glistening slash that extended down her cheek and jawline.

I suctioned the side of my face to the side of her face, rubbed my dry cheek against her wet one.

What, I whispered in her ear.

Do you mean what you said, she whispered back.

Yes. Pause. I don’t know.

I don’t know isn’t very reassuring.

I know. But there’s also the yes. The yes came first.

She weighed my words.

If you mean it if you really mean it…

There, the rest of her words were washed away in a torrent of tears.

She shook. I held her. She continued shaking. I continued holding her.

I’m so scared, she said. So so scared, you don’t even know.

Me too, I said.

I’m a coward when it comes to love, she said.

Don’t worry. Love makes cowards and fools of us all.

You too?

Me especially.

She began laughing through her tears. Making her laugh was one of my favorite things. It gladdened my heart.

She sniffled.

Is my nose running?

No, it’s still on your face.

You’re such a smartass, she pinched my cheek.

It’s one of the reasons why you love me, right?

Yes, she gently concurred, it is one of the reasons.

And no, your nose isn’t running. But your eyes are.

Love usually makes my eyes run, she laughed brightly.

Love IS notorious for its relationship to tears. But that’s beautiful, right? Because water makes things grow.

Yes, that’s true. You always have such a beautiful way of looking at things.

Trust me, I don’t. That’s just, how shall I say: your poetic projection and fictional facsimile of me inspired by the flavors of my characteristics.

Fucking smartass, she kissed me. And then kissed me again.

I pulled her in close, said–So, pink stucco motel, three days, alone, uninterrupted. What do you think?

I think, there she paused. I think locationless places are very much worth discovering.