Tango After a Plutonium Opera

Tango After A Plutonium Opera

    My hawk gaze follows her in the saffron skylight of our cathedral of solitude. I have hidden for three days in the ruins of this building which once soared into the heavens. I look at her with thirsty eyes and drink in the vision of woman. It has been months since I’ve seen a female of the species. I sometimes contemplated that I might be the last person on earth. Yet I am overjoyed that not only is there another among the fallen city but she is a female.
     She breaks the crystal silence. “Fancy meeting you here. I’d begun to think there were no others. May I sit on that couch? This looks like some executive’s office.”
      I reply, “Be my guest. Or should I say join me?
This place is as much yours as mine.”
     “Yes, this is the ultimate collectivism. Everything belongs to everyone” she says.
     I move aside to give her space to sit. “Hey, I found a bottle of bourbon in the desk. Would you like to share some?”
     She winks at me. “Sure would. It feels kind of odd here. I wonder who occupied this place and
what happened to them?”
     I hand the bottle to her. “I’d like to think they escaped before the calamity. But I am a wishful thinker.”
     She rests her head on my shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind me resting on you. Men make good firm pillows. And you’re the only man around here.”
    I wrap my arm around her. “I make a handy headrest. And I’m indeed the only male here. That puts me at an advantage. I never was very good with women.”
     She sprawls across the couch and rests her head on my lap. I feel her breath upon my cocooned crotch. She says, “I do apologize. I have taken liberties. Would you like me to sit up?”
     I caress her flaxen hair. I said, “Heaven’s no. Please feel free with me.”
     She replies, “You are a gentleman. But don’t go saying you like me because I’m the only woman around. I wouldn’t take kindly to that.”
     I massage her scalp with long gentle strokes. I say, “In a room full of women you would stand out for me. You are a lovely soul.”
     She looks up at me and our eyes meet. “I’m touched that my soul is beautiful to you. But am I attractive physically? My inquiring mind really wants to know.”
     I begin to knead her shoulders with my questing hands dipping close to her breasts. I reply, “My darling you are the Botticelli Venus incarnate.”
     She beams up at me. “You’re not just saying that to get into my pants?”
     “To say just would be untrue. I confess I do fancy you in that way. But my passion for you is greater than sex.”
     She points up at a sagging beam in the ceiling and says, “We really should take our conversation elsewhere. That ceiling doesn’t look stable.”
     We stroll hand in hand out under the brilliant blue sky. The ozone layer is mostly gone since the calamity. So I recommend we find shelter.
     The tall buildings stand cracked and fallen in the sunlight. I lead her down the street whose skeleton ruins smolder quietly. Smoky funeral wreaths settle like winter snow across desolate streets. Awash in sacred silence she and I hold hands walking together.
     Calcified relics shine in noon sunburn. Effigies of humanity haunt the daylight. Ravens perch on steel husks. Petroleum-fed insects lie in repose. A salamander suns on the pearly marble steps. A centipede crawls cautiously over laminated tiles. We walk by the smoking embers of a fire in a vacant lot. Apparently, there is someone else somewhere. A brown paper bag cartwheels on the asphalt. A Bible is laid open to the ravages of nature. Gospel scraps whirl in the vortex. Golden words swirl playfully with wisdom strewn like confetti on oil stained sidewalks.
     She follows me like a guru in this city lost in dreams. I put my arm around her waist to comfort her. What more can I do to ease her passage down these graveyards of humanity?
     She stops to look up at the façade of a once-intact library building. She leads me into the repository of books which molder under the roof of the sky. She leans down and picks up a decaying copy of the Bible. She says “I used to believe in things. When everyone disappeared I lost all faith. I guess you could say I’m an atheist now.”
     “The past is dead. Religion is meaningless. Like Nietzsche said we must become our own God now.”
    She weeps. “I want God to fix things. I want the world back the way it was.”
     I embrace her with a bear hug. “You’ll be ok,” I tell her. “I’ll take care of you,” I say. I have no idea of how to save myself much less her.
     I love this woman as if she was the wife I’d lost so long ago. I never thought I’d feel for another person so deeply again.
     She says “I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier. I don’t know how stable it is. But the remnants of the paintings are a solace to me.”
    I say, “That sounds perfect. Yes, let’s go there.”
     Wisteria vines climb the bones of the city. “Let’s make tracks in the crematory dust with a tango.”
     I say, “Yes, let’s bless the ashes with our shoeprints. But would you pick me for your dance partner if your dreamboat from the movies magically appeared?”
     “Oh no, now you’re the insecure one. Let me be the only one in need of constant reassurance in our relationship. We, women, are good at playing that role.”
     She does her stances like a flamenco dancer under the illusion that the absence of hellfire means we have found grace.  She lifts her knee to part her legs with her thighs an open book. She faces me with her freedom in an act of audacity more subversive than anarchism and more enticing than an embrace. I lift her hand and kiss her cheeks.
     “Shall we go to the museum now? I hear admission is free today” she says.
     I say “Do we really want to hang with the hoity-toity crowd?”
     “Hey, I’ll be the only one with you. Are you implying that I’m a snob?”
     “Honey, I’d love you even if you were.”
     We cross through the entrance of the building.
The halls are still passable. Light shines down from a shaft in the ceiling. She says, “The whole building is honeycombed with holes.”
     I reply, “It’s a skylight.”
     “Yes, I just hope the roof doesn’t cave in on us.”
     I wipe my forehead. “I feel lucky today. It won’t fall.”
     She says “Hey there is a ballet class by Degas. It’s just lying on the floor. When I was a wee wisp of a lass I dreamed of being a ballerina. I’m going to take this one with me when we leave. Is that stealing?”
     I reply, “Who would you be robbing? Look, the art has fallen on the ground. I’ve never touched a piece in here. The paint is wet. The holes in the ceiling must let the rain through.”
     She says, “I wonder why the paintings are strewn across the floor?”
     I reply, “Probably vandals cut them from their frame and left them. It’s a fitting desecration of the hubris of our western world.”
     “Then the people who did this could be out there.”
     I reply, “If they’re still alive.”
      She whispers, “Do you think humanity will ever rise from the ashes?”
     I hug her to comfort her. I say, “I’d like to believe so. It depends on how many survivors are still here. Then the soil may be radioactive. We need crops to feed the children. Can people still reproduce? Or has the calamity sterilized them? There are so many questions. Time will tell.”
    “Oh please don’t be pessimistic. I need hope. I beg of you to be optimistic. I need a man to lean on.”
     “You have such a deep and wistful gaze with eyes which see through the hauteur of man’s vanity and beyond his veil of worldliness.”
     “Such a gentleman, but these eyes see right through you. You’re courting my baser instincts.”
     On her tiptoes, she kisses me on the lips. I say,
“Look at all this beautiful art. Surely a species which created this can find a way to resurrect. Such genius will find a way. It will happen.”
    She places a fiery kiss upon me. Her tongue presses into mine with the paprika passion of heat unbound. Soon the paintings blur in our teary eyes. She loosens her dress letting it fall as though she can read my thoughts. Our clothes are discarded under the watchful eyes depicted in the ancient paintings.
     She says, “I want you on your back.”
     “Now wrestle with me” she orders. We roll and tumble on the mat of rare art pieces. Slick with sweat our bodies cling to fallen artworks and their pigments stain our skin. We are tattooed by the strokes of ancient brushwork. The palette of long gone souls touches us with rainbow illustration. Finally, she locks my head between her thighs. I concede the match.
     She says, “My daddy named me Palaestra, after the ancient Greek girl who invented the art of wrestling for men to entertain themselves during the times of peace.”
     “You did your father proud Palaestra. Being outwrestled by you was heavenly.”
     She says, “Nothing like a healthy dose of girl power to prime your pump. Let’s go another round. This time I’ll give myself a handicap. We’ll start with you on top.”
     “Oh but the shame if I lose.”
     “Come now. Being overcome by a woman doesn’t make you a sissy.”
     We tussle upon the smudged art with our skin sticky from the paint. The blurred impression of Monet’s bouquet of sunflowers is imprinted on her derriere cheeks. The blazing suns of Van Gogh swirl around her nipples. The stars float in a murky indigo sky upon her aureole.
     Her valentine is coated in Renoir splatter and wriggles beneath me. She rolls onto her back and our souls fuse together. She coaxes me to stretch into a source of shame for a male during yoga class. The end is only a beginning. She lies atop me kissing me with her warm lips.
     “Your behind is printed like a bridal corsage of sunray petals,” I say.
     “Ah, my tush inspired such beautiful words. Well, I did catch the garter at my sister’s wedding.”
     “There are plenty of vacant hotels in this city.”      
     “Let’s hole up in a deserted mansion. Why not move up in the world?” she accepts.
     That night we sleep in the cavernous museum. The next day we will search for food. We have become foragers in a hungry world.
     Morning blossoms over the blighted city. I don my clothes. She covers her nakedness with her dress. She asks, “Do you think you impregnated me?”
     I hug her. “I don’t know. Would it be right to bring up a child into this world?”
     Tears sparkle in her eyes. She says, “Instinct tells me so. Without children, there is no hope.” I lead her by the hand out into the blinding sunlight.