Ghost of Giselle Haunts the Gallery After Lucifer’s Fire

Ghost of Giselle Haunts the Gallery          
After Lucifer’s Fire        
         
     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 my 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 the female I married long ago.
     She says, “This is boys will be boys taken the lunatic fringe. After the pandemic left New Orleans a ghost town, teenagers with drones sent nukes instead of starting a takee outee business with home delivery via those mini-copters. A bigger bang than fireworks I suppose.”
     “Social distancing would have been better observed by remote take out Chinese but who would their customers be?”
     She breaks the crystal silence. “I have been remiss. Here is my proper greeting. Fancy meeting
you here. What happened to your little plane?”
     “It ran out of fuel. I ditched it on the outskirts of town.”
     “Well I’m feeling spry as a filly saddled up and ready for the Preakness Stakes since you left me at the home.”
     I say, “Equine sports were abolished before you were a twinkle in your father’s eye. But your metaphor is apt and your fitness held fond by me.”
     “Always love to please the men in my life.”
    “Are there are others?”
    “Were another to come along I’d trust you to stave off his affections. Since you own my heart it shall not be toyed with even in the interest of genetically diverse repopulation.”
     I reply, “I know how you can dissuade unwanted suitors. Talk that Freudian envy particular to women.”
     She says, “The emasculatory peril for men should put the fear of the Goddess in them. The jaws of my female beast that give severance as payback for millennia of patriarchy will thwart their flirtation.”
     I reply, “Pearly whites where they shouldn’t be are grounds for divorce.”
     She says, “Be assured my purse is free of sharp objects as my gynecologist can attest too.”
     I reply, “So you emptied it out to earn his pity?”
     “You know what purse I speak of. We’ve hardly reunited and you’re already talking about divorce? Tsk, tsk.”
     “Pray tell, what happened to the two squares and a cot I left you in?”
     “Their food synthesizers broke down so they dismissed us. Good thing you are here to take care of me now. I’d begun to think there were no others. But I should have known our paths would cross again. 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 over the bottle to her. “I’d like to think they escaped before that crab took hold of us human fishes. But I am a wishful thinker.”
     She rests her head on my shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind me resting on you. I am so glad I married you. You make a good, firm pillow.”
    I wrap my arm around her. “I make a handy headrest. And I am glad you showed up. Being your husband puts me at an advantage. I was beginning to think I might have to do without the comfort of a woman forever.”
     She replies, “You are a gentleman. But don’t go saying I am your generic woman comforter. I wouldn’t take kindly to that.”
     She sprawls across the couch and rests her head on my lap. I say, “I do apologize. You are to women what sushi is to gourmet dining.”
     “You are to men what barbecue tempeh is to vegan cuisine.”
     I massage her scalp with long gentle strokes. I say, “After I left you at the home, I thought I’d never see you again or any woman for that matter. But in a room full of women, you would stand out for me. You are a lovely soul. That is why I married you.”
     She looks up at me and our eyes meet. “I’m touched that my soul is beautiful to you. But am I still 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 back into my pants?”
     “To say just would be untrue. I confess I do fancy you in that way. But my passion for you was always greater than sex.”
     “Surely you love me and if that affection is bestowed upon me then even now after our months apart then it will never die. We must have known each other from previous lifetimes. And no doubt we were lovers many times over. After all, rebirth isn’t a foreign concept to me with my Hindu tendencies.”
     I reply, “What are those tendencies?”
     “They were limited to doing yoga in a women’s group. But surely that is enough for me to have
absorbed the culture.”
     “That yoga must have made you flexible.”
     She says, “You men are nothing if not predictable.” 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 plutonium kids went crazy. 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. She pirouettes in the smoke as it coils upward, like snakes. The dying embers of Eden silhouette her sensuous circles as she moves cat like through the smoky streets.
     She could be the darling of a Sultan with the roll of her serpentine waves. She is my prima ballerina whose dance is immortal even in the bones of the city. I can smell the burning ashes like those in the mother of pearl inlaid incense burner sitting on the cherry wood table back home. Awash in sacred silence she and I hold hands walking together.
     Calcified relics shine in noon sunburn. Effigies of humanity haunt the daylight. Ravens are perched 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 who is the wife I’d lost so long ago. I never thought I’d reunite with this person I love so deeply again.
     She says “I visited the New Orleans 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 I wouldn’t blame you if you left me for a man with plenty of water and food. Scarcity does things to the mind.”
     “Oh no, now you’re the insecure one. Let me be the only one in need of constant reassurance in our marriage. 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 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.
     “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. The 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’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 pandemic-plutonium duo sterilized them? There are so many questions. Time will tell.”
    “Please don’t be pessimistic. I need hope. I beg of you to be optimistic. I need my man to lean on.”
     “You always had 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 for it to happen.”
    Rowena places a fiery kiss upon me with the paprika passion of heat unbound. Soon the paintings blur in our teary eyes. I say, “Let’s use a makeshift birth control by staying dressed.”
     She replies, “You men are geniuses. How, did you ever come upon such an idea? At least you didn’t suggest complete abstinence. But I want you to ballet dance with me.”
     I say, “Dance was an aphrodisiac for us.”
     We do a pas de deux on the mat of rare art pieces under the watchful eyes depicted in the ancient painting. Her body is fluid motion. She smile beams in a utopian trance. Her reed body sways to my rhythm. We dance on waves of ambiance made French by the Degas strewn on our makeshift dance floor. We are two dreamers who sway together like strands of kelp in deep-sea love.
     Her body is a Cello string she that I bow with my hands of fire. Alive in the Renoir night her body glissades across my slick marble floor in our
birth world of love. Slick with sweat I lower her until her seat is pressed into the fallen artworks. The palette of long-gone souls touches her with a rainbow illustration. The wet paint of the smudged art soaks through her leotards onto her derrière and their pigments stain her spandex. Her tutu blossoms into a sunflower portrait.
     She says, “My tights are soaked in wet paint. Do you mind if I take them off to dry?”    
     “Why would I mind?”
     “It may throw a wrench in the works of your brilliant stay-clothed birth control method.”
     “We can control ourselves.”
     “Famous last words,” she says.
     She slips them off. Her bottom is tattooed by the strokes of ancient brushwork. “You have a sunflower corsage on your seat.”
     “Which boutique gave it to me the Van Gogh or the Monet?”
     “Unmistakably Van Gogh.”
     “Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit.”
     “He would feel honored that his art is no longer stationary on a museum wall but travels the city.”
     “My derrière is like a mobile library but for great art that circulates in broad daylight.”
     “I am sweating bullets. My slacks are soaked. Do you think I should disrobe? Though, we are alone together and married, an interloper could arrive.”
     She replies, “There is no docent to call security.
We’ll start our own home nudist society. But what if another pretty lady shows up?”
     “Then she can join our naturist colony.”
     “But then again a gentleman could find us.”
     “Don’t go there,” I reply. I shimmy out of them.
     She rolls onto her back and our souls fuse together. She lies atop me kissing me with her warm lips.
     She asks, “How did you feel?”
     “Like a sweetgum tree dropping its gumballs.”
     “Spoken like the true southern boy you are. You must have taken up bartending since I lost track of you. I was a cocktail waitress after we parted and can smell a bartender from a mile away.”
     “Actually, I led vampire tours in what was left of New Orleans.”
     “I encountered some blood suckers in the ruins. Thank God you aren’t one of them.”
     “The only blood I drink is a Bloody Mary.”
     “There isn’t any vodka or tomato juice around here,” she says.
     “Yet, we can kiss a toast, to the good old days,”
     “Hey, there was a traveling exhibit here from before the cataclysm that would appeal to my fascination with ancient Greece and especially Homeric legend. Let’s seek it out in the morning.”
     “It is fitting that this labyrinth is the final resting place of those artifacts from the birthplace of democracy whose Dionysian rites of spring live on in the burgundy blush of your cheeks.”
     “On that note let the festivities in our bridal suite begin. I never was a blushing bride. But hey, what’s for supper? It’s easy to forget about food in the midst of all this concupiscence. We can’t eat the paintings after all.”
     “There is a trail of crumbs on the floor that seems to lead out of the room. Let’s follow it.”
     Bingo, she says, “Look at what I found. A big box filled with cartons of granola bars with our names on it.”
     “Must have been left by the staff when they fled.”
     “I dub these better than sex granolas. But look over there in the corner. Is that what I think it is? Yes! A carton of cherry sodas that could last days. This is so much better than sex.”
     She pops a top and continues, “Hey, much as I find it charming for my leotards to be art in motion, I’d much rather not have paint stuck on my derrière skin. Would you be a gentleman and use the handkerchief I see in your shirt pocket soaked in soda to wipe my bottom? I can hardly reach back there much less see. There is no mirror here.”
     “Would be a pleasure. Just pose for me.”
     “I may be your wife, but don’t rub it in.”
     “Pardon the pun.”
     “I love you, you wicked man.”
     The end is only a beginning.