THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

I don't remember her name. Well, to be more precise, I don't remember if she's even told me her name. She's leaning there, supported by the banister, swaying slightly, keys clutched leaving imprints in her right hand. Her hair is somewhere between long and short, honey colored, and auburn, and caught up in the fingers of her other hand. Her lips are full, red, and laughing. Her eyes seem gated, wary. She's leaning there, because of two very important reasons … she's leaning because she's had far too much to drink. She keeps telling me this, along with all the other things that tumble from her lips, which I seem to misplace as soon as they are mine. And she's there at the bottom of the staircase, one foot still on floor level, anchored, weighted, the other tentatively, seductively, one step up, pointed in the direction of her third floor walkup apartment, because I've willed her to be.

I met her at a party. An art opening. Mine I'm pretty certain. (I never can seem to remember the details of how I meet them.) She was laughing underneath an enormous gray canvas, the red smear of an anguished face angrily slashed across it. She wondered if I was the one in the painting, the one who'd painted, or both. I had to tell her that I didn't remember. Caught her off guard. Who can't remember the act of creation? I have a theory that it's like giving birth. So much pain, strain, agony. The only way to be able to complete the act again is to forget it entirely. I think even God has forgotten. Maybe that's why he's dead to us now. Probably some wino lying there on a street corner in a puddle of his urine, hand out stretched, begging to be remembered, begging to remember. Knowing he did something once. Something maybe even important, but he can't seem to remember past the haze of pain. The fog of consequences. Or worse, maybe he's lying there because he does remember. Maybe that's why we haven't had a miracle in so many years. God remembers it all. Maybe he can't forget.

Me, I always forget.

The dark and brooding thing always seems to work for me, that and the sad eyes, but only so far. They are drawn in and repulsed at the same time. Danger does that I guess. Fear too. The heart speeds up, and you can't tell if it's because you should turn and run, or stay and fight.

I touch her on her side, fingers sliding up softly. Her blouse is silk and I feel rogue fibers catch on the hard calluses of my fingertips. I'm smiling. Saying something. I'm sure it's charming, whatever it is, because she laughs, still wary, but I can feel her muscles start to relax, and I can feel a soft shudder travel up her body and out her fingertips. She is caught in indecision; I still have work to do.

I offer my shoulder as replacement for the banister, and she takes it. I can feel her weight tumble into me. I teeter there for a second, my own head spinning as much with the accomplishment of freeing her from the anchor of her nervousness as it is with the poison of the alcohol flowing through me. Stumbling and laughing like the quake of a derailing train, we climb four more stairs with our momentum.

In earlier conversations I am sure she has told me all about herself. The work that defines her, she is an editor, or she works in marketing, something like that. Her history, talking to redefine the thin boundaries, moved from somewhere, went to school somewhere, visited somewhere. Hinted at her dreams. Desires. Needs. Talked about music, and art, and movies, and books, and beliefs. Anecdotes, stories, speaking windows into her. All the while I watch the geometry of her mouth, the architecture of her eyes, deaf to the details. Intersecting planes. Muscles pulling skin and bone. So beautiful, like a living sculpture, alabaster and blood, flesh and stone.

We stop moving, and she collapses into me, the aura of her warmth engulfing me, and for a moment I loose consciousness … which is not to say I pass out, rather that I loose conscious control. My face pressed up against the base of her throat, a hand at her neck. I can feel the soft down underneath the line of her hair. My mouth fills up with her. My lips sliding along the curves of her. My teeth pressed into her. Her unexpected moans fill me hot and stinging, like liquor. She presses into me. I feel the slow swell of my excitement against my pants zipper. Her leg, slipped free from the confines of her skirt, wrapped in black silk, pushes hard into me. My cock jumps with the contact. Her breath catches in the back of her throat, then hisses slowly past her teeth as my bite sinks into her. I am teetering. Cut free from gravity, the stairs, the world around me. My walls are her breathing, her moans. I am supported by the smell of her. Her flesh a room to hide away in. My hand, guilty villain, snakes down her middle. Sliding past her breasts. I feel heat. Like touching the glowing spirals of an electric stove when I was too young to know better. Burning. The curves of her ribs. Swell of her stomach. The silky fabric bunching and snagging against the rough calluses of work burned into my fingertips. And suddenly her warm skin beneath my touch … sliding past boundaries … rough curls of hair … the tight restraint of elastic at my wrist … questing deeper … divining … water witchery … my fingers moving down … and I feel her hands on my wrist …

And suddenly it as if time is rewound. I am pulled away from her, an amnesiac. She looks at me, nameless dread in her face. Eyes half-lidded in fear and lust. She pulls away. Muttering apologetic wordless. She starts up the stairs. Frightened. Lurching. Hoping that when she looks back I will be gone. Disappeared. Dissipated. I am an uncooperative shade. I haunt her still. I refuse to vanish, and follow her flight with words of my own, like the sounds one makes to calm a child, to unspook an animal. You could say soothing.

I'm such a good liar.

She travels several flights, my words in pursuit. I'm sure its as much the alcohol, the drunk, the spinning, as it is my soft fluttery words that make her stop. She is not looking at me. Not down, but up, her floor frighteningly close. The nearness of her door trapping her. If she goes all the way up. If I follow.

Her shoulders heave with the sigh, and she turns back to me more words at her lips. Apologetic. Questioning. Begging. I ignore them all. I remember the earlier sounds she made. The moans. The hissing. There is more truth in those sounds, cut free from the confines of words. Her eyes are weary. My smile is surprisingly gentle. More than I intend it to be. It is this place where I almost turn back … this war between the inside and out. I come so close each time. Afraid for her. For all of them. What could this mean? To surrender the blanket of words we weave around ourselves? What do you lose when it is frayed, unraveled, undone? My own has been discarded, replaced with something else, something base, so long ago, that I can only feel the memory of sympathy. It is nostalgia. I climb the stairs. Come closer to her. Fingers outstretched, no more words on my lips.

She lets me touch her.

She is quiet. No more words. And together we climb the stairs towards her apartment.

It is late, that hour that is exactly between. The one that is empty. Open. Quiet. I feel the soft weight of her leg draped over me. She is sleeping. I can smell her hair. Smell us. Salt. Animal smells. The taste of her is still wrapped around my tongue, clinging to my lips. Intertwined. I hang on the moment as long as I can, trying to imagine myself trapped in amber. Already I can feel it start to slip away.

I see the red glow of minutes slipping past. Pictures draped in the soft dark. Silhouettes of all the things that make up her life crowded around. This audience of her history. I still don't remember her name.

She makes soft noises and shifts, pulling her body away from me. I know it's time to go.

I get up as if I were never there. Pull on my clothes. Walk down the hallway towards her door. The door at the top of the stairs. I turn the knob. Stop for one last indulgent second, remembering all the pieces of her. Pictures on the wall. A pile of bills on a small table in the corner. The rattle of her keys. The catch of her breath at the back of her throat.

It's such a fantasy, trying on someone's life like a thrift store suit. Playing dress up. House. Pretending that it all fits. That I don't look like a clown. Oversized. Drowning.

The door clicks behind me and as I walk down the stairs, memory evaporates like sweat drying on skin. And I am taunted by that second when I am lost, only to find myself again, on my way back down the stairs. And so, I choose to forget it all.