strangers in the night

Strangers in the Night

I. Bitter Limes

I down three lemon lime bitters and two gin and tonics while I wait for Dad and I’m looking at a massive plasma TV in the lobby that’s playing images of a bombed-out town somewhere, and then it turns to an add and there’s blonde and tanned girls in bikinis in Palm Beach and there’s a slogan, flashing in letters that are red, looking like finger-drawn blood dripping, saying Are you happy? Are you good? as if that’s the same thing, and I adjust the cigarette dangling from my lips, across the lobby of the Four Seasons, a pianist playing Candle in the Wind and below an enormous picture of Goya’s Yard with Lunatics and Dad sighs, strokes his blonde hair, his skin is an orange tan, and he asks about the usual things, passes over a silver box that has a watch in it, the metallic shine blinds me, and I nod, as he goes to the restroom, leaving his Oxford suit jacket resting on the chair and I overhear an old man, his skin stricken with lines, talking about how it’s a ‘crazy world out there’ and I gaze at the windows, snow beginning to fall, and I’m about to leave, drain a final glass and head back to the flat, for Dad to find my empty chair, the muffle of lost conversations floating through the hall of the hotel, but an envelope drops to my lap, yellow and stained, and I slip my hand beneath its papery cover, revealing a cheque of dollars, twenty thousand of them, and that’s when the night turns.

II. Dirt Coca Pink Cola

i had a dream last night

there was a boy in the mirror

silver notes falling around him

and there’s a smile

wiping along the red face

blood along the hair

soaked

where the the dirt meets the ground

it’s pink down there

pink and blue and pink

and a coca cola can beside the paper

dripping onto it

where the boy left it

the money dissolves

and drowns

and goes

and so does the father

after the mother

but who remains

only the boy

now without an envelope

and just the girl

a friend

singing down the row

where the dew drops

forget to fall

before they rise to the sun once more

more

III. Platinum Blonde

A park beyond the neon-lit city. Smoke rises and rains falls, dissolves on the ground. A dog barks. Crickets buzz.

QUEENIE: Quiet one.

ME: I’ve seen quieter.

QUEENIE: Where’s the envelope from?

ME: It fell to me.

QUEENIE: How?

ME: I don’t know. It’s been one year since Ma left and not a lot makes sense since then.

QUEENIE: I’m sorry.

ME: For what?

QUEENIE: I don’t know.

A long silence. Eyes drifting. Pan to the trees.

QUEENIE: That’s a weird mole you’ve got there.

ME: Where?

QUEENIE: There…

ME: Where’s ‘there’…

QUEENIE: On the skin below your hair.

ME: My hair?

QUEENIE: Yes, your hair. I like the colour. It’s blonde, like platinum blonde. But I like the mole on your skin more.

ME: I like your piercings.

QUEENIE: Which one?

ME: The one above the tattoo of the raven reading the time on his pocket watch.

QUEENIE: It’s not a raven.

ME: No?

QUEENIE: No.

ME: Then…?

QUEENIE: It’s a crow.

ME: Ahh, yes.

QUEENIE: Yes what?

ME: I don’t know.

A beat. Slow dolly then zoom in. The sinister hum of cello strings. Focus.

QUEENIE: Is that a new watch?

ME: Yep.

QUEENIE: Is it from Dad?

ME: From my father, yes.

QUEENIE: Nice watch.

ME: It’s alright. Good water resistance. I like the strap. It’s too loud when it ticks.

QUEENIE: Yes, I can hear it.

ME: See what I mean.

QUEENIE: Yes.

ME: Mhmm.

QUEENIE: Will you keep it?

ME: I think so. I don’t need the money.

QUEENIE: But without your Ma…

ME: There was twenty thousand in this envelope.

The envelope is placed on the grass. A shooting star.

QUEENIE: From who?

ME: I’ve been asking myself that all afternoon.

QUEENIE: It’s been a dark afternoon. More like night.

ME: Yes.

QUEENIE: What are you going to do with the envelope?

ME: Who knows. Burn it. Throw it to the bottom of the lake.

QUEENIE: The Virginia Woolf lake?

ME: Yes, the Virginia Woolf lake.

QUEENIE: I have to be somewhere.

ME: Where?

QUEENIE: A performance.

A pause, lasting long.

ME: A performance of what?

QUEENIE: Things today with being alive and then dead.

ME: Sounds interesting.

QUEENIE: Not really.

ME: I can leave you some of the money…

QUEENIE: No.

ME: Are you sure?

QUEENIE: Yes.

ME: Sweet dreams.

QUEENIE: All right.

Fade to dark.

IV. What I Think About The Beginnings

My father, when I was young, left a book bound in rough paper and string at the step beyond my door. I remember the wind was hot and the fig trees outside my window were shaking as my feet crept, pulling me through the blackness, to the door, hearing the creak of his boots echoing down the hall. Opening the door, I held the book in my creased hands. Paper ripped open down the middle, the sound of a bird calling to a friend in the distance. It was a book about a young man with golden hair who had become very rich after being raised on a farm; he had come into a great deal of money after surviving a boating accident when a ship was washed against monumental waves, light foam at the tops. He pined after a girl who lived across a bay, with nothing but a blinking green light to hoist his hopes onto. As I read under the sheets, cold and motherless as winter swept in, I curled into the pages, imagining that I was there too in the summer almost a century ago, dancing among gods and greats and away from here, that I might be found there hiding between the shadowy words, before my reminiscence shattered into an unholy truth.

V. Boy Down the Road

You know the boy down the road?

Not really, no.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Oh, okay… well anyway.

Anyway what?

He got given an envelope.

Really? An actual envelope?

Yes. 20,000 in there.

20,000?

Yes. 20,000.

Wow.

Yes, wow.

What will happen next?

He took it with him.

Ah yes, to where?

On his adventures.

And what happened to the money?

It ended up at the bottom of the water.

Why there?

Because that’s where all ghostly things go.

I should’ve known.

I would think so.

VI. Home Down the Road

Hardly ever will I think of home again

Sitting in the pocket there and then

In the hands of time ticking too loud

Skin on flesh, on pound for pound

I’ve never doubted cosmic happenings since

Take me to the well, shower, rinse

And I’ll appear, on the outside of town,

A baby takes a breath and no sight of a frown,

Only the universe, standing, smiling.

VII. Where Nothing

Close up of the face of a boy. He has blonde hair. He holds an envelope. A frown, fading to a smile. A girl across the street. Tracking shot. He walks, slowly. The envelope is clasped in his hand. The edge of the water is in sight. Close up. One step. Two steps. The envelope drops. Pan. Lower and lower and lower. Into the water. It sinks. Down to the black, where nothing can be seen.

VIII. Pictures of Me

…and of course in the novel itself, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde makes elegant use of the shade of snowy lightness, where Dorian himself is coloured with a purity and bare innocence of boyhood. The handkerchief, the flowers, the powdery glow of his face, all resist those cursed stains of sin that creep slowly into being, but what are we to make of light, and where is the darkness in the story, the beauty of darkness that towers over the empty and barren wasteland that the sheer lightness of a blank page brings, and we are left waiting for dark marks to strike down that very page, to flicker into life, to make the strokes of meaning that outline the shape of our idols…

IX. Sometime After

the envies and the rages and the furies and the poets and the ferns and the withers and the branches and the flames and the bruises and the inks and the rocks and the winds and the braves and the gothics and the castles and the boats and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the the the the the the the the th th th th th th t t t t t t t t t

XI. He

- “Where was he?”

- “Where was who?”

- “The boy.”

- “When he was gifted the envelope?”

- “Yes.”

- “In the hotel.”

- “And in winter, yes?”

- “Indeed.”

- “I wonder what happened to him.”

- “I think he went.”

- “Went where?”

- “Away.”

- “Away where?”

- “Oh I don’t know, just away.”

- “Like he died?”

- “I suppose so.”

- “How?”

- “Well the body goes where the money does, right?”

- “I suppose that’s correct.”

- “His body went where his money went.”

- “Is that all?”

- “I would say so.”

XII. Resurrections

I am a book. I am made of paper. I house words. I house pictures sometimes. I have a black outside. I have a pale inside. I have secrets in me. I have money in me. I have dreams in me. I have whispers in me. I have all of those things you could only dream of but never set your sights on because all I am is a book, a book in your imagine and the key to unlock it remains at the bottom of the dark water, waiting for a morning that is made for resurrections.

XIII. The Little Black Book

A field of snow falling.

Grass unseen.

Trees that shift and yawn and house animals with orange eyes.

Look, what do you see?

That’s right, the curl of your lips tell me so.

We all have little dark books.

Most of us never get past the first page though.

We all have lines worth scratching, pictures worth striking, and stories worth scrawling.

Our lives are scribble. Most things make no sense.

So open up a fresh page. Take out a pen. Write what you see. And whatever you do, don’t put the pen down.