Love is a game…a fun game of catch-me-if-you-can. Once playing starts, you must take turns at
getting caught. It is a basic principle; if you want to be loved, you have to let yourself caught.
She never let Michael win so he never loved her. Larry thought he won, but didn't, so he
didn't matter.
She was a tough child who wore either white socks or nothing.
Her emotions had the intensity of a raging fire. Air, with all due respect, vibrated with her
beating heart. She was sure she'd go to hell but something made her think she could change
before it was too late. In hell, your desires are never satisfied. That's what they say.
Was she scared?
Yes, maybe. She cut her life against the grain.
On a shelf in her living room, she kept a gray box filled with letters and old photos. Never
sentimental—she fought hard against the emotion. But, every so often, she'd open the box; its
contents were like Seurat paintings with a multitude of seemingly random dots coming together
as faces, words, and memories. They stirred a unique feeling in her belly, like an itch that could
not be scratched.
Her blue eyes matched up pieces of the big puzzle—fitting faces to words and the reverse.
In turn, she turned a postcard or photo in her hands and read the few lines on the back. Some she
barely remembered—some she knew by heart.
"Friday evening. Friday. Wait for me."
The postcard had a mountain landscape on the front and his scrawled signature on the back.
Matilda was sixteen when she pushed her body into the dance of gestures—delicate and
haphazard. The arc of her weird life formed a parabola. She came back to everything left behind.
Sixteen and enslaved by Saul's detailed complexity. Saul, a dark, Machiavellian man with
glowing, controlling green eyes.
Twenty years prior, in a wooden cabin surrounded by woods and mountains, an innkeeper
shouted something about a storm. Matilda did not care. She stared at the woods with intense
persistence—trying to match the green mountains of the postcard's image with the twilight view
displayed in front of her as real life. When she held the postcard and quickly looked toward the
sun setting behind the mountains, she could almost hold the image in place. But an errant rock or
incongruous slope—unmatched in the postcard—interfered with her task.
A voice came from behind.
"Close one eye, then switch to the other—you can get it."
A heavy hand fell on her shoulders. Behind her was Saul—in murky shadows and looking
rough as if after a long hike. He seemed preoccupied and in a hurry, but his gestures were soft
and his voice velvety.
"Come on...come in, a storm is coming."
Her nostrils caught the ionic smell of electricity. She wanted to stay and watch.
She responded with unwanted indecision.
"I like the rain and wind…I like the feel of danger."
Inside, with unnecessary loudness, the innkeeper closed the shutters. Increasingly insistent,
the wind whined.
Her voice was as quiet as a whisper.
"It will be a wonderful storm."
Thunder. Angry, untamed clouds broke above the cabin. The shutters strained at their
hinges.
Thunder burst between them and attacked shelves bearing an army of lined-up bottles—
they clanked like an absurd percussive concerto. The roof rattled as if attacked by drunken
carpenters. With the next thunderclap, the deafening storm rushed in—fast and furious.
Afterward, she watched him sit at the base of a tree and smoke a cigarette. Beyond the
trees, the moon and stars sprouted. It was late, terribly late. She sat next to him with her knees
raised to her chin.
He smiled.
"What causes the stars to appear and disappear?"
She answered with a laugh.
"It's the job of a naughty girl…to light them with a magic wand as penance for past
mistakes."
White socks loosely rode her thin ankles and emphasized the contours of her faultless legs.
The image led to thought, thought to excitement, and excitement to the sin of unhindered desire.
With an artist's skill, he kindled warmth in her belly.
Desire.
Intense emotions vibrated and flowed between their bodies.
Life's tragic events clear the spirit. Later on, that's what she was told.
Her memories were like trains. Some screamed by quickly, others were heavy with
travelers. Some were routed to forgotten side rails…fenced in and neglected. Driverless, with
broken windows—rusty and desolate. She could not scrap them. They were vestiges of her life.
We would be nothing without remembered people and events.
Some trains started a long journey but ended up abandoned.
She reviewed images recorded long ago and felt things, perhaps imagined, as frightfully
real hallucinations. She took comfort in false security—that dead history was safe and could not
touch her.
During her mental wandering she grasped at who she might be…flesh and bones, soul and
spirit or perhaps just a random thought in God's feverish mind.
Now, her life was a gray box filled with old letters, postcards and photographs.
Long ago, in a storm's aftermath, Saul sat at the base of a tree and gazed at white socks
embracing her tanned ankles.
What do you think causes the stars appear and disappear?
