F L E U R

de

L I S

- Dim Aldebaran -

XIV. la R O S E du M O N D E

It was three: but the bars were open. It was Paris, after all. No one turned to look at her when she entered, drowning selfishly in themselves. All was silent but for the drunken piano player and his lurching rendition of Für Elise.

The barstool creaked as she sat down, but it was high enough that they didn't ask for ID; she looked old, she supposed, old enough for the whiskey she ordered. This thought made her vanity crinkle like old paper, quietly, with none of that fresh crackle as a young woman's might have.

She drank one; sipping once, twice, thrice, fire down the throat; it burned, though it doused her memories sufficiently that she felt no guilt in the second glass, nor repentance in the third.

Für Elise became an anthem of sorts: she hummed along brokenly, notes oozing from her throat like the cheap whiskey down it, tapping her foot and staggering the rhythm until the piano player moved on to drunken jazz (how it ought to be played—)

She went to the piano and said something quite rude in Italian; or Latin, she wasn't sure. Italian was her language of choice for gratuities: it made vulgarities so graceful, but Latin would lend her class.

He smiled and said something in return. Being drunk, and, furthermore, broke, she acquiesced.

He hurried, not wishing for her to sober up. Must be the desperate sort: the fallen had a thing for innocence lost.

—but he played the piano. When she entered the apartment, she saw the beer stains on the keys, the greenglint under the pedals.

But no matter. He undressed her studiously, methodically, almost the pedophile to her small frame. After, it was a quick affair that left her clutching for memories long after she fell asleep.

XV. la R O S E de la G U E R R E

The hangover left her drunk enough on pain that she didn't notice the scent of his other lady, Mary Jane: though it would have been a petty jealousy, at best.

She found a blouse on the floor: not hers by the fit, but hers by appointment. It fell over her shoulders like a shawl of cheap linen, and indeed falling far enough that it went to her knees, pale cream by knobby tan. There were pants, though she desisted: they wound about on the floor like snakes, diamondback beerstains, scaly wrinkles, too long.

The light was weak: thank God he wasn't the Impressionist man with wide wide windows for le plein air. The magic was gone from her anyway: bleached to the fine white of shells on the beach, beaten and broken.

Pictures on the wall: no frames, too pricy for the poor, hung by a nail and a prayer. They were mostly photographs, too faded to be anything but memories: a boy on his bicycle, two children running down the sidewalk, Goldilocks with curls and a cake. All childhood things: sweet it must have been, or perhaps just sweet in comparison—

—though the comparison is all that matters.

The corners curled in and out, casting peculiar Picasso shadows on the wall, sharp against the general haziness of the stains and memories, more clear than the photographs themselves.

She followed the wall: a lad and lass holding hands under the table, picture taken unknowingly from behind; a boy holding up a tooth, even without color it was red; two young men balancing on a fountain's rim, flicking coins into the water that glinted in the air like misplaced stars, faces noon and night, locks gold and black, but both were so pale, so beautiful, they could have been gods—

XVI. la R O S E du C O E U R

Madness was routine: she took it with a calm fate obviously did not expect, instead slipping off the blouse and laying down on the bed, wondering if he could feel the pounding of her heart through the madness of whatever dream he had.

They did not match for size: but they complimented each other nonetheless. She… fit, not so much like a doll but a sculpturette, aesthetics for him to enjoy his own way, art for art's sake since art was quite obviously useless otherwise. There was something in this she was attracted to: it was not love, but something else, something that had all the illusion of it… not lust either, she knew what lust was, knew it how mixed so potently with the milder wines, and this wasn't lust, lust was what she had dreamt and never did.

Perhaps it was just the contact: flesh against pale flesh, making it so easy to pretend—

When he stirred, his eyes were pale against his skin, translucent green that could have been frosted grass, opened and shared a little smile and got up: his hair was no particular blonde, but rather platinum and gold mixed together like a poorly tossed salad, and the curly Irish variety—and his body too: thin, lean, gaunt, the very artistic notion.

She stayed: still, warm. She could see the piano from there: looming out of the off-white walls like black rain from a white thunderhead. In the air before it she traced music, sketching and shading and coloring until at last she could hear Kinderscenen.

He came back with tea: fine delights. "—you seem like the sort," he explained, passing it to her on the bed. She curled sheets around her and sat up against the headboard: she had to look childish, even to him, sipping chamomile like a schoolgirl on a sick day, or perhaps that's what he liked after all.

"Hungry?" he asked—she noticed the English and the accent of Ireland that can never quite leave, and pondered the friends of the blue-eyed boy, wondering if she had been the only teacher of friendship or simply one of many.

"—no," she replied, "no, not very."

He shrugged; leaving the bedside and producing toast from somewhere in the kitchen, eating it plain, and it crunched oddly in the silence: she decided that she hated loud foods.

It had a sort of comfort to her: sitting on a filthy bed with only a few sheets between her and goosebumps in a strange man's apartment—but he had paid her tab and she had seen the piano and this was all somehow more intimate than anything she had ever known before.

She looked down at the tea and the teabag that had been reused five times before: little wisps of steam came curling from the Styx murkiness, dissipating.

He moved towards the piano, pausing to select pants from the floor, boxers already on. He was very comfortable with her, or perhaps just with himself, not knowing her enough to particularly care. The thought stung, like the hot tea she just spilt on her thigh.

"—you don't seem like the sort who'd mind," he explained, sitting down at the bench. He kicked a bottle out from near the pedals; it spun out, greenglint, haha, spin the bottle—He played around a bit, mostly Schumann, whimsical airs from The Book of the Young, toy soldier marches, petite picnics, such childish things.

She watched from the bed: she didn't listen, ignoring such frivolities, remembering Vocalise and the Stradivarius; but she watched the pale fingers as they stroked across the keys. He was more intimate with the piano then her, she saw, and she had the sudden temptation to sit next to him and play some of the weak chords Artemis had taught her on one of his little whims—

"This isn't real," she whispered, and said it again, louder, not to herself but to the piano man, and he heard the second time and knew it to be true: he knew what he played were only games, and he changed tunes to more Schumann, Phantasie in C minor, passing through the rippling chords like a man through the rain as it thundered and lightninged and he didn't mind at all. He knew the theme of the music, the fall, Garden of Eden in his own backyard, fall from innocence his own paradise lost.

She followed the flow for a while, letting herself fall with the music but you can never fall all the way with music, you can come close to the apple but you can't taste it, no, only see and sin—that's the way with real music, you follow the melody and fall downwards until the rope snaps taut and your heart is bruised and aching but you stop, and your ascent is quick, bungee jumping, and they'll all ask afterwards how it was and you'll smile and say it's not to your taste but you lie because you know you love the fall—

He stopped, she stopped. She thought she would die. He looked at her and she looked back, and he smiled a bit and asked if she liked it. She nodded: anthem of her life, sell an album make a million and she would still be falling with the music, and this time the rope wouldn't snap taut but snap in twain. "You didn't play that way at the bar."

"I don't play this way for anyone but myself," he replied. He got up from the bench and went to the kitchen, grabbing a beer and drinking deep. "Anyone who's at a bar at three in the morning is there to be drunk. I don't want people getting any more drunk they already are due to my playing. He took another drink and smiled. "Point in case. Besides: you saw what happened when I played Für Elise. I was so drunk I was myself for a few minutes there. People do strange things when they hear the good stuff, let alone when they're drunk. People are themselves then, they react as human beings…"

She nodded a bit and reached for her own blouse, draped across the headboard, pale pink the flush on his cheeks. "Who taught you?"—as if she'd know a name.

He gave a little laugh. "Myself. Never cared for the old lady teachers; they all stunk of grandchildren. I always hated children, they never behaved like children at all, always pretending they were adults."

She frowned, but he couldn't see it: her head was bent as she did up the buttons, fingers thick with the hangover. He watched her; ivory into rose and out again. Was she a child to him, with her small body and naïve speech?—she couldn't tell. "I heard someone play like you once."

He leaned against the wall; his skin was pale, so pale it could have been death, all up his concave belly and his thin back. "If you're looking for someone you have an entire red light district to go through, no place for a lady like you." He scrutinized her with those pale eyes; she blushed. "Or perhaps that's it exactly."

"He has blue eyes."

"So does most of France. The Germans never did hate us as much as they should have, damn Aryans."

"—you'd know if you saw them, they're blue, real blue—"

He stopped and took a drink, as thoughtful as cheap beer can be. "I think I know. One of those rich boys with more money than brains—but no, this one had brains, he had it all, I don't know why he bothered—"

Last button: she did it carefully, then looked at the floor, trying to find some will within herself to leave it all and let be a final time—but she never was the sort to stop, like a rolling stone, just another unknown, trying to find reason when, in fact, there was nothing but circuitous paths to follow, round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows— "When?"

"—never," he said, and gave another little laugh and he drew at the beer and then said without the smile and the bottle thrown under the piano: "A while ago. I don't remember; he comes and goes. I never know whether I'm drunk or not."

"Did he come with a—friend?"

He nodded, sitting down at the bench, back towards the piano. "French girl. No, no ménage à trois, thank you. I was raised a Catholic; I don't say the rosaries, but some things stay on, you know?"

"I see."

He stretched out his legs and crossed his arms across his bare chest and she could sense the irritation growing in him, fast and bright like an allergy to righteousness. "What were you? Catholic girl, Protestant—no one sleeps with a pianist who's pure. You've already fallen from whatever divine heights you still fancy yourself on. Are you married? You don't have a ring, but I've known them where they put it in the purse for things like this, and put it back on right before they leave so I can see and they tell their husbands they were out late with the girls—I've seen a lot. Don't tell me you're perfect or that you're above me, since you're not—you listened to me play, and if you listened to him you'd be falling too—I've seen a lot, I've certainly seen you. Some people hear something and they're never the same again and they'll search for it their entire lives because that's all they have."

Her eyes strayed to the piano. Artemis had performed in France, before, when he was only the blue-eyed boy, he had played Schumann in Paris—"What instrument did he play?"

He looked confused. "The piano, of course."

All segment before this are now updated. Natasha has done up to segment three, and I've gone back and done some polishing. Hope it looks all shiny now. :)