a transmission; seven thatcher.

[secondhand_stars]

<center>The automatist's undoing.
The whole world starts unscrewing
As time collapses and space warps.
You see decay and ruin.
I tell you, "No, no, no, no.
You make such an exquisite corpse."

I've got it all sewn up.
A hardened razor-cut.
Scar map across my body,
And you can trace the lines
Through Misery's design
That map across my body.

A collage, all sewn up.
A montage, all sewn up.

--Exquisite Corpse, Stephen Trask</center>


<center></center>

Ten years ago, they created an international tidal wave of media frenzy. Against the flashing lights of paparazzi cameras and immortalized in magazine interviews, their relational undoing was captured in all its violent glory. There were the classic dinner brawls where expensive crystal tumblers full of brandy were lobbed at sculptor. She, all frail and swathed in red, was thrown into tourist fountains as a hopeful Ophelia (but never quite drowned.) Yet, despite all their destructive inclinations, they were in love and fearlessly rushing to the future. That is, until a third party stepped in and turned the tables. In a moment, everything vanished. Battlelines were erased and bloodlines redrawn.

Today, he lived quietly amongst the plush, leaf-lined canals of the Jordaan district in the strange heart of Amsterdam. In a maze of narrow cobbled streets and blocks crammed with tiny shops full of immaculate vintage and blue smoke, he had finally escaped all the hype and scandal of his youth. What had been lost personally was now regained in his experimental workshop-of-sorts, the gallery de Stijl. There, a constant and controlled game of destruction and rebirth was free to cycle through as installation pieces were torn down and pasted up again.

More myth than man, he played the tragic hero beautifully. Anxious and moon-mad, he was a modern-day Hamlet by cityscape. Chasing ghosts, both paternal and dripping in red silk, down alleyways, broken glass crunched beneath his heels and made new constellations against pavement. Older, but perhaps not necessarily wiser. The chapters continued to unfold in a language he had yet to fully master. Against the grain of evolution, he remained the same as he ever was in so many ways: obsessive, compulsive, waiting at a door that would never darken, grotesque hands still battered, veins that would not heal, heart that would not mend.

Of course, it must be said that while he was not, everything else was always subject to change and revisions in accordance to a master plan he had yet to piece together.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ June 28, 2005 01:53 AM: Message edited by: perestroika ]</font>

[secondhand_stars]

His circadian rhythm had been completely obliterated. Morning, night, or afternoon -- These terms had neither meaning nor value to the sleep-walker. The dream-king had been thrust from his throne and locked out of his kingdom. It was three-fourteen in the morning when he returned to his home set in the heart of the red-brick covered meat-packing district. Home was a loose term, just as the industrial sector was to residency. Nonetheless, it was his own, sort-of, and secure behind it's facade. After climbing up the narrow staircase that groaned metal-against-metal beneath the rush of his feet, he unlocked the set of locks upon metal door and pushed into the darkness.

Finding light-switches, he followed a jagged, connect-the-dots path through the spartan flat until everything was illuminated in the garish light of bare bulb fixtures. Coming full circle at the kitchen area, pockets were unloaded upon formica: the mix-and-match set of keys, loose change, and crumpled pieces of paper with their edges torn. He set the stage for sleep, as if hoping to successfully trick body into it as water was set to boil and fingers worked away the buttons of his shirt. A sense of uncertainty hung in the air, as if perhaps, perhaps he would collapse with the exhaustion that ate away at bones.

He confronted the truth in the mirror though as dress shirt slipped off shoulders and was cast off upon the top of the short dresser. His body was riddled with a million scars, but there were two that he couldn't shake. There were two, still an angry red and shaped like free-form stars, that he would never get used to. He had sacrificed his hands for his art, leaving them gnarled and licked with pale stripes. These set upon his torso were entirely different. They were almost, accidental. Frowning, he leaned in and carefully placed the pad of his thumbs into either wound's subtle depression: at heart and side. It was the briefest of moments, the skin beneath thumbs thrumming with pulse for mere seconds. Seven grew weary of replaying the past events over and over in his head. Instead of succumbing to the pressure of memory, he quickly pulled on a t-shirt worn thin from cycle after cycle of the wash. Cotton was as good as skin and even moreso unblemished.

[secondhand_stars]

Morning.

The sunlight that hit his skin was uncomfortably warm in combination with the layers of sheet and blankets that weighed him to the mattress. While eyes remained closed still and mind struggled to hold to the vague dreams that always burned away like fog, he contemplated this phenomena. He knew all too well that when he looked out the window, he would only see branches still bare with winter and litter dancing across pavement from the icy wind that lifted off the winding canals.

He hated the cold. It invaded his bones and made old battle-wounds throb. When did he become an old man, he questioned as fingers rubbed into the sockets of his eyes. When did the world become so unfamiliar, was what always followed. He couldn't escape the questions -- Anyone's, but most of all, his own.

Seven had stopped assuming he'd always be in the last place he remembered. When eyes finally did open, those black marbles set so deep into olive skin, he saw the familiar comforts of... Home? No. He had ceased to have a home years ago. "Amsterdam." He murmured into the plaster box.

The Amsterdam house was composed of three narrow floors, or four if you counted that little triangular attic. It was a charming little residence with it's brown brick facade and blue door. The door had once been red. Everything had once been red. Now, he surrounded himself with the calming hues of yellow and blue. Red, he learned, was a color much too bold for him. The house had no backyard, but it's front was full of promise of summer bulbs and herbs. Now, only a few scraggly survivors remained in the dark earth.

For eleven years, Seven had owned this property. He had bought it off the earnings of his first, successful gallery showing. It was set in the heart of the Jordaan district with all its quirky shops and canal-works.

Just like he, it had survived.

With a hiss of breath, Seven slowly lifted from sheets and twisted to settle feet upon cold floorboards. This was the hardest part of the day: getting out of bed. He sat there, a silent statue against the hum of an already bright-eyed district, at the edge of his bed with hands tangled in his hair until everything stopped spinning.

[secondhand_stars]

Afternoon.

It began like a stippled painting, it was only after one stepped back from the seemingly random swarm of tiny colored dots that he saw the entire portrait. No, that was wrong. For most, they first saw that serene, if not pastoral, scene before they ever noticed that it was composed from separate pinpricks of color.

Seven Thatcher was not most.

An early spring had forced out the last, stubborn clutches of what had been an incredibly bitter winter. Fed by the decay, the grass beneath him seemed to shine with an otherworldly intensity. His hands were rough from his trade and covered in a mysterious tear-and line-shaped array of old scar tissue. In joints and wrists, premature arthritis always threatened when it did not vibrate and throb painfully with fever. Though battled-scarred and aged, palms ran across the green and skin reacted as if it belonged to a child.

With elbows digging into earth and back curved, he lounged in a fashion similar to one of the three bronzes that the city commissioned for the public park. Leather bound sketchbook and pencil wrap had been left propped up against the tops of his legs and atop hip. Feet, as always, were firmly planted in the ground while head would never seem to make the same sort of contact -- metaphorically speaking.

He saw there then. Or rather that first smear of color, as if some cosmic painter had smeared a vibrant shade of red against this palette. She wore a violently red throw around her waist like a skirt. Against white legs, the tasseled ends of it swung and batted at skin. Her toenails were painted the same color, too. He could make out the faintest hint of color upon the tips of feet. She dressed like summertime. A firecracker of color and swinging, dancing bare limbs. Even her feet were uncovered and left to the chill that still held fast to soil. Burnt umber with brown no. 13 mixed in, he thought as one of her hands collected hair into one fist. Something in her manner or recklessness sent Seven to gasp and eyelids to shutter quickly over black eyes.

He was possessed now. Some madman demon had invaded him to the very marrow of his bones. Straightening upright, hands flipped to a fresh sheet of sketch-paper and found a sharp graphite to work with. He drew her. No, he drew Her. Obsession was a funny, never-ending thing that had wormed into his brain and now wrapped spine rigid. Page after page was filled now of her in freeze-frame: she, laughing at the children that ripped across lawn so quickly that he could only sketch out shadowy, unformed spirits; she, wandering after the ducks that paddled upon orange plastic feet at the edge of the pond; she, as sweater was pulled over the tank-top and wriggling feet into canvas sneakers; she, leaving.

Scrambling up, he followed after with sketchbook still held fast in the crook of his arm. With only that veil of hair and red, tablecloth skirt as his guide, he wandered behind her at a safe distance.

As she wove through the narrow, quaintly paved streets of the Jordaan, he easily became her shadow with fingers working furiously to keep up with her every gesture. She wasn't Her, but she was close enough. While Her beauty had been pure woman and steady, his subject's faded in and out of view. Her nose tipped up slightly at the end, much like the pale chin below it. It gave her a whimsical, girlish look, he decided as pencil captured both.

He lost her in the flower market between the high, wooden shelves that brimmed over with thick-stemed, towering blossoms. Stopping in both work and movement, the artist turned in a semicircle and attempted to pick her out again from the crowd of faces.

However, he did not have to find her for it was she that had discovered him first. Clearing her throat gently, fingertips tapped warily upon the top of his shoulder. Seven jumped, gasping again though from shock rather than pure enchantment. Spinning back around, he nearly collided into her. Then stepping back laughingly, the woman shook her head at him, "You do know what you're doing can be considered stalking?" She was a tourist, he decided, or expatriate. Either way, her accent sent him to briefly blink out in a stuttering fashion. It was a blend of... Something achingly Eastern European and the unknown.

Seven fell mute, protectively shifting his sketchbook to obscure the half-finished scene from her. Then, jaws working and a hand rolling through his hair, he nodded. "Yes." He began, slightly hoarse from marble dust and surprise. "I do."

She laughed again, a hand falling to the knot of material at her hip. It unnerved him slightly to see her ease in this situation. Most people, he assumed now that reason had forced out whim and art, would have felt somehow, violated. "So, my stalker, let us see it."

"See?"

Her hand turned from hip to stretch out at him. Palm-up, fingers curled in to the skin and back out in an impatient twitch. "The drawings."

"Oh." Head shook, as if refusing, though the cracked leather notebook was being placed in that palm. He watched with the fright of a new artist now: eyes wide and fingers rushing to cradle and scratch cheek. He fidgeted as she critically flipped through the pages.

In one, violent ripping noise, the pages were separated from spine. Her movements were efficient as she stuffed the sketch paper beneath an arm and handed the portfolio back. A sheet remained separate from the series left atop leather. "Sign it."

"Why?" He rasped. It was as if she had torn away his skin rather than paper. Shifting again, a pen was pulled from back pocket. In neat, slanted script he wrote the only name he knew: Seven Thatcher.

"Because my friends would never believe that I had Seven Thatcher stalking me this afternoon, of course." The woman grinned proudly now, her chin tipping high enough that he could see the entire stretch of her neck from the underside of chin to collarbones that dipped into the white knit of sweater. The series now complete, she carefully placed the slip of paper beneath her arm as not to smudge the ink. Twisting away from him, she began down the narrow, flower-lined street again.

"Wait!" He called after. "How do you know who I am?"

She stopped, head tipping to blink curiously at him from over a shoulder. "I'm an art student at the university. I studied you in Elements of Design and my sculpture class."

Unable to respond, Seven watched her as she tossed him another crooked grin and shrug. Then, as she wandered back into the maze of bodies like some sea mythical creature to ocean.

[secondhand_stars]

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"

-- <u>The Great Gatsby,</u> F. Scott Fitzgerald


Next to him was Anne Sexton in a pink plaid suit and matching pillbox hat. With side-long gaze glittering, she appraised him. Cigarette lines formed carefully around her mouth. Self-consciously, she touched them with gloved fingertips. He spoke, but all that spilled from his mouth was metal-against-metal. In a tone garish as death she laughed madly. He watched the light catch at the tip of her upturned chin as it faded to the suble shadow-detail against swan neck. In an awkward, childish motion, he leaned to kiss the vein that pulsated beneath lily-white. As he felt the hollowness that rang in her grey heart, ashes filled his mouth. Eyes fell slow in their blink and his perception shifted to the present.

Alone in the roaring car that ran through the subway, elbows fell to his knees and he reverently bowed into the worn lines of his palms.

just because you feel it / doesn't mean it's there - there, there

[secondhand_stars]

She fluttered around the house like a bird caught in the rafters. Trailed by soft clatterings and the crackle of paper envelopes, Isabel invaded his space and privacy without so much as a blink of her pale, feline eyes. In the past month, her typically frail frame had blossomed with impending motherhood. Against the same formal pencil skirts and blouses she wore, her stomach pressed out against the pinstripe and starched cotton. Pulling open the refrigerator, a gasp fluttered past pale lips. The muted tapping of cardboard bases and glass against counters followed this sound.

?What are you doing?? Seven finally asked, glancing up from the scraps of paper that littered a round wooden table. ?Better yet, how did you get into my house? Did Natalie give you a key??

?This,? She stopped to lift up a carton of milk. ?Is expired.?

?It is? Oh. I thought it tasted funny.?

Paling a shade, she swayed into the counter. Leaning lazily upon it, a hand rolled over the curve of her belly. ?You?re absolutely disgusting.?

?I am.? Concentrating again on his latest work-in-progress, he began pushing the tiny tissue shreds together with the eraser stub of a pencil and paintbrush dipped in glue. Either wand-like instrument was gripped awkwardly in his stiffened hands. The weather had grown progressively colder and with it, his joints and tendons more sensitive. Wincing against the bite of pain, the number artist continued to piece together the mosaic design.

From across the room, she watched him with a fixed look that bordered on jealousy. While she had been denied her craft, he had continued to produce. Isabel sighed, giving a passing glance towards the refrigerator that was more or less empty. Later, she?d bring over groceries that he?d let rot and spoil away. ?I got a copy.?

?Of what??

?Your house-key.? Straightening upright, hands smoothed themselves off on one another. She had been blessed with her mother?s fine-boned and nimble hands; surgeon?s hands, they were. The sleeves of her Oxford were then slowly smoothed out of their cuffs and straightened. At wrists, a series of buttons were pushed into their holes. ?I?ll give it back, if you like.?

?No, no,? he hummed through teeth.

?Very well. I?ll keep it.?

?Do.?

Frowning, she breathed in a few deep, rattling breaths. Then, stepping forward into the living space, she paused in the middle of the room to again inhale greedily. Her pose was a curious thing: angled shoulders and tipped head. Her frown deepened and sent dark eyebrows to furrow. ?I smell smoke.?

?That would be because I smoke, Isabel.?

?It?s not good for your asthma.?

?Noted, Doctor.? The pencil lifted and jumped off the line of his eyebrow in a jaunty salute. Smirking quietly over, head gave a subtle shake before dipping to continue fusing tiny squares and trapezoids of paper together again. ?Funny how you know more about my health than I do.?

?It?s not good for the baby either.? A hand touched protectively to the swelling belt of her stomach.

Seven paused to blink once. Then, looking up, teeth caught upon the flat skin of his upper lip. Pulling mouth shut, a mad, nervous sort of cackle was caged in. Then, after a moment, ?I suppose you and your special frie??

?Tess,? she corrected.

??Tess,? he stressed the name for emphasis. ??Ought not smoke then.?
?We don?t.?

?I figured as much. You know, the whole doctor and phantasm thing.?

Isabel felt the slow adjustment of gauges: patience draining and ill temper rising. Smoothing a hand over the tight knit of her frown, she pressed the other?s palm to the small of her back. Pacing across the barren living room of the house that had once been finely furnished and polished, the scribe mentally criticized every shortcoming of the living room. It let too much light in during the day and not enough at dusk. The walls were thin and construction narrow ? as all buildings in Amsterdam tended to be.

?When are you due anyway??

?In the spring.?

?Do you know what you?re having??

The conversation was a stretch for the sculptor. It was obvious in his voice. Each question turned tenor tighter and thinner. Soon, he?d have to preface each sentence with an uncomfortable clearing of his throat. Already, she assumed, he was craving a cigarette ? if only to busy his hands and lungs simultaneously. Instead, those grotesque hands of his were left to send artistic instruments to poke and press roughly at the frail wings that he was slowly piecing together. Isabel smiled quietly then, her head bowing with a nod. Staring down at the gentle curve of her belly, fingers trailed over the line of buttons that marched over the bulge. ?We do.?

??And?? Seven gave a cough.

?It?s going to be a boy.?

The number artist squirmed uncomfortably. The rubber eraser end of the pencil was lifted to scratch at the skin just above the collar of his t-shirt. After a moment, a pained expression lifted up for her to delight in. Ignoring her triumphant glow, he offered his own weakened grin. ?Congratulations, Isabel.?

?Thank you.?

?Did you pick a name for him??

Isabel swayed a moment, in a moment of indecision. Weighing her options and the possible consequences of telling, her expression drained off into a lost look for a half beat. Staring out, as if the wall had turned into a moving picture screen, pale eyes narrowed. Then, after a moment, her slanted eyes tipped back to him. Smiling politely, head inclined to the rise of a shoulder. ?We haven?t really discussed names, but ? I?ve been gravitating towards the name Stellan.?

?Stellan!?

She nodded quietly.

?Natalie will love that.? Seven smirked quietly down to the makeshift wings. Poking a dark red square into place, he busied himself with his work rather than the darkening of the scribe?s expression. An innocent hum rattled from his chest briefly before it transformed into an itch in his chest. Coughing out into a palm, head shook away the painful crush that seized lungs.

Across the room, Isabel?s pace had circled back towards where purse had been abandoned upon the narrow table that ran across the back of the couch. The strap was roughly slung back upon a shoulder. ?Well,? she murmured. ?At least it?ll be one thing she loves.?

?She hasn?t warmed to the notion, yet??

?No, not at all.?

?Give her time.?

Even in her ripening state, she moved gracefully through the scene. With each step, the low heels of her dress shoes clicked efficiently forward. Glancing over her shoulder, fingers lifted to tuck back a glossy strand of her long hair. Black as the night, it ran like a sheet over shoulders and down back. It was in moments like these that she was wholly unlike her mother, but instead a hieroglyph upon some sandstone wall, all full-eyed and solemn. ?I?m afraid that time may not be something I can give her much of, Nico.?

?What do you mean??

Isabel sighed, hooking a hand around the knob of his front door. Eyes stared through the blue painted panel of the front door. ?Nothing. I don?t know what I meant by that really. I?m late though. He?s expecting me back at the hotel shortly.?

?Send him my regards,? Seven murmured.

?I will.?

??And Isabel??

?Yes??

?Stellan is a great name.?

She looked back to him briefly then, her expression softened by a vague smile. In that moment, the scribe was achingly familiar in a way that the number artist couldn?t place. She was young ? girlish even ? and healthy. Her response was lost within the sigh that he felt build like a static hum in chest and ears.

[secondhand_stars]

A hiccup in time and space: Amsterdam.

He walked the city in a disoriented haze. The afternoon sun high above his head turned shadow-angles sharp and lean. There was no vague between. Rather than fade out, shade was deeply divided from the slices of pavement and street that were colored in with stark light. Despite all this, he was seeing stars. They flickered in and out of vision like strobe lights. Fatigued and weary, he trudged with shuffling feet. His back was curved and shoulders turned in. Though his entire body seemed to be in quiet retreat of its surroundings, his head was still lifted towards the sun.

Seven squinted up through the dark lens of his sunglasses. His profile was as sharply separated from its background as the shadow from the sun. A razor-blade had cut him out. His nose pierced through the blurry haze of the fruit-vendor with its yellow-and-white striped awning. When he swallowed, the fist of his Adam's apple rolled lazily up and down.

For all its appearances, the world was still flirting with a chill that had not melted away as easily as Amsterdam's winter layer of frost. Instead, blustery gusts still lurked in the narrow alleyways. Ready to pounce, no one was save but those who still kept their collars up and scarves looped around winter-pale throat. Seven did neither. Instead, in a flash of absent-mindedness, he had escaped from the empty shell of his gallery without a jacket. Shivering in the thin knit of his long-sleeved thermal and a pair of paint-splattered corduroys that had grown thin upon the seat and knees, the heels of his sturdy boots stamped out the cold in each step. He sighed out a foggy breath to briefly warm mouth.

Voices swarmed around him, broken bits of radio transmission upon white-noise static. The rumble of a motorcycle as it passed with its rumbling engine and the subtle aftermath of plastic bags as they were ripped apart and filled with vendor's items dominated his hearing. He was on a search for inspiration. The smaller picture was what dark eyes were focused upon: the abstract shape of things against canvas shopping bags, the cut of apron strings against a matronly fruit seller's waist, etc..

De Stijl had been closed a week. It had been seven days since he had taken down the last of his latest installation piece and pasted wide stripes of brown wrapping paper over the wide plate-glass window fronts. On the door, a cryptic, but polite note had been pasted over the plaque that read the gallery's hours of operations. To be continued, it read in black type writer font against thick white card.

"Seven! Seven, over here!" A voice broke through. The thick Polish slant to an otherwise perfect English was unmistakable in a crowd full of chattering Dutch shopkeepers and customers.

He paused, eyes shifting over the clusters of people and carts to where Oleksander Marek in all his eternal adolescent glory undoubtedly loomed over the heads and shoulders of all others. The painter was a gangly creature, full of awkward angles and good-natured spark. He lacked a certain amount of requisite torture. Instead, grinning he was clownish with his beak nose and flop of black hair. At his side, a woman with dark glasses negotiated the purchase of a bundle of dried herbs. Meticulous with her bowed head and pale hands, she sorted through the bunch of reedy limbs and tested their integrity.

Hands dove into pockets to straighten out arms and keep shoulders from lifting to his ears. He wasn't shy so much as he was wary. Wandering over to the couple with slow, decisive steps, Seven offered an awkward grin. "Olek, hello."

"Isabel, I've someone for you to meet." Olek beamed, nudging at the woman with a sharp elbow. He glanced between the two excitedly. "Isabel, this is Seven Thatcher. Seven, Isabel Ash."

A certain twist of fate and undoing of memory had allowed Seven to sink back into his amnesia. The woman who stood before him was not a secret sister and sometimes antagonist, but instead a stranger. The fall of her dark hair was hidden behind the candy swirls of a Pucci printed scarf save for an inky lick of curling bang that fell carelessly over an equally dark brow. At the introduction, she removed her sunglasses to reveal a pale gray set of knowing eyes. While he had been forced to forget, the scribe had the benefit of knowledge. One hand folded over the immense curve of her stomach as the other lifted out. "Isabel Ash. Pleasure to meet you, Mister Thatcher."

"Seven," he murmured in grave correction. Awkwardly, one of his battered hands lifted to manipulate stiff joints and crooked fingers around the delicate shape of her own. He shook her hand politely before retreating back. "Nice to meet you as well."

"Olek has told me so much about you."

"Has he?" Blinking once, eyes flickered between the couple. They were oddly matched. Where Olek was a straight line that ran from floor to heavens, Isabel was small but curved. In the end-stage of pregnancy, her body had metamorphosed into the shape of a primitive fertility goddess with her heavy breasts and wide hips.

"You own de Stijl."

"Oh, right. I do. Yes, my gallery. Have you been?"

"She just arrived from London," Olek supplied.

"In your condition?"

Isabel laughed, fingers streaming down the curve of her belly at its mention. "I only look... I'm not terribly far along, just -- Immense. It's rather unfortunate, no?"

"I'd imagine so."

"Seven, you must have dinner with us soon! This week." Olek clarified with a jab of his index finger against the square stretch of his palm. Beneath the half moon of his fingernail, a smudge of pale cornflower blue was buried. It was a far cry from his violent reds and moody blacks. It was a nursery color. Seven lifted a dark brow over the black plastic edge of his sunglasses, but said nothing to it. "Tell me you'll stop by the flat and eat with us."

"Of course. Sure."

"Lief," Isabel drawled with a slow lift of her chin. Looking up at her companion, glasses were already unfolding from their collapsed position and settling upon the bridge of her tipped nose. "We've an appointment at four." An index finger tapped lightly at the glass-face of the watch at her wrist.

"Yes? Oh. Yes, we do! Dinner on Thursday, Seven?"

"Dinner on Thursday," he confirmed with a nod of his head.

"Great! Brilliant." A hand lifted to gesture his departure as opposite arm was tugged insistently at the elbow by the pale one of Isabel. Dragged backwards, he smiled a beat towards the number artist before turning around to loop a protective arm around the petite woman. They descended quickly into their own conversation with her head bowed towards him and his dipped low to catch the spill of her words.

As he watched them separate and shift back into the crowd, Seven was left with a strange feeling in his chest. For a moment in time, he was horribly homesick for something long ago forgotten and buried away. It wasn't the love and companionship of a volatile woman that he fixated on once more, but instead something earlier. He was unable to identify the feeling, but instead merely wallow in it. After a moment however, it passed and shoulders lightened. Turning back onto his previous path, the number artist continued on.


The universe is shaped exactly like the earth; if you go
straight long enough you'll end up where you were
- Modest Mouse.

[secondhand_stars]

This was the face that he wanted to forever capture on something more reliable than the crumbling wonderland of his fractured memory. Seven watched her with intense interest as she curled up her top lip and bared a row of teeth that would have been feral if each had not been perfect and proportionate first. Her eyes zeroed in with an intensity that had sent Olek shuffling off to the kitchen to heat another bottle for the baby. Yet, he was unfazed by the dark stormy look. Instead, matching eyes gave an oblivious blink before he turned chin down. Focusing instead on the newborn tucked into the angle of his arm, a calloused finger scratched down the surface of his cheek. He could scarce feel the fine texture, but memory lifted up something silken and powdery.


"I despise you," she hissed after a silent moment. Her words were sibilant, like an offended snake's as they wrapped through the air and grabbed up handfuls for a death squeeze. The room suddenly, seemed much too small for the three. In his arms, the newborn angled shoulders and began to squawk out quiet animal noises. A warning call.

Isabel leaned in, her frail frame -- made even more reedy and fragile by the trauma of childbirth -- cutting dark shadow over the table between them. Staring, her look never wavered but instead, waited for a buckling that would never occur. Already she knew that he had his famous yellow house sold and the gallery that had been his life under contract with a dealer. Seven never spoke until it was too late. Even now, the artist was silent and unaffected. "How could you --" Another shriek of sound, more lively than the first, emitted from the parted miniature of Stellan's mouth.

At this, Olek rushed in with a cloth diaper thrown over his sharp-boned shoulder and a plastic bottle in hand. Playing proud father to the mystery child, he bowed in with a flash of his eyes and lifted the baby from Seven's arms. "It's time for his feeding. More szarlotka while I'm up?"

Dark eyes dropped to the remnants of dessert still left upon the small circular plate before him. Bits of apple and cake left in a crumbled smear of sauce made for a curious composition in and of itself. Again, he wished for a camera.

"No," Isabel interjected furiously as a hand lifted up. Her index finger stabbed in the air before aiming towards him. "No, no szarlotka for him. He doesn't deserve any."

"Isabel," Olek murmured benignly.

Rather than defend himself, the number artist sat slumped as he felt the electric crackle of her temper mount into something terrifically violent. It was familiar. It brightened and enlivened him. He felt human in the face of fury. "He's leaving Amsterdam. Did you know that? He's leaving everything he's built up and a city that adores him! You said you'd think about doing a guest lecture at the university. And New York in the Fall. What about that show?"

"I changed my mind."

"He's a grown man, Isabel."

"Did you know? Oh my god, Olek! You knew!" Inky black eyes wheeled up to where the gawky man stood. It was his turn to burn beneath her concentrated stare. Where Seven was immune, the Pole only withered. Turning into something much smaller than his lanky six feet, four inches, he cowered. To Stellan, bits of affection and nonsense were rattled off in a language that neither Seven nor Isabel understood. "How could you not tell me?" She wailed.

"I thought he was speaking hypothetically?"

"That's how he always talks."

"In theory, I'm still here --" He piped in with a crooked grin. She glared and easily melted off the superficial layer of his expression. Left solemn-eyed, he slouched in his chair like a scolded schoolboy and pressed joined hands between his knees. "I've always wanted to go to Greece."

"Seven, seriously now -- How are you going to live there? I mean, really. There's a market down the street from your house, but I still bring you groceries in. Are you really going to take a boat to the next island to get food?"

"I'll buy in bulk."

"That's a lot of peanut butter."

"Hey," he huffed out in a soft exclamation. Dark eyebrows furrowed towards Isabel, as if she had somehow wounded him at the mention of the stock-staple that filled his cabinet. "I like peanut butter."

"Artists have survived on worse," Olek crooned down to the baby.

"Stop defending him," she whined shallowly. "Have you even found a buyer for your house, Seven?"

He didn't immediately answer. Instead, a small inconsistency in the plaster upon the wall behind her became fascinating. It was, by his estimates, exactly two inches above the stark black-and-white photograph that had been taken of Isabel two days prior to going into labor. A daring nude, at that, yet there was nothing sexual to the backward splay of her arms or that mysterious shadow that crept up from where crooked legs met in. Instead, she was all-maternal with her sway back and moon-belly. The flop of dark hair glossing her forehead wasn't alluring, but a well-placed note of exhaustion.

"Actually," he began slowly. Eyes trailed away from that notch in the wall to Olek, to Isabel, and then, hesitantly, back to Olek. The look spoke volumes. Before he could confirm, the woman had already dragged in a low, rippling gasp.

"No!" She crowed lowly.

"Isabel --"

"I gave him a wonderful deal," Seven murmured benignly.

"I bet you did!" She snapped as dark eyes narrowed in on Olek. "You should have refused."

"And let someone else snatch up the house? A stranger?"

It was a flawless point. She quickly found herself at a dead-end and gaping incredulously between the pair of men. Slumping forward, elbows crashed down upon the table top and head burrowed into palms. Of course, they couldn't let some impersonal stranger raze over the dust and memories of the faded monument that was the artist's house. It would be a tragedy -- even one more profound than his leaving for a remote Grecian isle. "Why?" She finally asked, in a mournful tone.

He lacked an exact answer for her.

[secondhand_stars]

The sea churned with a ferocity that he couldn't recall ever seeing before. Currents were shattered into a million razor-shards filled in with the shadowy dip of undertow. Upon the white sand beach, waves cracked down unmercifully before dragging back in. He couldn't tell sky from sea in the horizon save for where black rocks lifted up around the edge of the cove.

Upon the tin roof that extended from the sandstone of his house, rain clattered and formed a natural symphony. Beneath it, he stood in front of his easel. Seven painted frantically in all the shades of the angry sea. Greens and blacks formed an ominous sky streaked in patchy golds and blues, but the sky wasn't reserved for the air. Instead, it flooded over. It began arms and eyes. The result was some angry all-consuming mother nature with her hair curling like sea-foam over the crackled paper and aluminum rubbish of an abandoned picnic.

Behind him, the sound of a telephone ringing floated from the cave of his bare-bones home. The insistent chirp dragged him backwards, heels working pockets into sand before trailing in the granules back onto an already sandy floor. He moved around a table littered with the scatter of dismantled alarm clocks, radios, and toaster ovens and past the counter of his kitchenette stacked high with yellowed magazines and a vat of lacquer. The only sign of domesticity was the peanut butter jar amongst the mess with its lid left atop an old French Vogue and a butter knife stabbed into the melted contents.

The phone was also surrounded by the miscellany. Pushing back a red metal toolbox, he made room to sit on the counter as free hand grasped the plastic neck of the telephone. "Hello?"

"Seven Thatcher."

"This is his residence."

"May I speak to him?"

"You are," Seven announced with a squint-eyed grin to his reflection in a mirror. At its center, the glass had created a pocket. The result was a carnival image. He was a central blur that faded out to something eternally distorted and distended at left shoulder.

"Wonderful! This is Desdemona Christos from th--"

"Desdemona! Like from the play..."

"Pardon?"

"From Othello," he supplied with a wave of one brittle hand. The rain had made arthritic joints flare. Though hands throbbed and grew numb in turns, he continued to work. Agony made for better art, he had long ago decided.

"Oh, right. Yes. My great-grandmother actually." Desdemona gave a breathy laugh. He imagined the woman now, at her office, perched on the edge of her desk with legs folded primly to the side. She wore high heels the color of crayons. Her lipstick, fire engine red, matched. He envisioned the way that her fingers tangled in the coil of the phone cord the most. There, his imagination stayed for the slow turning of her wrist and snap of black plastic wrap against olive skin. "-- Hello? Mr Thatcher, are you still there? It's awfully noisy."

"I have a tin roof," he explained. "But yes, you were saying?"

"The school just wanted me to welcome you to the island. Your contribution to the arts has been immense. I'm particularly fond of the Modern exhibit you had in the early nineties..."

"That was a very long time ago."

"Yes, but well... Just the same. I -- and countless other members of our facility -- are big fans. It'll be a pleasure to work alongside you. Have you received our informational packets containing the revised schedule for the Fall and our planning dates?"

"I'm sure it's around here somewhere."

"Wonderful! If there is anything else we can get you..."

"Do you know where I can get some peanut butter? I'm running low..."

Laughter pitchy and bright filtered through again. Meeting a lack of punchline, a lengthy silence soon rushed in and passed between them before Desdemona realized that what had initially been perceived as a joke was actual truth. "Try the supermarket."

"Wonderful idea. Well, it was very nice talking to you Ms. Christos. We'll keep in touch."

"Yes, well.. Good-bye Mr. Thatcher."

[secondhand_stars]

Lucy Hart -

Ms. Rachel Harris of New York, NY gave me your Village Voice featurette. She's a fellow colleague and a media design instructor here at the school where I will be teaching sculpture and installation. I suppose she thought that it would interest me because you cited me as an influence.

Was that a real train that you were sitting in, in the picture? I'm very interested in public transportation at the moment. It's all fascinating to me: a miniverse full of satellites and planets and all. Once a blind woman read my palm in the London tube. Her eyes were completely white. When I looked in them, I saw myself but it was funny like, it was the first time I had ever seen myself before. The island officials have refused my request to have a bus shipped over twice.

Do you like industrial metals?

- Seven Thatcher