Your road trip ended on a sidewalk.
An avenue rising toward a speculative mansion. A tower slipping out of frame. A city trading heritage for a shoebox skyline.
She drove off. I was left behind — a wayside beacon in the scale of Brussels.
Inside the derelict hush, a phantom surgeon turned his pages. On a stucco wall, a mirage flickered.
Aetheria does not announce herself. She glows where speculation fractures certainty.
And sometimes, the path that feels like abandonment is the one that alters everything.
YD6-112—1994-Modulating and Speculating paths in the shadow of Aetheria--an echography frenzy
Against the hush of the western skies, the rear grand portal skims across the backyard’s saddled roofs, along the fenestrated brick facades cut with dark crags and nooks.
When Victoria's shadow slices across the skylight, hold to the shady corner. Hands roll out cup and saucer; a short pour from the jug, a slip back to align with the percolator. In the briefest pause, she sips.
Her face exalts—clear as water—lingering in thought through the grand portal’s small panes. At my end, cornered in the lounge, I’m caught behind the crystal mosaic of the V-stance folding doors.
She dances herself free from the culinary enclave corner, caught by the time gobbling monster holding her back. She squeezes out the passageway, drops back the telescopic blades of the kitchen bar counter. Turns the corner, stretching at arm’s length to pose the cup and saucer on the edge of the table, and uncoils with a strange gaze for the exit door.
In her approach, I’m on hold, in the hush for that unpredictable outburst.
“My Little One! Hé, attends!—[hey, wait!]”
I spring to my feet, swirl around the slatted garden chair; a hand lags as I slap shut the screen of my Texas Instruments. A glance at my wristwatch—‘I'll be half an hour early!’—and I brush a shoulder against the V-doors’ stand.
Her gaze avoids locking eyes; her mind sidesteps the knowledge of her blue Fiat Panda waiting in the street, not an option among a train of cars in the park cast wooded hedgerow. As she sidesteps and my plan slips into oblivion, I swear in the hush, catching up, hailing, “Drop me off at Winy!”
In her swag, true to the pull of the entrance door, to its opening whisper, within that breath her urgent words, thin to a lingering—“It’s your baby, after all.” She steps onto the ±0 white-marble landing, veers toward the light in the crystal mosaic, and vanishes into the grand portal’s hollow.
In the wake of Victoria’s flitting descent down the split-level, I pull the apartment door shut behind me - whoosh… clunk - the Art Deco frames sealing the hush before the doorstep releases the avenue: cast-shaded hedgerow thickets, peering from the depth the last twigs of winter’s brushwood.
Victoria’s step across the resonating coal-chute plate, turns a cunning gaze at me: ‘Are you coming?’
A pause, farcical, as I pull the door behind me - fizz... cluck - shut. She spearheads ahead, keys trailing, jingling her proper bunch, and takes her stance by the Audi’s passenger door. I sidestep at the taillight, off the curb, scoot through bumpers, slip into the lane with a hip-roll rounding the rear fender. I catch the driver’s door on its opening crack, meeting Victoria’s keys falling to her lap—among a trio of excited bangles - smack - as she shuts her door.
True to her rush, I tweak the ignition—glance over my shoulder, hand-spin the wheel—from stall along the curb, spooling into the lane, bending past the hedgerow of ashlar-fenestrated pre-WWI brick facade, the wall retrieving itself into looming, distant reflections. The asphalt carries us, bridging across a downstream of lawns beneath over-arching branches.
Where Helios’ glow reaches the inner canopies, curled leaves flash gold, sprinkling spring with mottled light.
Victoria withdraws into the corner of her seat. She seems to have traced her path—through my line of duty—leaving me with the quiet question: ‘Where does her mind head now?’
We emerge onto the flocculent avenue. Inside the hush of our ride, the glass bubble holds its breath; Victoria bottles her deepest secret. We’re drawn into a sweep of converging lanes, filtering sunlight through thin, leafy branches along the grassy median. The road rises beneath an overbearing canopy veil; light speckles the windshield, rebounds off neo-modern hedgerows, fenestrated face-brick façades sliding past in softened reflection.
In a trickle of traffic, we roll uphill to the crest, into reluctant reverence for the hilltop’s odious skyscraper—its staggered concrete decks scraping the sky, my mind dressing them down, willing it to crouch among the ring of surrounding communities.
At Albert Square, the intersection stutters—traffic tethered, then released at the toggle of changing tricolor lenses, a slipping chaos of stop-go packets bleeding through the crossing.
We drop wayside past an industrial rolled-up paint-warehouse—splashed trademarks flashing by—sidestepping the looming local Match supermarket, escalator hollows sinking underground toward the tram station—under construction.
Among idle drivers, before pulling off, we ride the traversing Waterloo Road on hold, skirting away from the opposing far quarter where tables sprawl beneath unfurled umbrellas, inviting patrons. Victoria’s hands rest in her lap, clasping trinkets amid a scatter of keys and bangles in the quiet. Her gaze oblivious to the brasserie’s extended verandah splashed with beer brands—a puff of smoke, a cocktail, a Porto—her eyes locked to the leading roadway, edging toward the emphatic crotch of the staggering, towering decks.
The light bathing the intersection bends away into a welcoming effervescent spring green. The barrel-vault raised high on stalky tree trunks, airing the parkway, relieving it of its debuting median parapet wall. Slipping instead; raising gantry, treading suspended cable runs, tethers pantograph from the median as a tram surfaces from underground, cleaving a way through the parkway—silver tracks stretching through dedicated grass.
Windows profile passengers’ bored expressions. Leapfrogging, a free ride, the tram distances itself through the median ahead until the halt platform. We flow in the wake of a virgin architectural rhythm, hedgerows of ashlar architraves returning amid face-brick facades. Narrow rays of side streets vanish into the community, outside her regard, as persistent foliage holds gables and eaves in passing, drawn along the artery’s far, closing blur.
The haze clears as we approach a sunlit bifurcation pushing into stop-and-go traffic. Released from the tram halt’s shadows, pedestrians cut freely across Square Vanderkindere, fanning toward storefronts and corner eateries; tricolor lenses toggle as drivers mischievously tease the loose end of the bottleneck.
We veer away from the right lane and cross the arid square through its appeasing chaos, threading past a few oncoming cars, meeting the bow of a townhouse shielded from sunlight as its corner entrance slipping by. We pass the dark flank of the corner retailer, its lintel tagged in a deep blue-backed enamel nameplate spelling, “Winston Churchill Avenue,” and the façade breaks open—commercial sideyard giving way as our path stretches ahead.
Our glass bubble spools us into the barrel-vaulted arcade, Victoria’s destination sealed in her mind. Mine lies straight ahead. The hedgegrown crenellations of fenestrated facades should read as a lesson—speculation stacked before me, an avenue’s soiled heritage masquerading as success—I drive on a lost cause, bound to meet the umpteenth off-plan buyer at 208 Avenue Winston Churchill, speculating on the mansion’s apartments.
The arcade’s foliage presses, in its hushed darkness, squeezed through the narrow breathing space. At the edges, branches glow and intrude, streaking a thin line across our path. The dark breaks—what‘s slipping behind, verse across a light beam swelling, releasing us briefly into sunlight, then folds us back under shadow again. We advance at the rhythm of time, counting the crossing streets, the cadence shifting through the Winston Churchill roundabout and tram terminus in the open. Leaving the circle, the median carries its silver threads onward in a dedicated, shadowed run through the grass.
This next approach is policed by tricolor lenses toggling in the shadow while others bleached out in the glare. From the darkness, I measure the barrel-vaulted span breaking across the traversing streets, opening the crossroads to sunlight. When lenses turn green to our favor, we coast through the bright crossing and edge toward the curb, halting behind a train of glittering parked cars.
I tweak the ignition key, to clasp my keyring, as I step out by the unlatching door. I spared her a glance as she urged a foot across the central console. Her legs entangle; I think—You'd be better off stepping out and circling to my seat’—but she scoots, stuck on the edge of the passenger’s bucket seat, her thighs tackle the gear lever’s knob.
Smack - I shut the door. An assailing glance snaps to the traffic lenses. In a stride to jaywalk across the lanes, I stall, my eyes trailing back to the driver’s window. I skim the street again, gauging a break short of the zebra crossing. Behind the glass, Victoria twists and wiggles, ending her gymnastics with a seat shift, hands latching, her torso drawn close to the steering wheel.
Our paths break at the corner of the street—Victoria’s Fiat Panda driving style, alternating a floored throttle with release. I catch my Audi kangaroo-leap into the lane, and to my dismay the tailgate storms down Avenue Winston Churchill, vanishes into the blur of the Bois de la Cambre, carried along Waterloo Road. It leaves me with a thought: ‘My Little One, you’re born under a lucky star.’
With my path in view across the avenue in its breadth, my feet lag behind, the Audi a reminder of the deserted lane. Before me, emphatic, two pairs of tram tracks traverse my way, their rails carrying light forward, skipping through the shadowed grassy median toward the wooded edge of Bois de la Cambre.
Mnemosyne answers the call: under my feet the milieu shifts, and my ghost transposes half down the block, to standstill—stealthed among the dark trees lining the youthful branching, barrel-vaulted lane. In dabs of late-morning light, a pair of harnessed horses draw closer from the shadows, along the shouldering hedgerow of fenestrated mansions.
The horses draw toward me, the driver in a black tuxedo and hat seated high in the center of the cart’s bench, sliding through a sun-dab where bent leaf-branches unzip the sky between canopies. I let my guard down, yet still test the reach of my phantom. One step back from the curb, I stand within the English-style driver's field of sight, half-concealed by the lineup of dark barks—my gaze fixed on the man’s eye.
Without gloss, an amniotic shield of light: a two-way membrane between our worlds. I stand in plain view of the driver, yet he spares me no glance. Bound to his period, he does not reach me—he slips past, while my present runs parallel, irreciprocal.
I’m invisible, stealthed by the wayside, watching the horse-drawn carriage shapes up—hood lowered—bearing a dignified personage in Edwardian dress: stern gaze, stone-faced, his slender figure set into the rear seat. He parades past, neither drawn to my wayside presence at the verge, nor offering an acknowledging glance.
Below the driver’s perch, the vacant seating—soft leather’s dull shine, and while in passing the footwell aligns exposing his feet through the gap of the tandem cartwheels, their spokes spinning a haze. Then, I’m called back to the driver, gathering the reins. He guides the horses into a wide arc, entering the driveway, toward the bluestone architraves. In the hush, the carriage halts, and before the horses the massive wrought-iron doors.
The obscure glass flirts with a blemish, a spot stretching into elongation. Beyond the horses’ pricking ears, through the crack of the middle stile, a groomer appears and pushes the heavy door leaf back on its hinges. He slips across the opening, catches the dormant leaf and hinges it back to latching flush to the wall flank. He stands by, collimated to the interior wall, as the driver flicks the reins. The horses enter the porte cochère, swallowed by the interior’s shadows, where I lose sight of the activity.
I find myself back, pacing across the zebra lines toward a green pedestrian lens, crossing the asphalt with a sturdy step; my eyesight skirts the corner terrain, chewed by economic logic, given over to the odious shoebox towering apartment windows.
I head for a residue of Greek pediment and white stone ashlar jambs—belonging to the 1911's mansion. Rounding the sidewalk’s plumb brick pillar, I walk up the driveway and pause by the wire-glass behind the wrought-iron scrolls to the door. I turn the key, set my right shoulder, and press. Before the weight on its hinges gathers momentum, I squeeze through the crack, sidestepping into the somber porte cochère.
Along the flank wall, square Corinthian columns rise, among them the phantoms gather around the horse-drawn carriage—the distinguished figure just descended. On the elongated marble treads before the glazed archway portal, he turns around and pauses. He issues instructions to the driver, straightens and heads onward vanishing into the shadows beyond the glass. In his wake, the groomer grabs the reins and leads the horses further on, their silhouette thinning as they pass the backyard’s daylight.
I’m left pacing the ceramic-tiled floor, ice spikes rising through my feet, past winters held derelict in the walls. As I circle, the chill carries the echo of a distant school bell, tolling children into chaos—the mansion draining the last rituals stalled in the air. A painful grab tightens the calves of my legs, and I keep pacing in circles to kill the cold. My clothes crisp and creep along my skin, pressing into my flesh.
The hands of my wristwatch lag mercilessly from one to the next five-minute notches. Then, to my relief, shadows gather behind the scrolls of the wrought iron door, shaping in the translucent scrim glass. An arm stretches toward the calling button. I step up, grab the lever, unlatch, and tug the heavy leaf open—facing a youngish woman, followed by an elderly man.
The woman, says. “Nous sommes…[—We are Mrs. and I’m Mr. Hack—we have a ten thirty appointment.]”
I step back, begged the couple, “Suivez-moi!—[Will you follow me?]”
Bang - the heavy glazed-steel shuts behind the couple. I lead the way, mounting the stretched thread, offering the potential buyers a sightline to the four-leaf grand arched portal, to the entrance hall, marble chill underfoot.
As their eyes roam the infiltrating light, warmth sketches the dark wood raising the elaborate staircase toward a cathedral stained-glass mural, its efflorescent, sylphic light descending through enwrapping balustrades. I skip ahead, climbing the self-sale pitch toward the upstairs apartments. Across the hallway, I lead them into the featured mirror, replicating the entrance’s four-leaf arch portal.
I sidestep to the far right of the mirror and crank the discrete door lever. The mirror swings back, opening onto a gloomy chevron parquet floor, haunted by emptiness, if not for a pair of narrow, tall windows casting soft shafts of daylight to the feet of phantoms on standby before an operating table.
The husband lags behind. The wife’s eyes meander, gauging the breadth of the walls and the height of the ceiling, drifting around the surgeon, recognizable in his eloquence—issuing instructions, inserting himself among an assistant readying utensils on a side table for a surgical intervention—an untimely mystery, drawing me into his path.
I sidestep into the woman’s path with my handouts, then fall in behind her reluctant man. The Hart couple unfold the A-3 sheets, their eyes questioning—‘What is this?’
My finger leaps, rubbing the color schema of the ground-floor apartment, but she steps onward, through the interleading doorway. Whether they notice—now dismantled to the backroom—a flash: the backyard portal asserts its character, cinder block masoned across against vandalism.
Around the corner, in the shadows, I meet the surgeon again—behind his desk—spectacled, studious crouched over an open book, reading through the rifled pages, wings spread. I’m drawn to the bookcase rising over his shoulders, replicated across his study in glazed doors shelved with stacked spines.
The surgeon dissolves in the shadows, before the undeterred woman. Her curiosity slips from the bare room, her gaze caught astray at the wall paneling's blind door, then leading on climbing past the stained-glass mural toward the upper floors.
The woman drains my mind as she roams the apartment floor. I wait for her signal to continue, lingering toward the rear window, hovering there. From the blind backyard corner the groomer emerges, walking the pair of horses toward the distant stables along the men’s local.
I turn away, meeting the woman at the door. She sidesteps from a peek to discover the adjacent flight of stairs. She further rises to the next floor, sparing glances through doorways. Climbs further to the mansard floor. Returns to her waiting man from the dust-blanketed maids’ dormitory rooms. In her passing toward the exit staircase, he blurts, “This wouldn’t suit us.”
The servant staircase worms shoulder tight down to the scullery glass door. The man and woman step out, baffled, turning away from the backyard light. They head toward the tunnel light. In a brief greeting by the door scrolls, the translucent pane clears onto their dark Volkswagen Golf, speaking loudly of people set against outreaching desires.
Bang - I turn back and lag in the surgeon’s hush, winter seeping up from the derelict’s basement, pacing up and down as impatience presses on, my brief expectation of Victoria picking me up thinning with each glance at my wristwatch, the next five-minute notch already slipping, until, in my search for warmth, I find myself edging outdoors—carried by the driveway tracks to the sidewalk gutter, where waiting resumes. I peer left, catching shadows and wild reflections sweeping across windshields, inoculating the drivers too as they approach along the alleyway.
Befuddled, I scan the traffic for the Audi’s grille, as a few cars pass without flickering its muzzle out of the Bois de la Cambre, dissolving instead into the mottle dabs of the alleyway. I step along the curb, a wayside beacon—gadget—impatient paces not letting my feet root down, checking each undulating mold for the bubbly Audi, still failing to surface in silver-gray among the passing trickle, the thought of walking home doesn’t cross my mind, as wishful glances bustle over my shoulder.
I weigh my options of drifting out of orbit as I anchor my gaze on every approaching car, still in disbelief that Victoria has forgotten me. Reluctant, I step down the curb at the corner, cross the street, and find myself stepping up again, stretching my orbit beyond being found, abandoning “Winy’s” street block behind.
I pace along the stretch of sidewalk ahead, my mind beginning to churn—‘Call a taxi!’—only to be reminded of the telephone booth at the South Station hotel, that evening I landed in the country, Mariette Somers’ number in mind for lodging.
The sidewalk extends my reluctant strides, drawing up a bitterness; then I doubt myself, a tram trundling past behind the thought, the question flickering—whether she can be blamed at all. It dissolves as the tram leapfrogging ahead—or back—to a platform along the grassed median tracks, its silver thread running light-stippled toward the scattered halts, and my own shortcomings—clueless at borrowing public transport.
Until the monotony is breached by the hedgerows of fenestrated apartment blocks, I lag in my strides, hopes dwindling as cars glide past. Sheepish, I steal hopeless glances at the mismatched crenelated wall shining beyond the shaded arcade, a remnant that withstood the gutting of the classic mansions, while the modernized entrances now bear brass plaques, redesignating them as corporate headquarters.
The lure of the brasserie’s bright red awnings answers my skepticism—whether Victoria would ever find me—with her lucky flair. ‘Victoria wouldn't miss a drink.’
Helios’ efflorescent light plays away from the awnings, the corner facade opening its wing deep into the sidestreet, Aetheria’s seizes the mirage spreading across the stucco wall, flickering and flushing out a blue enameled nameplate—‘Edith Cavell Street.’
It punctures the mind. Confusing, perhaps, but not to me: it pulls New York close, draws Yael nearer to home, vibrating with Edith Piaf’s voice, trembling through the walls.
I press through the corner door, the airlock yielding as the beer hall opens onto a few turtle-crouched men over their glasses, sending me forward beyond the front booths. I slip along the opposing counter toward a woman with a long, wavy dark mane, a kitchen towel draped at hand as she rubs the sparkle into the long-stemmed glass bowl.
I head further, halt before a poster on the end wall, claim the vacant corner. I sway hips onto the penultimate padded bench, scoot toward the window, and watch—through beer brands splashed across the glass—the upcoming traffic, scanning for my Audi.
The black-haired retards her advance, slips from behind the bar counter, settles squared before the table—“What can I help you with?”
As she leaves, I catch drivers flickering in the shadow of their passing, undulated windows—a last resort, drafting a strategy, while behind the brasserie’s teasing airlock corner door I imagine Victoria’s eyes peeking inside, sweeping the beer hall—though I know in my right mind, that wasn't going to happen.
The waitress returns, balancing a platter. With her free hand, she places a coaster in front of me, sets down a mug of hot chocolate, then side-steps—slipping the ticket beneath the coaster—and retreats behind the bar.
I sip and let down with a sinking feeling, finishing my drink. I remain, elbows propped on the table, dawdling over the empty mug—hesitant to call the waitress and stir the beer hall back to life. Another drink wouldn’t extricate me from the crossroads weighing on me, nor ease the reluctance to resume the long stride home.
Ready to face my betrayer, I spur to my feet, pause, and leave before the waitress her ticket with a hundred-franc bill before heading toward the exit. I emerge onto the sidewalk and glance back—’no returning.’ I swallow the simmering let-down and set off into the long, uncharted stretch ahead.
My feet slap the paving, thoughts milling. ‘She’s probably decided to go home—she’s likely forgotten me altogether.’
I steady my mind on the hedgerows, crossing intersections in laughing sunlight, reading in their crenellated edges a wall not designed but grown—remnant mansions niched in chaotic pattern, stalled jewels from another age—until Winston Churchill Avenue heels back.
There, I crawl past the alternating street corners, short of the kaleidoscopic shimmers of retailers across Square Vanderkindere—a dynamic foreign to my purpose. I urge myself onward, drifting along the diverging parkway, the deserted sidewalk stretching ahead, the historic hedgerow architecture untethered in rhythm: neither sprawling mansion nor fluted slender townhouse, but wide facades holding the middle ground.
Dragging my feet as though through freshly poured concrete, I pass another deserted plate-glass tram shelter, solitude drawing up behind me as the sun-bleached sidewalk stretches ahead.
The jagged concrete skyscraper loomed ahead—pivotal—against the vista’s far blur. With each stride, the haze lifted; the bend carried the hedgerow’s fenestrated, craggy, balcony-riddled facades across to the other side. My path skirting the tower, which remained only a thought—fallen out of frame.
Opening into the straight, the last townhouse cuts short Square Albert’s intersection—the clearing jump-starting a new row of offset gable ends, to the walls of facades slipping downhill along the median and its asphalt lanes. In my strides the parkway shedding its rows of townhouses as grand flocculent branches rise from the last shouldering corner. Where, I leave the wall of the fenestrated brick facades behind, cross the street, stepping into the cast shades swallowing the sweeping descent. I mount the curb, and prolong the park’s gritty graded sidewalk.
The grit answers my pace in a whispering crunch, and as I near the low, overbearing branches gaping their foliage, my mind flips from pursuing the sidewalk home to a wilder, unstressed course along the wide river of lawns through the wooded park. I veer, duck beneath the branches, and find the bank’s gritty path, descending with the lay of grass, gazing through the thickets across the field of asphalt toward the freckled row of fenestrated brick facades, leaching my frustrations away.
As the moonlight path opened behind the flocculent hedgerow, scattered beech spurred into sunlight at the whispers of my pace, and passing, immersed in the flow of lawns, I reached a cast-shaded island—the sturdy lone oak, proud, cloaked in its foliage. Beyond it, a park bench held the light of a shallow dugout, and through speckled leaves I monitored my bearings: the meddled brick and bluestone ashlars facades across the avenue, searching for home’s doorstep by the basement grill, for the bright vestibule pressed toward the street—never assured while the thickets kept their blind spot, until they folded back, and the lawns drew into a backwash, pressing against the hard lip of Square Rochefort traffic.
I step clear from behind the bus shelter and probed uphill among the trains of curb-parked cars, calling in the hush of my mind—‘My Little One? Are you home?’I jaywalk across the avenue toward the bright vestibule, scanning the stationary cars through streaky shades for my silver-gray Audi, in vain.
Keys jingling in my hand, I mount the curb, lean off No. 13’s barn doors, and step up to the oak-glazed entrance clearing into bright white marble. I pick the lock, turn the key, press the door—mounting wrath dissolving, as I shut the door on a lingering hush, a derelict stillness that ought not be.
I rise the split-level, making my peace with Victoria, cross the crystal portal to the +/-0 Belle Epoque landing, and meet the strange dark entrance pane that ought not leave me doubting what waits behind. I unlock - cluck - the door leaf springs back to a vacuum chill.
The bookshelves held their silence; the dining room gave no echo of Mozart’s symphonies. I stretch a hand, hook my arm around the doorjamb, reach across the sidelight, and with an awkward finger flick the switch. In the hush I lose myself, retracing my earlier steps around the V-stance of the grand portal doors toward my secluded corner in the lounge.
I hook a finger on the backrest and swing the garden chair onto a leg, then reach over to lift the screen of my Texas Instruments and press the On button. With one eye on the boot lines streaking across the screen, roll my hips into the chair, my shanks tucking under my bureau and bumping the Okidata laser printer on the bottom shelf. Finger typing, opening the screen where I left off earlier, only to remain lost and cold, wondering—‘Where is she?’—doodling through the figures of the construction project, while the city blurs her whereabouts in its scale. Until, ears pricked in the niche of the inner angle by the interleading doors, I catch a muted resonance threading beyond the walls.
In a gust - clunk, whoosh... - offside in the blind entrance’s corner, the door flings open - clang, clung, cling - her bangles confused with Victoria’s bunch of jingling keys. She voices a carousel of joy: “Viens voir—[Come and see!]” And in the trailing - whoosh… - of the shutting door, her relentless thought spins on—‘Come and see what I have.’
As the thought ruminates—‘Find out what happened?’—Victoria’s sprightly mosaic crosses the grand portal, waffle-crystal beads trembling in their yellow wood alongside the casement architrave. She breezes from behind the V-folded doors that shouldered me. I catch the gap and throw after her: “Pourquoi n’est ut pas venue a Winy—[Why didn’t you come an fetch me at Winy?]”
Ignored—‘catch-me-if-you-can flight’—I’m left bewildered by Victoria's blatant deaf ear, my words obliterated. I fold into her call—“Ça ne peut pas attendre un peu—[Can’t that wait a little?]”—but her persistent cry—“Viens voir—[Come and see!]”—tethers my glance, and drawn by her urge—her entry into the lounge across the floorboards past the bystanders of her yellow upholstered Bergères—I twist in my chair, wrenched counterwise over my shoulder, until her, “Viens voir!—[Come and see!]” slips beyond me in the long strides ahead.
In revenge, blasé, Victoria blocks out my voice. A VHS cassette at hand, she strides toward the white marble mantelpiece, the television monitor’s cathode tube housed inside the open hearth. She dives for the anthracite Video Home System casing resting on the white hearthstone.
My head rings with my own pleading. “Je serai tout avec toi—[I’ll be all togehter with you.]” I bluster, but fail to reach her,. “Ça ne peut pas attendre un peu—[Can’t it wait a little—‘I’ll be with you right now!]” But Victoria, slotting the video cassette player - klec - stoops, before - clack, clack, clack - blind gears set the tempo and draw the tape inward to a hush, the white-labeled spine with a brief scribble still before the open mail-slot lid.
I fall foul of an apprentice bricklayer’s vow never to swear—construction men who fire off their words like rap singers, a limited arsenal of vulgar syllables explaining their world—while I suffocate ‘Sh-t! Sh-t! Sh-t...’ behind my screaming mind, Mnemosyne tearing between me and my Texas Instruments as I uncoil from my chair and rising behind the backrest toward Victoria.
She heels back, her eyes shifting on the television screen’s snow, then relaxes further, squatting on her feet, her girlish voice persisting: “Viens voir, c’est fantastique—[Come and see, this is fantastic.]” Her impatience draws a finger to an inept - pock, pock, pock… - then wilder pocking skittering across the VHS’s fascia and back.
The tape player’s entrails respond - click, cluck, clang… - as Victoria creeps closer, expecting the snow-held screen to divulge its mysteries. Pre-emptively she paws at the screen, fingernails bursting dry - tick, tick, tick … - and does not weather the machine’s indignation, no signal rising to meet her. Frustrated, she jabs while I stand poised behind her—until she whirls: “Ça ne fonctionne pas—[It’s not working—do something. What is wrong with this machine?]” She flips back, in her runaway threatening tone. “Fais quelque chose—[Do something, this is your Loulou!]”
Victoria’s attention lifts in flight between the cassette player to the television snow. In the hush, I breathe a thought. “Maybe it needs rewinding?” Then—the snow swap. Her wish granted: a wash of static gives way to a calm sky-blue.
Her irate finger responds before she does. ‘If I can’t—You can’t get this to work either. I can do this.’
Wild-eyed, she toggles the Video Home System on and off—prophetic, convinced her touch alone will conjure signal. Her magic fingering triggers the casing entrails - click, cluck, clang - pause. Then, proceed - whiz-z-z. . . - The player halts—as if thinking—whines toward the tape's end - click - catches its proper rhythm - click - the entrails smooth. The screen blackens.
I stepped up. “OK, I’m there with you.”
She doesn’t hear me. I hover over her shoulders, her gaze locked on the parasitic screen. She wiggles in anticipation while I retreat inward, thinking. ‘A bad recording!’
Victoria isn’t deterred by the salt-and-pepper scratch of clawed static. Instead, she retracts, easing herself into a comfortable yoga posture. Girlish and sejant, myopic near the television, her eyes swallow the black-and-white grain. She holds herself there, wiggling—then wallops the screen again.
The parasitic lines morph with the motion of a black-and-white weather radar. She advances closer, persistently pecking a fingernail at a convoluted throb. “There, there,” she says.
I lean in, trying to catch her enthusiasm—to blend into her joy.
“That’s her head,” she say.
After a while, I begin to grasp what she sees as she teeters and points. “Ça c’est son petit bras. Ça c’est son petit pied—[That’s her little arm. That’s her little foot,]”
out of the noise—sound waves bouncing off a kick—arm and foot retreat into the grainy, vibrating gray, creating and reshaping themselves in doubt.
Victoria drops a palm to the floorboards, props her arm, and rolls on a hip to sit on her thigh. Her fingers taps the floorboard. I step closer, cross my feet, flex through my scissoring legs, and lower myself beside her.
