Chapter 4

As we walked, the stress of Orientation slowly began to wear off. It would have dissipated faster had I access to a cold shower or a private room, but trying to think of other things, non-sexual things, was hard because the girls in my company were Victorian Secret quality. It was difficult not to stare, and I am certain Loxy caught my straying eye, but only smiled, and leaned into me, and even took my arm as if she and I were old mates, but overall, walking brought things down a notch. Loxy’s kindness was genuinely administered, as opposed to the agenda orientated kindness that accompanied a general Hooter’s hostess.

“It occurs to me, I failed to introduce us all properly,” Loxy said. She rambled on about how strangely at ease she felt with me, as if that alone was an explanation for how easy the rapport had come, but she was still seeking a deeper answer.

Lester grumbled something inaudible.

“So, this is Alish Forester,” Loxy said.

Alish, the green hair, green skinned girl, touched my face with both hands, as was her custom. I was surprised by how cool they felt, and the texture of her skin was like silk. Her shift was also silk, thin, translucent, and revealing, and I was tempted to see if all of her felt equally silky, but I told myself, ‘this not a dream you can’t just do as you wish…’

“Keera” Loxy said. Keera offered her hand as if she expected her knuckles to be kissed, and curtseyed. “It’s a pleasure.”

“And Lester…”

The old man stropped near an oversized rose stem; there was a giant rose bud several meters up. The old man turned and came at me.

“I don’t like you,” Lester said. “I don’t like how easy your transition seems to be. You don’t question anything! You just roll right along, as if nothing fazes you. That’s bizarre. That’s dangerous! Look at her!” Lester pointed to Alish. “Her color doesn’t strike you as odd? It doesn’t bother you?”

“Why should it?” Keera asked.

“Because it just should! No one walks into an LSD psychotic break from reality and not freak out!” Lester drew even closer. “Unless, you’re use to LSD trips. DMT much?”

“I don’t use drugs,” I said. It was neither a boast nor a lament. It probably should have been a boast, as I was the only one who emerged from my family of origin without a drug addiction.

“So, what’s wrong with you?” Lester asked.

“Lester,” Loxy warned.

“No! You’re always helping noobs and strays, that’s your flaw,” Lester said. “Alish is positively ambivalent, just like a ‘planimal’ should be. Keera, well, if her affectation for purple were her only flaw, she might be sufferable…”

“You’re really angry,” I said.

Lester fell silent, his eyes narrowed and his nose flared. I expected to get hit by the cane.

“Let’s see how you feel when you’ve been here over a hundred years,” Lester said.

Lester turned to the rose stem and proceeded up, using the thorns as if they were a ladder. When he was out of earshot, Loxy patted my arm.

“Give him time to warm up to you. He is really a loving soul deep down,” Loxy assured me.

“I don’t see how you arrive at that,” Keera said.

“You can’t be that angry and not love,” Loxy insisted.

“If you say so,” Keera said. She headed up the stem.

“I echo Loxy,” Alish said. “I recommend patience.” She followed Keera up to the bud, pushing through a specific petal.

“So, this is our nest. We have already had dinner, but if you would like something to eat before we go up, I could prepare a meal for you,” Loxy asked.

“I am okay, but I do have a question, if you’ll permit,” I said.

“Of course,” Loxy invited.

“Why are you being nice to me?” I asked.

“That’s a really sad question,” Loxy said, touching my arm. “Was it really that bad where you came from?”

I shrugged. I really didn’t know how to respond to that. “It was what it was.”

“Either you are wiser than you let on and the school made an error in accepting you,” Loxy said. “Or you’re too dismissive of your own pain, real or perceived.”

“It’s probably age, not wisdom,” I offered.

“You’re what, thirtyish?” Loxy asked.

“Forty-eight,” I said.

“Wow, you look younger,” Loxy said.

Again, I shrugged. Luck. Genetics. It wasn’t my diet, which consisted of fast food and microwaveable dinners. The healthiest thing I made was homemade chili.

Loxy nodded. “I suppose, one can make a distinction between age and wisdom, but there is usually a high correlation,” she said. “So, coming up rose top?”

“You really live here?” I asked.

“No, I sleep here. I live here;” Loxy said the last part while touching her heart. She then touched my heart, my forehead, and then her forehead. “Come on.”

Loxy started up and when she saw I wasn’t following, she paused.

“You coming?” she asked.

“I, um, you…”

“Aren’t wearing underwear. You embarrassed?”

“Um, no, just horny,” I admitted.

“That sounds healthy. Now, come along,” Loxy said.

The inside of the rose bud was spacious enough for us all to exist and lay out at our own designated petal. There was no furniture. The floor of the rose was not rose like, but more like a golden dandelion, with a gentle, feathery texture. It gave off a gentle golden hue that filled the space with a warmth. There was a center style that flared into a stigma which on demand produced potable water for drinking. On most nights, Alish explained, the rose was opened to the sky, but clearly, the rose was expecting rain, indicated by not blossoming.

“So, where do you come from?” Keera asked.

It was the standard question I would have expected much earlier. “I live in Sanger, Texas. North of Dallas.” I always add ‘North of Dallas’ because everyone knows Dallas, but no one knows Sanger.

“Of course! If that doesn’t beat all,” Lester complained. “An American. A God damned American. You know how hard it to keep them fed!” Lester turned on his side, covering his full body, even his head, with a petal so as to be out of the group talk.

“What did you do there?” Keera asked.

“That’s so not the right question,” Alish said.

“What’s the right question?” Keera asked.

“Did you love?” Loxy asked.

“Sure,” I said, smiling. “All my life.”

“That’s it?’ Keera asked. “Details, Sir!”

“Never married, no children,” I said. Was this really the stuff they wanted to know about the stranger that just fell into their midst? “No friends during childhood, and before completing high school, I moved as far from family as I could. There was a string of relationships, not one lasted more than four years, because, per my pattern, I would find women who were somehow broken or in need, and I would repair them, or teach them, and they would heal and once I wasn’t needed, well, they moved on, or I moved on, or both.” When I finished rambling, I was struck by the material I had shared. Either my discernment was shot, or I felt so at ease with these folks that I was risking ridicule and abandonment for being so perversely revealing.

Loxy touched my arm with kindness.

“So, what was your job,” Keera returned to a questions she could track.

“I pushed freight, with a fork lift,” I said. “Many ‘six day’ weeks, ten hour days, unpacking trucks, loading trucks, shifting weight from one area to the next, netting freight, building cans and cookie sheets for aircraft, pushing these to where they needed to be, and repeat…”

“How dreadfully monotonous,” Keera said.

Loxy drank directly from the stigma. “Oh, I forgot, if you need to use the toilet tree, you descend here, and there should be enough rose light to make your way to the tree we passed,” she said.

“Oh, God damn it!” Lester complained. Apparently mentioning the toilet tree produced the urge to go. He untucked from his petal, pushed through the trap door with his feet and descended the stem, his cane hooked to his arm, all the while complaining. “Why the hell did we make this thing so damn high…pain in my ass…”

Loxy showed me how to recline my petal, assuring me it would not drop me. Lester returned, grumbling, and on entering he asked for the lights to be out. They consented and Alish mumbled a phrase and the gold dimmed and flicked off. The rose petals themselves gave a faint, red light that made it still possible to see. Loxy excused herself and headed down the stem. Keera said good night and closed her eyes, her cover petal was rolled so that it was a body length pillow to snuggle. Alish sat back against her petal, sitting in a lotus fashion, as if she were going to meditate all night. Her hands rested on her knees.

I lay back, staring straight up at the ceiling, its twisted turns and folds and lines drawing the eye ever towards center. I revisited Lester’s complaints about me and felt certain he was on to something. Was I so emotionally dead that I had failed to grasp the significance of my change in situations? Could I explain it away as one too many viewings of the X-Files? Fiction and fantasy had made me immune to wonder; that seemed to fit, but I was perturbed that I didn’t feel anything akin to happiness. I always imagined if I got away from Earth I would be overwhelmed with joy. At the least, I should be feeling relief. I was free of the other life! Perhaps part of me didn’t believe it was real and I would wake up, but I had no intention of testing that or pushing that, and so would stay because here was better than there. Presently, at least.

I heard Loxy returned but kept my gaze upwards. I had lusted after her enough today. And she had been nothing but kind to me. She deserved better than an old, perverted man leering at her.

“You okay?” Her whisper was near and I could sense her beside me, but I focused ever upwards.

I nodded.

“You’re crying!” she almost broke her whisper.

I hadn’t noticed the tears until she brought my attention to it. I turned my head further away from her. She brought it back with gentle hands.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I am okay,” I said.

“Jon,” Loxy said, seriously. “If you learn nothing else today, learn this. The strongest magic is telling the truth. If you don’t learn to do that, you’ll be here longer than Lester.”

“Wow,” I said. Even in the dim rose like light, there was a brightness in her eyes, an intensity of spirit akin to that girl that got everyone killed at Troy. “You are so not Glenda.”

“Who’s that?” Loxy asked.

“From the Wizard of Oz?” I said.

“Not ringing a bell,” Loxy said.

There was a joke there, but I let it go. “Really?”

“I’m not American,” Loxy reminded me.

“But you’re English,” I said. “You should get the reference.”

“Nineteenth century English,” Loxy said.

“Really?” I asked.

“You want to see my girdle?” Loxy asked, smiling mischievously.

“No, I believe you,” I said, but not a hundred percent committed to that belief, but a hundred percent certain I wasn’t going to admit my skepticism for fear of calling her a liar.

“So, about Glenda?” Loxy pursued.

“Oh, well, Glenda wouldn’t tell you the secret to getting home until the end of the story, after you made the long journey of self-discovery, made some friends, and killed the witch,” I said.

“Why would you kill a witch?” Loxy asked, concerned.

“Oh, not me. Dorothy, the heroine of the story, a young lady about the age of nine, at least in the books, was given the task of killing the witch and bringing back the broomstick as proof in order to be granted the wish of going home by the powerful Wizard of Oz,” I explained.

“How dreadful for the witch!” Loxy said.

“Well, she was an evil witch,” I pointed out.

“And that justifies killing her?” Loxy asked. “And, what kind of evil wizard would send a nine year old girl to confront a witch in the first place?”

“Well, in the movie, she was a bit older,” I mused.

“I’m not sure I like this story,” Loxy said.

I chuckled. Trying to suppress it turned it into laughter.

“Would you keep quiet?!” Lester snapped from under his petal.

“Tell me about your tears,” Loxy asked. “Are you home sick?”

“Oh, no,” I assured her.

“Then what is it?” Loxy asked.

“I don’t know. I think I might be happy,” I told her.

“That doesn’t make sense. You either are happy or you’re aren’t, there is no thinking about it,” Loxy pointed out.

“I really don’t know why, then” I said. Was this happiness? Did something deep inside me finally shift and all the suppressed emotions of all the years was finding its way out? I hope that wasn’t the case, because there was also years of suppressed rage and disappointment, enough to drown a world.

“Shhh,” Loxy said, cuddling into me. “Shhh, you’re safe here.” Her embrace was love and warmth and natural, but there was also a hint of selfishness, sufficient to erase any doubt that she was offering sympathy for the simple sake of appeasement. She did this because she wanted to. She kissed my cheek, tasting tears. Her lips met mine. I tasted my own tears, but mostly her lips, and again the faint hint of someone who had just eaten an orange.

Unlike in Orientation, I was not bothered by the fact that there were others present, nor did I feel compelled to perform. I did consider the others present, but I could almost justify their being in this space, knowing that the further back in time one went, the less likely one was to have their own private room, and so there would be a time when intimacy between couples simply didn’t occur in isolation. Privacy was a modern invention that rarely existed a hundred years ago, much less a thousand years ago. Our clothes came off too easy. I watched her body move in the soft reds and pinks and shadows. The whole affair was intense and quiet and when she was satisfied that we were equally satiated, she pulled a petal over our naked bodies and dozed against me. I followed soon after, unwilling to let her go, for fear of waking her, or waking myself and finding myself back in Texas, alone. My tears kept coming.

This was joy. A light rain began to make its applause against the closed rose, like rain on a canvas tent.