on the post down the road

Kala'amātya reined his red horse to a halt and gazed back over his shoulder, counting those that trailed behind him.  Two dozen guards, porters and attendants formed the thin procession, the company forced to assume the shape of the narrow trail, none of them spared a heavy burden of provisions, gifts and accouterment.  A white palanquin formed the nucleus of the increasingly dispirited assembly, borne by stalwart men, their sodden grass cloaks no longer any use against the incessant rain.  Though he was yet to glimpse its secluded passengers, he was not troubled by the circumstance, his task set, his reward negotiated in advance.

The day had barely hauled free of the dismal, unfledged light of dawn, though noon had come and gone, kept cool and dripping by a hidden sun.  Rain had redoubled the weary porters’ burdens, the milky clay beneath their feet a greasy quagmire in which they slipped and stumbled, crying out and clasping one another against the prospect of a fall.  Kala'amātya had passed through the belly of Guangxi once before, though on that occasion he had been unencumbered by a small army of inagile companions.  The crowded, jewel-green mountains lost their heads in pewter clouds, looking as though they had been flung down from the sky and buried waist deep in the rock beneath.  Misted gorges echoed with the roar of hidden torrents that wound between the cliffs; he frowned as the palanquin was set down, and one of its bearers shouldered his way toward him, water spilling from the wide brim of his hat.

“Lord... the lady asks that we rest now.” the bearer informed him, panting as he bowed his head.  “She says she can go no further.”

“Tell her that she must.” he muttered, urging his mount onward.  Another backward glance informed him that the troupe had settled on the track, adopting the stationary palanquin as a warrant for the unscheduled respite.  The bearers crouched by the lip of the precipice, seeking the shelter of its eaves.  Porters set down their chests and bundles and took out packages of sticky, leaf-wrapped rice, cramming the grain into their mouths while glancing anxiously toward him.  He drew his staff of heavy ju wood from his horse’s harness and slid down from the saddle, striding back toward the delinquents.

A shudder rippled in the ground beneath him a moment before the advent of a deep, resounding crack that ripped through sodden earth and air.  His eyes turned instinctively toward the sky but no bolt had crashed down from the dismal heavens; instead, the puggy trail bowed, sagged, and began to disintegrate, crumbling as the rock below sloughed away from the hillside into a sucking, grinding cataclysm.  It drowned its victims’ cries as it bore them down the flank of the mountain, crushing them into the savage mass of trees and stone and earth that flowed like water into the mist, toward a unseen valley floor.  Kala'amātya grasped the overhanging branches of a stunted tree, anticipating the imminent failure of his own footing, but was spared; the ground beneath him had broken with the massive wedge that had slid away, their violent dissociation shaping a concave face of clay and freshly-scoured limestone.  No more screams drifted upward in the beating rain though he detected a low, keening whimper through the sound of it.  Turning his head to assure himself that he was not mistaken, he sought its source below the edge of the surviving trail.

The white palanquin had become wedged on a tangle of broken trees.  It lay on its side while a passenger begged for assistance from within.  Wiping the rain from his face, Kala'amātya walked out along the remaining track and swung down onto the shorn stone of the cliff face, sliding on his haunches toward the pinioned vehicle until he attained its supporting ledge.  A wrinkled matron’s face, flat-featured and high-browed, appeared from behind the chair’s spattered drapery; she exclaimed at his approach, praising the gods that had flung her entourage to their deaths for their judicious lenity while he lifted her from her frame and set her down onto the crumbling ledge beside him.  The chair's remaining occupant, having lost her grasp upon the uppermost door, dropped down through the wooden framing toward the opposing one, now yawning out over the drop.  Her bare feet had already passed through it into the empty air when his fist closed on the fabric of her robe and took her weight, slamming his arm against the cracking timber.  He dragged her back up through the drapes onto the ledge.

Delivering them to the safety of the stable ground proved less difficult than he had imagined.  The elderly matron, having no wish to join her ancestors, scrambled up onto the road with remarkable, almost pithecoid alacrity.  The younger passenger climbed before him, independent of his aid; despite the station implied by the cargo that had attended her, she wore a plain, stone-white kimono of humble cloth and plicated amplitude.  Her black hair hung in a tangle of broken combs beneath her hood.  She sank to her knees on the edge of the trail and looking down, he saw the features of the girl who had brought the lilies to his barrack hut.  The matron abandoned her own cursory toilet and scolded them.

“This is my mother’s sister.” Suki murmured.  “She has no sight.”  He took the cue from her formality and abjured mention of her name.

Shuffling toward him the older woman reached up with both hands and attempted a manual survey of his features, only to be thwarted by the great discrepancy in their statures.  She scowled more deeply at this discovery and groped downward, following his arm to his hand where a count of his cool fingers caused her to fling it down and stumble backward in disgust.

“It is you, the kyuketsuki, the oni... you have tricked us into this misfortune and now you mean to devour us!” she exclaimed.  The matron at once began to chant, crouching and devoting herself to pious defence against his peril.  His horse returned, blowing snorting breaths at the small party of survivors.  

“This creature has saved us both from falling." the girl advised.  "He means no harm.” 
“Because it has already satisfied itself in wickedness!”
“Stay here then, with the virtuous spirits of the wood.” she sighed.

Kala'amātya caught the loitering horse and beckoned to the pair; the old woman squinted obstinately as her niece explained his proposal, which she treated as an affront to the manners accrued in a lifetime of sheltered luxury, the pitch of her objections ascending as he lifted her into the saddle.  The girl shook her head against the prospect on her own behalf, her insistence intensifying as he approached her.  Catching her arm, he pushed his hand into the fold of her robe, setting it against her stomach; her gaze rose to his as he perceived the gravid proportions the fabric disguised, attained in the three months since their last encounter.  The old woman pressed her dry, penurious lips together as her ward climbed slowly into the saddle before her.

“Does it please you, to have begotten evil on this girl?” the crone snapped.  “No matter.  She is made of wickedness, and if the paint were scrubbed from her face you would find the mark of it there, where she has devoted herself to witchcraft, to compound her crimes.”

“You are mistaken.” he told her.  “I have no part in this.”

“Though they come from all around to eat the fruit, none will own that they have planted seed.  Thus it was in my day, and so it is in hers.  The palace guards have followed her to your house and back again, a dozen times!”

“Tokogawa himself has done the same.” Kala'amātya replied.  The rationale enraged her.

“Tokogawa does not lie with demons when he is betrothed to a family beyond reproach... he has not disgraced himself with a dozen nameless lovers in Kyoto!  Nor consorted with the tsukimono-suji, and consigned himself to hell.”  Recovering, the old woman sought the composure she cherished most, speaking with the cool, serrated assurance of her station.  “If you are not the sire of this accursed child, you are close enough to be so in the eyes of others, and that is the heart of all such matters.”

Kala'amātya did not reply, but murmured to their patient mount, leading them once more along the slippery track as it reached upward into dripping forest.

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

Okay, so a quick glance at someone wearing Moscow could possibly register a red lip situation.  But have a good squint at the squiggle swatch above right there.  Moscow's on the left beside MAC Lady Danger, which to me is a good example of where true red ends and orange begins.  I'd call Moscow terracotta, copper or russet before anything else; I mean, Nars Rouge Basque is redder, and that shade's still a long way short of true red if you're asking me.  Maybe it's the name?  Moscow always makes me think of bold scarlet on an icy blonde and confusion is probably what I deserve for cherishing such a basic-arse stereotype.  

Moscow is unequivocally warm, as you can probably see, so anyone with neutral to toasty tonings should be perfectly fine.  It's a friend with benefits for redheads and auburnies who find true reds too clownish; the skeptical can feast their eyes on the cave-beast pallor of my hand up there and assure themselves that this shade really isn't too much against our particular epidermal fortunes.

I don't have any problems with it, personally, and am only slightly disappointed that it wasn't a bit more dramatic.  But then again, there isn't exactly a dearth of drama in my lipstick drawer so I should probably just learn to appreciate Moscow for its flattering and reassuringly organic wearability.  It really is the nicest and definitely the most sophisticated member of this ocherous orangey group that I know.

R took this lovely detail shot.

I have three different clones of this sought-after variety; one super-large and sprawling with a weirdly cinereous, bruise-coloured flower that nudges ugliness, and two smaller, slightly frillier plants with a sweeter plum bloom, of which this is one.  So not all Patty's Plums are created equal and this may account for the mixed regard in which this variety is held.  I personally went to great lengths and some expense to secure this poppy, and while they will  flower well in half shade and do look great with roses, all in all I prefer other varieties, like the deep reds and large whites.

My fucking poppies are flopping this year on account of all the bloody rain.  Poppy flop sucks.

Between the austere rigors of his training at the Yagyu martial school and the nocturnal divertissements of Edo’s floating world, Kala'amātya moved as though wrapped in the folds of a dream, devoting himself to the pursuit of precision and extremity in the two environs and discovering that they were obliquely confederate.  He eschewed the sparring staff, finding the struggle to evade the incisive attentions of the katana more profoundly instructive.  His master at the Yagyu school smiled often, gratified by the speed with which his lessons were assimilated, though he would not speak with his strange pupil outside its walls despite the convenience of their respective dwellings.  At night, sorrow stalked him, worsened by the spectral longing he still felt for those most complicit in effecting it, its black face buried not by chashitsu beauties but with the aid of the Yoshiwara's most recondite savants.

When no one would face him outside the compulsion of battle, he was sent to the valley of Sekigahara to assist in implementing his patron’s martial will.  Back in the capital his accomplishments, bleached black and white in reportage, lodged like frozen stones inside the hearts of those that might have rejoiced in any other hero.  On his return, Kala'amātya reviewed his instinctive distaste for armour, bound his long hair into the queue of his newly-awarded station and redoubled his reputation for saturnine eccentricity by commissioning a pair of long odachi in place of the suite of smaller swords that were expected of him.  His choice was deemed an unseemly departure, though this disapprobation remained a private thing.


It was on an evening late in summer that Ieyasu Tokogawa resolved to embark upon an inspection of the barracks grouped around his palace.  The prunus trees cast wide circles of deeper shade beneath the horned moon as he strolled through the grounds, accompanied by a pair of silent guards.  With his pale coif, liver marked brow and plain grey robe he commanded little attention; the sound of the neatly-tended gravel beneath his feet was all the fanfare that his mood required.

The sight of the rectangular barracks had always pleased him.  The shutters glowed from within the largest structure and the shogun abandoned his guards to listen for a while to the talk that issued from within the crowded mess.  Its samurai debated a single and apparently implacable concern; Tokogawa announced himself before the sliding door and stepped inside, blinking in the lamplight as the men pressed their foreheads to the floor.

“What is this?” he demanded, taking a seat at the head of the narrow room, easing himself down onto the matting slowly.  “Do not whisper behind your sleeves, like women.”

The eldest warrior inclined his head respectfully, eyes on the ground as he replied.

“We are made cowards by portent.”  
“What portents are these?  What was my victory at Osaka, if you do not call it providence?”
“What troubles us wore the mon of our great lord into that battle, while holding secrets in its heart, like a thief, using honour as a shield against honest gazes.” the general admitted.  The samurai awaited his response in silence.
“Of whom do you speak?”
“The nameless one.” the elder replied, grim-faced.  Tokogawa’s scowl deepened with his umbrage at the pusillanimous nature of the allusion.  He squinted hard at their self-appointed representative, who had begun to regret his own outspoken impulse.

“You know that I have made this barbarian a general.  Remember, how the road to Kyoto was lined with skulls from end to end... so many of them were taken by him alone that the captains could make no count of them.  He came to me, his armour painted with the blood of my enemies, as though he had burst forth from the lakes of hell, his face and hands, all wet with this most precious colour.  He kills, not for pleasure, not for the thought of land or great advancement, but for Tokogawa.  In all of this, he paused only to clean his swords, and receive my orders.”  The white-robed men listened without speaking.  He continued, his gaze moving slowly over their faces.  “It is said that a warrior must have ninjo, kindness... this is the feeling of our ancestors, and I cannot question their wisdom.  But it is my thought that sympathy should rest with old women and monks, where it can do no harm.  You fear this creature because he does not share your weakness.  He is a stone, blind and deaf to mercy.  This is what I would have on the side of Tokogawa.”

“Great father, it is well known that yōkai have such cunning in war.  We have heard that it will accept no payment for its service.  Our wives and daughters are corrupted, shamed and dishonoured by their weakness, in their curiosity... the monster spends more hours in idleness with them than with the sword.  The creature debauches women of your own house!  If these are not the ways of a devil, they are the acts of a ronin.  We beg you to consider these things without anger.” the man insisted, belying the servility of his posture with his petition’s vehemence.  “We ask only that you do not speak of our part in this to the nameless one.  Its wrath may take a form that bests our swords, leaving us with nothing with which to defend your house.”

Tokogawa stood slowly.  A speckled moth circled the lantern, ruining its wings against the paper.

“Better one demon general than a thousand cowards in my service.  Men of honour have no insults for those they have not the heart to face.”

Marching stiffly along the narrow, dogwood-shaded way toward the quarter that housed his controversial prodigy, the old man muttered his impatience at his aging legs; no light shone from within the hut and he frowned about it in the shadow of the overhanging trees, marking its resident upon a stone bench beneath them.  In his hand was a cake of smooth white limestone; he lifted it from the blade of the odachi and sheathed the frightening weapon in deference to his guest.  A small idol of blackened bronze stood beside the door of the hut, long arms ending in clenched fists that lay by its sides; its face was not clearly apparent to the shogun as he stooped to peer at its features and he abandoned the attempt and snapped at the guards who lingered on the path.  The creature’s black hair hung in a long braid past his shoulders, merging with the gloom behind a face as pale as the whetstone.  He offered his visitor a ladle full of water from the stone bowl seated beside him, and the old man accepted.

“I will not trouble you with idle talk.” Tokogawa began.

“Candor does not offend me.” Kala'amātya replied.

“You accept no payment for your service.  I ask why this is so.”

“I have few needs, and no desires beyond my private means.  In future, I may avail myself of what is owed to me.” he said.  “But not today.”  The shogun frowned.  "If you are troubled by granting a fair reward in respect to the tasks I have performed, dismiss me, and I will name my price.  This matter is entirely in your own hands.”

“Were I to dismiss you, would you seek to serve another lord?”

​“I would seek it at first light.”

The prospect of ordering his men against such a foe wrinkled the shogun’s pied brow.  The creature’s patently inhuman features enraged him, but he maintained his composure, concealing his frustration.

“I do not wish to see you take another’s colours... I have come with a request.  A task must be undertaken, and I am trusting it to you.  Should you succeed, I will grant you a prosperous han, and you shall be a daimyo.  In this place, you shall surely find shelter from that which troubles you... we are protected from the evil of other lands by the divine wind.”

The shogun’s personal guard lingered for a short while after the man himself had departed, ensuring that they had not been overheard.  When they were gone, Kala'amātya stood and slid a hand into his robe, finding a secreted knife as something disturbed the flowering cornus beside his dwelling and moved along its walls toward him.  Through the lace-thin branches came a girl in a trailing coat and furisode cut from dappled, rose-stained red, bound at her breast with a broad black obi.  From her sleeve she drew a stem of lilies, their petals whiter than a winter sky, and handed it to him with a slow nod of her head, its formality melting into a wry smile.  Her long coat whispered on the stones as she sat down in the darkness at his invitation, shadow shifting on her face.  Their heads were filled with the flowers' honey-dripping scent. 

“A year passed in Kyoto and no word to me.  I believed myself out of favour.” he told her.

She smiled again, bringing her sleeve to her chin.

“Good works have occupied me.”
“I trust there have been young men grateful for your virtuous endeavours.” 
“They have been very attentive.  More so than you were.” she replied, dark eyes creeping past him along the path.  “But there were spies in every garden and so I came home, only to find there are even more spies here.”
“What of the foxes in Kyoto?”
“They are most cunning... they have heard there is a strange yōkai in Edo, and...”
“Ponder what use might be made of such a demon?” he suggested knowingly.  “The foxes of all lands are of one mind.”
“I am now but a month distant from becoming one myself.”
“Then they did instruct you well.  Let us drink to that.”  

They saluted the moon that swam in their little grey bowls, and drank to the fulfillment of her long-held, though clandestine, ambition.  The girl found she no longer regretted the silence of her companion's features, whether affronted or amused, and found contentment in his equanimity.

“Are you still to be married in the spring?” he inquired.  
“I do not look too far ahead.  How is grandfather?”
“As ever.  He has just gone from here.”
“Yes, I know.  I fear that I must speak with him before long, though I am not so eager.”

She leant toward him, and drew one of the lilies to her face, breathing their perfume.  He nodded out along the path.

“Let no one see you come to me or leave this way.  The bushi talk of me as though I eat their dogs.”  She leant on her hand and rose from the bench, smoothing down her robe.  “Are you well, Suki?” he asked.

​“Well enough.” she smiled.

She turned, and bowed her head, stepping back between the supple branches.

​CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

Let's have some background.  Possibly because they are so jankily idiosyncratic, my teeth possess a strange Jungian significance in both my conscious and unconscious mind; I share them with my blood relatives and they feature in my dreams.  They used to distinguish me from three hundred other punters grinning in the blacklight on trance nights.  They are weirdly totemic.  For these and other reasons I am one of the people who just do not go to the dentist and am strictly of the opinion that allowing people to tinker with shit that isn't broken is how you end up on the unnecessary procedure treadmill with five grand's worth of unpaid bills fermenting under your fridge magnets.

But you know, I'd been in a lot of dental pain for a couple of months.  Yes, months, because a prolonged fuck-tonne of pain is ironically the only thing that could have nudged me toward a cubical to get it looked at.

The nurse said I might hear cracks and 'ear sounds' as the tendons securing the tooth gave up, and possibly feel some sort of weird pressure but when the time came, the surgeon just selected the tooth with an implement I didn't even get a look at, rocked it a couple of ways slowly and then boop, there it was.  Out.  No sounds, no graunching, absolutely zero pain, some pressure (nothing startling or horrible) and the entire process lasted about 20 literal seconds.  If I could have allowed myself to blink by this stage, I would have missed it.  I should say that this was an uncomplicated extraction of a conventional molar with no breakages etc., but that's a pretty standard presentation.

I think this is a really spectacular image and one of R's best.
Almost straight out of the camera after three months of rain in the top garden.
Nice work babe.

​A lot of people overseas seem to imagine NZ as some sort of diminutive Hawaii-type situation, maybe with a central volcano farting lava and some hungry seismic shit just itching to swallow tourists whole via giant earthly fissures.  Which is like picturing France as a baguette shop but oh well; geography is hard and like, totally irrelevant.

"New Zealanders are counting the cost of the earthquake that swallowed roads, twisted railway lines and left towns and cities smashed and deserted."  The fucking Guardian just printed this breathless shit in their rolling updates.  It's utter conflated bollocks, of course.  To think we just gave that rag some of our hard-earned money.

NZ is actually 1600km long, so what happens at one end means fuck-all to the other.  You know, sort of like in America or India or France or Namibia.  What happens in the middle doesn't even affect anywhere else, so the 7.5 magnitude quake a third of the way into the South Island last night didn't even wake us up here in Dunedin, which is two thirds of the way down the same piece of dirt.  So disregard the overcooked bullshit you're possibly reading in the overseas media about all-encompassing catastrophe blah blah.  Two very unlucky people died (so far), some windows and chimneys bought it in the adjacent areas and some roads and rail are out due to fairly substantial (but not unusual by our standards) landslides (slips, we call them).  Your tourist friends are perfectly safe.  There are no tsunamis.  There might be some transport hold-ups over the next few days but nothing that can't be worked around.  The damage is more a product of our ghetto/tenuous/coastal infrastructure than the relative severity of the earthquakes, by the way.  Here's a pretty good depiction of the quake from someone's security cam.  It was a long-arse thing but the Japanese probably wouldn't have looked up from their bento boxes and/or tentacle sex.

Here's a few pics from the areas in question.  This is the worst, most picturesque damage; there's a bit of minor road cracking and shit over a larger area north of Christchurch.  I don't mean to minimise anyone's actual loss of life, livelihood or convenience- Kaikoura really is going to be pretty fucked for a while- just attempting to calm the tits of anyone out there thinking NZ just slid into the Tasman sea.  (pic credits: various)

Maelstrom, Storm Imogen, East Sussex: Rachael Talibart 
​Landscape Photographer of the Year awards in the G.

ordeal by roses #38   Eikoe Hoeso / Yukio Mishima
See more here

“The closest I've come to a bouncy castle, before this is... I'm not telling you now." Susan complained, lifting her head from William's arm and narrowing her stare at his smile.  "It was a jungle gym...."  His expression devolved into lazy-eyed confoundment.  "A jungle gym, you know... those things kids play on in parks.  I ended up with bruises on my bum and a cider hangover.  If it’s going to be outdoors, it has to be something padded... or a golf course with that nice soft grass." 

“Golf courses?  Are you sure there’s no werewolf in your family?” he laughed, folding his arms behind his head against the silver floor.  “You don’t want to believe I was a bouncy castle virgin because it disturbs your cozy vision of my omni... slut... tifer... my omnislutiferousness.” 

“That’s not a word.”  

​“English isn’t my first language.” he sighed, his hand wandering to her breast.  They lay together in the midst of the structure to which she had referred, unclothed but for the length of blue ikat he had worn into the garden, Susan's own garments draped from several of the inflatable turrets surrounding them.  The midnight sky was lightly veiled by a haze swept up from the city, though the foremost stars retained their trenchant brilliance.  She arranged lines of idle association between them, able to devise no novel constellations and touching fingers to her face in an inquiry into her own sense of pleasant dislocation.  It was furnished by consumption of the dawamesk William had concocted in the kitchen and perfect secrecy from various fruits, pistachios and a dose of the hashish he obtained from nameless associates.  

"I am completely shitfaced but I can't stop eating this stuff." she confessed as she leant over to suck one of the three remaining sweetmeats from the pallor of his stomach; rolling back, she reached out for the telephone lying in obscurity at the base of the wall and began reading through his numbers.  “There’s three... four Pandoras in here.  Who knows four Pandoras?  Who’s Crazy Pandora?  And Phaedra?  I love that name.”
“Crazy Pandora's in Spain now, I think... Phaedra’s a sixty year old witch with gold bridgework and is more of a sabre-toothed tiger than a cougar, but I still would.”
“Who's Javier B?"
"Oh... just this guy..."  
“Exactly how gay are you, William, because I don't fancy walking in one day and finding someone's shiny bollocks in mid bloody air."  His disturbing laughter echoed through the trees around them as his head fell slackly sideways.
“I don’t know..." he sighed.
"Yes you do..."
"Oh cloudcheeks, please don't flimsy-scale me..."  
She frowned, then laughed.
"I'm Kinsey scaling you."
"Whatever... it's just a little black line, and my scale needs more directions, poupée... dimensions..." he explained.  His hand rose again and wandered over her face, tracing the shape of her brows.  "It's not really a thing for me.  I don't look at men and think, wow, that guy’s hotness is putting me off girls forever, and vice versa... that's crazy.  And wasteful.  I just can't get political about something as dumb and strange as sex.”  Susan smiled at his sincerity.  “If I get a choice, I suppose I do swim toward estrogen island rather than gonad inlet, but there are a few pillow-princess inches on my person that would find it hard to dire au revoir owner/operator blowjobs.” he laughed.  “But je ne sais pas... if you’ve got your hand down my pants, all I'm really thinking is wow, you read my mind."
“Wow, you put some thought into that.”
“Genius is located on the slut chromosome.  It’s science.”
“Nothing to do with how much time you spend with a bong thinking about sex, then.”  
“Ever tried girls?”
“No..." Susan sighed.  "I always think of lesbians as experts.  I’m too lazy.”
“You’re sure?  Phaedra loves a brunette with an accent and I don’t mind taking time out of my busy schedule to make sure you’re doing it right.”
“Thanks, but no.”
"Don't be backward about coming forward with nasty scenarios, cloudcheeks... your wish is my I thought you'd never ask." he smiled. 
"I don't really have a secret thing..."  Susan rolled her tongue behind the denial, fueling his suspicion.
"Well, you can cross semibestiality right off the to-do list."

She slapped his arm.

"Alright... I do sort of have a thing... about men.  Watching guys going at it.”  
"Mon dieu... so it was a lie about the bollocks in the air... in fact, nothing would please you more..." William declared, taking up his phone.  “Anything for you, baby.  Bear or twink?”
"No!  I don’t mean now...”
“Mmm Javier... está muy bueno.  I never have, but he’s got a great personality.  And a monster cock.  I'm just assuming you're a size queen...” he grinned with the phone to his ear.  “Javier?  Sup?  I’ve got this freak here and she’s begging me to go gay for pay.  Throwing Cs right at me while I’m talking to you.”  William fended her gently with his arm.  “I’ll deal you in for half if you can get here in twenty minutes.  Yeah yeah yeah...”  He looked back at her dubiously.  “Well, she says she just wants to watch, but I can't guarantee she won't strap on and tap in...”

Susan seized and threw the telephone from the edge of the castle, rolling him over and spanking his rear while he lay with his face pressed to the vinyl, incapacitated with laughter.

“Your face...” he gasped as she perceived the ruse to which she had fallen victim.
“You are so fucking immature!”
"I know... je suis désolé.”
"Oh no..." she cried, pushing him over onto his back and discovering the remaining dawamesk flattened by his stomach to the floor of the castle; he caught her leg and dumped her onto her back though she thwarted the kiss he attempted by covering his mouth with both hands, shrieking as he pushed his tongue between her fingers.  A pocket of sap smacked in the fire he had set in the midst of the magnolias, at which she started violently, then lapsed onto the vinyl with relief.  “Every time I hear a noise I think it’s your brother about to take my head off with a shotgun.” 
“Why?  Has he said something?” he asked, settling alongside her with his ear to her navel, drawing the blue cloth over their legs.
“He doesn’t have to... he just looks at me, and I know he knows that I know.  Not that I actually know anything about him... and I think I prefer it that way..."  
“There's a lot I don't know either." William admitted.  "I was at one end of the world and he was at the other a lot of the time... some of what I've heard is just third-hand backwash bullshit..."  He remembered the dawamesk and peeled it off himself, sucking the sweetness from his fingers.  "I could tell you the things I believe.”
​
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce