requiem for lovers

She stepped, blinking, into the mid-morning sunlight, her hand thrown up against the vibrant rays. They had walked into a garden overflowing with Hydrangea and Chrysanthemum. A gargantuan Willow sat near the edge of the trees where she could just make out a swing, swaying underneath the foliage. She paused at the foot of the deck, her entire body frozen. 

“Samira,” Amma chided, attempting to elbow her forward, but she couldn’t have moved for all the tea in China, every muscle in her body was swamped in tension and anxiety. 

Her husband, the word sent a chill down her spine, was standing beneath a whitewashed pagoda, its beams crawling with Ivy. His hands were clasped politely behind him, knuckles tucked alongside each other with military precision. The realization came then that he was wearing a General’s uniform, his bright red coat was pockmarked with little gold buttons each resting parallel to each other. The fringe on the epaulettes wavered softly in the breeze, it was one of the only parts of his countenance that showed any signs of movement. He could have been a statue, hewn out of marble and long-standing in this very garden if it weren’t for the nearly imperceptible shift of his head towards her. 

She took one more nervous step forward and then stopped again. This time a glimmer caught her eye, a sparkling brooch pinned to the lapel of a little girl no older than five. She had vibrant red hair, pulled half up into a lovely blue bow and the greenest eyes Samira had ever seen. His daughter then, her daughter she supposed. 

She felt faint. 

The little girl was wringing her gloved hands in her lap, wrinkling the delicate lace fabric beneath her tiny palms as she looked towards Samira with something like hope, eyes saucer wide and brimming with ambition. 

I am all the hope she has, Samira thought mournfully. There was no way to be certain of that, no way to know what was flowing inside her mind but she couldn’t run now. Not from a girl who had already lost one mother. Not from a child who had not asked to suffer in the world.

She remembered her Appa then, the lines that crinkled around his mouth when he laughed. His deep, fond voice calling her Kannu, the smell of his cologne still resting upon his favorite reading chair even months after he’d died. Samira had sat in it for long, sorrowful hours her face pressed into the cushions.

She took another step forward. 

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation,” the priest droned looking particularly bored, “-to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency-”

His voice became a low droll buzzing in the back of her skull as the summer heat began to sink into her bones. She could finally see him up close now, her new husband. He was shorter than she’d expected, standing only a head above her and he tilted with an odd-gait, resting most of his weight on left leg. Silver curls sprouted from his scalp, but she could still see some traces of auburn reflected in the sunlight. He was handsome, more handsome than she would have guessed just based on description alone. With a boyish sort of charm, flashes of crooked teeth and an air of puckishness that surprised her. 

It took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her. 

“My Lady,” he said quietly, inclining his head towards her. Her gaze swiveled and she took in the faces of everyone present staring at her in silent anticipation. 

The priest cleared his throat and prepared what was clearly a repetition. “Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

The words stuck in her throat, rested on the tip of her tongue with uncomfortable tackiness. She looked around again at her mother’s furrowed brows, at the girl’s hopeful face and then Lord Abbot gave her hand one squeeze and leaned in close to her ear. 

“Don’t fret,” he whispered lowly, the words barely audible, “I won’t hold you to it.” 

Against her better judgement a surprised laugh slipped out of her mouth and he smiled then too. The movement left her so stunned she took yet another moment before answering the waiting priest who was looking at her with no small amount of annoyance. 

“I will.” Her voice was ephemeral, a puppet pulled up by the strings, some pantomime of her mouth and the words coming out of it. 

Lord Abbot began to repeat after the priest as the wafting smell of Gardenias brought her briefly, back into the crystallizing reality around her. 

“With this ring I thee wed,” he said, taking her hand. He was startlingly delicate, his fingertips barely brushing the inside of her wrist as she rested her palm against his, he slipped the ring onto her finger “with my body I thee worship,” one of his fingers dragged up the heel of her palm as he pulled away. His eyes did not tear from where it sat as he finished, “and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” 

She had thought she might feel different, suddenly shackled to the bounds of matrimony when he spoke but she felt nothing except the same nervous fluttering rhythm her heart had played one thousand symphonic times over since she stepped foot in the house. The summer breeze tickled her cheek in the same way it had since she was a child, warm and gentle-handed rustling the grass that perked up around her ankles. 

“Y’know you’re gonna wear a hole through the floorboards doing Jazz Squares like that,” Jack said leaning against the open door of her trailer. He had the easy kind of confidence and male bravado that usually drove Samira up a wall. On him she found the whole effect to be frustratingly attractive. He smiled wolfishly and pushed off of the doorway with a heavy-gaited step, all sparkling eyes and crinkling lines.

Samira paused and gave him her best measured frown, the one she practiced in the mirror to be sure it was remaining at the highest level of venom. His smile just broadened and mirth twinkled in his gaze.

He was wearing a smart linen shirt, slightly transparent so she could see the demarcated lines of his undershirt on his shoulders. A pair of pressed navy slacks and black boat shoes gave the whole thing a sort of Don Sharp in Ha’penny Breeze air that made him seem more at home on a yacht than a sweltering film set in California. God, he really did grind her gears.

“For your information,” she said sharply, crossing her arms over her chest, “If I was doing Jazz Squares you’d be laid out on the floor in astonishment.” It was false swagger, she didn’t believe a lick of her own blustering self-confidence but it sounded nice coming from her anyways. Fake it til’ you make it, Amma had said before she departed for Los Angeles with little more than a pair of saddle shoes and collection of Jane Austen novels to her name.

“Hey, you won’t hear any arguments from me.” Jack said settling into her cream couch, feet kicked languidly up on the lacquered coffee table. She yearned to smack them off. “You’ve been knockin’ my socks off since the day we met.”

Something silly and girlish rabbit-jumped in her chest, pattering uselessly against her breastbone as if her heart could burrow its way out of her chest by sheer force of will. She really hated when he did that, said something so lovely and earnest she couldn’t help but be charmed by him.

Jack Abbot was a good twenty years older than her, he’d been a leading man in the pictures since she was a teenager and he was a known lothario. Being endeared by his easygoing smirks and silver tongue was the absolute last thing she needed as a burgeoning actress.

“Alright kid,” he said, leaning forward to uncork a bottle of brandy, no matter that it was still 10 O’Clock in the morning. “Why don’t you take a load off and tell me what’s got you in a whirl?”

He had a bad habit of employing the most pinpoint accurate skills of observation she’d ever come across since, well, her own. He seemed to possess some supernatural awareness of when she was so nervous she could cry, or when she was about five seconds away from throttling Michael Robinavitch after the third ‘act prettier’ direction of the day.

But January’s Valentine was Robby’s movie at the end of the day, no matter how high she inexplicably sat on the marquis she served at the whim. Still that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“I uh-” the words caught in her throat and she remembered running along the New Jersey boardwalk dragging her Appa to wear they spun the saltwater taffy, trying to unstick it from the roof of her mouth. It had been summer then and it was summer again now, it was always summertime when she remembered him. “I’ve never done a kiss before.”

Jack’s brows furrowed nose twitching in barely concealed delight. “Kisses on-screen are no big deal. It’s like seeing your Aunt at Christmas dinner. You just… pinch your nose and get it over with.” He nudged his shoulder into hers. “Aw c’mon Mohan. I won’t bite.”

“No I mean-” she flustered, hands fluttering anxiously by her sides before she fisted them in the fabric of the couch, “Like at all… ever.”

That caught his attention, his eyebrows shot up, two little grey wrinkles of outright confusion right there on his handsome forehead.

“Oh,” he paused and his head snapped back towards her, “I mean no offense, honest. But why?”

She shuffled uncomfortably and stared down at her hands.

“I’m not judging you, I swear I just-” he motioned up and down as if the answer was obvious. “You’re a knockout kid. You’re what, twenty-one, twenty-two-”

“Twenty-five,” she corrected though she knew that he knew better.

“It’s 1955, you’re a modern woman, you’re living in the City of Angels, you’re a glamorous actress.”

Glamorous actress was a generous way of overstating that she had been a chorus girl plucked from obscurity who had only played two-bit background roles up to this point.

“You’re telling me no guy has invited you to dinner and tried his luck on your front doorstep.” Jack seemed genuinely baffled by this revelation, he was staring her down like she was one of the animal people from Island of Lost Souls.

“I mean they’ve tried,” she muttered, “Tony McDonough tried to kiss me at senior prom and I shoved him into a bush.” There had been dinner invitations and coy promises of drinks and drives along the coast.

Jack barked out a loud, genuine laugh, “Atta girl.”

“I just haven’t had time. I’ve been so busy working and I didn’t really think about it until I booked this role.” Trinity and Victoria had been her closest friends since she stepped off the train and even their constant pleading hadn’t been enough to persuade her to leave the comfort of the three bedroom apartment she shared. Between poring over scripts and picking up shifts at the cafe there hadn’t been time even if she wanted it.

He began to chuckle fondly and she shot a sharp glance at him.

“Kid I swear-” he put out a contrite palm, “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just wacky that someone as singular as you are has never been kissed.”

Her mouth sealed shut of its own accord, whatever barbs she was preparing lost in the way his eyes crinkled. She wasn’t certain where the confidence to say her next words came from but they thundered in her chest, braver and bolder than she’d felt in years.

“Well how about you then?”

He looked arrested in sudden thought. She’d seen a similar expression on him a couple years ago when she watched him play a morally dubious Sheriff in a Western. His expression unreadable as he’d reached for the gun strapped to his belt.

“What about me?” His voice cracked over the words, less surefire than she’d ever seen him.

“You could kiss me. You’re gonna kiss me anyways so I might as well get it out of the way.” Samira couldn’t meet his eyes and so she took the glass of brandy he’d been sipping on and downed it in one shot.

He made to stop her but only managed to catch the empty glass as her confidence shattered into a round of raucous coughs that shook her all the way down to her toes. One of his big, calloused palms came to soothe the small of her back and tears pricked the corner of her eyes.

“Alright alright, I’ll kiss ya’. No need to drink yourself to an early grave about it.” He chuckled lowly his thumbs wiping the wayward tears away from her cheek. She pawed at him attempting to smack his chest but was met with only the fluttering of his shirt as he held her head still and dodged her easily.

From this angle she could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, pools of green and brown swirling with anticipation. His palms were warm, but maybe that was her cheeks. and she swallowed hard nerves clawing up her throat.

It seemed to happen in slow motion, the chaste, dry press of his lips to hers. She blinked once, twice, and then pulled away face contorted into displeasure.

“Jack Abbot if you don’t kiss me how-” but her words faltered as he leaned in again, sealing his mouth over hers. All at once she felt hot and syrupy like she’d been poured over hotcakes fresh off the grill. She clutched at his shirt and deepened the kiss, his tongue catching the seam of her mouth.