Nocturne

The tree kept falling over and they needed a stronger base to keep it upright. “Do you need the tree?” Pierce asked. Pierce was the producer. He was worried about spending more to bolster the tree. It was probably the most expensive piece of stagecraft of the whole set, possibly the most expensive piece that the theater company had ever had made. “The play is called Tree of Life so we kind of need a tree, dude,” Monica replied, standing at the edge of the stage looking at the empty rows of seats in the theater. 

“I've been thinking, do we need a post-modern retelling of the story of Genesis?” Pierce asked. “I mean, why now?”

Monica rolled her eyes. Pierce's vision seemed to stop on a dime. His cheapness was why they had such a faulty tree in the first place. He took the lowest bid to have it built, and they'd been spending money on repairs ever since. 

“Yes, Pierce. Right now is the exact right time for it. Eve needs someone to speak up for her.”

“I'm just worried that tree is going to kill somebody. The liability if that happens,” Pierce began whispering calculations. “It'd be enough to bankrupt the company.”

“That's funny,” Monica said, “I'm worried about, you know, somebody actually dying.” 

“I am, too,” Pierce snapped. “But I have to look at the bottom line of it, too. You're the director. You spend money like it's printed in a back room.”

“We sold the investors the script. They bought a script with a tree. It needs a tree.” 

“What if the tree is a metaphor?”

“It's already a metaphor, Pierce.” 

“What if we have it rewritten, though, so there isn't a physical tree that might kill somebody in the center of the stage?”

“What if? What if we had competent people build it in the first place?”

“Well, we can't keep harping on that, can we?” Pierce kicked the tree. A plaster branch from the uppermost bough creaked and snapped off, tumbling down onto Pierce's foot with a loud pop. 

Pierce screamed, and Monica grabbed him before he crashed onto the stage. Jon the stagehand rushed to Pierce and helped prop him up. 

“I guess we're getting rid of the tree,” Monica said. 

“Drive me to the hospital, Mon,” Pierce said.

“We could call an ambulance.”

“That's not in our budget,” Pierce said. 

***

“Hey Rob, this is Monica.”

“Hi Monica,” Rob said. “How are you? I am really excited for opening night.”

“It's coming up fast. So that's something that I wanted to talk to you about. We're having problems with the tree, it kind of broke.”

“Oh, you want me to come down and fix the tree? I'll get my tools and be right there.”

“No, it's kind of a hazard that's beyond fixing. It kind of broke Pierce's foot, so yeah, we were thinking maybe you could write it out of the play.”

“Um, jeesh, that's...I wrote the play kind of because of the tree, so that's going to be hard. I mean, I wanted the tree to be part of the, um, seduction, of Eve--”

“I know, I read the play.”

“Bu-but also part of the you know, how we have the kind of symbiotic relationship with trees, how they breathe in the carbon dioxide and out the oxygen--”

“I know, I read the play.”

“So you see, I just don't really see how it's going to happen. It's not going to be the same play it wou-would be if we cut the tree. No pun in-intended.”

“If we don't cut the tree, someone will die.”

“W-well, that's not good, either.”

“Look, the actress who plays Eve is a magnificent playwright, I am going to put her on this with you.”

“I-I'm kind of a so-solo act,” Rob said. 

“Okay, I am just going to send her over to brainstorm with you,” Monica said. “Her name is Monique, you just pitch things to her, see what sticks, but we need to get this done as soon as we can. We're less than a month away from opening night.”

***

“Hey, sorry I'm late. I was just dropping my kids off at their dad's,” Monique threw her purse off her shoulder onto the couch and stuck out her hand. Rob shook it.

“How do you like to work?” she asked. 

“Um, well,” Rob began.

“I'm just asking because I really like to just dive in. No bullshit, you know? I don't want to sit around wasting time. So we're getting rid of the tree? I'm glad, that thing was like a deathtrap waiting to, um, you know, spring. Traps spring. I mix metaphors sometimes so just keep an ear on it. I have to say, I love your play. Love. Love love love. I was just so...fucking ready for it, you know? The challenge, the story. I don't think we have to change much except for everything, you know what I'm saying? Great bones. But we have to keep the beauty, the ideas. Just, just Eve.”

“Um, yeah. Do you want a coffee?”

“Do you have any macha? Weird question, I know. It's like immediate upgrade, you know, you're like do you want any sugar and I'm like got any gold? Sorry. But do you?”

“Um, I have some licorice tea and I might have some peppermint tea.”

“Am I too loud for you? I'm an extroverted introvert, if that makes sense. I don't mind talking, I just, I see it's making you uncomfortable. I'm attuned to introverts, you know? So I'm going to shut up and write some ideas.” 

“Coffee?”

“Oh, yeah. I'll take some, why not?” 

“Okay. Do you take sugar? Or maybe some gold in your coffee?”

“What?”

“It's a joke, callback to what you said,” Rob said, “Sorry, I'll shut up now.”

“Oh, oh, no, it's funny. I'll write that for the script.”

***

Monique stretched out on the couch. It was a cold, rainy day. The wind thrummed the raindrops heavily against the window, spreading into delicate plumes shaped by relentless gusts. It had been three days since Monique came to help with the play. 

“Here's your macha,” Rob said, handing her an earthenware mug. She wore a thick red sweater, and she pulled an afghan from the back of the couch and covered her legs, but she still seemed cold. 

“Do you want to go take a hot bath or something?” Rob asked. 

Monique smiled. “No, I'm just cold-blooded, you know. I need the sun. I think that's why I act. The only time I feel myself is when I'm under stage lights.”

“Being someone else?”

“Yeah, that's right. Being someone else makes me myself.”

Rob sat on the other side of the couch with a notebook. He stared at her staring at the striating raindrops.  

“Well, let's pick up where we left off.”

“Where was that?”

“Adam is exploring Eden, while insisting that Eve stay by their home.”

“Oh yeah.”

“He says, 'You are my fixed star, you will always lead me back here, I hearken to you like the flowers face the sun.'” 

“And she says, 'Why should I stay fixed for you? Why should I remain still while you encircle, and circle and circle in wider gyres while I lay waste to my own light?” 

“And he says, 'Your light is no more wasted than mine, your days are no less endless than my own, as I learn about the world fraught with danger, you learn the secrets of fire, of the home and of the harvest.'”

“And she says, 'And the danger of a wandering mind and a straying heart, the danger of seeing a dandelion mote float through the air with more freedom than have I should affright you more than any animal in the garden.'”

“Right.”

“Because she knows he's lying?”

“What do you mean?”

“He knows that if she leaves that she's going to go to the tree of knowledge, and that she'll eat the fruit.”

“He doesn't know that, though. He knows that he is afraid for her, and in my conception of Adam fear is caused by a lack of knowledge, anxiety is the opposite of action, or something like that.”

Monique sunk into the couch and put her feet across Rob's lap, uncovering her toes from the afghan. Rob pulled the afghan back over her feet and tucked it under to make sure it wouldn't be moved. He liked the weight of her legs across his lap. Their intimacy had grown quickly and startlingly and Rob didn't want it to end either by finishing the play or escalating it to romance, but some change was inevitable for nothing in nature remains in comfortable stasis, he thought, and he gave her foot a squeeze. She smiled at him over her macha as if she was caught sharing the same thought.  

***

“Pierce came up with the idea of you adding Satan to the play.”

“I know. And I told him no.”

“Because if there is a Satan, that robs Eve and Adam of agency. The story is they're duped instead of curious, which is infuriating. I need for them to make the decision to eat from the tree. That's why we need the tree as almost a third character, as a stand-in for Satan, but natural and symbiotic and ultimately Adam and Eve need to make their choice on their own, without gods or demons influencing them. We, all of us people, suffer because of the choices we make, not because we're tricked or cajoled or forced to make a choice. We are ruined by each of our own hand.”

“I know. That's what I told him.” 

“You did?”

“Yeah, man. I got your back.”

***

Monique said, “You know, in Milton, Adam and Eve are redeemable because they're tricked.”

“Yeah, but that's not what I wanted to say. I feel like so much of the mess we are in is because we can say, 'oh, we were tricked,' instead of accepting a larger responsibility for our actions.”

“Well, maybe Eve should, instead of taking responsibility, lie about being tricked. Maybe that's where it has to end.”

“But she doesn't. That's not what I want for my Eve.”

“That's not what you want, but maybe that's what she does.”

Rob glared at his pad of paper. “I am going to stop talking now.”

***

“I am hungry,” Monique said. 

“Oh, yeah, you should get home to feed your kids. I've been keeping you here too late.”

“No, they're with my ex tonight. I figured we might have to pull an all-nighter. Monica has been texting, she needs the draft by tomorrow morning. We really need to get working.”

“Oh,” Rob said. “I just...I spe-spent two whole years working on this play, and I c-can't just knock out a different version with the same meaning and implications.”

“But you've made a lot of good changes here, Rob. I love it. You've given me such beautiful words to say.”

“Beautiful but empty so just superficial as bubbles or something ephemeral like that.”

“We should order something to eat. You're losing your touch as we speak.”

They ordered and ate something and Rob felt better. Winds unsettled the windows, they seemed like they would shatter.  

***

“Do you have any candles?” Monique jumped off the couch in the sudden darkness of the apartment. 

“I have a flashlight.”

“Where?”

“On my phone.”

Monique rolled her eyes. “What are you going to do when the big one hits?”

“I don't know. I live in an unreinforced masonry building so I'll probably die.”

“Don't say that, Rob.”

“It's my choice and I have to live with the consequences,” Rob said. 

“You're committed to that, I have to admit.”

Monique took out her lighter and lit a burner on the gas stove and used its feeble light to search the kitchen for something that might be used as a candle. 

She remembered she had a pack of crayons in her bag. She peeled them from their wrappers, melted them in a pot, found a small glass jar from Rob's recycling, and made a wick from a pack of kitchen twine weighted with a small safety pin from her sewing kit. 

It didn't smell good, but it worked. 

“Where'd you learn to do that?” Rob asked. 

“I don't know. Internet. Pintrest or something.”

***

They wrote by the light of the improvised candle, pouring out the puddling wax so the flame wouldn't drown itself. Rob and Monique acted out the scenes, by the flickering light, breath coming out in misty puffs as they practiced and proved the dialogue, scratching out sections and scribbling more. 

“Cupid and Psyche is the same story, with the same frustrations,” Rob said.

“It's a Blackbeard story.”

“The Garden of Eden is a Blackbeard story, where God is Blackbeard. Blackbeard lays a trap, the room where he leaves his dead brides. God lays the trap in the Tree of Knowledge. It's the same trap. Knowledge is the bait, curiosity is the spring, death is the trap.” 

“But isn't death preferable to ignorance?”

“I don't know. We live in a world now where we are ignorant of ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine subjects because our collective knowledge is so vast, don't you think?”

“But all that happens in Cupid and Psyche is that Cupid gets burned with a little wax,” Monique said, and she dripped some wax into her open palm. “It hurts, but then it hardens.” 

“Yes, but Psyche isn't that smart, which is maddening because she's supposed to represent the mind.”

“That kind of says something about what the Greeks thought about the mind, doesn't it?”

The light from the candle flickered. “It's going out,” said Monique. 

“Drowning itself,” Rob said. 

“'In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, that on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the death-bed whereon it must expire, consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.'”

“That's right,” said Rob. 

***

The flame had been out for many moments. “Goddamn, it's cold,” Monique said. 

“Do you want that bath now?” Rob asked. 

“Only if you take it with me,” Monique said. 

“I'm serious.”

“I am, too. It's too dark to see anything, anyway.”

Rob considered and said, “Okay.” 

He went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. A hot steamy spray of water came out of the antique spigot. 

“You get in first,” he said. 

“Sure.” 

Monique stripped and got into the bath. Rob brought in a couple of thick towels that he had been clumsily seeking in the linen closet and put them on the toilet. Monique moved her legs to make room for him, he could hear the slosh of the water slap against the walls of the tub. 

He took off his clothes and got into the tub, too. He could feel Monique's soft skin against his hairy legs. 

“If you had omnipotent knowledge,” he said, “perhaps the only thing that would surprise you is curiosity. It's rather cruel.”

“No, they were going to die, anyway. God wanted them to eat from the tree so they would know it.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Well, you're going to die. I'm going to die. But we haven't yet, so for all we know we're the first immortals.”

“I don't follow.”

“You'd think you were immortal all along if you hadn't experienced death first hand,” said Monique. “God was just taking the blame for what was going to happen anyway. He was absolving them of responsibility for their actions.”

They let their legs to intertwine under the water. 

“I haven't been this intimate with anyone since I was married,” said Monique.

“I haven't been this intimate with anyone ever,” said Rob. 

***

They lay in the tub, occasionally filling it with more hot water as it turned lukewarm. Rob rubbed Monique's pruny foot, feeling the growing ridges. 

A great puff from the heater, a hum of power then the lights turned on. Rob turned his eyes from Monique and Monique covered her breasts with her left arm and hand, using the other hand to grab a towel to give to Rob. 

“You get out first,” she said. “I'll close my eyes.”

He got out of the tub and dried himself off. 

“Cute butt,” she said. 

“Eyes closed,” he said. “I'll go get you something to sleep in.”

“I'm not staying here,” she said. 

“You're not going home,” he said. “Don't worry, I'll be a gentleman.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” she said. 

***

She wore one of his dress shirts and a pair of his old sweatpants. He wore his pajamas. 

“You get in first,” she said. “I hate getting into a cold bed.”

“Sure,” he said. He got into bed and held up the covers for her to get in. She scrambled in and shivered while he spooned her. 

“Your freckles make constellations only I can know and name,” he said. 

“That's too much,” she said. 

“Too much for the play?”

She rolled over to face him, “Too much for everything.”

His hands hovered over her, passing over it with an inch sized gap between his hand and her body beneath. He stared at the brilliant flecks in her eyes, which from a distance combined into a single unity, now seemed to be made up of a galaxy of different colors, just as her face looked so different when she was on the stage, always beautiful but a different beauty. He timed his breath so his inhale matched her exhale, and her breathed her breath, smelling it and letting it warm his nostrils. 

“Sleep, death's twin brother,” he said.

“Le petit mort,” she said. 

“I don't want this to end. And now that I've said that, it has,” he said. 

“It hasn't and it was always the end, anyway,” she said, and she reached over his trembling body to turn off the light.