<\/p>\n
Elastic and wary, they kissed.\u00a0 This was only the second time.\u00a0 Brooklyn\u2019s heart bounced up and down.\u00a0 She wondered where the fifteen years that separated the two of them went whenever their lips touched.<\/p>\n
Dorian said, \u201cOkay then.\u201d<\/p>\n
They were in a place outside the boundaries of campus called the Attique, a tiny caf\u00e9 that Brooklyn didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 It looked historic and fragile, or perhaps that was just an emanation from the antique store downstairs.\u00a0 Both the curio shop and the caf\u00e9 were enclosed inside a large, converted farmhouse.\u00a0 Up here, the exposed eaves slanted upwards and met perhaps eight feet above the main walkway, which necessitated the miniature furnishings.\u00a0 Small knotted rugs and faded velvet runners, a modest border of faux gold leaf, and tiny glass tumblers etched with the images of deer and foxes.\u00a0 On the edge of each beam, repeated in shrinking perspective from the outside entrance, a small cameo had been nailed, maidenly portraits in rose and periwinkle.\u00a0 There were four gables like the one Brooklyn and Dorian occupied each with its own small table and a pair of chairs.\u00a0 The windows only came up to waist level, sitting down, so that any pensive occupant had a skewed perspective if they looked out and down at the surrounding landscape.\u00a0 A woman sat behind the small bar reading the local independent paper.\u00a0 The only draw to such a place\u2014other than its removed location and the privacy it offered\u2014lay behind this stately hippie woman, a long shelf of rare liqueurs, brandies, and cognacs collected in eccentric bottles and unmarked decanters.\u00a0 The smell of espresso lingered in the hardwood, and a smooth, Swahili soprano cooed through speakers, though Brooklyn had trouble determining where exactly they were located.<\/p>\n
Dorian fit here, somehow, among the irregular surroundings and the sharp, aged liquor in her mouth, but it wasn\u2019t until after an hour and at an appropriate turn in their conversation that she acknowledged their surroundings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m somewhere else,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not in Uniontown, am I?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry, Doc,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cStill here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cIt feels too foreign.\u00a0 Parisian maybe.\u00a0 Old, Victor Hugo Paris.\u00a0 Or is it farther east?\u00a0 Poland?\u00a0 The Ukraine?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s American, plain as day.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat other place tries to recreate ol\u2019 Europa?\u00a0 While every other quote-unquote exotic culture is busy trying to recreate its cities as modern, sparkling tower yards pulsing with the envious American-made business model, we\u2019re buying up anything that looks Old World or, at the least, colonial, to warm our houses with.\u00a0 Us middle classes anyway.\u00a0 We want the comforting definition of something first-generation and migrant-made.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToo much talk,\u201d she said, even though she knew half the reason she\u2019d agreed to come here was to hear him speak again, to gauge the tide of his vocabulary, to see if his always ready opinions ever slid away or rose beyond his control.\u00a0 After years of reading students\u2019 double-spaced propositions and conclusions, Brooklyn felt she had a sixth sense for detecting bullshit, but her infatuation with Dorian had her lost in a fog.\u00a0 She responded to his speech on a primal level, no matter how tightly intellect wrapped the actual words.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it\u2019s a caf\u00e9, innit?\u201d he asked.\u00a0 \u201cArt and caffeine, politics and pastries.\u00a0 Or at least long whispers and absinthe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes<\/em> she\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u00a0 There\u2019s a rumor.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow can there be a rumor? There\u2019s probably ten people know about this place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cTen is not enough for a rumor?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGod, no.\u00a0 Rumors make more noise than that.\u00a0 But look at her.\u00a0 If anyone in this town had some absinthe, it\u2019d be her.\u00a0 Right there under the bar.\u00a0 Or maybe locked in a little chest.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s kill her and ransack the place.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooklyn covered her mouth but failed to halt a squealing, girlish laugh.\u00a0 \u201cLet\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen we can rush out back to our horses.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHighwaymen.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMoonlight and stolen spirits.\u00a0 The circuit judge becoming more irate and furious with each near-capture.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll hang us for sure, if we\u2019re ever caught.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRide fast.\u00a0 Ride hard,\u201d Dorian said, his eyes glowing.<\/p>\n \u201cI wear a veil during the day for a disguise.\u00a0 Layers of skirts and a corset.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have a silver flintlock pistol.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have a husband, somewhere.\u00a0 A simple man I don\u2019t love.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m an orphan the townspeople said would never amount to anything.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll hang us for sure once we\u2019re caught.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPunish the wicked.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMake an example.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAccused of spreading lasciviousness across the countryside.\u00a0 Vice-crazed cohorts and illegitimate lovers.\u00a0 Sinners like us, they say, have no place in God\u2019s country.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWould you hold my hand,\u201d she asked.\u00a0 \u201cRight before they dropped the trap-doors?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMore than likely we\u2019d be captured separately.\u00a0 You\u2019d wait and wait one night for me to return to the meeting spot, and in the morning, though you knew the truth, you\u2019d try to steal into the nearest town and arrange some means of escape for us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s possible.\u201d<\/p>\n He was holding her left hand across the table.\u00a0 He lifted it to his mouth and bit the tip of her forefinger, right at the knuckle, a soft bite, a soft trigger.\u00a0 \u201cBut they\u2019d have their trap set.\u00a0 We\u2019d be thrown into opposite cells to wait for the night.\u00a0 Listening to them assemble the scaffold all day.\u00a0 Hammer and peg.\u00a0 Both of us embracing the stone wall that separated us.\u201d<\/p>\n She withdrew her hand on a reflex, looked down at the table then back at him.<\/p>\n \u201cOr maybe,\u201d she said, \u201cthey\u2019d just fill our pockets with rocks and throw us in the river.\u201d<\/p>\n Dorian laughed now, his already narrow eyes squinting in a way that collected all the wet reflections of light into a tiny, hopeful space.\u00a0 Suddenly the proprietor was beside their table, her gypsy-inspired garb swaying around her lean body.\u00a0 She placed a bowl filled with bunches of swollen, red grapes on their table then stepped away, back towards her roost.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what she does when she wants you to leave, Doc,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, not really?\u201d Brooklyn reached for a grape.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t!\u201d Dorian grabbed her wrist.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re coated with arsenic!\u201d<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n She followed his lead, maintaining only a few inches distance as if the darkness would become total at any moment and she would need to swipe out for him.\u00a0 The grass behind the house was long and defensive, weaving around their shoes if they did not raise their feet high enough as they stepped towards the sound of frogs.<\/p>\n \u201cSee this?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n \u201cMy god,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cNow I know where we are.\u00a0 This is Hapsburg\u2019s Pond.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhose?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n They both looked across the expanse of still, black water, perhaps half a mile.\u00a0 The opposite shore possessed thicker vegetation, and a thin row of trees blocked off further sight, but it was still possible to spy the floating, peach-colored squares of light from the nearest houses.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s a neighborhood over there,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cWhere a lot of professors live.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLooks secluded,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSomewhat,\u201d she whispered.\u00a0 They walked for a little while close to the mossy shore, listening to things plop or drip into the pond.\u00a0 They both stopped where they thought the other wanted to pause.\u00a0 Brooklyn felt Dorian\u2019s pinky curl around hers.\u00a0 She felt the impulse to judge this action, to define it in terms of pathetic cuteness and irony, but after a breath, she was able to let that mild pulse of habit and tendency be absorbed back into her bloodstream.\u00a0 In the dark, with the absence of a definite, central object to focus on other than the shifting expanse of the pond and its clandestine, silver shimmers, their eyes moved constantly, pupils dilating and wavering.\u00a0 Dorian pulled out his tiny tape recorder from the inner pocket of his coat.<\/p>\n \u201cLandscape,\u201d he began.\u00a0 \u201cis art\u2019s most widely practiced genre.\u00a0 The most lucrative, possibly, also, for this reason: you can own land, but you can\u2019t buy any of the mood-altering variables along with it.\u00a0 Temperature, light, weather patterns.\u00a0 The deed doesn\u2019t include the inimitable power of the terrain, the mysterious union of natural elements that inspired us to create gods.\u00a0 You can trim your hedges, plant your flowers in arranged rows, build up the ground or excavate it.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not a yielding environment for any dramatic flair dictated by man.\u00a0 And so we need the artist, once again.\u00a0 We need him to capture nature\u2019s teasing beauty or imposing eeriness in a portable form.\u201d<\/p>\n He went on, the words weaving together expertly to form reasonable opinions.\u00a0 Who it was for or what inspired it mattered little to Brooklyn: she felt weightless when he spoke.\u00a0 She floated through the entire verbal exercise, dropping a few feet when he paused at the end of a sentence before being buoyed up again by the next. \u00a0Eventually, his voice wound down then ceased.\u00a0 Dorian\u2019s lips remained parted\u2014almost the exact same distance as Brooklyn\u2019s eyelids\u2014and the tape kept running and whirring for an uneasy moment.\u00a0 When his finger finally clicked the device to a stop her freefall began.<\/p>\n 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