Lady
Lady withdrew her finger and sank her hips to the floor. Her wrist was held in place while she laid the folds of her skirt neatly down. He asked her a question about how she was, too quietly now, with all that had come before. He had left word on the tip of her thumb that trickled down into her open palm, that she closed around him until he drew himself back. He wrote to her in a letter a few weeks later, the moon had sunk his gaze into the river and he had lost his way. She wrapped her fingers around the words and wondered why she could not have accompanied him to the ends of the earth. Lady raised her hand against herself and lamented the labor it took to do only this, but the language was kind and she had known him to be a kind man.
A lump of animal lard makes for a wonderful lather, and she should not have waited so long to come into being. She thought it all the while, to have made herself alone before anything else and her body amongst the others, they found her unappealing if only for her need to learn every little thing that they had always known - to coax a knot into smaller parts, one kneaded with their knuckles bare. Lady was pleased with the discomfort and attracted to any morsel of herself that she had not before seen. She was brought up by desire and had given it all to him, for all that he made her own a long conversation and a kiss for the head… which she was never to give over and had always to keep for herself.
He dressed as a doctor and washed his hands like those of a bride, once the consummation had ended and she knew that he would always put himself first. His hands wove ink into indelible strokes, they gave sentences to young women who succumbed to a vapid dose of malaise, that thorny feverishness which took hold every once in a while and for no precise reason. She was not entirely like the others, he said. He spent more time with her than any of them, and talked with her about the way things were on the outside; he kept her secrets, the elucidations that unfolded were always volunteered. He never told Lady what he intended, but she knew all along that it could not be any better than it already was.
Lady liked the cocktails, they were slung from a tin can that had been kept in a cold place. Fruit soaked in white syrup for years if she was lucky, licked the sweet sludge right off a silver tray. Pieces of meat with a softened hue, her sweat that smelled like metal. Every day more muted than the last, the milk and its rancid residue on the cuffs of her sleeves, its spill leaving thin rings on her table. Something to put around her finger, that may have been a longing of hers sometime before.
Music was hard to come by, but he brought it to her whenever he could. They danced quietly, she teetered around on her toes. She was light like a child, and he draped his white coat around her body to keep it warm. Lady could hardly breathe if she wanted to hear it through the damp heavily laid over her ears, she tried very hard to be as he wanted. She asked to hold the record between her fingers and slipped it gingerly down while he danced. A jaggedness, some picture of carnelian wax seeping into the wood and all the way down her swaying arms, he should have known better than to do what he did. It was good luck that they had sown fabric over the tile, so that nothing like it could happen again. Lady let him change the music, she kept on dancing right through the end and well into the beginning.
When the cure was over, she was returned to the old parts. He came to her less often, she wore a skirt for him once and asked him what he made of it. She danced for him and smiled, he had never seen her in quite this way. She had waited patiently for him to act upon her as she had hoped, and he would not do it, not for a great while. Lady was older now and walking along the bridge, she had spent so long inside, and there was nothing more to think about. She climbed a set of stairs and craned her neck to watch the sky, the only thing above or below her. She wrapped her body in her own arms and tilted her chin to the moon, its polish bright and clean. Lady loosened herself from her clothing and gazed steadily into the waters, she could see her softened edges in the silken finish ripple with sounds so delicate - she would have to keep quiet to hear them play.
End.