Excerpt from novel in progress: "For the Love of Dahlia"

Bloody fingertips struck the smooth keys of the Steinway grand with a passion reserved for suicide. At the start, her hands hesitated, hovering above the slim black and white bars with a delicate tension of fear, anxiety and suspicion before pressing deep and quick, striking the perfect chord, the appropriate vein for the right sound to release her of the emotional death piercing her heart. While the player’s mind traveled through a chaotic dream of truths that disbursed into red blotches, her lovely, blood covered hands plucked out a tune that did not belong to a composer. She possessed no thought of the tune’s origin but of a journey, a savoir to take her from the desperate and sad revelation she’d just uncovered.

If there were tears, she could not feel, taste or free them. There was no time to cry despite the burn searing her eyes.

 Having cried a waterfall of tears before the age of ten, she had almost become immune to them, particularly around the time that Liz Taylor (mostly known as Flame) came into her life: “Cry into your pillow, if you must, but not in front of other people.”  It would be years following this speech that she’d find herself in tears, so deep and well driven that she’d folded herself within the arms of love and allowed herself to drown within its downpour.

If Flame was present, he would tell her to slow down, “take your time, make love to the keys, and stroke the keys like this.” Then he would brush his long graceful fingers across her cheek, softly smoothly down to her chin. And she would offer him a genuine smile, sweet and innocent.  She missed him terribly, desperately with an ache that possessed her entire body.

This new thing was like the drama of a reality show, a part witnessed with your own eyes but too outrageous to believe is true. Even if you believe it, how could you ever heal from it? The entire affair made her long for Flame more than she had within the last two weeks. Flame would know the answers to this thing that found it necessary to greet her with violence, the drawing of blood, a hateful name hurled at her like a fist.

Flame loved her more than he loved his own life. He had died protecting her from what he believed to be danger. He had been her teacher, her protector, the father she never knew. Flame was gifted at tickling away sadness and talking her into tomorrow’s great news. He taught her how to play the piano, how to dance without a partner, how to ignore the voice of a naysayer, how not to run if danger was small and arrived in numbers less than two. Why he never enrolled her in karate or judo, she never thought to ask but ballet, jazz and contemporary dance sculpted her beautiful body into an unbelievably complex geometry which included shapely angles, sharp turns and smooth rounded corners that men admired. Her body could bend in ways Flame’s lover, Shell, called contortionism.

The day Liz Taylor (mostly known as Flame) saved Dahlia’s life, chasing a gang of two back to their home, he delayed his business. He was surprised when she quickly climbed into his pretty blue car and seat belted herself securely without direction. She announced her hunger with a request that they visit the local McDonalds.

“I don’t have permission from your sisters to feed you burgers and fries. You know how strict Grace is.”

“You don’t have permission to drive me to the store either but you’re doing it,” she had mumbled.

He turned his attention from the street to her profile catching her eyes as they darted from their corners to stare straight ahead, and, impossibly, over the dashboard.

“And you aren’t supposed to get into cars with strangers but you did it!”

“You’re not a stranger. I’ve heard Grace and Laila talking about you. I’ve seen your other self driving this same car. I saw you fighting that man who lives two houses away from yours for hitting that girl. But Grace said she deserved to be slapped because . . . well, never mind.”

“My other self,” he remarked as if searching for that self within the car. He understood what she meant and there was no judgment or malice in her tone. There couldn’t be any malice, even though the girl lived with Grace, the most perfect Christian in the world, holier than anything in a convent and ten times the judge of any man or woman appointed to the sit on the thrown of a superior court.

“We’ll get fruit, something you don’t have to cook. But you can’t tell Grace that I gave you a ride. She doesn’t like me but you already know this.”

“No, she doesn’t like you or your other self. And she would hate you even more if she saw you now, dressed like a woman! But I like your jewelry and you smell nice too.”

He parked the car and helped her out of the passenger’s eat. She grabbed hold of his hand. They proceeded across the lot and through the automatic doors of Kroger. Heads turned, tongues wagged but no one dared speak aloud for fear of Flame’s chastisement. Still, he was familiar with the attention. Dahlia was obvious to the talk and stares though it wasn’t a new thing. He shopped here often. Yet, some of the people weren’t at ease with his masculine six foot eight inch frame dressed impeccably in heels, makeup and wigs . . . but they, particularly women who did not know, were smitten and full of compliments when he came as his other self.

Flame picked out a readymade bowl of various melons, grapes and blueberries then proceeded to checkout.

“I’d like a soda, please.”

He peered down at her, a glossy black curl dipping over his right eye. He didn’t bother to move it back into place with the other curls, but looked past it, reaching his hand forward to slide back the door of the freezer that held the cold bottled waters.

Pouting wasn’t her style. Filled with too much curiosity and awe, she decided not to protest. She concluded he was too tall to disobey. And he was too elegant to make a scene. Moreover, she’d experience too many hungry days in the past to exhibit a bit of gratitude when someone volunteered to feed her.

Once they reached the registers, she picked up a candy bar: “May I have this?”

“No.”

“Why not?” She frowned, temporarily forgetting about her earlier thoughts of past hungers.

“You should not eat candy on an empty stomach. It’s bad for you.”

“I’ve eaten it on an empty stomach before. It tastes good too!”

He looked down beneath a crowd of long lashes.

“That was before. This is now,” he flipped the bar over in the palm of her hand. “Read the ingredients.”

She peered down at the words, some she couldn’t pronounce, shaping her mouth phonetically before giving up.

“Here,” she waved the bar up in the air like a wand.

He looked down into her magnificent green, slanted eyes; eyes that made him feel as if he was fighting for his life.

“Please,” she said without a whine but with sweet politeness.

“Why would you eat a piece of candy, or anything, when you cannot pronounce the ingredients or know what they mean?”

She continued to look into his eyes, tilted her head to the side taking his hand into her own. It seemed to last longer than a minute, that sweet little gaze, coming from those magnificent bright eyes.

Flame’s heart was beating rapidly. She reminded him of Laila in so many ways. He shook his head.

“Okay,” he relented. “I will buy you the candy bar this time but when you get home, eat the fruit first. While you’re eating the fruit, you have to look up the definition of the words on the back of the candy bar, write them down, and tell me their nutritional value.”

She sighed: “I didn’t know this would turn into a school lesson. Laila doesn’t make me do this.”

“Miss Dahlia, all of life is a lesson. Those are the stipulations, do you want the candy or not?”

“Yes,” she smiled gleefully.

“Even if you find out there are things in it that’s unhealthy, that may make you sick?”

“I love candy! It’s not supposed to be nutritional,” she spoke joyfully, swinging her body which helped her to move her hand and arm so that his arm moved along with hers. She held his hand tight.

“It makes me happy!”

It was as if her life had flashed before her eyes, the best parts that included Flame, not Grace or Laila. There was no one left. No one . . . except for him and he had yet to call.

She tried closing her eyes, hoping behind the lids sat the answers, the soothing balm, the calm and a savior. But the right eye burned and blurred. The left eye raged with pain brought on by Laila’s violent punch.

A trickle of blood slid down her face, traveling from someplace higher than her forehead. She couldn’t remember what happened there, had she fallen on the floor, bumped her head on the table on her way down or was it from the glass Laila had thrown? Dahlia didn’t bother wiping away the stains. It was only a matter of time before she gave in to unconsciousness; already the thoughts inside her head were swimming, trying to save themselves from darkness. Her life and the dreams she’d imagined had exploded into pieces. She hadn’t the strength to gather them for safe keeping.

She had but one chance left, another person who was missing in action, he’d make things better. If she could only make herself move from the stool and quiet her fingers then her mind and thoughts might follow.

Still she sat, compelled to play, the black and white keys slippery with blood. The noise she played was unpleasant, even to her. But she could not stop; destruction lay ahead if she so much as paused. Only the pimp seated in his car, two houses down having witnessed her run from Grace’s house to Flame’s, knew she was inside playing this wretched composition. She’d play this death tune until there was nothing left, no love, no hate, no regret, not even pieces of the dream she began the day the pretty blue car slowed down for her. He was gone but not Darryl. Yes, Darryl! She’d call Darryl later, if she survived this suicide melody.