YD6-44(SHEa) Aetheria At Peace With A Rodeo Girl Nickname Little Sparrow

 

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In this chapter of Vitrine of Consciousness, Aetheria is in line as unfolds a "rodeo girl" from France arriving at the narrator’s bachelor's studio in New York. Aeheria’s heightened awareness facilitates Franc-ine sharing memories of her time as a college student and proximity with her professor, Gaetano Pesce. Chatting progresses into the evening, to exhaustion Franc-ine requests to go to sleep. While the writer reflects and finds it difficult to reconcile the cowgirl image with Francine's nickname, "Little Sparrow."

Ring, ring - I lift the handset, “Hello.” At the other end of the line, I’m surprised by Francine’s soft whisper. “J’ai atterri . . . — I’ve landed. I’ll hand over the taxi driver.” Lost in a gust of breath. In contrast, a deep voice, thick with Mexican accent, mumbles. “What is your place?” After giving the address, where I’m sitting at my Compaq Portable, the line goes dead. The taxi driver hangs up on me. I lend a thought, logging the trip before returning to the screen. Returning to the world I left, piano, the keyboard echoing my thoughts --. 

A young man without the scent of danger crosses two South African police officers on a raid on Jean’s childhood home in Orange Grove. When he burst through the driveway gate. He flees into the street toward the park, and the police office block for police officers, my sister Ines, and Ronnie reside. While the maid, peeks from behind the door of the backyard’s servant quarter, hiding her lover in the interior's shadow, unfolds an ex-lover drama.

I’m removing from my thoughts, sentient of a distant heat flare, a nagging hot-air balloon drifting closer to the edge of my thoughts. Until restless for peace, I rise from my writing table in a daze, pacing the galley kitchen. I turn beneath the portrait window, picturing the sun dabs through the leafy canopies. I turn the skeletal key jingling my keyring, the mortise lock unlatches. Fingers rest on the cool lever. The door cracks, to the sunbathing concrete driveway ramp up to a canvas of sidewalk trees. A canary yellow flickers through canopy shades and flashes a taxi creeping up sleek and gleaming glides to a stop.

A shadow stirs in the backseat, for me to decipher an exchange of fare. The taxi’s sleek canary plumage cracks a rear door wing, and over the driver’s shadowy shoulder, a figure’s ongoing retrieve in the darkness of the rear dark window. In the light skirting the door, a manly brown needle-toe boot to jean cuffs steps onto the asphalt. ‘_What, a footwear package from France?_’ I exclaim to myself. When above the window, sunlight catches frizzy wavy hair waves over her shoulders. Fingers curled over the door frame. Her head ducks down. The shadowy figure tugs and drags a heavy bag to the edge of the seat.

A boot kicks the door shut, revealing a rodeo girl in a button-up blouse and a massive belt buckle. Through her slender figure twists, she wrangles for the straps, shrugs her huge duffle bag to the shoulder to gain her balance to a pause. Her eyes scan, questioning her whereabouts, while the canary yellow slips away, leaving her exposed in the mid-morning shadows to Aetheria. A stallion eyes on me. Under the weight of her bag, she stumbles to her footsteps. Steps over the storm-water gutter onto the driveway apron and approaches. Straightening her shoulders, lugging her bag, Her mind lands with a reflexing smile. “Tu n’es pas ce à quoi je m’attendais — You’re not what I expected!” I blurt out. “Mois non plus — Neither I,” Francine retorts. 

Francine’s eyes darted toward the door, to shrug me off from grabbing her duffle bag. I caved in to trail Francine across the doorstep. She veers by the cabinet’s worktop, leads through the galley kitchen. She emerges to sight the glare of the sunbathing backyard across the panoramic window. Her eyes wander from the made-up bed corner draping the duvet skirting the marital bed. Around the opening’s jamb, her shoulder dips, with eyes roaming. Freezing by, her duffle bag falling to her feet. Seizing the bunker of a converted double garage, I contoured her sinking thoughts. In my silent turn around Francine, I convey, ‘This is how things are with me.’ In a detour, my eyesight sweeps away from the flight of stairs to upstairs. Bracing my shins against the foot of the bed, then retrieve to stance, then I plant my knee on the edge. Punctuating my eyes with a hip swing, prop an arm, to sink into the mattress’s soft edge, and perch with Francine in the corner of my eye. As she’s assimilating the place to launch her career.

She awakes, pacing up the aisle. Francine slants away from the gapping shower room doorway, extending her hands to rest on the duvet. Crawling with a knee on the edge, she reaches out, pressing her boot to fall to the floor. With a lizard-twist, she drops the other boot to the aisle. Crawling further with a sensuous slink, she lies in front of the paired pillows. Gazing aside, flexes her arm, rests her head in her palm, and sighs. “Je suis arrivé . . . — I got here, ‘thanks to you — through my mother, Ingrid’s best friend.’_”

Francine’s open soul words, inciting the Hydra head of my mind, glides over a cityscape past a canal. Swoops into a university campus, to hover under a contemporary gymnasium ceiling to students. The group stands in a crescent to their prank — While I’m seated coiled with a flexed knee on the bed beside me, an eye in line with my shoulders, listening to Francine. “… En première année à l’université de Strasbourg . . . — As a freshwoman at Strasbourg’s university, my gig was to roll on the floor,” she whispered. An offside near-corner door cracks from a dormant door, with a leaf swings a young woman enters the gym. In a glitch to barrel rolls, her slender figure stamps a gray chain of body print on an unrolled white table paper to the students’ feet. The puritans in me recoils, but remind myself. ‘Let her be who she is.’

Mid-conversation, Francine springs to sit. “Where is the toilet?” she asks. Her feet skid, buttocks kicks, scoot, both legs slip over the edge to stand. My twisted body uncoils in relief, as she strides from the showered doorway toward the foot of the bed. Around me, she passes by the rising staircase against the wall. Bright sunlight from the panoramic window-French door casts reflective shades on the panel door. Underneath the upstairs landing, Francine pushes her way into the small toilet cubicle. In the gaping doorway she unbuckles her jeans, turns, lowering behind the blind wall. Whisks from the knees, her drawers down to her ankles. I’m wandering. ‘I mean . . . That French audacity?’ and then, ‘Even alone, I close the door.’

Francine’s hands return to grab the bundled waist of her drawers. She rises in the gapping doorway, wiggles her blue-jeaned hips, buckles up, stepping out of the cubicle, returning to puritan normalcy. Circling me, she pulls my gaze and my body twist and coils as her hands paws at the bed. She crawls on knees to sit cross-legged between the two pillows, straight back, short of the headboard, leading the conversation to home. The Hydra of my mind, stretches to small, pranky children in the street — Francine’s recollections of Ingrid’s children and her siblings playing “Rue Des Sources” their families’ houses at opposite extremes of the street bend. 

Conducive to a lover’s pride, distancing from her childhood innocence, Francine’s eyes widen and brighten. A sensual smile graces her fine lips to soften her whispery voice. “My professor, Gaetano Pesce. . . He’s Italian.” Her soul shuts the gates to these memories. The Hydra head of my mind betrayed, to a pinch of jealousy, leaving me heavy-hearted. Yet, Francine’s overwhelm raises the aura silhouette of a grandfather mentor versus a student youth, which slips away the figures as a clasp of clay through the finger, with Francine springing out of her thoughts. “Can I take a shower?” she asks.

“Sure.” I say, eyeing leashing her across the aisle to the shower room door. Francine scoots, then jumps, vanishing through the gaping doorway. Behind the wall, plastered with maps and textual caricatures. The shower - hiss… - raising a steaming genie that curls from the ajar top of the door. The spray falls silent. Francine emerges in a silky black Kimono patterned with rambling roses, her hair swept up in a Marie-Antoinette pouf. She plants her hands on the bed, kicks a knee on the edge of the bed, ceased by her gown. She reaches behind, pulls her gown to struggling a feline stretch. Rolling back on a hip amid the pillows, her hands flutter ballerina wings, as she uncoils the turban, letting her hair tumble onto her shoulders.

With a flourish, Francine discards the bath towel, by the same magic reveals a foot-long, rose-colored plastic comb. She plants the teeth in the frizzled ends of her hair — reminiscent of Jean before her mirrored dresser, smoothing wet blond hair with gentle strokes — The sight stirs me from my restless inertia. “Can I help, comb your hair?” I ask. Francine sighs, “Oui — Yes.” Continuing combs down the ends. 

My left knee leaps over the right leg, in a turnaround, after my hands propping on the bed. Clumsy, with a tingling pain, one shoe-toe kicks off the other heel, then my toe in a sock presses the other shoe to fall. I crawl up to Francine, my face to soar from the comb she holds to her shoulder. Rising to my knee, I wiggle nearer, her knee poking groin. I sit back on my heels. Grab the comb, my left hand scooping a section of hair at the nape, draping over my purlicue. The comb’s teeth into her hair’s ends hook in tangled knots. 

I snap a lock of hair taut against my index finger, teasing out frizzled ends with snappy strokes. Working my way up, smoothing the section to reach the crown of her head. Starting another section, teasing out the knot as I circle her head. Reaching her ears, her hand comes to rest on the comb. She leads the stroke out of my hand, and plants the teeth on the top of her head, smoothing her hair along her temples. “Je veux que tu m’appelles Petit Moineau — I want you to call me Little Sparrow!” she says, to my utter surprise, while final comb strokes, hair flowing over her shoulders.

We chat, and Francine materializes a pointillist Graphics Interchange Format to the Hydra of my mind perch the rear ceiling to sight a lecture room. As windows filtering blurred lights, outline the professor and a dozen students, from a convex lens of Francine’s frizzy hair flowing over her shoulders — We chat ourselves under the duvet, with her painted romantic four-years in interior architecture, a concept so abstract to me. I’m remaining with the hard lines of architecture blueprint raising core structures. “je suis fatiguee . . . — I’m exhausted. Can we go to sleep?” She whispers. Nesting our heads on our pillows. My mind, hard at grounding away a cowgirl perception. But granting her the name “My Little Sparrow.” ill fit the duality of the sparrow messenger who graced my windowsill.