YD6-50(SHEg) the professor’s phantoms and Aetheria’s sunlight as destiny intertwines

 

This chapter is memoir-philosophy with Aetheria (consciousness) as the protagonist. evokes a dreamlike journey through memory and desire, where the past haunts the present. Francine's nostalgia for her professor intertwines with the narrator's own insecurities, creating a tense undercurrent. The vivid imagery, contrasting perspectives, and introspective monologues paint a portrait of longing, jealousy, and the complexities of human connection. The ending, with its bustling cityscape and looming skyscraper, leaves a sense of anticipation for the journey yet to unfold. 

I fumble through a patchwork of elementary school vocabulary. Francine’s laughter breaks through — sporadic giggles that aren’t teasing, as we are seated chatting across the double bed, her eyes blissful alongside the panoramic window to a morning glow, when her eyes dip into homesick reveries. “I was seventeen. . .” she blurts out. “… when I moved in with him.” 

I’m so intimate with the beacon of the brain. As she raises her beams of sight — strobing her third eye’s gyrating —  Her mind exudes a self-hypnotic gateway. From a profound memory, she conjures an old timber-frame inn, a candlelit bar’s wooden counter. At the far end, her vacant stool, perched with the phantom of her figure. Her boyfriend, the barman, oblivious, continues serving drinks, to the merry-go-round of patrons spinning on into the night.

Over the past week, Francine and I have been conversing on our Aladdin’s flying rug, weaving through our distant worlds. She’s fine-tuning her family with my sister Ingrid’s — best friend with her mother, a setting against the backdrop of Salbert, exurbia to fluid childhood stories. But, lingers through those last four year’s studies in Strasbourg.

Francine’s words weave a tapestry of admiration for Gaetano Pesce’s creations, yet a hidden thread of infatuation winds its way through the fabric. Igniting a fever of jealousy through my chests. Francine’s consciousness leaps on Pluto's chariot, as her old professor rides cloaked in stealth. He spurs on — His Sun in Cat, stealth. His Moon in Scorpio, which errs from a solid marriage, tactful peccadilloes. He’s driving reins, carrying her memories deep into the undergrounds, burying, eluding me, leaving my mind telepathic blind. Eroding the ground beneath, opening a sinkhole into the French terrain of her past. The skies echoing a cathedral choir, singing. ‘… Too many times, married men think they’re still single, That has caused many a good girl to go wrong. . .’

To understand this surge of jealousy, I recall an incident with Chris Duplesis, an architect and business friend, troll. Jean crossed the driveway. She ignored Chris, ‘or didn’t she, an instant earlier?’ Blank eyes, she walked on toward her parked car. Her strobing beacon of the third eye, nurturing Jean’s infatuation with Chris. His Moon in Leo, charismatic. I failed to notice, however, her poisonous darts sting my heart to a fever of jealousy. This is strange, considering how unaffected I was by Basil Tiernan, my bank manager, and open infatuation with jean.

My mind stretches a hydra head, eyes shy into the ceiling surface juxtaposed at the rear wall. Relaying a view over a populated lecture room. To sight the elderly professor. His back was to the blackboard. He stands on the estrade. Overseeing a class of students ending the day’s lecture, to betray — The professor’s eyes skimmed over, his eyes blank, unseeing — oblivion to the classroom straggles egress the offside door to the hallway. Francine, lagging a homeless heart in the center aisle, pauses, before the professor. ‘Talk woman?’ His body language speaks volumes, overlooking, unfeeling, Francine. The scene volatilizing into thin air — the question lingering in my mind. ‘Has the professor’s path converges?’ leaving me to wonder. ‘Is Gaetano Pesce in New York? Visitor to his studio?’

The percolator’s gurgle ceases with - huff - dawn’s on the end of brewing. ‘I’m done!’ to announce ‘finished dripping a jug of coffee.’ breaking away from our Aladdin rug, stretching my leg off the bed’s corner, to raise on my feet, walk through the archway into the galley kitchen. I return with a crystal cup of coffee for Francine across the double bed duvet spread. Sipping coffee, Francine voices breaks her wishlist. “I want to get close to the Brooklyn Bridge.” 

Francine arose a curiosity, after her shooting photos of the dual gated archway flowing with traffic. Then again, as we sailed upstream into the window of the traffic deck valance spanning the shores. While dwarfing, passing beneath the deck, Yael to her world in the Brooklyn. I was fascinated to discover the cable swag’s anchors that were reported to threaten the life of the bridge. 

Francine and I, step out of the galley kitchen, to Aetheria’s hopeful smile, without a shadow, pave our path sun-white the leading driveway up the ramp toward the far corner onto the leading sidewalk. Our path punctured to crack through the lines of cast shades while the tree canopies umbrella foliage into sunlight. Doodling in mind the city as I’ve learned to know over the years, commuting to construction sites. Before disappearing on Queen Boulevard, into the sidewalk's hatchway underground to the subway station. Thoughtful, where to rise from the underground network at a stone’s throw from the East River.

We’re standing on the edge of the platform, bemused by pelts, rising from the ballast. Trailing a dark tail, as the pelt ducks underneath the silver rail tread. Slipping across railway sleepers, unperturbed by the looming train. Swift, the little rat glitches by the far track, fearless along the edge, by the undercarriage trundling into the station, vanishing in the shadows. The carriage windows to a cinematographic interior, to a Sunday’s seated parents, with dynamic children on an excursion, among little groups of bright faced tourists. The doors open, we cross a few egressing gloom locals’ faces. With the shutting doors, and a tug of the floor, taking to sit, mirroring in artificial luminescence, riding the otherwise dark tunnel. 

I’m doodling in mind the cityscape above. The subway’s rhythm punctuates our course with flashing stations and brief halts and tug away in pursuit of the city’s underworld. I’m lending Francine a hand, off her seat to her feet, dancing to alight the opening doors and walk along the platform to the exit tunnel. Meeting the filtering sunlight beckoning through the stairwell’s hatchway. Ascending from the subway to a welcoming sun-kissing glass tower. My eyesight of an eager spider crawling through jagged rooftops against the sky. Rotating the building quoins on a reconnaissance swirling. Among a medley of chaotic blocks facing a diversity of fenestrated brick or stucco facades. Until a street vista tapering, shards peeks of the turquoise waters, calls me to lead Francine venturing onward. ‘Whoosh-whish, whooshing …’ calls me to glance into side streets. Distant flickering gleams of trailing cars behind the elevated parapet to a guardrail, the futuristic appearance, by a mere illusion of running through the ancient buildings. On a course where we’re heading toward a glimmer of the east river. 

Francine in a venturing silence, as I’m reminiscing about my first year, ‘the city that never sleeps,’ at every occasion of crossing ice cream vendors. To walk away licking a soft-serve. Dissipated my mind, overstressed lingering headache, to my relief. I afforded Francine her silence, as her eyes shifted, at our approach. Athwart the concrete jungle, looms the slender flyover’s deck concrete-white, reflecting the sunshine. While casting a shade black barrier, in our approach, I’m oriented to recollect at 4am. When I drove Micheal Metal Art Works’ fleet Oldsmobile from Brooklyn to Manhattan. The Brooklyn Bridge traffic streams to slow down to a standstill. Creep on through the bottleneck. Passing the train of equipment that is removing the top layer of old asphalt. Sweeping and spraying, the paving machine laying a new base, trailed by the road roller along the far lanes through the night. To head on stream along the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive’s expressway.

While cars flicker, passing behind the sun-white parapet to a guard rail from a distance. Francine and I approach the cast shade of the overhead flyover. In the darkness flares up a Chinese lantern, the pillar to shadow the flyover’s underbelly beam. Sunday’s ‘Wish, Whoosh’ spills from the guardrail, falling down behind us to splash. As we breach the shield into the chilly cast shade, to glittering scattered soft drink cans. Surging vagabond phantoms creeping under my skin, while Francine paces unfazed. An engine-block in the distance shines of moonlight, while I joggle the ghosting street mechanics, the gangs of car strippers, or the remnants of a car flipped over the above guardrail. As the parts lie widespread, with a rusty mudguard, bumper, among small car debris, an assortment of wheels. 

I ignore offside far afield, a broom stick widespread whirls, whirl litter’s call into the distant darkness. Until, my third eye, gyroscoping in the wake of frequency, echoes to my mind feeling a rise of fever. With an inadvertent swing of eyesight, draw my head roll. Gazing into the asphalt blurs the flyover’s minion underbelly wedging down into the darkness. When far abreast, the asphalt swells, as a discarded car tire, cracks. Rising to shadow an exoskeleton, toward the filtering light. A zombie I ignored, as the milieu lends itself to skepticism. My eyesight swings across Francine’s naivety gaze into the sunlight bath turquoise water sheet teasing the distant shore, blurry brown barbed Brooklyn skyline. Leading her steps, litter swirls crinkling, counter spinning, rustling like autumn leaves. Along her path, dancing along the curb distancing through the street gutter, as I’m avoiding frightening her wits. 

Abreast Francine, I’m multiplying glimpses of phantoms, in stealth converging into our path, ‘We’re in a hobo domain!’ I reason. The sun’s yellowish shine’s a brick flood wall, like a shepherd dog couchant. The call of our escape way, from the darkness of the flyover’s cast darkness. Francine's palms poses atop. Kicks a knee, vaults her foot over the two-brick wide wall to a prop, sweeps her other leg over, bouncing to her feet, swirling herself to walk away. Following her, I bounce across the wall, to follow her hop-scotch into the checkered bluestone slabs across the sloping down embankment. Her gaze glides away, from the half-dozen rows of square boulders gleaming smooth, slipping away underneath the water sheet. Refrains from a mermaid dive underneath the waters, far across the ocean, France. She restrains her eyesight, sailing offshore, and pauses. Flexing in her jeans’ lowers herself to the middle of a slab, sits back. Pulling her knees, arms wrapping her legs, her chest to rest, her chin down into the crack of her knees, hovering midstream, musing on her life.

She leaves me standing at the angle of the grid of slabs, offside-behind Francine. I’m towering over her stone-sculptured mermaid. I’m chill with unease as Aetheria’s blessing breath, a soft onshore breeze, whispers. ‘Don’t let her drift away?’ as the breeze dissipates through the gap between us. I advance a checker slab, flex my legs alongside, to sit back abreast of Francine. We’re capturing Aetheria’s sun, warmth greetings us from across the waterscape. While I’m waiting for Francine’s regard hovering over the water’s reflection, my mind doodles a chess game on her next move.  

Flashing back my memory on a reconnaissance, Aetheria’s mirage in the sunshine. Streets’ thread of sunlight led us earlier, bushwhacking a path through the concrete jungle. Cracks stretched through street blocks to water’s glazed shards. Teasing beckoning fingers of turquoise fragments, the water signaling, ‘come on out. Here I am in the open!’ 

Inching in our approach, jagged rooftops open to the sun. Reflected the golden trellis cantilever far afield, the turquoise sheet of water. We found the treasure trove, to think Francine would elate. But we remain passive, and silent, as offside the Brooklyn Bridge's stone pillar offshore breaches the waters. In the midst of the looming sentinel at the gates of stone pillars’ twin archway. Suspender cables mesh etched the skies, a valance swag to a flickering traffic deck evanescing in the blur of the distant Brooklyn shores.

I’m fantasizing as a toddler. We weren’t allowed to touch De-P’pa, father’s Meccano box. With a myriad of pieces. Screw holes punctured strips, plates, of screws, bars, washers, and nuts. Offside-overhead looms the Brooklyn Bridge’s engineered structural trellis trusses. More complex than De-P’pa’s constructed truck undercarriage girders, with a steering wheel, and tandem rear axle and suspension. Punctured rivets, instead of the screws and nuts. Fascinating by flanges, like soldiers file to steel girders, to a steel trellis-work. But even more so, ranks of rivets, of connecting plates, and more fascinating, the riveted blades like truck spring blades.  

My eyesight falls from the fascinating Brooklyn Bridge, to the awesome tranquil turquoise waters. Aetheria, in a shy mirage, plays the fiddle, as her breath serenades bring unperceptive soft undulations. The water rhythm laps the slabs across the rows, two slabs away from our feet. Chafing Francine, without voicing. ‘Here, no tourists, nor a single New Yorker is bound to stroll by!’

I drift away from Francine’s buffer, into Aetheria's voice offside rhythms to soft strokes surfs around the stake of a rotting pier. Reconstituting the undulation onto lapping the polished embankment slabs, ebb to vanishing underwater. I call back, past Francine’s regard locked in her intimate bubble. Where a cargo barge appears sailing upstream. The cargo barge deep into the waters sails against the distant shore, exacerbating my patience, paining my pelvic bone, as I’m persevering the bluestone to dig through my flesh. While the barge leaves me to wonder if the bow wash onshore will affect next to me, a cable slack swag into the water, tethering at leisure of the tides. When the cargo barge cleared from view, wavelets hit at a mere accelerating rate. Aetheria’s wipers, ‘watch out!’ calling to the rusty derelict floating dock, hampered by a false vacillation. Crawling past the rusty haunches to greater, lappings up the bluestone slabs at our feet.

Until my third eye swirls a gyroscopic awakening in my head, frying a regard’s frequency. I flip a nervous response, sling my eyesight and whip my head. I dart in the cast shade of Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive’s flyover. Thinking we shed the lurking shadow. Reaching a glitch of jealousy, in the popping white hungry eyeballs skulking Francine. Dawning in me, he had been following us in the shade. I stare at the man, unseen. Reflecting the darker aspects of a Scorpio’s possessiveness. I’m reasoning. ‘The hobo, like us, he has the right, too, to the place!’ While the hobo continues stalking Francine, I uncoil. With a glance at her seat, unperturbed by the hobo’s conjuring uneasiness.

Francine, serene in our quiet isolation, light in her frizzled long flow of hair over her shoulders. She’s in the crosshairs of a sniper’s telescopic eyes. My guardian’s eye twitches. With frequent glances over my shoulder. As the disheveled shadow waxes cloaked in overcoats, shapeless, the wear of the remnants sleep. I’m vigilant because of the hobo’s threatening behavior. ‘Why does he need to borrow our earlier path?’ I reflect. While South Street, peaceful and deserted in the cast shade of the flyover, stretches along the floodwall. Identify himself, Hispanic and middle-aged, floods in sunlight. I uncoil my cranked neck, withdrawing from gauging his lack of agility at breaching the barrier, crossing the seat-high sun floodwall. 

During the hobo overseeing his daubing hands, as pitiful, he hunches over the top of the floodwall. Sidling alongside, edging toward the massive sunlight reflective concrete pillar in the cast shade. I throw inadvertent skeptic soft whispering glances over my shoulder, ‘I don’t trust your intentions’ as the hobo sly, verging the dark cast shade background. He’s infatuated with Francine, as she figures deep in her world. Without a qualm as my prison guard's eyes are darting on both of them.

In a glitch, the hobo had jumped the floodwall, a silhouette in sunlight, shifty eyes lurking over his shoulder, fixated on Francine. His hands daubing the top of the floodwall. The hobo’s footsteps scuffles, sidling along, as he mumbles and gestures, cryptic, leaving his intentions shrouded in his territory. Eyes over his shoulder, as he insists, eyes pillaging the clothes off Francine’s back. 

‘He looks creepy!’ crosses my mind. Avoid frightening Francine, suppressing my thoughts. ‘We’re among city beasts!’ 

Francine’s dream heightened, her third eye awakening, pondering, sweeping an eyesight past me, trolls over her shoulder, darts along the hobo’s rays of eyesight — like a cable car trolling up to the face of a mountain cliff to station, grasping the hobo, ‘deprives,’ unflustered, Francine’s eyes sweeps away, blurts. ‘Is he dangerous?’ Her gaze returns, swift and calm, but finding her dream shattered. 

I’m paying closer attention, instead of dismissing the Hispanic hobo’s nonsensical bubbling words — like on my construction sites, with Zulus, Ndebele, Sotho, laborers. I followed their demeanor, expressive eyes. Mumbling into the breeze, the hunched hobo, daubing hands and sidling along the floodwall seems to pause. As I troll along his beam of eyesight, at a darker underworld beneath Francine’s slab. I’m holding the spread of a fear shiver crawling under my skin. Avoiding spurring fear to Francine, the fright out of her wits. I uncoil, step back, escaping, urging Francine away. “Mon Petit Moineau. Si seulement tu savais ce qu’il dit ? — My Little Sparrow. If only you knew what he’s saying?” 

Francine frowns. ‘Qu’est-ce que tu racontes ? — What are you talking about?’

I’m attempting to raise Francine by the water lap’s the rhythm to her feet. In a musical tone, saying. “Mon Petit Moineau, tu n’as pas entendu ce qu’il a dit ? — My little Sparrow — Didn’t you hear what he said?” I conclude, 'You didn’t understand what he mumbled in English?'

‘Obvious not!’ I remark to myself, as Francine trawls in the wavering veil of her dreams. Floating in the breeze over the undulating glaze, and over the water lapping the blues slabs. She trawls the veil of her dreams onto her knees before she relents her dreams to the wind. She lifts her eyes, sweeping past my legs. Only to see the hunched Hispanic hobo feign pecking food scraps at the foot of the floodwall — ‘pebble! But scraps of food? — what is he faking?’ I’m asking myself. He mumbles a hair-raising chill. I glance back at Francine, alarmed, without spurring her fears. “Tu n’as pas entendu ce que le clochard a dit, n’est-ce pas ? — You didn’t hear what the hobo said — did you?”

Francine’s soft sigh, whispers. “Non — No.” swift and wondering. Behind Francine, a little pelt peels from the dark crack of the large shining bluestone slabs. Out of Francine’s eyesight, the little pelt trots, serene, with such indifference as children playing hopscotch. The mouse across the giant slabs, across grid joints. In a further crack, disappears to the realm of an underworld. As her eyes roll, questioning me, ‘What’s going on?’ she senses my adverse urge, in my extending hand, saying. “Moi, J’ai compris ! Viens, on devrait y aller maintenant. Allons-y, je te raconterai en chemin ce qu’il a dit — Me, I gathered so! Come. We should go now. Let’s get going, I’ll tell you on the way what he said.”

Francine’s naive as an enigmatic mermaid, bathing in sunlight at the edge of the water, ready to dive in the water into her realm, unperturbed though alert. ‘Catch me if you can.’ She lends me a set of fingers, rising through a Jive spin. ‘Slow, quick, quick..._’ I lead her through foxtrot steps up the angles of the sloping boulders, ahead of the Hispanic hobo. 

I lead Francine to an acrobatic swing, vault across the floodwall into the flyover’s cast shade. In the rhythms I catch up with Francine holding her pace. We stroll around the concrete pillar, flaring out to support flyover belly-beam to the overhead deck, spilling down a muffled - whoosh, wish. Walking South Street’s deserted wandering, searching our destination, breaching the colonnade’s opening cracks. 

Beyond our cloistered path, around the pillar, a crack opens, revealing the turquoise water sheet downstream. To gapping between the flyover pillars a far distant cantilever model of a pier’s fascination. conjures an echo stage a childhood song, “Sur le pont d’avignon, on y dance. . .  — On the bridge of Avignon -We dance, we dance - On the bridge of Avignon - We all dance in a circle. . . “ as Francine and I pace the curtain-folds punctuating our shaded alleyway. Granting us an intriguing simile bridge of the pier suspended midstream. 

Cracks open along the embracing pillars, to a slanted view re-etching on the turquoise canvas, a distant rear facade. turrets in an architectural shamble among saddled roofs. Flickering between pillars, our path traversing the colonnade in the distance to an asphalt clearing. A flurry of figures against a towering skyline, leave the impression of trickling from the surrounding concrete jungle. While offside, the pier morphed from its toy model beginning, at the cadence of the flyover pillars. until around the pillar tagged, “11.” gapping a fragmented amplitude hints at an offside touch the facing superstructure.

As the pier facing the ocean clears, to a ghostly ancient morning’s bustling fish market. Fishermen’s whispers, folding up their stalls. Francine and I emerge from the cast shade to Pier 17. Where Aetheria basks in Helios’ warm touch, she casts a soft shimmer on a mother, nimble hands tend to her child in a stroller. Francine’s eyes lend a flicker of delight as we walk past. We draw toward an enclave and a few stretch steps, to rise onto the wooden deck, scattered with dawdling figures, the jetty promenade expanding to an apparent crowd inviting our curiosity. 

Francine and I thread the planking we’re traversing, along with hers and mine, lines of round black bolt heads, to light-brown wood grains fixations. The deck vanishing beneath a throng of feet, to approach the schooner’s bow. Furled masts against the sky. We meddle in, weave a flurry of families, couples, and lone strollers, before the museum plaque, awakenings a sense of déjà vu.

From a distant memory the pieces gather, reminiscing, following Yael, on the awkward boarding treads over and down the bulwark to the deck. A stride across the deck cross a doorway. We descended a sheer, narrow sailor's staircase. A mind-buckling interior of intricate carved wood — a treasure of craftsmanship within this refurbished vessel. But Francine’s ignorance sweeps me away from my memories. Her gaze was drawn to the facade’s skeletal steel A-frame portal, in the middle of contrasting wings facades bearing their saddled-roofs.

Through a set of four green-framed glass doors beneath the balcony, to observe figures flip open, and flap close behind expressions of veiled mystery. Francine left the schooner’s bulwark behind, weaving across the esplanade through the meandering crowd. I follow close behind her escaping figure, by justice, catch the springing back door released from her hand. Francine disappears from the light filtering atrium. Around the corner, I see her figure framed inside a two-door store. She pauses before a storekeeper’s box counter, faithful to a mounted cash register. The dark-olive-skinned young man, baffled, is enshrined in an Alibaba kaleidoscopic treasure cave. With packets of snacks, curio and card rotating display, refrigerated bottles, and cans. While Francine mute before the storekeeper, his eyes questioning, ‘What will it be, ma’am?’ I'm catching up, translating Francine’s request. “A coke, please. . .” I say. 

Francine strolls away with her Coke in hand, the young Indian hands over nickels, dimes, and quarters, to my pocket while turning away. In a few strides, I catch up with Francine strolling past storefront windows in the dark. She glances back to my diet coke at hand, amused, and laughs. “Ça, ce n’est pas du Coca-Cola - That’s not Coke…” she teases.

We circle Aetheria’s staircase from an all-round diffusing light, breezing free louvers of rich brown wooden threads. We return to the atrium pouring daylight, behind a few roaming men. They scatter before us, baffled, disenchanted in their strides, shying regard from each other’s wake. Unable to place a purpose, earlier than us. As we, too, return from a Mall’s hallway. A storefront deep. Butt a boutique in a somber cul-de-sac alongside a closed storefront door.   

We emerge from the dead-end, the idiocy whip from mind in the light of desire. Aetheria’s inviting Francine at the core of the atrium. A classic approach to a mansion’s heart-shaped stairways. To foreshadow a couple with toddlers. Parents’ heart-warming patience, for a boy and girl descending those giant steps in the adjacent branch of stairs.

Francine paces around me, short at the newel, of the alternative bifurcating branch of the staircases. I leave Francine’s with her perception, as the heart’s organic shades vanish beneath modern straight lines. Crystal balustrades flaring upstairs, to bright figures, heads, and shoulders leaning toward the void, and gazes fall. Capture a see-through illusory underworld. 

The guardrail attracts dancing legs, to stand by. Animating the encompassing stairwell as Figures swap places, above Francine. Her boots scuff the gleaming red wooden stretch treads, to weaving louvered light. I’m in a sense of levitation up the stairs, to leveling with the gleam washing off the top floor. I’m darting my eyesight through leg stilts. Replicating downstairs doors, whispering - flips, flaps - as bright figures emerge from the light and stepping past. We step onto the floor. Francine takes a lead, palms the door. An ocean engulfing breeze, lynching me by the collar of my bomber jacket, chilling me to the bones. But I caught the springing back door. Closing behind, the mischievous phantom leaves me with goose pimples.

We walked onto a herd of people across the balcony to ask myself. ‘What am I doing here?’ when over the barrier to the ground brass band blaring the national anthem of the United States — ‘well, it sounds likewise.’ a princess' welcome. But Francine, untouched by the fanfare. She circles away from the bright disheveled curtains, to women’s manes, men’s crew cut, skirting the balcony. Her eyes hit the rear sidings. Coils, flexes her legs, squeegeed her spine down the wall, unveiling the student’s craze to plop anywhere behavior.

Dwarfing behind my legs, seated, her cold muteness chills me further, distancing from her. The crowded strangers lean on the guardrail overseeing the balcony. Stressing at loss of orientation. As my mind juggles this creature, mustering patience, to afford her space. But cold in isolation, verging panic, I’m gearing up to escape. When she lifts the can of Coca-Cola, her hands meeting - snap, fuzzing - she brings the can lid to her lips. Sips, and again. She poses the can alongside her on the floor, pulls her legs to her chest, to an embrace, stares at a point in the air upfront blind to the skirting legs of people, whose eyes lean overboard.

A flame licks through my chest. Sending my heart into darkness. I calculated a side step, facing the door, reaching my reflection. With sunlight behind me, Aetheria’s mirage orchestrate intuitive guiding essence. Instead, I sweep my eyesight across the barrier of spectators. Their eyes gazing into the void, none to care about my predicament to stay or flee. I take the reins, whip my Moon, ever the free-spirited Gemini. Whimsical, untethered, in the Wind of Gemini’s Element. Flirting with fancies — with a boost of Tarzan’s free spirit swing by Liana in the undergrowth of the zodiacal jungle — Urge ahead of my nurturing pigheadedness. As my Sun in Warthog lag, ranting an eagerness to escape Francine. Aetheria’s instinct to conscience, tethering me, to think. ‘You can’t leave her planted here in this big city!’ Gemini’s introspective of her generation, appeasing. ‘Rather than live to regret?’

Heel over toes, I spin around, through a Twist’s dance step, my legs flex, my back against the wall. Sliding down the wall, clutching my Diet Coke, to sag sitting beside Francine. Between us stands Francine’s can of original Coca-Cola — a silent landmark, I wondered, or an inadvertent buffer to respect.

I sink into thought, my ego forsaking an idiotic mature man, along with a student. I shift to distraction from the disheveled quilt, wavering skirts, and shifting pants. The sea breeze through a palisade of legs, reaching Francine in her world. With nowhere to be, my mind meanders. To fixate on men’s bare calves in summer shoes, skittish little boys seeking an outlook post. A chilling breeze through a palisade of legs, In a perpetual wave roll behind my back, ebb the warmth flow from the back wall.

After a silent break, the fanfare blares by the striated wicking orange flames through the palisade of legs. Among old piggy ankles standing in heeled shoes. Offside from a mother’s slender legs. After a burst, the brass falls silent. Two little girls in her skirt, as they tease each other. My curiosity puzzling out the orange gapping behind the palisade of legs.

In the dead of silence, I linger, wondering about the sudden evanescence of the fanfare. Francine relents her arms-embraced legs, scissors in her jeans, rising to her feet with her Coke in hand. Her eyesight leading her departure around me to the doors. 

I rise, finishing the last sips of my Coke in haste. I rush to catch in Francine’s wake. On par, as if she understands my unspoken cues. I palm the door before swinging back close. She relents her pace, to walk in unison. On a hint of heads of seeming Siamese twins, retracing our earlier path back to the lobby below. 

We head across toward restless figures - flip, flap - swings of doors. We mill through to a flurry of people spilled in front of the schooner. By the leading esplanade, brushing past the brass band emerging from the open-front orange tent, 

Behind us, isolated drum beats rehearsal. We’re meandering toward people volatilizing from the esplanade into thin air. Heading among a thinning crowd. With a few remaining scattered figures, descending the pier. The deck’s enclave slipping onto South Street asphalt, as behind us, the fanfare burst forth. ‘Too late.’ a thought eludes me. ‘We’ve been patient.’

Francine and I breach the flyover’s cast shade. Walk to a vis-à-vis striated row of fenestrated brick facades. Margining, a blatant vessel in the middle moored in a cobblestone square. Cowering, a warehouse-commercial brick block, proportionate to a current backdrop of the towering concrete jungle. When across cobblestone, evanescent beneath a vast ghosting traffic of horse-drawn carts. The concession of the seaport’s leading fish market, to terraces adorned with bright blue umbrellas and scattered figures behind planters, fenced off tables. We stroll inland, crossing a few streets deeper. 

As I’m in a mental reversed-engineering, the glass skyscraper’s construction amidst past generated concrete jungle architecture. Francine on par breaks away. I mind our approach on the corner of the ingenious lattice perpetuating crane mast reflecting behind the smoked glass cage. Approaching an atrium’s latticework of tube and bolted plate over the joints, I left Francine trailing behind, shooting from the corners of the intersection to the tower. Her wits emerge from herself.

Francine’s eyes light up, a spidery gaze climbs on the purple-glazed facade. “Regarde la ligne élancée. . . — Look at the slender line…” she whispers. Carrying the cadence of an orchestra conductor. She speaks foreign, her academic language, lifting her hand up the purple-blue quoins. With horizontal strokes and backstrokes across the checkered plate-glass, more than meets my eye. Discarded as a glitch, like her professor, Gaetano Pesce’s wild artistic strokes, she exhausts hers at the tower planted on the sidewalk, to pauses facing me, her expression demanding a response.

Without divulging my indifferent heart. “OK! I like it,” I said, dismissing. ‘Why are you fussing about a curtain wall?’ I’m thinking, frowning. Jolts a memory with Yael. Her thoughts lingered in phrases like “Phallic. . .” during walks in downtown Manhattan. Obliging me, in the aftermath, to look up the word in the dictionary, for the meaning. 

From Francine dragging her feet, as I head away. I glance behind her sudden revival. Her eyes shift roundabout the tower, fine-tunes her camera. Points the lens. As she shoots, I cross the deserted intersection. After shooting with her camera, she crosses the asphalt, catches up with me, out of silence. “Ça y est ! Je l’ai — There! I have him.” She utters.

As we walk away, distancing, I blurt to myself. ‘What man have you got? It’s only a structure?’ But Francine throws back glances. I guess, until the skyscraper vanished in the sunlight’s stifling street. The fenestrated cracks to interwoven blocks of generations of brick and ashlar facades confused. Drawing the glazing slit across to the full windows at snatching their vis-a-vis scrambled reflections. As we are destined to emerge into Broadway, highlighting my memory of the derelict dark entrails, until the final touches of the Express Pizza Hut. A chef wafts a first oven crisp pizza. Off Wall Street’s deserted district, we descend the stairwell underground to stand amidst a colonnade of H-steel columns on the platform for the outbound train home.