YD6-54(SHEi) From Garage to Garden A Flip In Relationship

 

This memoir through self-contained chapters, each offering a unique lens into the multifaceted nature of existence. Inspired by my previous work, 'The Code: Horizon of Infinity,' and its exploration of mind travel, these stories invite you to journey alongside Aetheria, 'Consciousness,' of a toddler girl who uses mirages to shape destiny. Her yearning to be born and mirror her consciousness, at birth she elects her name: Sunshine. Soon, dark forces threaten her existence… 

This chapter explores the evolving relationship between the narrator and Francine, as they navigate a sudden shift in living arrangements and confront underlying tensions.

At 8 am, Francine clocks a tweak of the key, pulling open the front door, sunlight catching her frizzly hair, a street draft waving loose strands over her shoulders. Closing the door behind, flashing to mind her mile-path along 63rd Road out Forest Hill to Queen Boulevard’s subway. Vanishing in the crowd, to reach Gaetano Pesce’s art studio in Manhattan. 

That French student crossing the ocean feather in a whirlwind landing by me, with her talking about “SHE,” her thoughts echoing in my mind, ‘Girl you made it here!' I’m living with her enigmatic signs, guide to sightseeing New York. As a beast of anxiety dwells within me. Her first paycheck punctuating the move in her orbit — a pink Chinese studio. 

She left the shower room clear. I head in to brush my teeth, and shave. Running a quick errand. When I return, I flip the “On-Off” switch On the Compaq computer. Recalling where I left off, Francine’s story before our worlds swapped orbits over the weekend. 

The screen flickers, green DOS lines scrolling as the *.EXE files booting up. While livening the computer’s memory, I swing a hip around the padded chair’s backrest, settling into the crease of the seat, square up to the keyboard, the reins of bestial anxiety slacken. Trailing behind a plume of smoke, my fingers stumble over the keyboard. The grace of Irish dancers, confused, grunting out sluggish words, pounding text fragments, populate the screen. My thoughts -- a photosynthesis unfolding in my leafy mind’s Umbrella Thorn Acacia’s canopy. Aetheria’s whispers ground, by a scorching sun, rooting through the brain’s interface to guide my fingers.

‘Francine, clad in long jeans, steps from the shower room doorway. Her shirt collar stands open, the straps gouging deep into her leather jacket’s shoulder. After squeezing her duffle bag free, she edges the narrow aisle alongside the bed — puffed pillows and tidied duvet betraying where we passed last night. 

I stand clear of the foot of the bed, dumbfound, as Francine slips past, without a glance beneath my gaze. I hadn’t imagined, hadn’t foreseen her fledging wings and taking flight. Without a goodbye, she turns at the jamb. Her cowgirl boots - clop, clop - the floor. She heads out through the leading galley kitchen. Her steps fall silent as she turns around, gazing at me, the bag pulling down her shoulder, with which she had arrived weeks before. “Come with me.” she whispers.

Francine uncoils, as I’m twiddling my mind. Before I’m embroiled with doubt, ‘My Little Sparrow’ with few words, leads on. She unlocks the door, walks into a welcoming flood of sunlight. At a hesitant pace, I approached her egress, finding her shortcut in diagonal along the driveway ramp. I close the door behind, the canary yellow taxi vivid in my mind, pulling off, leaving her on the sidewalk that Friday.

“You haven’t paid your rent!” Mrs Pinkhasov’s voice booms from above. In the distance, Francine pauses, turning back to watch. I meet my landlady’s gaze over the guardrail, with accusatory eyes. Standing astride a riser, halfway down the flight of stairs. Mrs Pinkhasov, a Russian woman in traditional babushka clothing, engages in a heated discussion about the rent. I glance at Francine in the distance. Her face etches concern, as she watches the unfolding scene of the little family. 

Tammy, my landlady’s daughter, lingers at the foot of the steel staircase on the sidewalk. Observing with a guarded expression. While her son, Michael steps onto the balcony, rushes to close the door behind him, at the top of the stairs. My mind whittled down between two worlds, that Michael, the silent secretary of Aditon Inc., and my dealings with The Reise Organization’s contracts are in obliviation.

I freeze, the accusation pressing down on me. Francine’s gaze burns a contemptuous look. Her expression reflects old prejudices. While I have to arbitrate, find in my landlady the discrepancy, without fuelling Francine’s discriminating look. I can’t allow Francine to draw from the dark ocean of anti-Semitism, her Aries spirit appearing, ready to pounce and butt heads with the family.

I’m arguing with the babushka landlady. Confusion clouds my mind, as I try to decipher the rent for the past in the upcoming month. I tame my impatience, forcing myself to a clear thought. ‘Where is my landlady’s erroneous thinking?’ to simple mathematics. “But I paid my rent in advance,” I said. Mrs. Pinkhasov relents, we turn going our way. My guilt doesn’t relent, reflecting. ‘Moving out on the spur of a moment — without notice!’ On the edge of fairness, to think. ‘My landlady deserved a month’s notice.’ 

But, swept off by Francine, far, she steps on — she infiltrates my mind. I bear her hold, furry paws, soft and warm to my body. She disappears behind the swell of a lone green leafy hedge from a hook of brick fenestrated facades ending its protrusion up to the sidewalk.

I’m leaving behind the driveway, heading along the last of the terrace houses. In Francine’s tracks, behind the greenery jutting hedge’s end. Clearing the hook of a next lot of fenestrated brick facades, that steals a car parking spot away. There, across a patch of grass, Francine ascends a flight of stairs, to a stoop door she unlocks. She steps with the gleaming door swinging back into the interior darkness. Her duffle bag bumps the jamb — Francine’s stealth migrating in her life to follow the clues, vanishing in the shadows.

Francine leaves the door open, Her mind whispering ‘Welcome,’ her force drawing me into her life. I feel uneasy, my willpower shaken through a sift, to powder, and from her breath lift the dust, I cross the threshold, to see pink. In the distance, Francine moved around a motif of the draping double bed duvet. Alongside a Chinese flourishing garden, with wallpaper wrapping the room — such a stark contrast, from the converted garage I had called home, and welcomed Francine a few weeks ago.

At the headboard. Francine shrugs off the straps of her bag. Vanish in the far aisle’s shadow behind the bed. She retrieves herself past the dressing table, around the foot of the bed, her gaze catching mine. ‘Are you surprised?’ her eyes ask. I lower myself to the foot of the bed. Scrutinizing beyond her figure, the light textured lounging chairs on either side angled against the walls. Returning to her stance, saying, ‘go and get your thing!’...’ 

When the key unlatches the door, and behind me Francine’s figure shadows against the gaping sunlight’s dimmed brilliance. I hold my fingers, spider crawling over the keys. dropping Aetheria, filling my imagination. My impatience wakes, reaching the end of the story to print out “SHE,” and witness Francine’s eyes tickling her heart. ‘That will have to wait!’ 

I’m rising from the padded chair, turning away from the double folded New York Times. After I fluttered and glimpsed through pages, and nailed my attention on the Classified Smalls. My finger trails over the construction job listings, scanned the lines. But the few requirements read foreign — skills I don’t possess.

I watch Francine, consuming the oxygen in me. Her fiery Aries, turning her back to me. Her sharp hands unloading groceries onto the kitchen corner’s worktop. She stretches the plastic bag. Sit taut until tearing apart. The plastic lays gleaming bird’s-wing flat, clearing the pita bread’s mate round doughy-crust. Her hands excel at cutting off the top arc, and the other placing them aside. Camembert appears in her grasp, to unwrap the downy white disk rind amidst crinkly ears of paper. Without hesitation, she wields a steak knife — the only one I brought moving in — slicing the cheese into wedges, betraying her French heritage. 

Her fingers dig in the pita pocket open, stuffs it with three wedges of cheese, which she repeats with the other pita. Reaches for a tomato from its styrofoam cradle. A few deft rings slices fall along the knife blade. Fingers wrestle streaky plastic, ripping leaves from the head of lettuce. 

Francine sidesteps from her messy preparation worktop, vanishes through the offside doorway. When she reappears, with a faded brown bath towel in hand, to pause. In the entrance passageway, near the foot of the bed, she flutters the towel spreading out on the floor. She swirls in the passageway, turning to face her preparation on the worktop.

In a spinoff, her hands clamp frilly green spill from the pita bread. She paces up to the towel’s edge, crosses her ankles, bends her knees, lowering herself into a lotus pose. Placing her right-hand pita before her. Leaning forward, offering the second pita toward my side of the towel. In her retrieve, her fingers claw her pita, lifting the pocket’s foliage to her lips. Her gaze meets mine, a silent invitation, saying. “Viens, pique-nique avec moi — Come, have a picnic with me.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I wrestle with the beast of my ego. With a determined kick, I break free from my vulnerable poise. As Francine raises an assertive voice. “Viens manger, avec moi — Come and eat, with me.” as Francine bites, I cross my ankles. I slide from my perch. Settle into a crossed-legs position in front of her. While she chews, I Grasp my pita. Bite and savor the creamy cheese, crisp lettuce, and tomato, in the mouth. Despite my absurd, idiotic behavior, I feel rooted by her Aries symbiosis Horse squeezing me. 

As we eat, Francine’s eyes shine. “C’est tellement agréable de cuisiner pour deux, plutôt que pour moi-même — It’s such a pleasure cooking for two, rather than for myself,” she exults. I go and spoil it, in a whirlwind of thoughts. ‘Didn’t you say, you had a boyfriend — Where was he, then?’ The notion of a void in Francine’s life lingers, absurd after she had filled my head. I let go my impulse from intruding in her life. In the back of my mind, her words distant echoes, piecing together fragments of a puzzle. ‘Didn’t she visit her parents?’ unlikely lonely with two sisters. She had filled my head speaking of Gaetano Pesce, burning me with a fever of envy and puzzling what’s hiding. As her boyfriend, the barman, cheating on him twice, lingers as a course in her existence. I can’t sense her solitude during the relentless march of college examination, having danced well her student life emerging with a job in New York. 

Francine’s legs scissoring, rises in front of me, spinning a pace to face the percolator. She returns in a glass cup from my kitchen — my beast of an ego contributing toward living with her, melts away — glitters light. She lowers herself onto kneeling, posing saucer-less cups, serving coffee. Sits back on the soles of her feet, to sip our coffee. She rises, from hosting her maiden entry in her adult life, gathering both empty cups in one hand, whisking the towel off the floor, with her other hand, she swirls away.