Youth [h.s.]

Chapter Six: Manhattan.

-

"We're gonna fuel the fire,
gonna stoke it up,
we're gonna sip this wine,
and pass the cup,
who needs avenues,
who needs reservoirs,
we're gonna show this town,
how to kiss these stars"

-

     When she was eight years old, she loved to climb trees. Tall almighty lavishing green oaks that stood in triumph as she stared up from below in total admiration with big blue eyes and messy brown braids she did herself. She loved the feeling of being high and free, only way was up or down and she always preferred climbing up towards the great blue sky. She was a small malnourished child so in result she was lighter than average, being able to withstand thin branches with no tremor. She could stay up in any tree for hours, just distinguishing the white magnificent clouds and counting the roaring planes that flew by, staring until her eyes stung, believing she would go blind. It wasn't just being away from that house that made her feel like she was slowly fading away into thin air just like the clouds above her head.

   Ever since then, even after descending a 16-footer, she made her under-grown self six feet. As a child she's been outside the yard and even now she's struggled in the weeds. Today she puts on her shoes and steps out with a chin pointed upward, mimicking the almighty oak that grew in front of her house that taught her more than her parents ever did.

   The wind was howling down 46th, making it difficult to hail a cab without eating half of her brown hair. Her last hair tie that hung by a single elastic thread only lasted half her shift, leaving her with a mane the rest of the four hours. Her right wrist hurt and ink stained the cuffs of her white blouse along with beige from freshly brewed coffee. She sighs heavily, nearly collapsing on the seat of the cab. She absolutely abhorred being tardy. In fact, it's one her biggest peeves. Right in front people blowing their nose loudly in public and dragging of shoes.

"You're late!" William yells as soon as she walks through the double doors. She's stripping from her winter armory as she walks towards the stage where everyone bustled about.

"By six minutes, breathe Willy." She sticks her tongue out, the only one brave enough to do so. She piles her excess clothing onto one of the few unoccupied aisle chairs, jogging up onto the stage. "Where did we leave off last?"

"Scene 3," Kimmy says behind her, drinking from a bottle of water. "Jim just came home and you found the panties."

"Oh yes, the infamous black thong."

"We've talked about this AJ. It's apart of the script, just go with it." William warns her, beady dark eyes that narrow at her, turning away before she can begin the weekly argument. William Jamison. Husband to Candice, beautiful and radiant Candice, who was a regular at the shop. She was a writer and co-director with her husband in small theaters scattered along Broadway. Sometime two years ago Candice picked up a napkin she was writing on, as she always is, and nearly pounced on her, claiming that her words were the gate of both rebellion and unity of a misunderstood and unaware generation. Candice later introduced her to William, introduced as a writer but William pulled her as an actress. She refused repeatedly, not liking the characteristics of being an actor/tress. Conforming into someone you're not being her biggest ocean, being paid for it her fatal sea. It wasn't until she realized she didn't have a plan, for which for the longest time wasn't a concern of hers, the future also being a typhoon, but the facade she had to unbind and really pour the hail. She wasn't open to becoming a writer, much to Zoe's distaste, calling it a "waste of pure dumb yet gorgeous talent".

"I just don't see why it's always the man who cheats in these entertainment loads of.. and then the woman is left in denial and feeling accountable. It happens the other way around too, you know. Every situation is different."

"Tell that to William," Kimmy giggles, adjusting her grey beanie that covers her blond hair that was usually curled. She probably was preoccupied with the baby, she thinks.

"I did re-write most of this play, no thanks to Elizabeth." She huffs in annoyance, going through her script. She didn't come to to this barely-making-rent small theater off of Broadway and 51st. Though she hated the thought of being considered a 'part-time-actress' and 'assistant editor', she did love the sense of solitude she got on stage. She loved being in the theater, regardless and despite what she thinks of William and where he can stick it, she is addicted to the nicotine of fresh air whenever she's here. She's herself and then someone else. A life written on paper. She also loves the responsibility of creating the characters, nurturing them into people that last three scenes. Much like real life minus the red curtain.

"AJ and Janine, center stage please!" William yells from his seat, the grease in his dark hair glistening under the stage lights. "Scene six, line four."

****

   Her chin rested on her arm, legs tangled and numb, her back aching at the confined space that she cramped herself in tonight and every Thursday night of every week. She loved Macbeth as much as the next hopeless literate but seeing the same play over and over again was tiresome, lonesome, and cruel. She kept finding more errors and gross improv that disgusted her. Macbeth wasn't the kind of play to add to, never mind edit out key elements. It's like letting Romeo and Juliet live, Arthur not lifting the sword, Heathcliff never returning for revenge, Beth not dying, Poe not being completely mad.

   Every Thursday night, she'd cram herself in an unused private balcony that was full of extra props and machinery right across the stage, letting herself be devoured by the fiction as they practice for their shows. It was a Shakespeare based theater, although in her opinion they complete slaughtered and butchered everything his words stand for long ago. She loved the way her mind slept as they worked, the numbness in her legs from the uncomfortable position all she could feel at that moment.

   When she recently moved out, she remembered climbing this exact buildings fire escape, finding a loose window, squeezing through, and spent four months sleeping in this exact room. Granted, she left during their shows unable to shake off the guilt and did clean up the seating area as her own payment for the roof over her head. Even with her name on an actual official lease did she never feel more at home than here. She noticed the actors were going on break, the screams of the director being the only they thing in the air. She dug into her coat pocket, pulling out her most cherished possession as of a few days ago, flipping painstakingly to the worn page she left off last,

"I was asked if i believed in 'love at first sight' over a year ago..

I remember answering with a detailed no.

'Love at first sight' is a simple exaggeration, an allusion, facade. You can 'fall in love' with a face, I believe, but I can't. How can someone 'fall in love' with no substance, persona? How empty that must be, how empty one must be to believe such a thing or do even. One can definitely be infatuated when you first see them and then you can 'fall in love' with them afterwards. Not before, possibly during, but never before. I believe."

  She nodded along with his explanation, to whom she doesn't have a single clue. As a reminder to himself? Maybe. She admired his opinion and the matter he expresses it, never concluding something without an explanation or other motives. There was so much substance behind his ink that was is completely engulfed in. He seems so much older and wiser than she remembers him and it only adds to the aurora she built with his structure of being. What must he have gone through to become to wise and mature for someone so young? Granted, he did appear worn and tired.

   There. That's when it hits her. She looks down at the little brown journal her fingers are clawing into and it hits her. This book.. an exact replica of him. Harry. This little book, worn and brittle, is the copy of the man she met not even a week ago. A man she feels she now knows yet doesn't. Consuming nearly every thought, sentence, word. Opening doors she didn't know weren't open. It wasn't romanticized but simply cosmos. He's this drug she's addicted to, the nicotine to her eyes and mind, heroine to her blood and veins. The air she never breathed, the blue in the sky she never saw, the words she never knew, the song she never heard. How could someone so irrelevant be so much?