Daemon Lover ☽ Jimmy Page

Rethinking the Time

"𝐈𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐰𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠."

Peter says we have to stay inside . . . like toddlers. 

Reina retrieves her hand from the door and presses her ear to it. 

There's nothing. Only the muffled patter of shower water gives any sign of life. 

She leans away and settles on the plush carpet. On the side table beside the sofa is a lone cigarette, rolled by Robert. She looks toward the bathroom and its closed door and eases the little stick between her fingers. In the drawer is a box of matches. With the cigarette between her lips and the match held close, she strikes a few times before getting a light. It huffs and sizzles as it burns. She shakes it dead and leaves it discarded in the metal ashtray. 

Her back reclines to the front of the sofa, and with legs crossed and hair pulled back in a scarf, she smokes hearty. Reina tries the morning paper, where plastered across the front page is news of the theft. She skips to the funnies. Garfield's round face gives her side-eye.

"Hurry up. I tried to leave some hot water for you," Jimmy says, coming out of the bedroom. He struggles with the knotted towel at his waist. 

Reina stands immediately, untying herself and throwing the newspaper on the sofa. She reaches over to drop the cigarette in the ash tray when Jimmy's damp hand wraps around her wrist. 

"That was mine . . ." His face is soft, but his tone doesn't match. She licks her lips, tasting the wavering heat of nicotine, and nods. 

"It was."

Unexpectedly, his face breaks into a smile. Jimmy laughs and Reina finds herself laughing along, a little shocked and dried.

"Look at you," he smirks. "Grown defiant. Hurry up and take your shower."

She drops the cigarette and stands, looking at him for a moment before turning and leaving. He walks like a hidden man as if she can't see the placement of his feet and the water-speckled round of his shoulder.

She loses her pattern of breath. When will she see that bareness again? Tonight? A month from now? Decades?

The bathroom steams, vapor coating the mirror and walls, rolling out from the shower curtain. 

Reina folds her clothes so the sleeves of her t-shirt line up with one another. She loosens the scarf and her hair falls out in dark chocolate waves.

Aware of herself, she runs her hands over her body, feeling the curve of her hips and the inward slope of her waist. Ribs and skin. Water on her palm as she reaches out and the shower heat soothes. 

She passes over the tub threshold for her meditative baptism.

She cleans herself with the soaps Jimmy used not long ago and dries off in the same air.

Caught, like she is on the tile floor, she's in a cage of time. Not there yet to the future and too far to be in the past. Reina realizes she hates the present. Especially this existence as the clock ticks her steps into the bedroom away and she wanders between a long white dress and a pair of tight jeans.

"What do you think would be better?" She asks Jimmy when he finds her. He's made tea; he sips it naked.

He tilts his head and points to the white smock. "It's holy. Reminds me of your being an angel in the church play."

Her smile buries into the light fabric as she drowns in it and emerges on the other side, fresh, smelling simple clean of the hotel shampoo.

The air conditioner billows. Below on the street, car horns scream and a fire truck siren wails. Reina goes to the bedroom window. Jimmy's room is at the corner of the hotel and looks out onto a side street. People move past with goals, ideas, places to be. They get in taxis, they walk beside one another. So many different lives happening at the same time as hers. She turns back and looks at Jimmy.