The Falsity of Eternal Verities

"Pack of Lies, was it?" The woman from the bar stepped from beside a grated sidewalk tree and caught my arm. I could feel the pinch of her fingers in the muscle. "I've heard them talk about us before--Pack of Lovelies, it used to be. Compact of the Butterflies. You never know how they'll remember you in there."

I stood still, arrested in mid-thought. "Forgive me for listening, then." Hearsay's formal etiquette escaped me. She laughed, bone and sinew spasming against my arm, their visible armatures flexing beneath her shallow skin. After a minute, dry chuckles brushed the bottom of the joke and she let go of my arm.

"Apology accepted. Gossip is why we go, eh? We had such lovely flutters when we were all on the wing. Not so long ago, but stretching further back than you, I see." She reached up and ran her hand over the red mark from her grip. "Felt a pulse, just now." She tittered. "Of course you listened. I would have, and asked questions. Still, you're not...well, you've inherited that booth."

Gossip wasn't the reason I went to the Pollen and the Sting--acquired heritage and an ineffable sense of coolness sighed from the door as it opened. I have neither, but I needed such a place to go. Church was pleasant, but not my particular flavor and the shops, well, they aren't really places to stop.

"You don't really understand how we inherit those old-fashioned booths, do you?" She continued and I realized I'd dropped the conversation, flubbed my lines. "Thought it was just your lucky day when you walked in and found it waiting?"

"Yes, ma'am. And, of course, it was." A place to go meant that I had both a home a holt, two places to run.

She brushed again the mark on my arm, reminding me of the scar upon my mothers' arm that I had forever rubbed as a small child. The smooth indentations of the skin running in patterns over her arm meant that I could find her in the dark, half asleep. My companion looked at the mark she'd left, touching it again but feeling no difference in my skin. "My sisters and I shared the booth above yours and I'm the last of them left. Maybe you'd like to be able to share the story with the next person who takes it."

Of course. "It would be an honor to do so." Participation is part of patronage, although I hadn't thought of it that way. I hadn't even asked after the former owner of my booth. She didn't look old to me, her surface powdered and brushed into order. My eye was caught by a ruffle at her neck, the upper connections of her wings to her skin. Not a scarf, then, but ragged wings, rustling in the warm exhalations of the street. Those, like the hands of some women, spoke of age marked by sets of years, rather than years alone.

"Perfect. We shall meet tomorrow night in my townhouse. I shall have the address and time conveyed to you. Where is your place of employ?"

I gave her the name, which she recognized. "The place with the indoor garden?" I nodded. It was a lovely place that was off limits to lingering, even at lunch. If she was interested, though, I would make an effort to delay purposefully along its length tomorrow.

"There are those who say that wine is the proper accompaniment to a dinner and sherry to conversation afterward, but I find that good conversation grows best in the presence of a guest's favorite blooms. A good hostess counts it a good gift to know her guests." She turned and walked away.

I realized that I needed to find a florist and, perhaps, an unfamiliar favorite on this shore. Thinking of waxy, forced blooms, I wondered what manner of artifice we would discuss on the morrow.