Attenuation or Separation

She gave me about an hour to think about that earring, worn first day in what I assumed was a new job, then Fate shoved her chair back and rolled into my line of sight. "I'm already bored of the clicking over there. Do they have a coffee bar on the floor?"

"One floor down. It's a good walk when you need to think." I ignored her, but she rolled into the cubicle anyway. I had to scoot over while she looked at my photos and the art and glib comments taped under the shelves. I had scavenged in my roommate's cube before she left and some of those things were hers. Fate picked up one photo and looked at it for some time.

"You're leaving them in the light to fade." She showed me a photo, where a small oval in the corner was white. A faded aureole crept outward from it, a permanent sun fuzz across my friends and I. She moved it back into the corner, bringing forward a photo that I didn't recognize.

"Let this one pick up some of the light. He won't notice much difference." It was picture of a blonde friend of mine from college. I'd never taken or seen this picture, so I assumed I'd swept it in the box along with the rest of the desk stuff I'd been planning to send back. Why would I have kept this? His white-blonde hair and white shirt against a white wall, the droop of his head and his smirk...it was a New Wave picture that must have been taken in high school. Before we ever knew of him, among friends we'd never shared him with. Had we taken as good care of him as they had? Was he back among them now or among yet another set of friends, camped in a cube and being dilligent...not smart, no longer cool? She was right, better this fade before he had a chance to compare then and now.

I shuddered against the chill of the vent above me. Working at this angle could be like running a low grade fever for days on end. Fate stood and shoved her chair out of the narrow space beside me. "Did I say something? Would you prefer that I not touch your things? Some people are funny that way. Let's go get coffee and forget about it. You can tell me how looking at the flowers downstairs gets you in so deep that you get saddled with me."

Fate

I work with my back to a clear glass wall while another window looms over the edge of the felt wall to my left. Up above the garden, as if heaven itself were just an empty attic over the sky. Despite the back of beyond location, I was scarcely an invisible denizen of the divine beauracracy. Since I'd lingered earlier in front of the garden, a rumor had slipped from lip to ear that I was in a contravening mood. They knew, because my former roommate had warned them, that I was quiet and shy. Did I follow the rules or eventually ignore them? My boss stopped by to check on me as I logged in, and glanced at her own watch. The screen loads slowly and the few allowed icons (and the company logo background) are designed to be all the flashier for being the only ones given to us.

What I wanted was to think about first loves, the ones Mom used to talk about. The way that you could fall in love whenver and wherever, provided you were either entirely present or looking over the boundary into fairyland. She claimed it had happened to her at 5, although not with my dad. Dad called fairyland a warzone of competitive reproduction, when he deigned to participate in tale telling. He was gone more and more as I grew up, and I assume that he and Uncle Silver are gone right now. My boss, on the other hand, stands behind me and watches the screen load.

She doesn't know that I am afraid of the empty ends of buildings for no reason that I can name and that while I find spiders fascinating, roses fill me with dread. Nor does she know about the pub. "We're moving another admin into the next cube over. She'll be here after the paperwork is done. Will you have time to show her around?" The admin arrives before my boss finishes speaking.

As she greets my boss, I notice that her left earing catches the light as if catching fire. Hanging from her ear is a devil in red and orange glitter. My boss greets her and then suffers a correction.

"It's Fate, not Faith. Most people make that mistake, it's an unusual name. Nice to meet you." She swings her hand over to me and we shake.

Each Blooms Your Name

Although she left some time ago, my roommate, through whom I found this job, remains a green and growing memory, particularly on mornings such as this. She was white-blonde when I met her and morning light slanting down picked up those flat, bright highlights in her hair. She would take her coffee to the transparent wall by the flower beds and linger, drinking the small cup. It looked five seconds of coffee, but she took it in tiny, bitter sips. She seemed to greet everyone and they gave her leave to remain by the glass because it made work feel like something lingering from the weekend rather than the full stop to Sunday night. She faced outward, unlike me.

Why I think of her, facing this fabulous garden stuck between walls of glass, swirls around me like the dust. She was brave, she left for love, and she left me here, trying to carve a career in her wake, like a clumsy skier behind a motorboat. Before she left, one of the gardners gave her one of these tender perennials at the change of the season and she,seeing my avid interest, passed it on to me. She would have killed it, the way she did the rest. The live plants on the sill were all generously attributed to me back in the dorm.

That plant still leans against my window. Dreaming, perhaps, of its days as a model of its species behind the big glass panes. It has spread across the sill and gone to seed in the window, which I leave open as often as I can to let the bugs flit around. My mother would be happy to see it. She told me once that I would know my path because each flower that lined it would bloom my name.

Suddenly, I was resolved to bring a boquet to the dinner tonight of things that could be gathered from the yards and sidewalks around my apartment. The first flowers that I ever gathered, the ones at the back of the schoolyard during recess while I dreamed of being woken up from glass coffins. One of the managers walked by and frowned at my shoulder, stepping up close to make sure that I wasn't examing a problem. "Perfect view for the clients," he murmured, "Provided they can see the entire sweep, like the architect intended."

Back to the glass walls I go, to think on nothing.

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.

Pack of Lies

"Watch your hand, there!" The barkeep flipped a heavy brass catch. I pulled my hand into the booth, sliding toward the window and further down in the seat. The outside is quaint and people stop to stare. I know I did for months before the familiar features suddenly looked relaxed instead of worn. Most of them out there will just keep walking by, stopping to look in the windows, cupping their hands around their eyes and bending over the slight gap between pavement and foundation.

A set of stairs thumped behind me. The booth above and behind me was occupied when I arrived from work. I've only been here a few times since the first and I'd never met the woman in that booth. All of the booths have regulars, according to the barkeep. The first day, I sat on one of the few open tables and drank to myself. I thought I'd been looking for company, but he could tell that I wanted to space to unwind from work. In my office, we all participate in polite games with one foot in and one foot out the door. I didn't need to meet more facades afterward, I just needed to meet a couple of glasses of warmth, preferably something sweeter and stronger than beer.

When I'd been shown to this booth, it was something else. I was curious about the other inhabitants and, I spread several pages in a fan to my left to have an excuse to glance at her while the barkeep helped her down. She was delicately old, velum skin, spun sugar hair, and a sheen to her clothes like fine porcelain. Her back was to me, but her hand gripped the barkeep's. I shuffled the papers while staring at her back. I was only recently welcomed to the bar, no?

A thunk and giggle drew my eyes to the window and group of girls peering into the bar. When they saw me they slapped each others' hands from the glass and huddled together, gasping and laughing. Something tickled my memory, some crazy story I'd heard when I moved here about looking in the window to see your future husband standing in the field in the middle of the structure. I looked toward the grass in the center of the bar. The lady above me had already made her way to the door.

I shifted back toward the inner corner of the booth, but the girls were still standing together outside and I was caught in a curious conflict of identity. Bar or Street? Grass or Cement? Humans or dreams?

"Good place to write. I think the gentleman afore you used to draw. Good light, either way. Higher up," he jerked his head toward the upper booth, "the eaves sometimes cut the light." He climbed up the stairs, leaning against them to polish the booth and stepped higher to reach the table. "Sad to see the last of the Pack getting on like."

"Last of the Pack?" I may be a writer, but the distractions are my favorite part.

"Pack of Lies. Whole group of sisters who came back years ago. Flighty bunch, even after the years started to wear them away." He came back down. "I never knew them all that well. My older brother, he's the one who told me who they were. 'Pack of Lies, sisters with a taste for nectar and gossip.' I don't know. Tea's more her style, but I've seen drink Ambrosia against the chill."

I couldn't write this afternoon, had to get out of the close air. Despite the Persian woodcuts around the open area in the middle, the air felt like it was dripping like varnish over my thoughts. I nodded thanks and shuffled the papers into one hand. They bent as I bounced the heavy door from wrist to elbow, shoving my work satchel out into the afternoon breeze.

Welcome, Welcome

And it's not that we haven't seen you peering in the window, wonder if we're open, or if we'd give you the time of day if you stopped in. But then, we're not going to roust ourselves out from behind this lovely counter just to bang on the window for everyone who wonders by. It was the look on your face, see. Half smile, squinting under your arm. You looked like you had time for us, time for each and every one of us to introduce ourselves. Have a seat here, in this booth.

You can see everyone's about here. But that's a bit much for anyone's first time, eh? Let me introduce the pub instead. The Pollen and the Sting, she's a good old place. Been here for years, ever since that first wave of clovers tumbled out of the forest and set themselves up under the sunshine. First it was the bees who met here. They're a social bunch, just like us. Like to have their drinks and their stories, like as not about drinks, right? How to get to that sweet little bloom just over the horizon?

Sweet as this, right? Set it right back on that counter, looks like it was glazed with honey this afternoon. Need another? Yup, as do we all, that first time in a new place. I'm the owner, direct descendant of bees myself. Busy as, know what I mean? Well, literally, too. Somewhere back in the great-old line, my grandma used to tell me about how the fairies would enchant the bees to serve them in their plaited castles of living flowers.

One young lady, she wandered right into the middle of a field in the middle of the day, when it was so hot that the air flickered and the shadows just crawled right under the soles of your feet. She was looking for the perfect bunch of flowers for the table, since her betrothed was coming that night. There she was, standing in a patch of clover, sight blanched by the sun, lungs filled with the condensed breath of the flowers. The fairies must have slipped a circle of blooms on her head and there, in the shade from that circlet, was their palace.

Well, she went in. And not very far in, one of the servants hurrying by happen to catch a whiff of those flowers, hot and sweet from the sun. She thought he had fallen for her, but he had really fallen for the scent of those flowers. She said she'd give them to him if he lead her out. That he did, and disappeared. Grandma said she dropped the flowers and never saw the bee still clinging to them.

Her betrothed found her, flushed and sunburned on the lane and they lived for a number of years after that. That first child, though, he was supposed to be part bee. I dunno. Still, it's a good story. And we've got both the pollen and the sting here, depending on your mood. Enjoy the cup, eh? And don't worry about peering in any more windows. You're in the right place. Watch your head, though. Hexagonal booths can surprise those as aren't used to them. Well, we've had one leave recently. But that, my friend, is a story for next time.