"oh, and it's BYOB..."

"This penchant of yours for thinking too much will be the very end of you, you know.."

She walked around me like a sculptress, not so much like she was looking for form in the raw block of what I thought I was, but more like she was wary of planting her foot on one of the razor shards that fell each time she wielded her mallet and chisel.
The orange evening Autumn sun cast itself through the hazy glass of the bedroom windows, washing all in some sick color that was making even the polished pine floor look queasy, like that look she had on her face after she got so sick trying to smoke one of my cigars. It even muted her usual glow. And, it smelled, if a color can have an odor, like a pair of old pantyhose, or something that reminded me of old pantyhose, god knows why it reminded me of pantyhose, but it did. She preferred knee socks. I never argued that fashion bent of hers. I never argued any of her fashion choices. I never argued...
I take that back. I argued, once. But not with her. With another. She was, at the height of that sole argument, standing naked in a kitchen, bathed not in this orange light, but the light of a candle sitting in a saucer on her kitchen table, wishing, I'm sure, it was burning it's life away someplace else, as did I. Standing hard and straight, her arms crossed over her small breasts, her long bronze hair hanging about her like some Druid cape, biting her bottom lip as her pale gray eyes filled with water, while I argued that, like the remnant of that taper alight in the darkness, she was better off burning her life away someplace as well. I was a wanderer and she was an angel with translucent skin and fluttering wings, an air dancer and a miracle worker and was more worthy than I could afford at the time. That didn't end well. I won that argument. That's why I don't argue any more. Sometimes, you win...
But, back to now.

She continued her buzzard dance around me for a few more seconds, then crossed the room and stood looking out through the window, and became but some brown-gray ghost with a pumpkin aura, staring at the setting sun over the little town down the hill. She, too, was naked, save for a pair of fuzzy brown knee socks, of her own creation, knitted one night while we sat on her porch, as I read aloud from a book short stories about trout fishing. Naked, but not for any reason other than she preferred to be naked when inside her place. Always when she was alone and always when I was her sole company. Or mostly always. I wasn't as comfortable with myself as she was and preferred to remain in my usual jeans and sweatshirt, except when they got in the way, like last night or two nights ago, or a thousand nights ago, whenever it was, I really can't remember, when she coerced me onto her living room floor and made me lie there naked with her while she wrote out a shopping list for this party she was planning on having the next weekend. She kept getting up and padding into the kitchen to bang about the cabinets looking for things she thought she might have, but didn't, that were added to her list. I lay on my left side, she on her right, facing me, her paper and pencil on the floor between us while she scribbled in her left handed little kid's printing:

THINGS FOR THE PARTY:

POTATO CHIPS (THE ORANGE KIND)
LICORICE
BREAD AND CHEESE AND BUTTER FOR GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES!
COFFEE
CARROTS
AND YOGURT FOR DIPPING (PLAIN)
BALLOONS
PAPER PLATES
HERB TEA FOR DYLAN'S GIRLFRIEND FUCK HER!!!
NUTS (IN A CAN WITH LOTS OF SALT)
RED WINE AND WHITE WINE AND
GINGER ALE AND LEMON LIME SODA

She pushed the list into my face and said,
"Can you think of anything else?"
"I'm trying to figure out why you want to have a party..."
"It's for you. You need a party. It will make you happy and it will make me happy and for a few hours I won't worry about you and wonder why you always just sit and stare at me all night."
"I like to stare at you. You're stare-worthy."
"You can stare at me at your party. Are you sure I'm not forgetting anything?"
"You're not supplying any booze for your, I mean, our friends?"
"Nope, if they want to drink, it's BYOB."

Chisel, mallet... tap, tap, tap...

She turned away from the window at exactly the same moment the molten orb fell behind the furthest off hill and walked back to where I was sitting in the middle of the twilight blue room on her old wooden bar stool. Not everyone I knew or loved or wanted to love had an old bar stool in their bedroom, but she did. She took up her pace around me again, the scuff of her socks on the ancient pine, the air of her nakedness whirling around me like some maelstrom of mythic lust, counter-clockwise she moved, anti-sun wise, like how she moved around her circle in the clearing in the woods, that holy place where she talked to her goddess and sang to her gods... Her left index finger traced across my shoulders, then across my lips, then around and around again in that dance. I knew what she was doing and I let it happen. I never, ever argue...

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