She risks a thought, a long-sought-after desire ... then risks so much more
what's it all about
well-heeled & incessant traveler Sara Melina has been on a quest since she was a mere girl, searching for answers and facts, and in her constant pursuit ends up falling in love with two men at separate yet intertwined times. When she runs across meridians to the multitudes and solace of India, unaware of one another, they both go in search of her. With Adrián on her heels and Turner waiting at the Mumbai airport, in a moment that almost slips away, Sara unearths what she's been looking for: not in what either of them have to offer, but in what she discovers herself to be.
excerpts
"My accent?" She props one knee on a chair. He has close-cropped hair, and a well-defined five o'clock shadow that keeps her from looking at his angular face and blue eyes, eyes almost too big for a man. "It's not from anywhere in particular. I have picked up intonations from the languages I try to learn. Why?"
"Because I couldn't decipher it."
"I am not, nor pretend to be, enigmatic."
"Enigmatic?"
"From the Greek to speak in riddles, therefore hard to understand."
"Do you try to be?" He watches her over an invisible pince-nez.
"Hard to understand?" Sara smiles. "Never." Then goes to dim some of the bright office lights.
His eyes follow her through the glass walls until she's back across the table, though what he'd rather do is turn from her all: the contour of her neck, the curve of her chin, her voice. Feels like a child on a slide, anticipating, before his feet touch the ground, the climb back.
at office | of Corbusiers & Masters
"Causing a raucous, me?" He folds the napkin on his lap and laughs.
Fiery thoughts pulse through her head. "Could we go somewhere else for dessert?" She slips her feet into the sandals, sensing a need to flee the confines she has fenced around herself, elbows barely on the edge of the table, her heart in her mouth.
"You mean go elsewhere, and perhaps get lost like we did in Shanghai?"
"I want something sweet under a colossal column in ancient Cairo . . . something only you can give me".
Turner lifts his gaze to the ceiling, then closes his eyes. Fans rotate in a swirl. The people, dishes being picked up, placed on tables, waiters calling out to one another in different languages, get shut out one at a time before he turns to her. "What are you saying?"
But by then she's gone, scurrying out the door, the long scarf waving in the night.
Cairo restaurant | Slightly taut
The cottage, encircled by a lush grove of palm trees and ferns, overlooked the sea and a dock where fishermen anchored their boats. Sara walked ahead, sandals in hand, garment bag pulled with the other. She turned and looked in his eyes. "Would you walk away from me?"
"If that's what you really want me to do."
She should have known not to ask questions like that, not of him. She breathed the smell of the earth and ocean, flowers and decay, of past and present. Why did that need pull and bind tight when at other times it hung loose? The habitual breathing took its cue from the tide and it was either long and painful or short and taut, always one when she needed it to be the other. She felt limber, happy to stretch her soul, yet her mind was constricted.
Adrián kissed her forehead and cheeks, inching her into the shade. "Happy here?"
"Yes," she turned in circles and danced into the little house, "I won't have to wear shoes until we leave."
flashback | Drawing Lines in the Sand
"Risking regret of the worst kind: why cut a man in five parts? I mean, as far as —”
"Em, please, don't even finish that sentence. Five at least!'
"At least?!? Really."
"Yes. really," Sara inches her body to the booth edge and rests her elbows on the table. "Let's start with the head, face, the obvious, talking purely superficial here. There's the chest, upper torso, including extremities. Were you good in biology?"
"I am good in biology."
"After that," Sara smiles, "comes the mid-section, no need to delve."
"Whatever."
"Fourth are the knees, maybe even the thighs."
"Oh, pa-leeease!" Em laughs out loud. "That's worse than the shoes!"
at pub with sister | Confessions
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,
the fingerpoints look through like rosy blooms,
your eyes smile peace.
The pasture gleams and glooms
'neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
are golden kingcup fields with silver edge
where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly hangs
like a blue thread loosened from the sky.
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! Clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
this close-companioned inarticulate hour
when two-fold silence was the song of love.
Silent Noon
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
from The House of Life
A fabric is woven, woven with yarn,
textured or uniform,
single or plied.
The yarn is twisted for cohesion,
stretched out from strands, drawn from a sliver,
cleaned, picked, sheared, unwound.
Fiber taken from the source.
The design of the fabric goes on paper.
Yarns are let off the beam,
threaded through heddles
suspended from harnesses that move up and down
to the motion of the chain.
Through the opening created
the yarns shuttle back and forth,
interlacing with the others to create the pattern of the cloth.
A fine mesh pushes the yarns forward
and the fabric's taken up.
And wound.
And thus,
the woven fabric grows.
to
fall in love with
two
men
was
never
In her plans
Finally she has arrived
in the desert of writers and thinkers
of flyers & nomads
of those who crave to purify their souls
How it Happened
Riding the train, my heart on my sleeve,
I wrote on a notepad, then tore the pages and folded them into my briefcase. By the time I got to the office I was over "it." Fumbling through the briefcase later that day, I saw the pages and, with as little thought as it took me to write, crumpled them into a wastebasket. But the basket was made of metal mesh, so I un-trashed the pages and put them back in the briefcase. Months later, I came upon the pages again and cried all over again. More shocking than finding them was feeling so strongly about something I had written . . . that I had written it at all, and decided that perhaps I could make a story around them.
116,000 words later, those crumpled pages are buried in this novel, seamlessly woven into a body of discovery. Yet still, at times, when I re-edit or come across them again, I cry.
The reason
On my way to work, distressed beyond words, I was at the brink of tears when dropped off at the station, but I gathered my stuff, bought the train ticket and an apple strudel, and sat among my soon-to-be-fellow-passengers as if nothing was wrong. But pain seared, it was palpable. When at last I got to a window seat and tucked away my things, the dam broke. I can bear just about anything with the best of them, but not that day. And not only did I cry: I sobbed uncontrollably.
The outcome
What drove me to write a conversation between two fictitious people is a mystery to me. I continued sobbing, I'm embarrassed to say, while scribbling page after page, with no idea of what I was doing, aware only of the silence around me. I felt refreshed and put away the pad and all that went along with it, until months later when the pages resurfaced. Little did I know that giving them a reason for being would be the impetus for my writing, and that all the empty notebooks, and reams and boxes of paper in drawers and closets, were for that day and for every day since.
It is finished, but I am unsure it conveys what it is meant to convey.
originated
| fall of 1997
begun
| with fervor in 1998
published
| at last in 2022
The ending was proposed by a stranger who gave me an option so logical and sensible . . . I used it.
a tale of redemption
© Inés Santiago 2019-2022 | all rights reserved | member of The Authors Guild
to fall in love with two men was
never
In her plans
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,
the fingerpoints look through like rosy blooms,
your eyes smile peace.
The pasture gleams and glooms 'neath billowing skies
that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
are golden kingcup fields with silver edge
where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths
the dragonfly hangs
like a blue thread loosened from the sky.
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! Clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
this close-companioned inarticulate hour
when two-fold silence
was the song of love.
A fabric is woven, woven with yarn,
textured or uniform,
single or plied.
The yarn is twisted for cohesion,
stretched out from strands,
drawn from a sliver,
cleaned, picked, sheared, unwound.
Fiber taken from the source.
The design of the fabric goes on paper.
Yarns are let off the beam,
threaded through heddles
suspended from harnesses that
move up and down
to the motion of the chain.
Through the opening created
the yarns shuttle back and forth,
interlacing with the others to create
the pattern of the cloth.
A fine mesh pushes the yarns forward
and the fabric's taken up.
And wound.
And thus,
the woven fabric grows.