○ ○ ○
“It’s a sad place.” Karen has joined her sister on the terrace, the balcony, and they gaze out at the lake, two girls alone on a desolate island. “Sad and yet all too right for me, I suppose. Oh, I don’t regret any of it, Karen. No, I was wrong, wrong as always, but I don’t regret it. It’d be silly to be all pinched and morbid about it, wouldn’t it, Karen?” The girl, of course, is talking about the failure of her third marriage. “Things are done and they are undone and then we get ready to do them again.” Karen looks at her shyly, then turns her gentle gaze back out across the lake, blue with a river’s muted blue under this afternoon sun. “The sun!” the girl in gold pants exclaims, though it is not clear why she thought of it. She tries to explain that she is like the sun somehow, or the sun is like her, but she becomes confused. Finally, she interrupts herself to blurt out: “Oh, Karen! I’m so miserable!” Karen looks up anxiously: there are no tears in her sister’s eyes, but she is biting down pain fully on her lower lip. Karen offers a smile, a little awkward, not quite understanding perhaps, and finally her sister, eyes closing a moment, then fluttering open, smiles wanly in return. A moment of grace settles between them, but Karen turns her back on it clumsily.
○ ○ ○
“No, Karen! Please! Stop!” The man, collapsed to the terrace floor, has tears of laughter running down his cheeks. Karen has found an old shoe and is now holding it up at arm’s length, making broad silent motions with her upper torso and free arm as though declaiming upon the sadness of the shoe. She sets the shoe on the terrace floor and squats down over it, covering it with the skirt of her yellow dress. “No, Karen! No!” She leaps up, whacks her heels together in midair, picks up the shoe and peers inside. A broad smile spreads across her face, and she does a little dance, holding the shoe aloft. With a little curtsy, she presents the shoe to the man. “No! Please!” Warily, but still laughing, he looks inside. “What’s this? Oh no! A flower! Karen, this is too much!” She runs into the mansion, returns carrying the green piano on her back. She drops it so hard, one leg breaks off. She finds an iron poker, props the piano up with it, sits down on an imaginary stool to play. She lifts her hands high over her head, then comes driving down with extravagant magisterial gestures. The piano, of course, has been completely disemboweled, so no sounds emerge, but up and down the broken keyboard Karen’s stubby fingers fly, arriving at last, with a crescendo of violent flourishes, at a grand climactic coda, which she delivers with such force as to buckle the two remaining legs of the piano and send it all crashing to the terrace floor. “No, Karen! Oh my God!” Out of the wreckage, a wild goose springs, honking in holy terror, and goes flapping out over the lake. Karen carries the piano back inside, there’s a splintering crash, and she returns wielding the poker. “Careful!” She holds the poker up with two hands and does a little dance, toes turned outward, hippety-hopping about the terrace. She stops abruptly over the man, thrusts the poker in front of his nose, then slowly brings it to her own lips and kisses it. She makes a wry face. “Oh, Karen! Whoo! Please! You’re killing me!” She kisses the handle, the shaft, the tip. She wrinkles her nose and shudders, lifts her skirt and wipes her tongue with it. She scowls at the poker. She takes a firm grip on the poking end and bats the handle a couple times against the stone parapet as though testing it. “Oh, Karen! Oh!” Then she lifts it high over her head and brings it down with all her might — wham! — poof! it is the caretaker’s son, yowling’ with pain. She lets go and spins away from him, as he strikes out at her in distress and fury. She tumbles into a corner of the terrace and cowers there, whimpering, pale and terrified, as the caretaker’s son, breathing heavily, back stooped and buttocks tensed, circles her, prepared to spring. Suddenly, she dashes for the parapet and leaps over, the caretaker’s son bounding after, and off they go, scrambling frantically through the trees and brambles, leaving the tall man in the white turtleneck shirt alone and limp from laughter on the terrace.
○ ○ ○
There is a storm on the lake. Two children play “Chopsticks” on the green piano. Their grandmother stirs the embers in the fireplace with an iron poker, then returns to her seat on the window-bench. The children glance over at her and she smiles at them. Suddenly a strange naked creature comes bounding into the loggia, grinning idiotically. The children and their grandmother scream with terror and race from the room and on out of the mansion, running for their lives. The visitor leaps up on the piano bench and squats there, staring quizzically at the ivory keys. He reaches for one and it sounds a note — he jerks his hand back in fright. He reaches for another — a different note. He brings his fist down — blam! Aha! Again: blam! Excitedly, he leaps up and down on the piano bench, banging his fists on the piano keyboard. He hops up on the piano, finds wires inside, and pulls them out. twang! twang! He holds his genitals with one hand and rips out the wires with the other, grunting with delight. Then he spies the iron poker. He grabs it up, admires it, then bounds joyfully around the room, smashing win dows and wrecking furniture. The girl in gold pants enters and takes the poker away from him. “Lust! That’s all it is!” she scolds. She whacks him on the nates with the poker, and, yelping with pain and astonishment, he bounds away, leaping over the stone parapet, and slinks off through the brambly forest.
○ ○ ○
“Lust!” she says, “that’s all it is!” Her sketch is nearly complete. “And they’re not the worst ones. The worst ones are the ones who just let it happen. I£ they’d kept their caretaker here…” The man smiles. “There never was a caretaker,” he explains. “Really? But I thought—!” “No,” he says, “that’s just a legend of the island.” She seems taken aback by this new knowledge. “Then… then I don’t understand…” He relights his pipe, wanders over to appraise her sketch. He laughs when he sees the shaggy buttocks. “Marvelous!” he exclaims, “but a poor likeness, I’m afraid! Look!” He lowers his dark slacks and show her his hind-end, smooth as marble and hair less as a movie starlet’s. Her curiosity is caught, however, not by his barbered buttocks, but by the hair around his genitals: the tight neat curls fan out in both directions like the wings of an eagle, or a wild goose…
○ ○ ○
The two sisters return to the loggia, their visit nearly concluded, the one in gold pants still trying to explain about herself and the sun, about consuming herself with an outer fire, while harboring an ice-cold center within. Her gaze falls once more on the green piano. It is obvious she still has something-more to say. But now as she declaims, she has less of an audience. Karen stands distractedly before the green piano. Haltingly, she lifts a finger, strikes a key. No note, only a dull thuck. Her sister reveals a new insight she has just obtained about it not being the people who steal or even those who wantonly destroy, but those who let it happen, who just don’t give a proper damn. She provides instances. Once, Karen nods, but maybe only at something she has thought to herself. Her finger lifts, strikes. Thuck! Again. Thuck! Her whole arm drives the strong blunt finger. Thuck! Thuck! There is something genuinely beautiful about the girl in gold pants and silk neck-scarf as she gestures and speaks. Her eyes are sorrowful and wise. Thuck! Karen strikes the key. Suddenly, her sister breaks off her message. “Oh, I’m sorry, Karen!” she says. She stares at the piano, then runs out of the room.