Occ Time out of Sequence

[Love's Jester]

Baby, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But, don't you know that no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong I seem to be bad

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood


The juke box rattles with the vibration of the song.

The thump of the beat.

A new version of an old song.

Bit like me.

Old trouble in a new package.

Here for one thing.

Can you guess?

I blow my coffee and watch the world go by the window.

Rain streaked.

Weeping.

The world’s tears.

Seen them shed too much.



A figure sits at the table hands round a cup of coffee, just coffee. Not Latto, Mocha, double this or that. Just black coffee. The face is scrubbed clean of makeup, unlined, lips narrow, the eyes a pale green. The hair grey, short, cropped into the neck. A mix; neither old or young. The body, young looking and firm, yet she moves with the sureness of experience and age.

Stuck in the middle would be a good discription.

She is here to do a job, to make sure things don't get out of control. They could, so very easily. No, not an angel, or devil. Though in a past life she had been called both.

The circle goes round for her, for him, for all of them, save for the enemy Morgana. She continued, locked to existence waiting for the return of the once and future King.

He is here, what form the woman sitting with the coffee does not know, but she has to find him soon.

This time fate has thrown Merlin a curve ball, Merlin is this time a she... Not that the form matters it is the spirit inside.


Occ: I would like to attempt a different version of the Arthur legend, if a gentleman is willing to write with me.

PM me if interested with your ideas.

Thanks.

 

[Love's Jester]

bump.....

 

[Love's Jester]

Bump again... we shall see.....

 

[patrick1]

art

He wheels in his bike while the song's still playing. He parks the bike up by the notice-board for holistic therapies and obscure bands in obscure cafes. He runs his hands through his short, grey hair, then down over his slim, bare legs, sweating from his exertions. He looks around; smiles. His mouth is used to smiling, but his green eyes have a melancholy in them. Baby, sometimes I'm so carefree, With a joy that's hard to hide, he sings along. Glances at her. Waits in line. And sometimes it seems that all I have do is worry, Then you're bound to see my other side...

'Earl Grey tea, medium,' he orders. He has an English accent. He seems to feel her looking at him, and glances at her again. Then looks away. He's humming the chorus of the song. He almost buys a chocolate chip cookie, then changes his mind when it's on the glass counter. He picks up his tea, and asks for another cardboard cup when he pays.

He turns, and looks around. There's plenty of room.

He smiles at her, and sits down opposite her, at her table.

'Pardon me,' he says. 'Art.'

'I'm sorry?'

'Art. My name.' He's swishing the tea bag around in his hot water. Finally he deposits it in the extra cup he asked for. He seems to notice that the same song is playing again, in a different version, the Cyndi Lauper. 'That's strange, did you do that?' he asks her.

'Did I do what?'

'That magic? The same song playing again.' When she doesn't answer he sips his tea, and shrugs. 'I'm old enough to have seen the Animals do it live. They were terrible. Nina Simone's is my favourite version, how about you?'

 

[Love's Jester]

Merlin sensed she was being watched. She glanced round the café. Each face she studied; nothing out of the unusual, but why did the hairs on the back of her neck stand up?

Twitchy, she was thinking far too much on the what ifs.

Merlin sighed and returned her attention to the raindrops on the glass. A group of single drops ran down the smooth surface as if racing each other, they clashed together forming of thick river that obscured the outside world even more. Things were closing in again. The butterfly effect in action, or rather the actions of and faith of one man in himself. Merlin hoped she would reach him in time, before Morgana.

A small smile twisted Merlin’s lips. Oh Morgana, the beautiful, the clever, she of the soft skin and raven hair. Even I did not see your hate for your half brother until it was too late.


The scrape of a chair cuts into Merlin’s memories. A man has joined her at her table. Her eyes widen slightly as she takes in his appearance. The line of the nose, the hair damp from exertion rather than rain, the still fast rising of his chest as his body adapted to the chance in rhythm testament to that. The fact confirmed by his sideways glance at the mountain bike placed under the notice board.

“Pardon me," he said. “Art.”

”I'm sorry?” Merlin replied as she continued her study of the man before her.

”Art. My name.” He's swished the tea bag around in his hot water. Finally he deposited it in the extra cup hew had brought with him. His hands are well formed the fingers long. Strong hands. Again the hairs on the back of Merlin’s neck rose. I wonder, she thought. “That's strange, did you do that?” he asked

”Did I do what?” Merlin countered as her gaze now tracked again across his face, marking the swirls and shadows in the green eyes.

”That magic? The same song playing again.” Merlin did not answer, maybe she had. She was searching with the magic, looking for Arthur. She had cast it out like a net, seeking to trigger a response in someone. Often it caused a loop, which impinged on the surroundings. Is that what had happened now? Or was it something more? The feeling in the back of her neck was sending cold chills down her back that had nothing to do with the slam of the café door.

Art continued his conversation “I'm old enough to have seen the Animals do it live. They were terrible. Nina Simone's is my favourite version, how about you?”

Merlin curled her hands round her coffee. “I never really thought about it, the song is the same no matter how it is packaged. As for magic, maybe, then maybe it is just one of these compilation tracks, you know a bit of each version rolled into one, yet the heart of it is the same. And as to my name, Art, guess…” As she finished the Latin rhythm of Santa Esmeralda version began, the flamenco handclap mimicking her increased heartbeat. Was it possible her search was over? If so her task and problems were just beginning.

 

[patrick1]

art

'And as to my name, Art, guess...'

He smiles that smile again. 'Give me your hands,' he says, 'let me look into your eyes and maybe I can tell you.'

She lets go of her coffee. It could be a cheap trick; a tawdry chat-up line. What the hell. She offers him her two hands and smiles back at him. His eyes dance with something. Then he shuts them, and rocks back and forth for maybe ten seconds. His thumbs press on her knuckles. When he opens his eyes there's a different look in them.

'Merl,' he says quietly, and lets go of her hands.

Her mouth open, she pales, looking at him, examining his face.

'Hey,' he says, sipping at his tea, breaking the mood, 'don't do the ghost thing, I asked them behind the counter.'

She's disoriented, trying to say something but the words aren't coming out, and he for once seems nonplussed. He pulls out a notebook. 'Look, I've got to dash, I hope this won't seem cheeky of me, but, come to dinner? Wednesday?'

'Thursday,' she manages to say.

'Thursday. Here's the address. 28th and Morgan. I have to do some deliveries now.'

He's up, touching her left shoulder, 'Good to meet you,' and going to his bike. It has a holder on the handlebars for his tea. She sees now there are packages in a pannier at the back, marked with the name of a courier company. He half-smiles as he goes. She stares at what he's written. Art Leroi, 2810 Morgan. Can it really be him? Does she dare to go and have dinner with him? Does she dare not to?

 

[Love's Jester]

Merlin leant her forehead against the pole in the subway train carriage. The cold metal helped the throbbing in her temples. Since Art Leroi had held her hand and pushed the note across the table she had been plunged into a fever. The magic had been working over time, looking at all angles, all possibilities

Arthur had, had the ability to judge men, only once with Morgana’s magic blocking him had he trusted Mordred, but then perhaps it had been Arthur’s heart that had refused to see the evil in the young man. Everything pointed to this man being Arthur, yet Merlin knew she had to be careful. She had to test him. Not that she feared Morgana had got there first. The man would not be alive if she had. Morgana would not settle for trying to sway Arthur, none could, even Merlin could not. The witch would take no chances and destroy him. But Morgana would be hunting him, perhaps already close waiting for the moment.

Test and prepare Arthur, just as before, but it would not be swords this time, evil had many faces and there were just as many ways to defeat it.

The train shuddered to a stop and Merlin caught a glimpse of herself in the window as she stepped out. She was dressed in a pale green, soft silk knee length dress, which clung to her figure. Over this a long waist coat, a darker green the thicker silk embroidered with Celtic knot work. Round her neck she wore the thick twisted gold torc proclaiming her rank. The red gold dragons’ head on the two ends looked nearly alive. In her right hand she held a small walking cane. The ivory white wood carved. A twisting mass in interlinked human bodies.

Up out of the station she went and onto the slick wet street. The Morgan building loomed against the full moon. Its upper silhouette mimicking the arc of the orb in the sky. The building was old for this part of town, some 70 years. Once a proud symbol of commerce it was now a comfortable residence for a few hundred. Its art-deco façade displayed an age where function and art had met and created something beyond the two. The carved statues above the door seemed to watch Merlin as she entered.

Across the lobby and into the lift. One floor, two, five… The lift opened out onto a landing showing signs of its age half hidden under a new coat of paint. One plain door the number picked out in gold 2810.

Merlin felt a sudden buzz in her head, something was behind her. She turned. Nothing. The game was on, she felt in more and more. Merlin lifted the walking cane and rapped on the door. She waited.

It opened and a voice said “Hello.”

 

[patrick1]

art

There's a round table, of course. But this might be an ironic joke. It's certainly where he seats her. 'You look terrific,' he says softly into her ear, leaning close, though the effect is curiously un-intimate, as if a camp gay man, say, told her he envied her dress.

There's wine the colour of blood, blandly tasteful prints of modern art around the white walls, and there's a marbled counter between the dining area and where he's cooking. Music of a light grey tone, familiar snatches of classical music, plays on a continuous tape in the background. He himself is blue: blue shirt, dark blue but not denim jeans, a kerchief of many colours tied with something gold that has a tiny design which might be significant but is hard to see in the subtle light from lamps and candles.

He describes a life to her which might be his, struggling at the edge of things, a courier who would be the one who sends and receives, a nervous man who would be calm, a shy man who would be confident. Is this him or just the man he thinks she wants him to be?

He asks too. He seems sincere in his asking. She calls herself a therapist which seems near enough to the mark, and when he probes, answers questions with questions.

He serves her a vegetable soup and then pasta with basil and spinach and pine nuts. He scatters parmesan with attentive care, but once the main course is on the table, the wine begins to go down more quickly. 'I've been worrying about the building,' he says.

'The building?'

'Do you think a woman can become a building?'

'I beg your pardon?'

A building called Morgan. He doesn't repeat himself, and then he's talking about poetry, John Ashbery and someone else she's never heard of, but too fast, as if running from something he wants or doesn't want to say, gulping more wine, not looking her in the eye.

 

[Love's Jester]

The meal half eaten; toyed with. The conversation the same, skirting round both answers and questions. Neither saying what is on the tip of their tongues.

Merlin toys with the abandoned ribbons of pasta, her eyes tracing the lines as if they were a bird’s entrails, as if asking a complex question from a primitive magic.

“I've been worrying about the building,” The words fall out, dropping into a silence between the lifting of the wine bottle and the chink of glass on glass.

“The building?” Merlin repeats the words as again the feeling of being watched impinged on her senses and the buzzing becomes deeper. It rasps now on the edge of her hearing, the sound of the release of a long held breath.

”Do you think a woman can become a building?” He pours the wine into Merlin’s glass. Blood red liquid swirls round reflecting the lights of the guttering candles.

”I beg your pardon?” Her reply in a mere reflex action, it states nothing of her thoughts. She glances over at her slender cane a mere seven paces away. The figures are rippling, erotically convulsing as they react to something or someone.

Art changes the subject and the wood freezes, the figures now locked. The moment is gone, the magic fading away. He talks poetry, filling his own glass too quickly, the wine drips down the neck of the bottle coating Art’s fingers. He seems unaware of it as he picks up his glass, smearing the smooth surface with red.

Merlin had seen Arthur’s hands covered with blood before, that of his enemies, his friends and in the end his own. Would it be hers this time? Perhaps it would be a small price to pay to ensure victory.

The room feels smaller, the walls moving just out of her vision. Her mind goes back to his words about the building being a woman, it merges with his mention of John Ashbery.

Merlin smiles and says
“Here and there, in cold pockets
Of remembrance, whispers out of time Perhaps it is that you sense, those that trod this place before, seventy years a building, but what was here before? Who knows?”

“You think I am being fanciful?” He says and drinks

“No…” Merlin said truthfully. “Man has always called that he loved and hated female. Ships, wild in some ways like the sea, aircraft as well, the lines and curves. The way he has to court them, seek to control them and bring them to heel.”

“Freudian.” His remark is not bitter, but sad as if she had missed the connection, the hinted at maze of questions.

“Perhaps, then perhaps a building could be a woman, magic has no bounds if you believe. Same as a man, if he has faith in who he is and what he has too do.”

 

[patrick1]

Art

It's so warm. Has it ever been so warm, this early in Spring?

After dinner he has persuaded her out into the air, to a wooden bench at the edge of the little park on 27th and Gawain. He is touching the figures on her walking cane. He held her hand for a moment, as they left the building, and there was a sort of glitch in the atmosphere, a pause in time before the two couples on the opposite sidewalk began walking again.

Now she is leaning back, trying to work out where the Plough is, above them. A train in the distance sounds its horn. 'I know who you think I am,' he says after a silence. He swigs from a hip-flask he takes from his inside pocket. He offers it to her but she demurs.

'You think I am being fanciful?' She quotes him back at himself.

'Your Ashbery was right. I have cold pockets of remembrance. Mostly, though, the past is wiped clean.'

Now it's her turn to place a hand on his. He places his right on hers, to keep it there. No cars seem to pass this way. How small the two of them seem, how insignificant, gazing up at immensity. 'You've forgotten?'

He seems to reach for his drink, then changes his mind. 'Those were the days I was a drunk, perhaps. Or - maybe it was just - ordinary. Guinevere was a suburban wife who had an affair with a neighbour I called Lancelot. I hung out with a bunch of guys in the Rotary. My sword was my automobile. You were my shrink and Morgana was just - my step-sister. Couldn't it be?'

The glow of the lights of the city - the gibbous mirrored eye of an insect - blurs the far skyline. Merl doesn't look at him. 'I have different pockets of remembrance,' she says.

He turns to look at her. He smiles, his face suddenly younger and more vulnerable. 'Tell me,' he says. 'I'll try to call them to mind.'

 

[Love's Jester]

"Tell me,' he says. 'I'll try to call them to mind."

Merlin shudders at his words. The wind rattles the branches of the trees round the small fountain in front of them. The moon touches the water and illuminating something lying beneath the dark surface. A hand holding something. It is gone, Just the moon.

She turns to face him, her hand going to his chin. Merlin can feel the slight roughness of his beard, smell his aftershave. The cane in her other hand begins to ripple again. The figures moving as the magic begins to seep into the world around them to be shaped by her words into snatches of half- formed images.

“You were a King, chosen to heal a land, a once and future one. Time and again you will come and those souls that were your companions are drawn to you, again to walk by your side, in different forms, acting in different ways, yet the same.

Guinevere loved and still loves you, never doubt that, yet she desired the touch of another, but he did not replace you in her heart.

Lancelot was and is your true friend, yet he took your wife to his bed. But the pain of that cuts at him. If you were to call he would be by your side, so would she. Their love for each other pales beside that they have for you and what you are and will be.

The knights of the round table, fought for you once and will answer your call in what ever form you need them at any time.

Excalibur is but a shell in which you own power is contained. A sword, a car, yourself if needs be. You are the weapon.

I am that which makes you aware of what you are, I train you, use you and in the end will leave you to your fate as I go to mine.

Morgana your half sister. Did she trick you into her bed? Were you Mordred’s father? I do not know, but Mordred was your heir, then. Now? I don’t know. I do not feel him this time. Morgana might have discarded him, she has never surrendered to death’s embrace. She waits like a spider for you to return, she wants to stop you at what ever task you have to do this time.

I know it is not the clash of swords this time, yet what it is I do not know. But I know you must use yourself, the power of what you are."

Merlin could hear the rasping of Art’s breath as he listened to her words. The magic spun, the cane was writhing.