Stream

            Branches drip from the decay of orange ooze all around her, twigs falling like ashes, and all Beth can think about is the stream. The stream where they spent so many hours, so many thoughts, so much care. Now it was all collapsing like a shrine to the love that she feared was not the same. She heard a bubble break on the water’s surface.

            “Baby, I’m your girlfriend. Me.” Beth sighed at the striking face she knew so well, had traced in the dark, had pulled in close. She stared at that submersed face until its white-blonde hair swirled and it dispersed in wisps. All left was the boiling of a stream that used to be so transparent and youthful. Some idiot near the spring had filled an old well with garbage years ago, and slowly decay had been seeping through the aqueduct. Local service organizations had given up on any sort of cleanup, and she had been too deadened lately to give much thought.

            Beth pulled her own face back from the water, chopped ends of dark hair tracing biting trails onto her thin t-shirt. Lying alongside the polluted stream, she arched her back in a scream that toppled a smoke-filled, reddish tree across the water. Anya was quite possibly gone. Beth had looked through the closet that morning, and clothes were missing. Not her’s, Anya’s. But she wouldn’t leave just like that. Anya would come. She would come through the trees right now, if only to say goodbye.

            No she wouldn’t. Anya was right. Beth had been low lately. Anya couldn’t help; she was frustrated and often troubled.

            “I don’t want you taking pictures of any more girls.”

            “Anya, it’s my job. I take pictures. What could possibly make you think I want to see anything more than you.” But it was true, kind of. Beth worked as a professional photographer in L.A. The models and actresses were often very pretty, but only holographs. Hollow outlines. More often they only looked photogenic after they were dressed, painted, and lit.

What really started the whole thing was Mik, Beth’s photography partner. He was over for dinner, and happened to mention how spectacular a particular modeling agency’s photo spread was looking, and how Beth “couldn’t take her eyes off all the pretty girls.” He laughed, but Anya took it to heart.

That hadn’t been a fun night. “You spend all day taking pictures of gorgeous women. I don’t know how that affects you. Mik doesn’t seem as obsessive.”

“Mik is gay, An. And photography is only his side job.”

“You’re gay! And it’s your life.” Anya’s face had crumpled like a fragile winter leaf.

Beth tried to explain that Anya was her life, not some meaningless photographs. That was her job. Any art she found, she found it in Anya. And Anya appeared to accept it. But there was never closure, and it seemed to Beth that Anya was looking for a conflict.

A tree blobbed in a bright base of molten wood before slumping across the stream feet behind her head. Beth shot up, breathing in gasps. Anya stood in the charred circle once home to a hardy green tree. She blew absentminded wisps of hair out of her eyes and mouth, all the time staring at Beth, who smiled wistfully.

“An.“ Beth breathed. Anya blinked. Suddenly, Anya was next to her. Beth slipped easily into the memory of their first evening here. They sat side by side, toes in the soft current, eyes locked. Anya had blinked, green eyes reflecting the forest. “I’m so hot,” Beth had said, expression apologetic.

Anya had laughed. “I see that.”

Compulsively, Beth had rolled over the edge and into the stream. “But no, really,” Beth grinned from below.

“Now that’s gross,” Anya had said, seconds before joining the other in the chilled water.

God, the water was so clear then. Beth found herself sitting in the stream, scum clinging to the small hairs on her body, pores probably soaking in all manner of hazardous chemicals. She looked frantically for Anya, who was no longer there. She probably left. Left because I’m not worth her time, thought Beth. No, left because she’s smart. Anya was always smart, and the forest was burning, so it made sense.

Sage

7-25-12