Scribbles

Threshold

Serenity left the fortune-teller’s room of tawdry mysticism 300 dollars poorer — money she really needed for something she didn’t believe in. But there was time to kill before the date started, and everything was closed. As generous as she was enormous, Lynda had given her plenty of bookings that week. Paying for a reading seemed less insulting than leaving a tip. Besides, if the other escorts thought she was currying  favour, they’d push her down a flight of stairs.

The cold night air washed over her like a cleansing tide, sweeping away the incense-choked fog. The crystalline beauty and somnolent stillness of winter filled Serenity with a sudden sense of awe. Maybe the old charlatan was right, and all the pieces of her life fit together in a fated mosaic.

Snow had turned the city into a soft dreamscape, anything seemed possible. Magic seemed to be flowing through the late-night air, shimmering and alive. Serenity twirled slowly, wrapping it around herself. Beneath the amber glow of streetlights, she spun again, watching the echoing shadows layer and ripple over one another, creating an intricate, shifting pattern. It was a private solstice dance, a celebration of the in-between.

A summer memory surfaced like a blush of warmth: a little girl wandering woods she was forbidden from playing in, chasing faeries and perilous pixies. Deadly serious about following her own rule: never step on anything man-made or the spell would shatter, trapping her in the mundane again. The in-between had always called to her, a romantic reverie that softened the edges of the ordinary world. Now, with moonlight glittering on the snow, she felt it again. 

A familiar laugh filtered into her world and the comfort of it deepened the moment’s pleasure. Eric was watching her antics from across the street with amused affection, his easy posture emanating an invitation. She almost crossed to meet him, but stopped abruptly at seeing the red light. He cocked his head, puzzled, and waited on the other side. It was 3 am, there were no cars. A stand-off ensued.

He caved first, stepping onto the slushy asphalt. As he reached her, Serenity pressed against his torso, shivering a little.  The softness in his eyes made her uneasy. Such emotions were risky business among the demimondaine. They created ties that couldn’t be cleanly severed.

She wondered, not for the first time, how they arrived here.   It felt so natural and safe, beyond transactional. Dwelling on it felt unwise. Easier to just accept fleeting gifts from an indifferent cosmos than ask questions. 

Maybe Linda was right about past lives. Maybe I should have been listening.

Serenity felt the moment deepen, stretch out. Reverberations of past and future, flowing like a river, cutting a deep canyon into the fabric of reality. Every snowflake falling from the sky, landing in exactly the right place. Fragments of something were coming into focus, but the greater whole rested just out of sight. 

I’m so close to something, so DAMN CLOSE!

Huddling closer into his body, Serenity clutched at the feeling, reaching inward, trying to touch it. But it fled like a startled bird. Scrunching her nose in girlish frustration, she looked up at Eric.

“What’s that look for?” he asked, brushing snow out of her hair. Rather than answer she gently bit his lower lip. 

He slipped an arm around her waist and guided her toward his restaurant. The passing streetlights split and merged their shadows, two people in a world apathetic to them. The mundane seeped back in, and once again they were regular client and preferred prostitute.

But Serenity listened carefully to the muffled sounds of their footsteps, straining for the whispers of angels and demons, for a hint of the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary.

Eric unlocked the front door and they slipped inside. They moved past the forest of wooden chair legs, reaching toward the ceiling from table tops. Stepping into the kitchen with its antiseptic tang, they passed the stove Eric referred to as his “hot tempered and jealous wife.”

When they reached the familiar locked door at the back, a crooked “supply closet” sign hanging off a single nail, he slipped inside. But Serenity lingered at the doorframe, her fingers tracing idle patterns on the wood. The tiny, cramped room existed solely as Eric’s secret refuge, a place he could steal some rest between the unrelenting work of being a chef and owner. She was the only one who knew about the soft beige walls and Yojimbo movie poster behind the supply closet door.

Something held her back, she was caught in something, as though the moment held its breath. An unbidden thought disquieted her: How many times have you been here? How many times will you do it again? 

She saw herself opening this door, not once, but a thousand times, the action folding into itself like mirrors facing mirrors, stretching endlessly.

Every step of my life somehow led me here. And it would lead me here over and over again. What if I turned around right now? Walked back into the street?

The moment held a strange gravity, pressing down on her.  The doorway became a stillpoint, her whole life spinning around it in a dizzying whirl. 

And where would you go? – answered a silent voice from someplace inside her. There is only this.

This was necessary, but it was more than that – it was inviting. It wasn’t just his room, it was their room. Eric had swapped the mattress for something more comfortable and added Egyptian cotton bedding when her visits became regular.  It was just cramped enough to feel cozy, but not claustrophobic. It carried the scent of clean linen and sandalwood. Even in a life of give-and-take, there was room for generosity and tenderness.  She would find herself here, again and again. Not always in the same room, or with the same man, but with others that carried the same cadence. She could live this night again and again. 

Serenity watched Eric’s familiar ritual: turn on the space heater, adjust the little lamp, lay condoms out in easy reach, fluff the pillows, and pour wine.  He lay back on the bed and reached out a hand, gently brushing her knee, a question in his eyes.

She knew the sun would rise as they moaned in this windowless room. It would light up the world as eagles soared through the sky and serpents scraped across the earth.   

The magic was never gone, it was still moving about them. Maybe Eric was part of that flow. Maybe they both were. But she knew better than to look too closely. She just had to hold on to whatever she could. 

She took his hand.