by David Alday

Created on: July 03, 2007

It seems strange that after so long and frigid a night, it's 8 AM before the cold wakes me. Strangeness doesn't keep me abed, though, and nor does the seductive allure of quilt's dreamy warmth. She's still asleep, of course. She could sleep through the apocalypse.

It's but the work of a moment to retrieve the hot plate a kettle. The Deans don't like us to cook in our rooms, but I don't like to wake up without a cup of tea. Expulsion, I suppose, is my sword; tea my Damocles; addiction my string and... metaphors be damned, I smell hibiscus. They're months out of bloom, here, but they tell me sunny Florida knows no season.

I buy floral teas because she likes them. I take a deep breath of this one, sitting prettily red in its porcelain cup - it's heady and sweet. I set her cup on the nightstand. "I like the new tea," she'll say later, "it smells wonderful. Reminds me of opium." I'll remind her she's never smelled opium, and she'll brush it off. If not opium, Lorraine. If not Lorraine, Monet, dear Claude, my old friend. She has a wonderful memory, for things she's never seen.

I have a memory, too, and it flares up now as I look at her sleeping there. She looks different than she did when I met her for the first time four years ago, awake and incensed at having a "roommate." No Nazi ever made "Jew" sound so vile. The flush of passion is gone form her cheeks now, or as far as it ever goes. Winter is her best season, though she'd long for the spring. Winter makes her pretty, drawing out her paleness and icing over the fiery blush until it hides like a dusky rose beneath her cheeks. If only we were all so lucky.

I've made it to the balcony now, to my side, to my chair. It snowed in the night, the first snow of the year, almost two weeks early. Burnt umber fights crimson for the most garish leaves upon the snow upon the leaves. It's wild, this tableau, disorganized, artless. It's beautiful, though she'd never realize it. She can't see beyond the bursting gold of spring.

She never brings her saucer, but I always lay one out. She's not speaking yet - it's too early; she hasn't found her voice. Maybe it's there, in the cup of hibiscus tea she's cradling in both hands. She hasn't made it to her chair. She's stopped, in silent contemplation, her leonine dandelion shock of golden hair masking her thoughts as she bends to inhale her tea.

But a breath can only last a moment, and then you must face the day. And face it she does, openly and looking quietly curious, quietly appraising at the snowy clime as if she weren't sure she was going to accept it. As if one day she might shake her head no and send it back to the maker. It seems to have met approval today. She turns and smiles at me, and blows a puff of fog my way.

How cold she must be, I realize suddenly. She hasn't bothered to dress - merely pulled on the over-large man's shirt that serves her as a bathrobe and housecoat. I'm not a man, to notice the line of her legs disappearing under turned hems, or how dangerously close to indecency she comes with her cavalier posture. No, I notice how the wrought iron lines of the deck chair bite into her naked thighs. It must be icy, but she doesn't moan or cry out.

Her hand finds mine, indecently warm and improbably small. She give me a brief squeeze before returning to her tea. That squeeze speaks volumes, but that's ok - I was listening. "Good morning," it said, and "thank you," and "congratulations" as if this scene were all somehow my fault. "Good tea," it said, and "you remembered," and "have fun storming the castle."

I never considered myself a lover of women. But if this isn't love, I'm not sure I want to find it.

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