Patrick's Surfaces I and II

I

Her ankle was white with a black rose on the inside.

"I didn't know you could tattoo a bony place like that," I said.

"It's not a tattoo. It's Patrick. He likes to dabble in body art. Doodle, if you like. It'll wash off." She pushed her blond hair behind her ears, looking at me. While she had my gaze, she tucked her feet up on the chair underneath her, covering both white ankles and both pink feet with her blue paisley skirt.

I wondered where else Patrick had dabbled.

"Do you know Patrick?" she asked me.

I told her I didn't. "How could I?"

"Well, you never know."

I began to wonder if I did know Patrick.

For all she knew, I was Patrick, playing some dirty trick. I assured her that I didn't know Patrick.

"Good," she said with a decisive nod.

I went to pour more whiskey, making sure to do so silently. She could hear everything but saw nothing. I told her that my iSight camera had broken that morning. She believed me. Just like she believed everything I'd told her over the past two weeks of our correspondence.

She looked exactly how I thought she would and I wondered if she would look as good if she weren't framed by the pure-white of my 20-inch iMac. Her ankle had been almost as white.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Watching you," I said, putting my whiskey down.

"I'm not sure what to say to you," she said. "It feels like we've said everything already. It's nice to hear your voice, though. Talk to me."

"What would you like me to say?"

"Tell me what you look like."

"You know that already." I hadn't told her anything true, and wasn't sure I'd remember. I began to think her stupid for not suspecting. Or maybe she was clever and trying to catch me in my lies.

"I know." She looked straight at me from the screen. "I know you know Patrick. You may not know his name though. He's the one who told me what you look like."

I took a sip of my whiskey. "I told you what I look like."

"Yes. True. But he sees you differently."

"What does he see?"

"He dabbles, like I said. He looks for surfaces. He said the surfaces of your cheeks are not smooth."

This was true.




II

"Patrick never told you anything," I said.

"Oh, Patrick told me lots of things. He said, for example, 'luscious.'"

"What are you talking about?"

"He was talking about your lips. He said, 'luscious.' He also said, 'cacophony.'"

"That's no longer involving surfaces." I was done with my whiskey. I wanted another, but I felt like she could see me through the screen, though there was no camera to give her an image of me. Her round blue eyes were touching me, bristling my eyebrows. I felt her, and couldn't draw my gaze away from her face, from her own unblemished smooth surfaces. She was perfect, with her hair pinned up, her gauzy blouse, her gold-chained wrist. A dream. A day dream. Not possibly true. Perhaps, then, Patrick, whoever he is, made her up. Perhaps she was pure Photoshop and Flash. "What do you mean, 'cacophony?'"

"I mean loud chaos." Her grin made me think of a colon and a right parenthesis.

"What did Patrick mean by 'cacophony' in relation to me?"

"Oh, please," she said, and actually looked away. "Stop playing this game."

"Patrick told me about you too." I wanted to play the game. I wanted to be steering the conversation again. I wanted to turn my computer off, but had no power.

"Patrick said to me, 'nebulous.'"

"He said to me, 'rendition,'" I said.

"Pantomime," she said, her mouth making a perfect 'o' in the middle, then going flat. A colon and a lower case 'l'.

"Composite," I said.

When she said, "Sacrilegious", I got the strength to turn my back, walk to the sideboard, refill my glass.

"Where'd you go?" I heard her say.

"Tell me more," I heard her say.

"Cellular," I said to my glass.