Roxie’s purse is dazzling and endless. It is her very own humanness. Inside, all her important things live. A ladybug beanie baby named Lucky, who she was given on the sweetness of her fifth birthday. A crumpled napkin with a kiss mark from Lucy, who wrote in red ink: I could kiss you and lick you at the same time. Your passion is sticky, dripping. It tastes magnificent. God, I want to be more like you. I love you. A beloved copy of “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams. Earbuds. A CD she burnt when she was fifteen, which is a collection of songs by The Beatles. Then, of course, her wallet. The art deco thing, with celestial moon shapes and little stars. Inside, a photo booth strand of her and Lucy. Social security. Collapsible coin purse. Health card. Pressed golden aster from spring. Debit card. Folded dollar bills. Driver's license. Three lipsticks, two liners and one gloss. That is all of Roxie’s bosom, kept in a brown purse that sags on her shoulder, chipping at the edges.
Lucy’s purse contains only a couple things, and it is not endless, nor revolutionary. Inside is a poem by William Blake, called “The Lamb” and her notebook that has a cat playing the fiddle on the front. She has a wallet, a bright red pouch with little stars on it. She keeps her cards and cash inside. There is also the same photo strip in Lucy’s bag, except Roxie kissed the back with big red lips. She has an mp3 player from childhood that she does not use but likes to hold sometimes. A pair of over the ear headphones. She has three lipsticks, two liners and one gloss. She does not carry much, but she does not need to. All of what is important to her is outside herself.
They live together in a one-bedroom apartment, settled high above a city. They sleep together. Eat together. Make love together. They are not together. They only fill the company of the other, simply involved in the others' life. This makes things less complicated––giving everything of themselves, never making a name. They are just breathing in. Thriving off the life of each other. This is simple mitosis, performed each time their bodies drift from closeness. Lucy never performs at the June Bug. She just sits quietly in the circle, holding a journal. She fills it with quotes from each monologue. She is a poet, who prefers pubs and underground jazz. The buzz of life throbs in her. The jangle of keys is alive to her. Hissing and rolling and slapping the knee––she is a harborer. The June Bug is quiet, taking a voice in momentarily before letting it escape. Lucy finds this enchanting, and today, she plans to pick words and expressions off the faces of the performers like sticky notes. To pull down the masks, and mark where that change is. Lucy wants to strip down the cores, reveal the passion, no matter how slick it is.
Roxie acts in the June Bug downtown every Saturday preforming monologues from movies among other strangers. They all have the same long theatrical faces, waiting. What for? What is there to wait for? Nothing, really. They circle one another like vultures, swallowing the bones of passion. The very blood of spirit. A group of women and men, long and contorted towards fervor. They are waiting their turn to spit heart. To rally the masses with limbs thrown wide. To see lips agape, glitter shimmering on each crease. The eyes brimming like two wet suns. The world is colorful, vast, and vulnerable to them. Once they lean, crouch. Whisper, yell. This is the stage for the soul, all its shades. A box of ties pulled in one strand, taking the shape of words. The projection of sensitivity, art of the human lung. The pink tissue, let it be! Here it comes. This is what they are waiting for.
The subway rattles beneath them. Roxie and Lucy are on their way to the June Bug. They are wearing their tabi shoes, with long black skirts and thick turtlenecks embroidered with instruments and fleeting birds. Lipstick applied. Mascara clumped. Draping scarves wrapped around their heads, big jackets on their shoulders, cigarettes in their pockets. They are holding hands under all the anatomy of a wardrobe.
Roxie is practicing her monologue under her breath, whispering over and over ...but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself - forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea! The Lighthouse, directed by Robert Eggers.
In the movie, the lighthouse becomes something of pleasure, of power––this captivated Roxie. She told Lucy afterwards, lying naked together on the floor, it was like watching a kaleidoscope. You are there, on the island. You are a siren, then the lighthouse, then the sailors. It is all shimmering. How did he do this? A black and white film that glitters, glows.
Lucy, at that moment, saw the pulse of Roxie on the hardwood. The very breath she breathed was methodical and purposeful. Lucy knew the next moment her breast would rise, when they would slightly fall back to the top of her ribs. How they would lie. Lucy loved the movie too. She had told Roxie in return: There was something unknowable in the movie, something you could not place. It felt more out of reach. It fell beyond consciousness.
Roxie had closed her eyes and begun to curl herself towards sleep and could only mumble small unconscious words. Lucy watched her mouth part and her body transition to softness. She had laid her hand on Roxie’s waist and felt the sleep hover between them. The only conscious thing faltering above them.
After watching the lighthouse, she decided she would perform the monologue the next morning at the theatre. Lucy knew she would, as Roxie had a habit of obsession, especially in film. Each week Roxie performed a monologue from the most recent artsy film they had watched. Lucy never minded, as she wrote her poetry everywhere and her muses were pulled from the June Bug, one by one. This was something Roxie loved to see, she felt as if she could guide Lucy to some great secret, because of the June Bug. She provided a challenge for Lucy, and everyone loved to have a poet's eyes on them. Between her and Lucy though, it was as if words flowed there in the gazing silence, and in some other orbit. This was poetry without language.
Lucy is laying her head on Roxie’s shoulder, glancing at the people on the subway. "Don't you think we are moving too fast? The subway I mean. I want to absorb all these people. To see them, unfold them for a while. Don’t you think Roxie?” Lucy says.
“That would drive me mad, Lucy. If we could absorb these people, I would feel all gross and lost.” Lucy took in her words like air and let them hover between them.
Roxie, intruding the silence, said, “Do you think I should say anything before my monologue? I kind of want to just get up there and do it, no preface...come here, your lipstick...” She reaches for Lucy’s plump bottom lip and holds her chin.
The dewy, deep gloss, salacious to the touch. She carves her rounded nail around the spot not proportionate to the rest of the lip. Roxie holds her elbows, looking at her with softness. Lucy wants to kiss Roxie, right here on the subway, amongst these overlapping strangers. She wants to make love to her in this gross place. Smudge her lipstick. She is ravenous for Lucy. In the subway they could glow pink, and love making would become more than this galaxy. It would be orbital, universal. Instead, they begin to laugh into each other's arms and Roxie takes the blemish of lipstick stained affectionately on her thumb, and rubs it on Lucy’s skin, under the collar of her turtleneck. A hickey to testify all hickeys, one that seeps into the soul and stays, forever.
As Roxie and Lucy are walking to the June Bug, the morning sun begins to swallow the city in its slow way. Roxie has started a “Spotify Jam Session” from her phone to Lucy’s, so as they walk, they can listen to the same song in their own headphones. This morning it is “London” by the Alessi Brothers. Roxie believes everyone should dance in the street more often. And as if an explosion of good news hit them, Roxie and Lucy take off gliding over crosswalks and tip-toing on sidewalks. They roll their stomachs towards each other and throw their arms up in bizarre motions as they crick their necks and pull electricity into every movement of dance. The two of them looking like two ribbons pulled behind a ballerina. As they reach the doors, they are folded into each other laughing hysterically about the faces of the early birds in the coffee shops and weary mothers turning their children away.
The June Bug, from the outside, looks like a classic movie theatre. It stands between two empty buildings on the streets corner, and it juts out into the sidewalk, causing people to bend themselves around its strange, curved architecture. In the evenings and early mornings, much like today, the June Bug’s sign illuminates bold reds and little bulbs of luminescent light––it feels like Hollywood. The inside is completely decked in blue velvet, with small janitor closets locked off to each side of the heavy, wooden doors. Straight ahead is the main room that contains an arena stage, and black chairs resembling crows' talons surrounding the big, raised circle. The room is dimly lit and provides an atmosphere of an old ash tray. The walls are always blank besides the faded posters and flyers that no one has replaced for years.
Once inside, the chairs are full of eyebrows, hair and lips. Roxie and Lucy find their way to the back row where they sit peacefully, waiting. Lucy believes these events probably function similarly to beatnik poetry slams from the 60s. People will sporadically begin their monologues and move with their words. Carrying each vowel from one chair to the stage, then to the floor, and before you know it, someone else is doing the same thing. It is live performance art. Everything forgets what was before and does not know what will come next. Here, everyone is prepared to see something unexpected.
CHAPTER SIX
Roxie weaves herself between two men standing on the stage, where she starts her performance with “The Lighthouse” monologue. She is lucky, as the two men pick up immediately on her words, beginning to imitate the scene in the movie as Roxie fills in the words. The men's muscles strain, and their expressions exhausted. Lucy focuses on them as they overwhelm Roxie. What could they be thinking? What will they do? Where will they go? All of this was so exciting. Lucy wrote down, Popeye the Sailor Men: A Comedy.
The performance ended and the June Bug continued with its pulse. Roxie bounced between the acts, jumping in for background characters randomly, or doing improv. Lucy continued documenting these characters––their quietness, loudness, all in her journal:
Sometimes these became poems, others left abandoned to the notebook. Lucy was free range in the contents of the June Bug. The only part of truth exposed in their parted thighs, or clinched eyelid. Lucy found the heart on their shiny insides, barely seen. When looking at Roxie, she was overwhelmed by her inability to capture her, anywhere. Roxie’s heart existed in the center of her chest, vulnerable, ready for the world to devour at any moment. Lucy was taking small bites, trying to find out what it was about her that made her so good.
During a scene change, everyone cleared the stage besides a small iPhone placed in the middle, barely noticeable. Roxie and Lucy shared a glance of puzzlement, and once they looked around, it seemed to be shared among everyone. A tsunami of quiet swallowed the June Bug.
Roxie leaned over to Lucy and whispered, “what do we do? Are we supposed to stop?”
“I think so, but this is strange, isn’t it?” Lucy asked Roxie and gripped her hand.
Everyone around them sat beside themselves and began to mumble nonsense. As quickly as the boom of disembodied voices ate the theatre alive, silence came back again. Everyone was unnerved at the sight of the iPhone, with its red glossy back. The June Bug, when in full swing, never paused. A place of consistency now interrupted by such a small thing, such an unnoticeable thing.
Someone stood up and asked, “Anyone lose their phone?” to which nobody claimed. They sat back down biting away at their thumbnail.
It was then the phone began to buzz and shake on the stage. The silence still dragging the audience by their little agape mouths. There was a shock to the performers. They did not know what to do. Lucy began to write I who have never known men, repeatedly in her journal. She was imagining the iPhone being fearful of these odd, shaped faces below it. She wrote how could it possibly not be afraid? But she did not seem to know what to call the iPhone besides it, because to Lucy, the phone was that scary. It did not belong to anyone, was not under any boundaries extended by God or society. Lucy was aware of its inability to feel the way she did, but she believed it could one day. The iPhone, for all she knew, could get up and start walking right now. It could feel fear beyond what we knew because it would know everything all at once. Lucy became more terrified.
The buzzing continued and the bodies of the June Bug began to twitch and shake. No one spoke, but their bodies, as called by the impulse of possibility, moved to the hum of a man-made device. The fear swept them that this may be supernatural, unknown. What would they do if God appeared in a hologram, or dead relatives? At the June Bug, you expected the unexpected. In the artist is an ego created by the iPhone, that creates their mother's last message. Their brothers’ last laugh. The little black screen seemed infinite and always showed the shape of their nose staring back. Lucy wrote this down, trying to capture the events objectively, as if they could not and were not happening to her. These were her own fears though. This fear hung from the rafters like some quiet beast.
Roxie leaned into Lucy and said, “I think it is a phone call”
“I think so too, should you go pick it up?” Lucy asked, half joking.
To her surprise, Roxie walked to the stage like a clown. She took long strides, moving her bent arms almost too far from her sides and she put on a big grin like a mime. She paced up the side stairs with long theatrical strides as if to open herself vulnerably to everything in the June Bug. As she got to the phone, she bent down with her feet pointing outwards and her hand on the hip with an expression that said, who could this stupid head be? This made everyone laugh.
When Roxie picked up the phone, her face softened, and she stopped acting. Her hand covered the lower part of her face, and she began to sob. She threw the phone to the ground. It was as if someone had died. An unknown voice came through to Roxie, almost like a breeze through a windchime, and Lucy heard it too. Everyone in the June Bug heard it. So faint, almost indiscernible. Lucy began to cry like a big bowl had sat itself in her stomach. When she looked away from Roxie, everyone was crying. Some were on the floor, dry heaving. Others standing up and clutching their stomachs. One person screamed in agony. Another began to claw their skin at their ribs. Lucy fell outside of herself.
She could not write this down; this was something of another grief. She was spellbound to the feeling of death, the feeling that all these people around her must be dying, though they were not. She thought of Roxie on the hardwood that night in the apartment. Her palm-like body wanting to be tucked to bed, with the soft under chin doubling over itself. How Lucy wished to give her everything at that moment. Though her body was heavy, she moved to Roxie on the center stage, stepping over heart wrenched bodies, covered in the fabrics of humankind, but if she looked down long enough, she would see their nubbed spines just like hers, heading for nirvana.
She lay beside Roxie and wrapped her arms around her body. Together they burrowed their heads into the others' chests and broke down everything of the complex, weightless heart. It was then people began to leave the theatre, still wet and puffy eyed, but Roxie and Lucy lay there for hours curled into each other like a large cochlea. Folding into the other nonstop, for eternity in the shell of the human body and spirit. Everything could be heard in the husks of their bodies, an echo of what made them. They became one with all those sentimental bodies and riddled bones in the June Bug this day, forever tied to one question, one unknown voice, from an anonymous sender:
