Read by Keleigh Wolf
PART 1. MOIRA
In the very last house on the very last street of a very small town lived a woman named Moira Sinclair. The house, once as nondescript as a house can be, had gained notoriety after Moira moved in. The locals (not so fondly) referred to it as the ‘house of black and black’. In a sea of candy-coloured picket fences, flowery bushes and even a red awning or two, Moira’s house stuck out like a sore thumb. A depressing, colourless sore thumb, that is. At the time of the sale, the house – neglected for years by the former owner – was in dire need of a new coat of paint; but to everyone’s chagrin, Moira decided to paint it in shades of black and blacker black.
Moira, as far as her appearance was concerned, was a person of monochromatic inclinations. She highlighted her paper-white skin with charcoal rouge and smoky eyes that went just right with her jet-black hair, and a wardrobe which could only be described as: ‘the coal collection’. But contrary to popular belief, Moira wasn’t a morose person obsessed with death. She was, simply, colourblind.
A fact she had discovered painfully when she was only five years old, during a disastrous school trip to a strawberry-picking farm.
For the next ten years, her parents had showered her with attention, doing everything in their power to help her overcome her impairment, or - as they liked to call it - her ‘unique alternative vision’. And so, Moira had grown up as a well-adjusted - if marginally limited - human being.
But, alas, Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair were not long for this world, and on one forsaken evening they met their end in a bizarre accident involving a white baby llama, a classic Volkswagen Beetle and a troupe of Hare Krishna monks.
Moira was fifteen at the time. The remaining years of her adolescence had been a succession of embarrassing, confidence-shattering (if not truly tragic) events; such as realising she had worn brown to the St. Patrick’s Day parade or that her favourite demure navy dress was in fact neon pink.
Suddenly alone in the world, Moira had to come up with a coping mechanism she could enforce on her own. Being a pragmatic person, she went for the most obvious solution: No danger of shameful colour gaffes when there were no colours to mix up. Since then, Moira’s world had been black and black.
Her limited-hue eccentricities, however, had a downside: She quickly became isolated from her community, whose members may have had perfect vision, but an inability to truly see.
And yet, not all was dim in Moira’s life. At some point, and completely by chance, she had stumbled upon a profession compatible with her unique sensibilities: a maker of silent black and white films – of the supernatural variety. This fact, combined with her involuntary avant-garde image, had gained her notoriety and a fair amount of success on the Goth Indie film scene; a surprisingly profitable sub-market, second only to Amish R-rated romance.
Moira lived a solitary, colourless existence and she was fine with it. The meals for one, eerily quiet holidays and the fact that half of the bed was never used didn’t bother her at all. However, every once in a while, she longed for someone to bear witness to her life, someone through whose eyes she could see in Technicolour.
But companionship had become an elusive concept for Moira, who was, to all intents and purposes, a shut-in, with the exception of her weekly stroll in the park. Every Saturday afternoon, she would pick up her favourite black umbrella (which doubled as a parasol, depending on the weather) and ventured into the town’s central park.
These excursions had a secret motivation Moira would not admit even to herself. Every week, while she enjoyed her coffee and a coconut ice-cream, she would receive a gift. The offerings were remarkable and oddly specific: an imported box of black truffles, a self-playing musical card, a scented candle with the aroma of apple-cinnamon pie and a pair of black suede gloves. The delivery system was just as endearing; each gift would come strapped to a box hanging from the neck of a golden retriever dog.
On this particular day, the dog didn’t bring a gift, but a message in a rolled-up paper scroll: “The boathouse, six o’clock.”
Moira’s heart swelled with the prospect of meeting the person behind the string of thoughtful gifts.
She went back home, put on her best little black dress, a pair of heels, her new gloves and even let her hair down. At six o’clock sharp she arrived at the boathouse in the middle of the park, where she found another note: “Follow the road.”
Outside the boathouse, Moira searched for the road, but all she saw was an empty field. She wandered for a while, lost and unsure, but finally concluded she had been the butt of a cruel joke.
A tear, tinted with black eyeliner, rolled down the side of her face.
Moira turned around and ran home.
PART 2. JOE
The world of Joe McCombs was crowded and loud, full of objectionable colours, unannounced tastes and impromptu smells. A long time synesthete, he had never quite grown accustomed to the sensory overload that was his everyday life.
Sounds that manifested as scents and colours that brought forth tastes - it was an experience-rich existence, never dull, but often overwhelming. Most of the time, Joe felt like a slave to his brain’s overenthusiastic wiring.
His social interactions, for instance, had been inescapably governed by his condition. Could one possibly like a person who dressed in colours with the taste of processed meat or whose name smelled like rotten eggs?
The answer was no.
As a consequence, Joe’s few friendships over the years had always been with men named Paul who, for some cosmic reason he had yet to discover, always seemed to dress in grey – giving them the consistent, pleasant smell and taste of strawberry jam.
But aside from the occasional movie night with Paul 1 and the monthly tennis match with Paul 5, he had little going on in his life.
Until the day he saw her.
One Saturday afternoon, Joe was on his break from the all-year-round-Christmas store where he worked – a career choice he’d made upon realising that red and green were two of the least offensive colours of the rainbow. That’s when he saw the girl with the black parasol, but not for the first time.
He had seen her once before, from a distance, at the town’s annual film festival where she screened one of her silent shorts: a poignant mockumentary about vampires’ social rights in nineteenth century Romania. The film had captivated Joe, but not as much as its auteur.
The fascinating filmmaker with the parasol was, in Joe’s eyes, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She was like a black canvas; colourless, muted and absolutely perfect. And her name ... it smelled like cinnamon and apple pie.
“Moira,” Joe said out loud, noticing with elation that even the food she ate was black and white!
Two things occurred to Joe after that first near-encounter in the park. One, that he was destined to be with Moira. And two, that years of social phobias combined with his innate shyness made him incapable of talking to a pretty girl.
So, Joe had come up with an alternative. He would woo Moira slowly, with thoughtful gifts, the kind a woman of her artistic multi-sensory sensibilities would appreciate.
It took Joe a few weeks; but, finally, he worked up the courage to ask Moira out. As usual, he sent the invitation strapped to the neck of his trusty mail-dog, Dog; and interpreted Moira’s ensuing smile as an acceptance of the date.
Joe had planned this moment for weeks. He prepared a banquet of squid ink paella, black beans and sushi rolls, Diet Coke and a dark chocolate fountain for dessert. He set up a table for two at the white gazebo in the park, and waited.
He had asked Moira to meet him at the boathouse, where she would find a note directing her to a road that led straight to him; a road he had drawn himself on the ground, using a sackful of red glitter – of which there was always an overabundance at the Christmas store.
Unbeknownst to Joe, the red glitter road on top of the green lawn would be entirely imperceptible to Moira’s colourblind eyes ...
*
Moira was halfway across the park when Dog came running after her. He was barking and jumping up and down as if life itself depended on it. Moira stopped, only because she had a soft spot for dogs on account of them fully comprehending her black and white view of the world.
The very determined dog seized the skirt of Moira’s dress and dragged her across the park, back to the boathouse and beyond.
Finally, Dog came to a halt when they arrived at the gazebo, where a gentleman of awkward disposition but handsome features was waiting for his date.
Moira stopped and looked at Joe.
Joe stood up and looked at Moira.
She regarded the table with two place settings instead of one, and the man, who was looking at her as if she was made of cotton candy. She smiled.
He smiled back and, with his usual tendency to get ahead of himself, imagined the many holidays to come, full of monochrome Christmas trees and the fragrance of cinnamon-apple pie.
(c) Alejandra Zannier, 2018
Alejandra Zannier works as a television researcher and spends most of her free time writing screenplays and short stories. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from City University and is currently working on her first novel.
Keleigh Wolf is an American poet, performer, journalist & activist. She performs as Coco Millay with the London Poetry Brothel and she also founded The Little Versed Poetry Collective, produces and hosts the Propaganda Poetry radio series, and is Poet in Residence at Kabaret @ Karamel where she curates monthly events.
Comments