I know anxiety. I know when it comes through the door, lingering by the frame like darkness before the last stretch of sunlight when everything sets. How it hangs desperately, as envoy to the upcoming gloom.

I know anxiety. It just walked in. Like a pillager, like a marauder, like The Scream bleeding with Munchs intentions.

I see it in her face, in her eyes. I see it only to know that I feel it, too. Or feel it more.

And I drop my head, if only to escape its wide, encompassing shriek.

~*~*~*~

I have never seen her more dejected as I catch her eyes, losing them when she closes her lids and opens them to the sight of the napkin on her lap.

How many more days like this? How many more days, when I shamelessly wander like a fool in the certainty of lamplight while she, bright in her endurance, remains constantly beautiful, constantly in existence; constantly that, which gives me reason to walk the dark wood despite snowy evenings?

She is that to me, Im afraid: lamplight. She is that path, tread too softly, with too little words, with nothing but the language in half-hidden looks by the light of some greater thing. Of love? Perhaps. Of lust? Certainly.

It will be the first time in nearly three months that stubborn courage finally welled up, and unlike the tears, something else was waiting to spill: to give lifeor to drown someone in. A deluge. A flood.

I take one last breath of hesitance, and take all the others with confidence that only I could perceive.

~*~*~*~

*****.

There, she walks, like an apparition of distorted, earthly desire, and heavenly to an intoxicating confusion, an El Greco painting in that black dress. I grit my teeth, feigning nonchalance, expecting her to sit as placidly as often Ive seen her do in the many years we were always -no, once -together. Changes. How I hate them with an all-governing passion.

I am pushed into this chair because of my propensity for change, my want for it and my cowardice in initiating it wrongly.

Look at her.

Only to watch, never touch! I am infinitely more than Munchs painting. And then instinctively, Ill have to admit that she is more beautiful than a Manet.

~*~*~*~

My steps eventually falter to a stance that bursts with careful missives: closeness, detachment, appeal, stillness.

***

She stops not opposite to Bette, not to keep space and table, china and glasses, between what was once only body and soul. It is symbolic, almost, when she pulls a chair to sit beside her, putting a hand on the small of Bettes back, her blond hair mingling with the black.

Tina whispers into Bettes ear, Lets talk, Bette. Tell me your thoughts. Gently, she coaxes and Bette slowly meets her gaze.

***

To be touched is not merely a passive act. Nor is it simply done with flesh; it could be with words, with how her lips free the plaintive peal in my name, Bette. All thoughts of Munch and El Greco have disappeared. So I touch her, not with kisses as I had used to do, not with a hand as she is doing but with a smile and something more; one that I am, at last, capable of doing.

~*~*~*~

Tina:

I wipe an errant tear from her cheek, noticing it as the first shed properly, processing it with some bit of wonder; it is the real and the true, not merely an expression of guilt, of reckless apology. I kiss her forehead, knowing that in all this, there is hope. There must be.

Because she is smiling. Because I, too, am weeping.

In the three minutes we have met, I have said more things, heard more things, than ever I have in three years.

It is enough.

~*~*~*~

Bette:

I sigh.

Its more than enough; its a beginning.