Still-Life
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“Are you kidding me?” Lea said, when I pointed to the canvas.
“I love her, Lea,” I said. “She speaks to me fluently.”
“Jesus Christ Almighty,” she said, picking her up and placing her in the cart. “You got a name for this Queen of the Damned?” 
“Lilac,” I said. “She’ll be known forever as Lilac.” At the hospital, that visiting MD was still rambling on about hip hop artists, and I felt like I was stuck in a bad episode of Lost in Space, recalling the tiresome shopping trip for the simpleton.  “Have you ever French-kissed L?” the Doctor asked me back on Earth. 
“On our first date.”
“What else did you do on that first date?” he asked.
“I carried her from window to window, giving her a guided tour of our house,” I said, as the doctor nodded. “It’s an old Colonial, four bedrooms and such.”
“What else went down?”
“We ate kettle corn and watched five wonderful films,” I said. “Birdy, the second Mission Impossible, Angel Heart, Casablanca, and Au Revoir Les Enfants.”
“Did you penetrate any part of the L with your erect penis?”
“It was our first date, Doc,” I said. “Easy does it.”
“Do you understand how pathological you sound to the world?” MD asked. “How far away from sanity you are drifting?”
“Me?” I said. “You’re the one asking those heinous and perverted questions, Doc.”
“To poorly paraphrase Papa Hemingway,” the MD said. “The lousy bill is coming for you, son, it’s already on its way.”
“As long as Lilac is near me,” I said, “everything is exceptional and cool.”
“Finish describing her,” he said. “Please go on.”
“Lilac’s eyes are closed as if in the midst of some orgasmic fugue. Her legs are crossed and there is one orange pillow resting behind her. Her neck is amazing, smooth, and elongated like those tribal women with golden necklaces you sometimes see in the Natural Geographic’s from the early eighties.”
“She sounds so vivid and pulsing,” the doctor said, near breathless.
“Lilac’s got wide hips, too,” I said. “A straw hat so cool and understated that it knocks you over, charms you, and makes your eyes spill.”
“Delightful,” the doctor said. “I really see Lilac crystal clear now.”
“At first,” I said, “I did little that was positive in my life - everything was sardonic and brutal. There had to be an insult, or I didn’t feel right about participating in someone’s chat. I was in rough shape, beyond teetering, crumbling even...”
“Excellent self-analysis,” the doctor said. “Tragic but exquisitely put.”
“It didn’t take long for me to develop a bond with Lilac,” I said. “And, when I fell into the psychic thunderstorms months later, the only safe place I found was with my L in a corner of our damp, mildewed basement.”