Gertrude

Excerpt

Gertrude’s routine has been without deviation every single day since the world ended. This is not to say, however, that it bears any resemblance to her pre-apocalyptic routine, which was filled with amorous pleasantries and gastronomical curiosities and plenty of exercise. Hers was a certain springtime, always and everywhere, a vignette upon itself in soft sinking brushstrokes until Armageddon tore it apart.

Before the world ended Gertrude’s mornings were shapeless bliss. She and Beatrice would wake up and spend hours hiding in their sheets before Gertrude made their morning meal. Nights were short. It might be said that their insatiable delight in each other’s company prevented them from ever sleeping to a reasonable hour, their slumberous embraces in constant crescendo until the faintest inkling of sunshine warranted more deliberate entanglement. This could occupy any duration, for though they were early risers, they were prone to distraction. On and on and on like this until Gertrude, always Gertrude first, would descend from their high-set bed and grope around the dresser for her robe, with good-humored lazy reluctance, dress herself halfway, and drift into the kitchen. Beatrice, still in bed, smoked no fewer than two cigarettes before following her, dressed even less than halfway, with another cigarette bobbing ahead of her and careless affection emanating through puffs of laconic dialog. Gertrude was not a rushed cook, and there was never any hurry. Their days were busied with little else, money an abstraction and responsibility a farce, leaving endless time for feasting and fucking and, to maintain figure, swimming. When eventually breakfast was finished, they would pass almost all of their idle afternoon in the lake, and while their youth prevailed, this seemed adequate absolution for their appetites.

Gertrude and Beatrice were only ever separate in the water. This was not a threatening truth, but a tangible one. They would float in different directions, minds wandering through disparate distractions and conversing very little. Beatrice would be the first to emerge, laying her body against the slanted lawn, with its impossibly supple grass, so that Gertrude could admire her from afar. Beatrice would lay there and read, and in their years together she may have read libraries of material, indiscriminate, constantly enthralled. It might be an hour or more before Gertrude would leave the water, ring out her hair, a somehow violet in the swollen sun, and walk past Beatrice toward the garden, marking the beginning of the day’s final feast. Gertrude would ask, with sincere concern, if not interest, how the reading was, but Beatrice answered only in exaggerated exhales. Of course, neither of them cared, and shortly thereafter Beatrice would smoke one more cigarette before following her lover into the kitchen and letting the night unravel in radiant luxury. On and on and days like this, from the coy morning to the elongated breakfast and into the water and sunbathing slipping toward tirelessly decadent suppertime, always a spectacle, with wine and wine and warm bodies and postprandial lovemaking in a utopian bedroom never missing the moonlight.