Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora

The Eglantine Deal

The Eglantine Deal H KATAYOON ZANDVAKILI We’re both on our knees to someone only we see. There is a gold coffin suspended in space, haze like a soft and distant drumroll (Schumann’s nocturne) the purpose: to get to Noah’s Ark Cowboy and Dog and Horse, of course—spots of white paper along the freeway spooking the Horse. Coffee and poncho and cups with the face cards all over them. This person feels safe in the world, this person is a boy becoming a man, an owl evolving in the hum and singsong arms of redwoods. He is astonishing because he knows you will forgive him, because he knows it isn’t up to you to forgive. Covered in a clear-white layer of goodness the other side of his mind has created, he troubles you by bringing your weakness into the circle of light his arms pretend, telling you in an offhand way that you, too, are received— The white butterfly bridge dream: he rode to tell us something before he changed. And we find what by the riverbed? 260 KATAYOON ZANDVAKILI Kneeling in the church—this could just as well be a bench off a park trail—(the intangibles, cherries and goblets)—he relates his dream. It is of being licked on the side of the head by a large wolf-dog. On burial ground. The girl would like to play Hansel to his Gretel. He meets his supplier friends and after, walking through the hills, he sees her. At first, he thinks she is a vision. She isn’t. She sits on the side of the hill with her knees drawn up, scent of azurine and a cream-white dog. Later she takes him to the magic circle of wishing trees. She lives in the hills, has no other home. She believes in the butterfly, in the eye of the wolf-dog at her feet, in the smoke trailing from her hut/cabin in the woods. He dances in the rain for her one night, flapping his poncho to make a point, making wolf and turkey sounds. Other times, he is nothing so much as a deer. She watches him as he watches her. She wears a Maya of the Wolves/Raquel Welch top the first time, made of animal skin and tan. She tells him almost right away about her dream of the perfect trail, how it wound around past the bend, past the familiar boulder she and the horse knew. THE EGLANTINE DEAL 261 We also need a character dedicated to sheer, strong laughter—not a fool but one with a bird’s-eye view, a this-too-shall-pass wisdom. He says,“I don’t know why I am doing this for you, but . . .” Last shot would be of him in a Little Prince scarf, a hint of cigarette, his frame long and skinny, standing with a blue-white globe at his feet—a bouquet of flowers off to the right. 262 KATAYOON ZANDVAKILI ...