Ebony and Ivory

Bell had followed him home. After a night of forty year old leaches in polyester groping her through thick clouds of stale cigar smoke at the Howard Johnson on route 60, she followed this tall stranger home. She was on business travelling for this dot.com company that was about to fold at any moment. She was reduced from nights at the Ritz Carlton to rooms that the bed rolled down sunken v-shaped floors to rest in the center on 45 degree angles. Her only hope was that the bed stopped rolling before she was flung off. But these rare stays, which have been lately saving her from the uneasiness of sleeping in rest stops on the side of the highway. Dodging those midnight flashers that came knocking on her window and covering her ears from the moans of the men in the rest room. But here in lounge lizard heaven she wished for the ineptness of London fogs and the safety of the detestment of her sex. To tell the truth she did not mind the company of homosexuals, for her head could spin off her shoulders but she was guaranteed to be left solid standing on her feet.

But the emotion this crooner had felt and permeated through the clouds of smoke to smote the loudness of green polyester and lard that jingled and mashed about this room through gold bands hurried into small tight pockets. The scotch was stiff and so was everything else in this sausage factory for retiries. But when he sang it all faded away, he was a man of heartache and compassion, one to be tender, but then be full of explosives. I had little explosions going all night. The smoke from my ears just mingled with the rest around me unnoticed.

So I had to follow this lone keyboardist. Then when he went for his keys and turned the knob, he did not make a last minute slide of gold band onto his finger. I was golden if he would just notice me before he closed the door. So I yelled and slipped down onto my ass holding unto my ankle. He came running, a bit jostled he tried to catch his breathe amongst the words of “Can I help you” which sounded like “I love you” to me. I stood up and immediately fell down again pushing him away saying I am fine. He picked me up and insisted that I come in and get some ice put on my ankle. How could I resist with my foot in such agony, but little did he know the real fire was just abit higher.

He carried me through the threshold and closed the door with his elbow. He placed me down in his craftmatic lounger and maneuvered the buttons to raise my feet. “Hold on I ‘m going for some ice.” he said as I thought if he had one of those ice chest that they kept in the hall ways for those who raid the minny bar late at night. For he was going to need two of them to cool me off. He came back with an ice pack and a towel and wrapped them un-top of my right ankle. I shivered a little when he touched me. He apologized for he thought he hurt my ankle, little did he know, Silly Boy. I started to go on and on like some corn bred fool in pigtails about how much his music moved me. I told him it was real, real you know. He blushed and tried to hurry the subject. What subject, I am not sure about. But he was in a hurry to get no where I felt. And I needed him to be somewhere on top of me.

He kept looking at his watch as I went on and on about my job, my past loves (which I told him he was nothing like...), my parents, my interests, and how well he played that damn piano. I started to worry he might think he was talking to Charlie Brown’s god damn teacher, so I shut up and got a bit sullen. He asked how my leg was doing and I started rubbing my left ankle and said it is going to take bit more to reduce the swelling. But he thought the leg looked fine. He apologized for being a bit distracted but he had a lot to think about and needed to wind down off the stage for awhile. I told him I understood. So I just sat there for awhile staring into his eyes, but he kept blinking and looking away at the clock.

We did not say anything much for quite some time when the dawn started to creep up on us. He stood in a dash and insisted I had to leave now, that he needed some sleep before he began his day. I insisted that the leg was still swollen and I couldn’t move it. Then he asked me which leg was it and I said it was my right! He snapped then at me and accused me that I could not keep my story straight and I was some kind of weirdo and he insisted I leave now! I blew up on him and started to call him one big conceited asshole whose ego was so over inflated to think I would fake an injury just to spend the night with him as I stood up and pointed him into a wall with my finger consistently jabbing into his chest. As he hit the wall, a cloud of smoke appeared. Poof! My finger went into the wall and I quickly grabbed it in pain. He was gone. Then I heard a small little gaelic “Fuck” from below. There stood before me was a little green leprechaun in a polyester suit. Cursing under his breathe he pulled out a large Havana Cigar and lit it. He proceeded to climb his keyboard stand to sit hunched between his knees with his fist in his chin and cigar tapping on his knee. “How is your ankle then!”

“You are a fucking leprechaun, no way! Shit, you really are a god fucking real life little bastard! How dare you be a leprechaun! One sure way to put out a girls helfires, man I bet everything shrunk. Man that is a shame.”

“Yeah and you are some kind of lying stalking weirdo! Faking that injury and getting me to bring you in my house. I mean who are you!”

“My name is Bell, shit who are you? Man you are a fucking leprechaun, God I can not believe it; where is your pot hey, and I do not mean that one that is sticking out from your pants and jacket there!”

“My name is Morey, and quit saying I am a fucking Leprechaun already.”

“Damn, what Irish mother would call her little green shit Morey! What some jewish traveling caravan came tinkering around your mothers skirts! Hey...”

“For one thing I am not stinking drunk Irish, I am a Check! Now get that straight, do you believe all stereotypes or what. You Frog!”

“Oh god, I must kiss you on the lips to turn you back into a prince and to shut your fucking mouth up! A green Check with a jewish name? Man I have heard and seen it all tonight.”

“But you will still be a fucking frog afterwards.”

“Ouch!”

I said and grabbed my finger that was really sprained and starting to swell up quite a bit.

“Do you always come looking for some fool to belittle and....hey are you all right!” he said as he seen the tears swell up in the corner of my eyes as I bent over holding my finger.

 “ Can I get that Ice for you!” I said sure as he seated me in the craftmatic once again. I apologized, I was just reacting from my loss. The first man in two years made my heart skip a beat, and I turned him green.

The first man I had contemplated getting close to without ringing his neck. After that night I folded his pants, his pants and found his ring drop out. I just watched it roll out and under my bed. At least I did not have to put up with his snoring anymore. I just left him sleeping there, in my bed, as I left for my next business trip. It was to save our Chicago interests that were failing. Consumer confidence was falling and so was mine. I lost the deal and myself in that trip. From there on the company and myself plunged. With my mood swings, so did our stocks. We had some upswings to be followed by some dives straight into a bottle of bourbon. You know the last drink I had before that incident, was a Roy Rogers. I never cared for ginger ale! This first man , and he ends up doing duets with Kermit on I’M GLAD TO BE GREEN!

“So what is your story, some evil witch hexed you to your mortal form at night when your love was turned to a hawk at dawn; like in that movie Ladyhawk with Micelle Pieffer and Rutger Howard; Enuit!”

“No nothing like it.”

“Then what was it!”

“Hey, what about you! Why are you frequenting bars that were paid for by three upc bars off a box of lucky charms! I’m lucky to get paid a bowl of cereal by the end of the night. Why follow a hack like me home?”

“Man you were no hack, until you failed to stack up...um; you are actually, or was quite good!”

“What you mean was! Just listen and shut up for awhile.”

Then the Leprechaun played a sonata that lulled the heavens to asleep as all the spheres above stopped. Bell felt like she was floating within a dentist chair with all the fear removed. And if someone came to remove all of her teeth, she would not even of noticed as he played. The beauty of the night was really in his hands she thought. But she was to find out was that it resided truly in his heart. For the hands can only speak for the organ.

“Man that really touched me, it really did. No shit!”

“Before you continue let me clarify one other thing for you! I was born a Leprechaun and blessed by the Fairy Queen, if you can call it that with that pale skin and extraneously lanky figure, to take the form you found me with so I could further my music career. There was not too many openings for little green pianists. So in gratitude for saving her daughter, she blessed me.”

“Why what did you do!”

“It came about on the Fairy Princesses’s thirteenth birthday she set oft to spin hay into gold. Without knowing she was hexed. If at any time after that her hand should ever be pricked by hay, she was to fall into a fast sleep.”

“Oh my, what did you do...is that the apropiate cliche I am to say at this interjunction, hey!”

"You can believe me if you want.. Well that is my scripted part. Now shut up and listen! Right! See I was called to the court for my music was renowned through out all the woods. My music was the spell that made the honeysuckle rise in summer and open its perfume to the morning dew. I was one of the few whose job it was to awaken the spring. You see they disturbed me on holiday, I was in the Bahamas trying to avoid the Checkloslovian freeze (it’s not always the Prague spring?). But no, they had to pull me back to wake up that brat. Well that is what I first thought, but when I seen her there sleeping..

She was cute, just real cute. Also I had seen the pain in the Queens eye and I watched her tears roll down to those beautiful heaving breast..

Um I’m sorry! No the kid had something special about her. She looked like the type of kid that would of brought her Grandpa Joe to the chocolate factory with her, you know what I mean. She just looked..just, so innocent. I wanted her for my own, so I played the song and she awoke. Now out of gratitude and to get me far enough away from her daughter as possible, She turned me into my human shape. For when the child awoke her heart was also kindled alight for me into a blaze that the whole hall had felt. See the princesses despised humans, so that is what her mother had made me. But I was blinded by the fact that now I could play Carnegie! So off I left. Then it was too late, and my heart sank. When I heard she married that Pooka from the Jimmy Stewart movie, I was devastated! I know, another cliche. Sue me..but that big shot, you know ..the seven foot tall rabbit with the derby! And look, you can not exactly call that place last night no Carnegie! Also you will notice she only made me five foot three and three quarters just to be on the safe side.”

“That is so sad..you had love stolen right from under you and you did not notice! You must of felt some lumps, hey!”

“Speaking of lumps, how would you like to go down to the lower east side for a cup of tea?” “No tea gives me such a headAACCHE! But wouldn’t they notice you?”

“On the east side... I just blend right in, lets go.” and he bent over to grab her hand as he stood on the foot of the craftmatic and she fell right into him and planted a big red kiss upon those minute green lips of his. She did not turn green and he did not grow handsome, they just looked into each others eyes and seen the real beauty that rested there for only each other to have found. In fact he never grew again and she never really turned into a real frog. She started her own web design company that made interactive movies in which he did the scores for. Ebony and Greenery; alias Belle Ebony and Morey Green. Partners for life.

P.s. He learned to love her, even if she was pale and lanky.