Beats of Seven by Peter Orullian

Author:Peter Orullian [Orullian, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Peter Orullian
Published: 2019-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

ROXANE

SHE PUT ON the red light.

That’s what you do when your stomach grumbles and all that the poets are offering is flowery verse. Not that there’s anything wrong with a compliment or two. Even a woman with flexible hips likes to hear something sweet before the fleshy business (or so I’ve been told). But I suspect by now she’d forgotten her girlhood, when she still believed she would find someone to love. That would love her. Before the red light.

I hated being here myself.

These days, the district was filled with gallants come from Paris with their mousy mustaches and dreams of finding love. Not a one (as I’ve heard) goes more than ten strokes once the love begins. And never before a lot of alley-side wooing.

Waste of time.

Still, it was the best I could do.

I was a French Army Cadet, soon to be dispatched to Arras to fight the Spanish. Cyrano de Bergerac was my name. I stood there, one hand resting comfortably on my rapier, the other cupping something unseen (but apparently important) in the air. I don’t know how I got into that pose. But it felt natural, nonetheless, for offering a verse.

So, I lifted my chin with my rhyme and wove it all above the stench.

Which, given the size of my nose, surely came to me in triple portions. Gutter-smell. All kinds of filth my boots had never seen—on brushed leather, no less! But I didn’t mind. Instead, I went on about her charms and wit and—

“My God, are you ever going to ask my price?” She interjected, not mad, but edging with impatience.

I ignored her and went on about her eyes. As I did, Roxane tried to draw in another “soldier of Satan”, pointing to her red light. No good. I was wearing the violet tabard of the military. No meager flesh-seeker was going to compete with me for her bed tonight. She was stuck until I either got on or got out.

“I’ve come to rescue you—”

“I don’t need to be rescued, you arrogant bastard.” She said it politely. “What I need is for you to do is stop talking long enough for me quote a price.”

No price. I wasn’t here to hire Roxane. Pitiful as I’m sure she’d think it, I was here for an open invitation, on the merit of my true feelings for her.

“Poet, why don’t you give her a poke with that pointy nose of yours. That’ll have her singing all right.”

Roxane smiled at that, looking past me at the man who’d offered the insult. The man came into the baleful light, which was simply a thin red scarf wrapped around her door lantern.

I dropped my raised hand. “I will ask you to withdraw . . . but only once.”

The man laughed out of the darkness. A coin flashed across the alley and struck Roxane in the teat, as the shadow stopped in the dull gleam of the red light.

I caught a last glimpse of Roxane as I turned, a strange look

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