Logs:The In-Betweens

The In-Betweens
Dramatis Personae Anahita, Toni	2023-03-14 "I believe that if you fill them up with stories, they don't ever have to lose the magic."
Location <NYC> Le Carrefour - Le Bonne Entente - Astoria - Queens
Above the bustle of the clerestory restaurant, tucked at the base of the bell tower, this indoor garden and library is out of the way and easily overlooked, sure to become a favored "hidden gem" of travel guides. Low bookshelves full of mythology, fairy tales, and folklore ring the central elevator shaft and the stairway spiraling around it like an easily navigable labyrinth. Beyond these are plants in a variety of tastefully whimsical containers, each with its own engraved plaque giving the common name, the scientific name, and their significance to various traditional stories and practices. The walls have been done away with so that the room extends beyond the doric columns into a surreal rooftop garden enclosed with glass stretching between the tower's massive buttresses. The arrangement of plantlife becomes less formal as one moves out into the four arms of the conservatory, visible containers giving way to beds and terraces and eventually landscapes carefully cultivated to look wild. There is plentiful seating scattered along the paths and just off of them, from proper benches to picturesque logs to surprisingly comfortable boulders. By day, myriad butterflies dance amongst the enchanted vegetation, and likewise moths by night. A shallow stream weaves throughout, feeding ponds that host plants of their own alongside fish, frogs, and turtles. Wandering the outer edges of the conservatory, one could almost feel lost in a mystical forest but for the stunning views of the cityscape beyond the glass. Anahita has been working her slow way through each wing of the conservatory, stooping to read the plaques. She's wearing a sage green tunic over a brown corduroy skirt and heavy black engineer's boots, a beaded satchel over one shoulder and a book she'd picked from the labryinth library tucked against her chest. She rounds a bend in the path and stops in her tracks, giving a quiet gasp at the view through the west-facing glass wall. The greenery of the magical garden looks all the greener against the gray sky, and though it's still snowing, the sun has broken through the clouds and set the city, the river, and the drifting snowflakes all a-glitter. She walks toward the glass and sinks down onto a mossy log placed exactly to let visitors enjoy the view. Her fingertips play over the soft compound leaves of the acacia tree next to her, but her eyes are fixed out at the snow swirling through shafts of sunlight. There's a click of heels on stone, crisp and punctuated with an occasional low voice, soft but firm in the one-sided conversation. By the time the actual speaker has rounded a boulder and come into sight the bluetooth headset in her ear has switched back off, her phone in one hand but not currently active, a coffee in a to-go cup in the other. Toni is dressed in a crisp black business suit, immaculately tailored, her blouse in a pattern of unevenly distributed green-black-and-gold vertical stripes and a pair of red-heeled gold pumps on her feet. Her hair is done up in an elegant spiral of braids wound round her head and swept up to gather into a loose spill of thick curls at her crown. She's slowed her steps considerably from that initial hard click, drifting more leisurely through the plants until her orbit draws close to the acacia tree. "Can you believe this place?" Her voice is at once hushed and awed -- like a library, like church. "I figured you see one fancy set of hotel conference rooms you seen them all but --" This ends with a low whistle. Anahita turns at Toni's voice, though she's clearly not surprised. "I haven't seen much in the way of fancy hotels. If beautiful conservatories are a common feature, I've been missing out." Her eyes stray to a slender laurel tree bending its branches over Toni's head, then back to her. "Are the conference rooms here as extraordinary as this?" The sweep of her hand is expansive and ends in a flourish at the capacious log beside her. "I gotta tell you I have not seen much extraordinary as this it's like a little bit of fairytale." Toni's gaze follows the sweep of Anahita's hand out around the conservatory. "The rooms are nice but this is another league." She looks back to Anahita, now, an up-down sweep of eyes no less evidently appreciative than the one she was just giving the garden around them. "You staying here?" Anahita gives the barest glimpse of a smile and looks down at the book she's been carrying. Then turns it around so Toni can see the gold embossed letters on the blue hardcover: Fairy Tales of the Ancient World. "So I have been discovering. From the plants and the books, both." She sets the book down in her lap. "Oh, no, I live in town. The builder of this garden wanted my opinion as a fellow gardener, and I was intrigued. I admit I didn't expect much of the hotel the garden was attached to, but it turned out a pleasant surprise. I have seen many kinds of beauty today." Her gaze lingers on Toni. "You are here for business? Perhaps this is a stereotype. I am sure conference rooms have other uses." "Whew, you know the person responsible for this? Hope you're gonna tell them they've made a slice of paradise, here." Toni takes a sip of her coffee, her mouth curling into a wide smile behind the cup at Toni's gaze. "Oh, stereotype away, I been stuck in meetings all the morning." She strides closer, settling herself on the log beside Anahita, half-turned toward the other woman. She studies the book cover first -- then Anahita -- then the greenery around them, with an inquisitive lift of eyebrows. "Which is your favorite?" Anahita's head sways side to side, though it isn't quite a shake. "Not well. Our paths crossed a couple of times. I do mean to tell him so, just as soon as I work out how to do it without coming off as mere flattery." There is a soft touch of laughter in her voice. "If I had to pick just one, it would be the lotus." She indicates a nearby pond where the lotus's elegant pink flowers bloom above the surface, while below koi weave between its submerged stems, glimpses of red and gold and white between broad green leaves. "But today, I'm rather taken with this one." She tips her head at the acacia growing lush and thorny beside her. "Or the story I was just reading about it, anyway." She's leafing leisurely through the book now, but looking at Toni again. "I don't think my business stereotypes will get me far with you. Most of them involve poorly dressed white men who haven't got time for magic gardens or fairytales." Her smile is perhaps just a little self-conscious. Very little, though. "Do you have a favorite?" "Little bit of flattery's gotten me a long way with some kinds of men," Toni's reply comes on a warmer spill of laughter, her face lighting with the sound. "You know," her voice drops lower like this is a confession, though she looks hardly abashed, "-- I don't know the first thing about plants 'cept they make a day brighter. There is a clump of flowers just over there --" She's pointing, fingernail elegantly manicured in emerald with just a slender hint of gold French tips, to a distant cluster of bold purple and white devil's trumpet, "twisty long flowers really caught my eye. Smell nice, too." She takes another slow sip of coffee, glancing down towards the open pages of Anahita's book -- then lifting a hand to trace lightly against an acacia leaf. "So what story's this tree got?" Anahita does laugh, this time. "You know the most important thing, then." She studies the plant Toni indicates. "Datura. I can't say which without a closer look, but they've been used for magic and medicine all over the world down through history." She looks back at Toni and drops her own voice. "For entertainment, too. And they're all highly poisonous." Her hands finally settle on a page: "Tale of the Two Brothers" reads the title, and beneath it, "Egypt, New Kingdom (ca. 1200 B.C.)" "It's about two brothers, once close as close can be, who have an epic fight over a woman and come to be separated by an enchanted sea of crocodiles. I'm leaving out some gruesome if mythologically common dismemberment." She turns the page, fingrtips brushing the heavyweight paper but skirting the whimsical marginalia. "One conceals his heart in an acacia tree so that he would be invulnerable as long as the tree stands. He tells the secret only to his estranged brother as a gesture of trust, and to his wife, crafted for him alone from clay by the gods themselves." She looks up from the page, arching both eyebrows. "Who do you want to guess betrays him?" "Datura," Toni repeats. "Beautiful, magical and deadly. I picked good." She leans just slightly closer, arm braced across her knees as she listens rapt to Anahita's summary. "Well, I gotta say that in my life siblings been way more of a constant than spouses, so my money's going to have to be on loyal brother, treacherous wife, and the moat of crocodiles should've been put up between her and the tree instead." Her brows lift, intrigued. "How's it end? Does one of them avenge him?" "You are absolutely right." Anahita turns the page again, even though she isn't reading, exactly, and has turned further toward Toni. "And you could say he avenges himself. See, when his brother learns of his death, he braves the crocodile infested waters and searches the land beyond for seven years to retrieve his heart from the fallen acacia and resurrect him." She glances aside at the acacia tree again, then back at Toni. "Moat or no moat, he probably should have thought to tell his brother where the tree was." She drops her voice slightly, tense and hushed now. "Furious, he seeks his wife out in the royal court and and changes himself into a series of animals. Each time his wife recognizes him and the pharoh kills him, until at last he takes the form of the acacia tree. When the pharoh cuts down the tree again, his wife eats one of the seed pods and becomes pregnant...with him." She gives a small lopsided smile. "In time he becomes the pharoh and elevates his brother to nobility, and they lived together, happily ever after." The edges of the pages whisper over her fingertips as she closes the book. "I'll have to think about how tell that story properly, but thank you for indulging me on the quick and dirty version." Toni lays her fingers lightly over her lips, her eyes wider and a small amused smile pulling at her mouth. "That is gonna be one gnarled family tree," she declares, slapping at her knee. "Whew but those old folk tales do not mess around, I feel like you wouldn't get half that story past the FCC today. Who's your audience, because I think I'd pick and choose details pretty differently if this was a bedtime story for my kids or some entertainment at a girls' night." Her smile remains as she lifts her coffee to drain the last of it. "Thank you for broadening my plant education. Now I know one more plant fact and that's you never know what drama is living in the heart of these things." She's very lightly batting at some of the acacia leaves in indication. "You're most welcome." Anahita hums and looks up toward the join between the glass roof and the glass wall, nearly invisible against the sky. "My audience runs the gamut, these days. Just folks from the neighborhood who happen to be around for story time." She looks at the book's cover and shakes her head. "I might come up with a PG-13 version, or leave it off the rotation entirely when there are little ones." She smiles gently. "How old are yours?" "Oh!" Toni's face lights up, her posture perking. "They're getting so big," is immediately contradicted by, "my oldest just started preschool I can't even believe it." She is already taking out her phone to proudly display to Anahita a photo, a very small toddler with hair in colorfully beaded braids and a not very much bigger child in overalls and a Daniel Tiger tee shirt, curled up against a long white Borzoi who is managing to still look dignified even as a toddler-pillow. The larger child is holding a picture book (Thank You, Omu!) open for the younger to look at. "Absolute fiends for new stories -- though I think," she says with amusement, "this one might have to wait a few years." "Oh, they are precious!" Anahita leans in a little closer, breaking into a much more organic smile. "Now I'm going to be a stereotype and say 'it's a magical age'. Mine spent his entire second year making as much noise as physically possible, and I still think that." She grips the book a little tighter, and then lets go of it and folds her hands primly atop it. "They do get big fast. But I believe that if you fill them up with stories, they don't ever have to lose the magic. You certainly don't seem like you've lost yours, even after half a day's worth of meetings." "It is," Toni agrees brightly, "people warned me about toddlers but please I got big emotions too, we can work that shit out." Her eyes flutter wider at the mention of meetings, and her laugh comes with a brief apologetic pat of hand against Anahita's shoulder. "Thank you for that reminder I got a half a day left. Magic may not have to end but it do get put on pause, time to time. This has been a lovely interlude, though, I am so glad I ran into you and your stories and your heart-tree here." She is rising, regretfully, starting to turn away -- then turn back, bapping her cellphone lightly against her opposite palm. "-- I was going to ask if you'd want to swap more stories some time in future then I realized I didn't even get your name here I'm about to ask your number. I'm Toni." "Two half-days of meeting is a lot for one day," Anahita pronounces seriously. "But in-betweens have their own kind of magic, too. It was really wonderful talking to you. May your business go quickly and as pleasantly as such things can." She beams at Toni's not-quite-asked question. "Oh! I'm Anahita, and I would love to do just that, except..." She rises, too, produces a rather new smartphone from her bag and unlocks the screen (a slowly shifting overhead view of waves lapping a stretch of sunny shoreline), frowning at it in concentration. "...I still haven't memorized my number. There's probably a higher tech way of doing this." Perhaps there should have been a "but" after that, but she does not seem in any way abashed to be presenting Toni with a blank contact entry. "Anahita -- how you spell that? Actually, text it to me then I'll have it right for sure." Toni takes the phone, entering in her first name and her phone number before handing it back. "Enjoy the plants twice as much for me, yeah? I'm 'bout to be bored out my mind." She waggles her fingers in a small wave, starting to turn away -- then turning back again to remember to snag her empty coffee cup. Then clicking her way crisply away For Real, this time. "I will apply my plant-enjoying skills to the utmost," Anahita promises, accepting her phone back with a single serious nod that's most of the way to a bow. She watches Toni disappear down the path before sitting back down. She stares at the screen of her phone until it goes dark, then turns it back on and saves the contact. For almost a full minute she hardly moves at all. Then the stillness leaves her and she starts typing. *(Anahita --> Toni): It's Anahita She switches seamlessly to email and taps out a message with admirable rapidity for two thumbs and no swiping. Dear Lucien, I hope this message finds you well. Your conservatory is even more amazing than I'd imagined, and I fancy myself quite an imaginative person. When we spoke I don't fully understand the decision to build an entire hotel around it, but the hotel does bring people here who might not otherwise go out of their way to find it. All chance encounters are gifts, wanted or not, but I had a very lovely one today for which your garden and by extension you deserves some credit. I have so many questions about it, but I am comfortable with mystery, too. May the gods grant you relief from the other demands on your time so that you might spend more of it enjoying this magical place you have made. Yours in horticultural appreciation, Anahita She hesitates again upon signing the message. Then looks out at the flurrying sky framed by the acacia's thorny branches and hits send.