Oliver Benjamin
Archimedes, champion of leverage, said “Give me a firm spot to
stand on and I will move the earth.” Technically everyone moves the
earth every time they take a step, however infinitesimally, but
because she influenced the steps of so many, her influence was
palpably stronger.
The French poet Charles Baudelaire, once wrote a poem called
“All Complete,” in which he identified the same poetic principle Roy
found in coffee, but in a lover:
“Which is the sweetest?”—O my soul,
You answered the abhorred Guest:
Her beauty is complete and whole.
No single part is loveliest…
My senses seem to merge in one;
The harmony that rules her being
Is all my knowledge—I have none
Of hearing, smelling, touching, seeing.
Roy had seen this in coffee. He had seen this in Ellie. He blinked. He
was seeing it now. With her widely set, golden eyes, golden-brown
skin, and golden hair, she might have been an unfortunate lover of
Midas but with movement so liquid she would have had to be molten.
Her individual features, details, were jewels in their own right. Yet
the whole was very much greater than the sum of the parts; to change
one would be to invite evil into the world.
At various times during the evening Roy found himself hovering
around her, estimating the distance as one does before jumping out
of a plane. It was impossible to estimate distance from a plane.
“Where did you find her?” he asked Partment.
“Boy,” said Partment, “If I had a dollar for every time someone
asked me that tonight!”
Roy grabbed Partment’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said, “I will give
you a dollar every time someone asked you that tonight. Who is she?”
“Easy, pal. She’ll be around. She moved into my halfway house
last week. Hardly ever leaves her room. I thought it would do her
some good to get out, and do you some good to get her in.”
“Well, what’s her problem? Drugs? Insanity?”
Partment shrugged. “Her paperwork doesn’t say much. Seems
perfectly fine to me.”
“Perfectly,” echoed Niles, sitting on a stool behind them.
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