Juliana

Los Angeles, March 17, 2008
5.33 p.m.

You know I’m a dreamer, but my heart’s of gold…*

Tomorrow, manicure.
Bitten nails don’t look good ― not on camera.

Do you remember Melissa’s fingers?
She was playing the piano forever.
Her runaway notes heart-painted those fuchsia sandy afternoons, the iced sky mornings, the violet windy sunsets and the warm starry nights.
They sharpened the mountains’ rocks, perfumed the petals’ wilderness, aired the palms’ spikiness and dew dropped the tricky cracks of my land of dryness.

Her music saved that stillness from falling into a dead corner of my eyes.
If I try a closer smile to the mirror, they are still the window on those desert’s years, GiGi, ‘cause all our dreams keep in our eyes the first place we dreamt of them. So was this ocean, these hills of fame and, yes… you too, puppy puppy!!!

You know that I’ve seen too many romantic dreams… *

Richard, too. He landed into my eyes a long time ago.
Melissa flew him into my bones.
It took my heart no time to recognize his forceful steps, last week.
The black paint of his long beard of secrets, half hidden under the nonsense of that funny hat, perfectly matched the vintage light of the breezy Brooks Avenue.

“Nice Ray-Bans.”
Just the time for his bold confidence to overtake my disorientation and I was already lost into his freedom.
He’s as wild as my Arizona flowers.
He’s from a different world ― that’s why he lives in his own. That’s why, at night, he lays his torments under that palm tree in the sand of Venice.

“There’s something circular about him, like moths fluttering in the clear Arizona nights.”**
This phrase’s the silver screen Melissa’s piano made me play Los Angeles on, waiting for Richard to make his entrance.

Yesterday at the beach I asked him if he was happy, the day those fuchsia, fully blossomed lips nestled on the veins of his neck.
His eyes first stretched down to the right to reach The Kiss of Death tattooed on his skin; then, they came back into mine: “Yes.”

That was the most ferocious and the most melancholic yes that ever kissed my days.
That’s the kind of yes that comes with forever.

They are knocking at the door all at once, GiGi.
My dreams are here, even if I leaf through the pictures of these fashion magazines and I wonder if the girl on them is really me… it seems like this life is happening to someone else, sometimes.

“Our life doesn’t really belong to us.”
That’s all my eyes say, when they look back at me from those magazines.
That’s all you get to learn, here in LA.

I’m on my way, just set me free, home sweet home….*

By the way, who’s playing the incredible piano in this song?
Melissa would know it. Richard must know it too. That rucksack where he keeps all he has is so full of music….

Where are you looking at, GiGi?!
Did you hear the same noise I did?!
Let me go check the door, babe….
Mommy will be right back.
I promise.
Right back.

Story by Liliana Isella.

______________________________________________

*Song by Motley Crue, Home Sweet Home

**Excerpt from Bret Easton Ellis’ book The Rules of Attraction