frame daintiest lustre by emma burden

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
Astrophil and Stella 1: Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show

She felt the Earth pulling her knees to the ground, so hard and so fast that she believed the wind had been knocked out of her. Her lungs were replaced with the plastic bag that tumbled across the sand, the red sand and dirt trapped inside beginning to weigh her down. But she stood perfectly still, spare her toes moving in her shoes to keep herself steady, and as much as she believed the Earth was spinning ten times faster than normal, her eyes saw the still landscape surrounding her. Clouds moved slowly, and she could see the tires of Catherine’s car slightly jutting backward, dangling onto the hill where they had parked. She looked down and saw her jeans were dirty, a stain on the knee the color of pancake syrup. 

Stella had shifted the food around on her plate during breakfast, cutting into it and stacking it up on one side, taking bites just large enough to see any semblance of change. “I’m not going, it’s not going to end well.” She said her statement to Catherine, but also to herself. She would be lying if she didn’t say she had a bad feeling about the decision she had made, but part of her didn’t want the coming week to go well. Because if it went well, and it likely would, Stella knew that in the end that her exasperated love would hurt her.

Her call with Catherine the evening before had been interrupted. She had thrown back her head almost immediately as she answered the second line, hearing a short breath that she couldn’t mistake for anyone else’s. “I want you to come and stay a bit. I haven’t talked to you on the phone since my number changed, and I haven’t seen you in person in four years.” Astrophil began to trail off, and she could hear something in his voice that she hadn’t heard before. It was the feeling of embarrassment, or it could have been the sound of shame, of a low voice and trepidatious speaking. 

“I’m packing to stay with a friend right now. Catherine Parker, actually. You two have met, right? You’d have to have met.” Stella laughed into the speaker of her phone, listening as her cheek pressed into a key, a short dial tone sounding, then again hearing Astrophil speak. She tried not to listen to whatever it was that he had to say, instead focusing on why he would be calling her. It had taken courage for him to answer the phone when she had called him last, in the midst of leaving a voicemail late last October when she heard him begin to say hello. 

The last time that their lives had been anywhere near moving at the same pace was in 1997, when they stood together in front of cameras, both a few drinks in, or, just enough drinks down that the wine she spilled on his pant leg wasn’t noticeable to either of them. She answered questions from reporters, smiling and nodding her head, relaxing into Astrophil’s hand placed against the small of her back. The only time that they ever saw each other was for cast reunions, and this was one of them. 

“How’d those two movies end up? You had just started that one film… you know, the one with that one young guy - Daniel Colgate! - and you were sending off the other movie.” Stella tried to recall what they had last spoken about, and couldn’t remember much of the conversation, other than Astrophil being busy, as he always was, and that he wasn’t planning to take time off anytime soon. “How’d that last one turn out? It was that play you wrote with Gemma like a million years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, well, you know how it is. Post-production is taking their sweet time getting it edited. I’m supposed to edit some of it, I’m just waiting for the email.”

“You waited so long to finally make this movie, though. I don’t get why you aren’t practically forcing the editors to get it off the presses,” Stella shook her head. She wanted to say that she had her own projects going, that maybe one or two of them had been delayed, but after a few years of TV movies and a series that didn’t stick its landing, she knew that they were in different places than they had been the last time they had met. They had always been in different places, because Astrophil had his shit together, everything lined up in neat little rows, a thousand different baskets to throw a thousand different eggs into. 

Stella tried not to think about how insecure of herself that she was. What had been on her mind recently was that she had yet to become a mother, at forty years old and single, nonetheless. She felt like she had failed at something that she hadn’t even tried. And she often thought of how far behind in life that she seemed compared to Astrophil. He was known for four blockbuster movies, while she was lucky to even get recognized anymore. Stella couldn’t hold anyone down for more than two years, and each time she heard that Astrophil was celebrating another wedding anniversary, it made her feel uneasy. The two of them were different. Stella knew that, and she knew that if she asked Astrophil, he would say the same thing, but she felt lightyears behind him when it came to her life and her talent. 

They’d connected once, in the fall of ‘85, when leaves scattered narrow forest walkways and he had slipped his jacket over her shoulders. Stella had recounted that during the filming of that movie that her body had ‘fallen in love’ with his body, that their bodies loved each other, and whatever tension that they had before had all but melted away. What she had meant to say was that their bodies loved each other when their sex-clouded minds had disconnected from them, that their grueling shooting schedules had somehow allowed for what anyone whom Stella had elaborated upon on the story with would call an affair. “But, it’s not an affair when you’re in love with someone. That was the difference. Our bodies loved each other, but I know that I truly fell in love with him.” 

She often thought of when she laid wrapped in his arms, when the pages of his daily calendar fell similarly to the leaves. She thought of how she didn’t feel guilty, not even one bit, for abandoning her boyfriend and finding solace in someone else. Stella knew that all of the love she held for Astrophil needed to be soaked up by something, but she let it sit within herself. She sat with the thought of loving someone who treated her well enough that for once in her life she believed that she deserved love, and the thought that he was her one, great love. How could she feel guilty for feeling okay? And as the gap between them grew wide again, she never felt bad, never regretting what she had put herself through, something short of an affair with a married man - short, because she didn’t think that you were supposed to know if an affair loved you back.

There was never going to be an instance where that connection could ever be replicated again. Those days in New England were the perfect storm, with only a few landline phones and no one else allowed to stay on set but the cast. And now, and certainly then, Astrophil had Gemma, and the promise that he’d made her when they got married, and the land they owned, and the image of a man who was wholly loyal in an industry full of temptation. She couldn’t believe that Astrophil had the guts to invite her to stay with him. 

“This film has been delayed a hundred times already. I think that I’ve just gotta cut my losses at this point. It’ll get finished when it gets finished.” 

Stella heard as Astrophil finished his sentence, then stayed silent. She was packing a bag to stay with Catherine for the weekend and began to zip it closed. She balanced her phone between her shoulder and her head, but as she pieced together why Astrophil would be calling, and as to why he was nervous, and as to why he wanted to see her, she cocked her head to the other side and let her cellphone drop. 

Her phone closed, and as soon as she could swear at herself for her impulsiveness, she was calling back his number. Stella sighed heavily, whispering that she hoped he would answer and gritting her teeth along to the phone’s dial tone. 

“Hello?”

“She left you, didn’t she?”

Stella drove to Catherine’s house, parking her car in the driveway and pulling in the original bag that she had packed, and then two more, on an impulse. “I was thinking I could spend a few days here, and then see if he calls again and head over to where he’s living right now.” Catherine ignored Stella’s sentiments, opening her own car door and stuffing Stella’s bags in, telling her that they would leave in the morning. Catherine planned to drop her off, practically leaving her stranded at his house in the middle of nowhere and wondering whether or not she was still in LA county. 

Stella couldn’t shake the feeling that time wasn’t real, that something was off and that she needed to go back. The Earth still spun too quickly for her liking, and she didn’t know if it would ever slow down again. There was no reason for her anxiety, no reason to be afraid or upset for being at his place. She could only feel ashamed if there was someone else there to catch them, and the two of them would be alone. 

She had agreed to stay with Astrophil for a week, and she envisioned the week to feel like solitary confinement, then reimagined it as a shared prison bedroom, with too kind of a roommate. Stella didn’t know why she was scared. But, as she turned around to say goodbye to Catherine, and as she quickly turned again to see Astrophil opening his front door, she could have sworn that in the in between, when her eyes weren’t focused on left or right, front or behind her, that she could see the end. The end of their time together floated in the corner of her eye, and while she was no psychic, and her mind’s eye wasn’t creative, the anxiety in her body reminded her that their time together would come to a close, and that its ending wouldn’t fare well for either of them. It was as if she had peaked into a rearview mirror while driving down a lonesome road, that she had seen another car behind her that wasn’t there one turn ago; or that she had sat down a book that she’d enjoyed, forgetting to read its depressing epilogue. 

In the moment that she saw Astrophil smile to her from his doorstep, with crossed arms and his hair falling to his neck, she forgot about whatever consequences would follow them. She ran into his arms, laughing as her backpack and two duffle bags slowed her steps. Throwing her arms around his neck, she smiled, and the weight in her chest was lifted. 

If the end were to ever come, as she knew it would, she knew that their end would mimic the end’s most common form, of fire and ice and horsemen and abandon. The arms that wrapped around her were arms forged of pure steel, of muscle mass and tightly pulled skin, with enough cushion to hold her in their bends. Astrophil was always looking for the next best thing, doing whatever he could to grow into another version of his person, but as her body that his body once loved would mesh back into his, after however many years, three years between movies and ten years between premieres, she was reminded that she was a constant. Stella thought of the phrase, the common saying that love would tear them apart, but she didn’t listen to herself barely whispering it. She didn’t listen to her mind telling her to back away. Her heart told her that there was no danger, no sense of entrapment or horror as she meshed into Astrophil’s arms. 

He would never hurt her, but their ending would. There were too many people that could tear them apart, and Stella didn’t doubt their power, though it had never worked before. Both entangled in careers that were lightyears apart, lives that were drastically different that led to continued and confused tension; their adversity towards each other only brought them closer. She knew it was going to hurt when he would eventually be torn away from her, and she knew that it would fall back onto her own doing, her own wicked manifestations that she couldn’t stop her mind from repeating, that what they were doing was wrong, even though it felt right, and that her stomach was flipping from the steam of a fire inside herself, a fire that was burning herself and Astrophil alive. There was a reason why they hadn’t ended up together before, and Stella didn’t know what it was, but that destiny had pulled them away from each other. 

She continued to relax into Astrophil’s arms, even as she felt him remove her backpack from her back and force her bags from the grip of her hands. His body was what honey would feel like if it didn’t gum your skin, something soft and warm and malleable, slowly bleeding into her. She wondered if her blood still ran through him, if there were a microscopic fraction of her running through his veins, reminding him of sex under painted trees when they were in their thirties. She remembered everything. And she remembered the nagging feeling that she’d always had, that their love would not end well. 

Stella was ready to be maimed, for her hair to knot, for her knees to bleed and her teeth to fall, for her hearing to fade out and her vision to blur. She was ready to be torn apart, from both Astrophil and from herself. She didn’t know what love was without pain, or if love mattered without sacrifice. Perhaps a version of herself had already died, and she was but a ghost of her former self, clutching onto a resemblance of real life. She knew that wasn’t true, and she knew that she was more alive than she had ever been. 

As Astrophil let go of her, waving her inside and telling Stella to make herself at home, she could feel her chest aching, asking her to pull him close again. She hesitated, then walked into one of the bedrooms. She wasn’t broken enough to love him yet; she hadn’t tried to remember enough of the end.