I desire this creature before me.
— M. Velez
I’m sitting in the front room of my house staring at a lovely portrait of Blythe Summer I found secreted away in the basement and rescued and brought upstairs to be mouned in a place of honour above my fireplace mantel.
As I stare at her image I allow my mind to wander back to how this affair began and subsequently found myself under the care of Elias, my psychiatrist, being treated for what he calls alcohol-induced delusions.
But unlike him, I didn’t see myself as a recovering alcoholic because booze for me was simply a means to an end—it wasn’t an end in itself.
I drank to escape the tedium of my existence and did that until I bought Blythe Summer’s house and discovered a portal back to her time. From that point on, I didn’t need alcohol because I had Blythe and fell in love with her and her era.
Up until then, I was merely existing and booze was one escape and Stella was another.
Stella was obstensibly my real estate agent but she was always more than that. She was a Siren of mythical proportions—hell, even her surname, Nerida, in Greek means sea nymph or mermaid.
You get my meaning. She was always more than most women and demanded more than I wanted to give which would have amounted to my ultimate surrender, and I reserved that privilege for Blythe Summers who truly deserved it.
She was a goddess, and not just of the silver screen, but her impact went far beyond that.
She was a legend in her own time and summed up the entire spirit of the Jazz Age.
At a time when some were searching for their own zeitgeist and finding it in politics or culture, Blythe embodied the eternal quest of the male gender searching for an ideal mate and never being able to find her.
I accomplished that feat the moment I uncovered the portal in a closed off wing of her house and it led me back to her time and resuted in a real addiction from which I have never recovered.
I”m obsessed with Blythe and determined to reopen the closed wing of her house and travel back to see her.
My ruminations are interrupted by the Ring doorbell chime and on my cell phone I see Stella’s lovely face smiling at me.
She is a beautiful woman as Elias reminds me and I fully agree with his perceptions—except she’s not Blythe Summer.
“I brought coffee and croissants, Theo,” she announces cheerfully.
A Greek Demigod bearing gifts…How could I resist?
I unlock the door and let her in.
Immediately, the room lights up as if the sun’s come out, and in a way it has.
Stella is a walking aphrodesia and her charms almost irresistible—but I glance at Blythe’s portrait to anchor me the way Achilles had his crew tie him to the mast of his ship.
Both methods work but they’re only a temporary fix and that’s why I flee Stella fearing I’ll succumb and miss my heavenly appointment with Blythe and settle for Stella’s golden fleece.
But the girl is persistent, I’ll grant her that, but why she doesn’t lose interest is beyond me other than the fact that she’s a realist and knows Blythe is dead and my quest will umtimately fail.
And maybe I know she’s right and will ultimately prevail, but I’m not ready yet to give up the ghost, painful as that is to admit…
And so I let her ply her charms to test my boundaries but I’m determined to resist this Siren’s song, even if it kills me.