Consumed by either fire or fire.
—T.S. Eliot
Prue Pritchard isn’t a goddess—she’s a co-ed at U of T where her father’s a distinguished Professor of History with several books to his credit, including the text I studied in my senior year of high school—but I don’t hold that against him.
Her mother is an attractive socialite and community activist—the sort of the woman I picture Prue will someday be—not unattractive, but definitely scary for me.
But if there’s such a thing as a modern Siren, her name is Prue.
She lives in swank Rosedale manse, near a park, and the wind in the trees all summer long is a waterfall sound.
Her tempting shore is a bench near a curve of wall on her hilly street—a bus bench directly in front of The Belmont Arms—an exclusive Thirties apartment building that time forgot.
Everyone says the bench is haunted—and no one sits there. But she does. It’s her rock on a lonely shore—her Colchos’ strand where she calls to me and I have to come, no matter the time of day or night.
Now you get the idea. I’m haunted. Marooned and under her spell.
I’ll be working late at night in my study, and will hear the rustle of wind. I get up to close the window, and see the Moon break free of a shore of clouds.
And then, I’ll hear the unmistakable sound of her calling, the inward music enticing me.
I’ll drive through the night to her street, and sure enough, find her waiting, sitting on the bench.
She always acts surprised, as if she weren’t expecting me, but it happens so often, that’s hard to believe.
“Are you my soul mate?” she asks me.
“What else could explain my being here?” I smile.
“Passion,” she whispers, and stares at me with those huge gray eyes.
I’m backsliding and the thought of sailing away to Key Largo is just a distant dream.
“I told you this would happen,” Mutt chuckles cynically.
It’s our Friday night wind-down, being at the rooftop lounge of the Park Hotel watching the sunset—watching my hopes set.
“Man, I’ve known you forever, and I never saw any woman who could bewitch you like this. That girl’s a witch, or something.”
I arch an eyebrow and he backtracks a bit.
“Well, maybe not a witch, but an enchantress, for sure. I mean it’s like she’s got radar or something.”
The waitress drops our drinks and smirks. I know she’s heard this before.
“C’mon, Mutt,” I protest, “aren’t you being a bit dramatic?”
He’s on his third Singapore Sling and his eyes are glazed. I mean if you’re slob with wild kinky hair and have this disheveled vibe going, drinking Slings is kind of embarrassing, not to mention, getting smashed on them.
But Mutt’s warming to the topic now—using his hands like he’s conducting the Toronto symphony. I feel we’re in a Greek tragedy and he’s orchestrating the chorus:
Life’s very long; Life’s very hard.
Okay, that’s Eliot, not Sophocles, but I feel my life being measured out by Singapore Slings against a cosmic background of Toronto stars. Mutt’s more a pudgy Poseidon than a Sisyphus, but he’s rolling a stone too weighty for him.
Doesn’t he get it—hasn’t he ever been enthralled?
In the end, I give up, because what can I tell him? I’m haunted by a Siren.
“Look, I’m really sorry, Man—I want to be there too—sailing among those Florida islands, but I just can’t do it. You’re right. I’m whipped.”
He sits back, a stupid smile plastered on his face, Hawaiian shirt undone, and chest hair curling unseemly in the ambiance of a gentle summer night.
“It’s all right, Bro—some of us are adventurers, and some also serve who only sit and wait. You can’t help it, Man—it’s Fate.”
It’s two am and I’m driving home disconsolate. I’m on autopilot and end up on a hilly street and a familiar bench.
The streets are deserted and all good folk home in bed—where I should be—not having adventures in southern climes—that’s too wild for me.
I sit on the bench as the wind stirs the trees. An ocean of darkness envelops and flows about me.
I see sails bending and ships reclining in waves, white billows unfurling, and I think of her.
The blown spume in the cool mist and gulls dipping in the haze—the world lost below the waves.
The sandbars glistening in the sun—nights dark and moist with a glimmer of stars, silent as the gloom after a shout, and I think of her.
I’m a tiny speck in a sky, so vast, I feel lost in it. I open my eyes to Prue’s gray eyes staring into mine.
And then I realize—she was in me all the time—the waves, the clouds, the mist and the stars—all in me now…
And it is ours.