Ladies of the Fountain

The Three Rules for Wishing on a Fountain (if you really think your wish will come true):

1. Make your wish.
2. Throw your coin.
3. Run like hell.

He threw three coins, but the damn fool didn’t run.

***

Staring into the white sculptured eyes of the first lady of the fountain, he said: “I want you to be alive and be my woman.” He threw the first coin and it landed in the top bowl. To the next lady he said: “I want you to be alive and be my woman.” He threw the second coin. It landed in the middle bowl. To the last lady, he said: “I want you to be alive and be my woman.” He dropped the third coin right into the bottom bowl. As it dropped through the air, he was happy and thought about how cool it would be if all three of the statues in the fountain came to life and were all madly in love with him and wanted nothing more than to accompany him everywhere and fuck his brains out every day.

Cool, he thought.

“Thunk,” said the last coin as it sliced into the water.

***

He didn’t run. He stayed and stared at the fountain: a big circular bowl made of white marble. A short podium with three rams’ heads jutted out the center, and three ancient Greek-looking women, arms crossing their chests, stood back-to-back in a circle on top of the podium.

“Run, you idiot,” said thunk. But he stayed and he stared at the fountain.

Balanced like half the scales of an unfathomable justice on top of the three ladies’ heads was a second bowl though smaller than the one on the ground. A pillar sprung out the center of this bowl as though it were a single purpose of thought spurting from the minds of the three ladies, and there was a third bowl, smaller than the second bowl, on top of the pillar. The whole thing formed a V pointing skyward with water from a metal tube bubbling into the top bowl, trickling down into the middle bowl and then into the bottom bowl.

***

For makeup the ladies wore spider webs and dark streaks blown across their faces by the wind and the rain. He used to clear away the webs with this hand until one day a large brown spider with long legs poked its obscene body out from under a stone white lock of hair just inches from his hand. After that, he thought the webs actually lent the ladies a touch of naturalness so he left the webs alone.

The fountain appeared ancient, ancient and Greek, like the kind of thing to inspire myth and mayhem, which was exactly what it would do.

***

He stared into the ladies’ white stone eyes as he walked around the fountain, loving them and wanting them. Stone sculptures in a fountain. Beautiful and timeless. But stone. White stone.

He really didn’t have much of a life.

He looked away from the fountain, into the long narrow distance of The Green, a strip of grass, trees, walking paths and benches by the river, and of course, a white stone fountain with three sculpted women of indeterminate ancient origin.

He strolled to the edge of The Green where it banked on the river, stood by a massive weeping willow and stared across the river, so wide at this point that tourists mistook it for a lake. A light wind whipped across the gray water and brushed gently through the droopy leaves of the willow. Alder bushes, reeds, ferns and saplings crowded the bank down to the water’s edge where muddy flotsam dried in the sun. Further down The Green, Dutch Elms towered into the sky, their tops spreading out like giant umbrellas in the heat-dazed air.

His head bustled with images of beautiful women whose loose robes flapped in lusty zephyrs revealing perfectly sculpted legs and cleavage plunging into depths that would drive him mad.

Warm gusts of wind rippled the deep grass of the Green like footprints of an invisible presence.

Run.

***

It was an abrupt change in the splish and drip of water in the fountain, a change in delicately balanced rhythms. The breeze evaporated into stillness. A million blades of grass stood erect. Every leaf on every tree hushed and hung. Time blinked for an instant and something sneaked past time’s inexhaustible logic and dipped its magical toes into the water of the fountain.

Splish.

Too late to run.

***

The ladies stepped out of the bowl wiping spider webs and whiteness from their faces. Deep blue flashed into their as eyes they looked around curiously, taking in the grass, the sky and the trees. They looked each other up and down with growing recognition and smiled.

“At last,” said Tia. “Time to party.”

“You might want to cover up a bit, dear,” said Alaia, pointing to a comely example of ancient breast slipping into full view at the top of Tia’s robe. “We don’t want our cleavage plunging into depths that will drive the mortals mad.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Tia as she nudged her robe barely enough to cover the pale pink of an eternally erect nipple.

“Oh, you guys,” said Epsy. “Always on at each other.”

The other two looked at her, thinking simultaneously All this time to contemplate, and still a ditz.

“Where is he?” said Tia.

Alaia pointed at a man standing by the riverbank. He wasn’t a memorable person: balding up front, long ponytail dangling from the back, generic face.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Tia.

“Think about it, dear. What kind of man is going to throw three coins into a fountain, make the same wish three times and really expect to get his brains fucked out?”

Tia looked at him again, shrugged her shoulders and pouted. “You’re right. If we just didn’t need the losers.”

Alaia nodded. “Better make this good.”

***

His name was Rollo. Rollo. His jaw hung dangerously close to falling off his face as Tia walked toward him, her robe slipping ever so slightly to reveal the tip of a nipple winking from depths that threatened to drive him mad. She moved across the grass like butter mixing with warm honey and put her arms around his neck. He felt her breath on his face―a warm Mediterranean scent heavy with lust and music―and all his strength flowed out of his body and into her lips as they pressed on his mouth. He flowed into her, eyes wide and body sapped of the will to even tremble. Her kiss drained his soul and left his body a single vibration of desire. He felt her thigh pressed up hard against the hardest erection of his entire life.

Alaia and Epsy looked at each other, winked and smiled.

Tia’s lips seemed to float away from Rollo’s mouth and she giggled and every giggle blew hot pleasure into his face. “I’m Tia,” she said. “And you’re…?”

Her voice sent a wave of pure lusty energy caroming off every cell in his body and landed full on his erection. “Huh!” he said.

“Huh,” repeated Tia. “Strange name. Is there a story behind it?”

Her voice rolled through his body like a hot snowball gaining strength and momentum and splashing into his penis with a force that nearly emptied his brain into a black hole of pleasure.

“Look, Huh, I know you can talk,” said Tia. “You made the wishes. Three times. Once for each of us…and here we are. Say something.”

“R…” said Rollo.

“And…” encouraged Tia.

He felt himself falling into her eyes and somewhere in the space that he fell through, the word “Rollo” slipped into the paralyzed wind.

“Rollo,” said Tia, nodding. “Reminds me of someone I used to know a long time ago.” She took his hand and led him to where Alaia and Epsy stood, smiling.  “I want you to meet my…let’s say…sisters. This is Alaia.”

Alaia curtseyed and said, “Pleased to meet you Rollo.”

Rollo opened his mouth slightly and nodded.

“And this is Epsy,” said Tia.

Epsy futtered her lashes and winked at him. “I don’t care what the others think,” she said. “I think you’re cute.”

Alaia and Tia looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Rollo stared into Epsy’s eyes and felt himself evaporating into her direction. He smiled. His mind was beginning to clear enough that he could think at least one clear thought. His wish. In his wish, they were supposed to fuck his brains out.

“That’s right, Rollo,” said Tia.

His eyes widened. Did I say that out loud?

“It’s Ok,” said Epsy, giggling. “This way we know how to please you.”

Suddenly, everything seemed to make sense to Rollo. His wish had come true. They would be with him. The three women looked at each other and grinned. “For a slow start, this one caught on quick,” said Alaia.

“Time to explore!” said Tia. She pointed toward the end of The Green where buildings peeked out from behind the maples and elms. “Is that a city?”

“You might call it that,” said Rollo. “More like a glorified town, if you ask me. It’s…”

“Are there places to eat and drink?” asked Tia.

“And shopping?” said Epsy. “Are there places to shop?” “How is the food in your glorified town?” asked Alaia.

“Is the wine heady?” asked Tia.

“Actually,” said Rollo, “this city is known mostly for its relaxing atmosphere and absence of choice.”

The ladies looked at each other, puzzled. Then they giggled and grabbed Rollo’s arms and dragged him toward the buildings. “We need to party,” said Tia. “And you…you need a life.” She winked at the other two.

As they passed by a statue of Robert Burns, the Scotch sage seemed almost to look on in approval through pigeon-shitted eyes.

***

On the opposite side of the street, sprawling Victorian style houses put on Victorian airs in the morning haze, their wood rot painted over,  dusty curtains sagging heavily behind fading windows.

“What a shame to build with wood,” said Epsy, “when stone is so much more permanent.” Tia craned her neck around Rollo and joined Alaia in glaring at her.

They passed a marble and brick building fronted by sculptures of animals and abstract shapes clawing at the air.

“Is there food and wine in this building?” asked Epsy.

“That’s just an art gallery,” said Rollo. “Mostly paintings and… “At least it’s made of stone…for permanence.” Tia and Alaia glared again.

They came to a building that filled the sky, stone and glass towering above them. Epsy regarded the building approvingly. She was about to comment on its stoneness when another thought crossed her mind, something deep and infinitely meaningful for someone cast in stone since God knows when. “I have to pee.” All three ladies stopped, almost tugging Rollo off his feet. “And that’s not all I have to do,” said Epsy, slapping her robed rump. The three giggled and Tia pointed at the building. “Are there facilities in there?”

“It’s a hotel,” he said. “But they’ll have public washrooms on the main floor.

“We have to pee in public?” said Epsy. “I don’t think I want to do that. At least not yet.”

“I mean, they’re…”

“He means open to the public, Eps,” said Tia. “Nobody’s going to watch you tinkle.”

They went through a pair of massive brass doors and into a high-ceilinged hall, ornate with leather, red felt and muffled air. Daryl Shaw, a reservations clerk who dreamed of someday owning his own bed and breakfast, suddenly put together all the parts of his life into something that finally made sense. He saw into the deepest meaning of things and realized that he really didn’t want a bed and breakfast because he didn’t really like people and didn’t want to spend his life serving and reserving them. He grabbed onto a bundle of initial plausibilities, walked off the job, and set out to make his life itself a work of art.

Rollo led the ladies into a hallway and pointed at an overhead light announcing RESTROOMS. “The door under the light,” he said. Giggling and pinching each other, the ladies disappeared into the washroom. Rollo waited for what seemed like hours. He thought that no human being could pee for so long. He was about to knock on the door when it burst open and the ladies barged out in a storm of laughter. Tia hooked her arm under Rollo’s. “You don’t notice it so much when you’re stone and have a couple hundred pounds of fountain on your head.”

Rollo nodded. “I suppose so.”

As they passed an open door with an unmade bed, Tia looked in and said, “A bed!” Without another word, she pulled Rollo into the room and threw him onto the bed. His clothes peeled off as he flew through the air and he landed naked. Tia was also naked. Behind her, Alaia and Epsy were naked. Staring at Tia’s marble-like breasts, Rollo said: “I think I’m going to loose my mind.”

Mounting him, Tia said, “You most certainly are.”

She pounded onto him for what seemed like hours. He was a wave rushing over an infinite ocean as she surfed his penis into a crazy horizon. He felt his pleasure soar into the universe and crash into the end of time and then soar again over and over and then it was Alaia riding him and then Epsy and then Tia again and all the fixed perspectives of his life seemed to flow out of his brain and evaporate from the churning surface of a pool of pure pleasure. It might have lasted hours, it might have lasted years.

As they left the hotel, Rollo had difficulty getting his head around the fact that it was still mid-morning. So he stopped thinking about it.

***

On the sidewalk, Epsy belched hard enough to knock three pigeons senseless. Passerby Richard Conway saw this, walked into the street and fell into an open sewer. As he plunged to certain death, he wrote an entire rock opera about a down-and-out truck driver in his head. It ended with a plop.

Tia yelled, “Gypsies!”

Everyone followed her eyes to the park across the street, filled with open-walled tents and tables. “That’s an arts and crafts fair,” said Rollo. “They have it every…”

“Oh, look at the beautiful scarves,” said Epsy.

“You said the shopping wasn’t good,” said Alaia, one eye cocked scornfully.

“But it’s only…”

“It’s wonderful!” yelled Tia. “Let’s shop!”

They pulled Rollo across the street and past ticket attendant June MacLean who picked up her iPhone and began writing that novel she’d always dreamed of, now that everything was suddenly so crystal clear.

“Oh look at the scarves!” barked Epsy. They rushed to a green-topped tent with hundreds of tie-dyed scarves flapping from wooden hangers and the ladies disappeared into rows of swaying color.

All around them, artisans, artists, crafts persons, patrons, customers, critics, apprentices, sculptors, weavers, etchers, potters, jewelers, glass blowers, and stone masons perked up from artistic detachment, and a new generation of craft emerged from their collective consciousness. Never-before dreamed of motifs that mocked all pre-conceived notions of design sprouted willy-nilly from minds suddenly bursting with fiery notions.

By the time the ladies exited the tent―scarves blowing from their necks, arms and ankles―the laid-back mid-morning arts and crafts show was bustling with excitement. They passed a tent with racks displaying thousands of porcelain pins, broaches, ear rings, and belly button rings all decorated with colorful bugs. Rollo noticed Epsy’s attention pausing a moment on a bright black and white ladybug pin. He bought it for her. She smiled and giggled and pinned it to her robe right over her left thigh. Then she kissed him on the cheek.

***

A folding sign advertising a special on Irish stew caused them to detour into Molly’s Coffee House. Molly’s turned out to be a licensed coffee house. The ladies drank every drop of wine, beer, and spirits from the bar and then from the store room. A group of Bohemian tourists passed a note book around their table and wrote the world’s first collective unconscious novel to win the Nobel Prize for literature. It was about coffee and beer.

***

Back on the sidewalk it was mid-morning. Rollo and the ladies were festive and drunk as they passed a man in a three-piece suit who gawked at Tia in a manner that displeased her. She smiled at him and ran her finger down the inside neck of her robe just enough to reveal the exact amount of cleavage to make him tear off his clothing and devote the remainder of his life to naked barding.

They passed a tall red brick building with a sign announcing Sports Hall of Fame. Alaia pointed at a large patch of thick grass shaded by a towering Dutch Elm. “Let’s rest awhile,” she said. Nobody argued.

Laying in the grass Rollo listened to the three ladies talk of many things, like how Tia drove Nero fiddling mad with her cleavage and Alaia teased Da Vinci by changing the slant of her mouth every time he was just about to get it right. Epsy giggled as she told how she inspired Catullus’ bed sheet tent.

“Which brings to mind…” said Tia.

And the three ladies converged on Rollo in the deep green grass under the tall Dutch Elm on a hazy summer mid-morning.

***

They came to a fountain similar to the one on The Green, except it had just one figure and it was on top of the fountain.

“Pan!” screamed Tia, pointing wildly at the golden figure, naked and mischievous-looking with his baby face and old eyes. “What are you doing here!”

Rollo half expected the statuette to answer but it remained frozen in stone and gold paint, unspeaking, water pouring from its midsection. A tiny breath of sadness seemed to surround the ladies as they nodded to each other. Alaia said, “Another time.”

“You knew him?” asked Rollo.

“Partied with him many times,” said Alaia.

“Sometimes he had sex with the wrong people,” said Tia.

“And the wrong beings,” added Epsy.

Alaia shrugged and smiled at the statuette. “See you later,” she said. “Party animal.” She pointed to a sign over an alley between two red brick buildings. “What’s that?” she asked.

Rollo read the sign. Piper’s Lane. “It’s named after the statue I guess. It leads to an outdoor party area with tables and decks and umbrellas.”

“Party area?” said Tia.

“Yes, but …”

“What are we waiting for!” said Epsy.

“But, it’s …”

“Time to party!” said Tia.

“But it’s closed!” yelled Rollo.

“What do you mean closed,” asked Alaia. “It’s late.”

Rollo looked around at the mid-morning cityscape and shrugged. “It doesn’t open until noon. In fact, most of the bars…”

“Let’s go,” said Tia.

As the ladies pulled Rollo away from the fountain, he could almost have sworn that the Pan’s mouth curved into a brutal smile. Seconds later, they were in shade between the two old buildings in an alley that smelled of urine and wood rot. The stone walkway was cracked and potholed. Epsy made no comments on the permanence of stone.

The alley opened into a sunlit square with brightly furnished decks, cobblestone walkways, specialty shops, pubs―most of them closed―and a large roofless dance area with an empty stage. There were about twenty people scattered through the decks and tables, drinking coffee, reading newspapers or talking quietly.

Epsy and Alaia pulled Rollo into the center of the courtyard where they sat under a wide blue and white striped umbrella while Tia grabbed onto a bartender, ignored his pleas that they were closed, and told him to bring food and drink, lots of food and drink. “More food and drink than you dare dream of,” she commanded. The bartender would eventually write a film script about two beer bubbles that fall in love and soar to the top of the glass where they evaporate together and reach an infinite oneness in the surrounding air. It would be lauded as one of the most remarkable films of all time but, with a running time of twenty-four hours, it would never actually be produced.

By the time Tia got to their table, other people were starting to arrive. Bar owners messing with computerized accounting programs closed their laptops after deciding that today would be a good day to open early. People working in surrounding buildings decided it was time for a break, time for a frosty cold beer and some salad. A group of drunken rednecks who had slept under their table the previous night so as not to lose it the following day decided to start the world’s first intellectual country band. They called it the “Existential Cowboys Who Are In Touch With Their Feminine Selves.” During their first live performance―in a country bar―the audience would pummel them to death with beer mugs and pitchers.

Within minutes Piper’s Lane was hustling with the sound of laughter and clinking glasses. Everywhere, the conversation was animated and passionate with talk of spatial relationships and the delicate balance between reality and illusion. People theorized and postulated new meanings into their ordinary lives, rising as they did into new realms of awareness.

A group of musicians lugged instruments onto the stage, plugged in and started playing. The music was indefinable, like something not heard on earth since gods slept in the clouds and woke up in ditches. The music flowed like hot tomato sauce over the tables and umbrellas and into the streets and over the buildings and over the naked bodies of hundreds of vibrant humans gathered in Piper’s Lane talking of form and content and the countless ways of arranging them into new meanings.

Rollo glanced around at naked men and women standing with drinks in hand, sitting with palms cupped over bare knees, absently scratching public hair while making a point about the ontological proof for the non-existence of reason. It didn’t surprise Rollo that he was also naked. In fact, it seemed more than natural, almost expected. And he wasn’t surprised when the three ladies pounced on him as one. Everyone was suddenly inside everyone else. They coupled on tabletops, on bench tops, on chairs, on the ground and standing up. An elderly man who’d just been told by his doctor an hour earlier that he would never get it up again felt his penis whip up like a telephone pole. People performed wild acts on the naked musicians as they played without dropping a note. Their music spiraled inexorably from mild to frenzied, and electrified the air, propelling the gathering into further sexual acts, into new ways of inserting body parts into body parts and positions that broke all rational laws of gravity and flexibility.

As they fucked, they talked. They talked about literature and art and ideas. They spoke in poetic tongues. They plotted plays and devised dialog. They inspired each other and consumed each other.

Whatever Rollo was feeling was far beyond sex with the three ladies who pummeled his penis and licked his body and kissed him all over as though they were one thing covering every square inch of his body simultaneously. He felt alternately on fire and frozen in space and time. His mind emptied into a beautiful ocean of calm and Tia, Alaia and Epsy were waves breaking over his being while he sank happily into a void where everything was waiting to become.

His loins began to build to something wonderful and great and the thought crossed his mind that in all the sex he’d had so far, he hadn’t come once.

Now, he felt the impending explosion. His awareness flew out the top of his head and soared into the air. He gazed right through the blue and white umbrella at himself covered with three beautiful women of indeterminate ancient origin mauling every cell of his body with their lust as all around them hundreds of people talked and found new ways to penetrate each other.

His brain exploded as his loins exploded.

And he emptied.

***

Rollo shook his head. It was dark. He was standing by the bank of the river under the massive weeping willow. The air was still. The grass was motionless. Every leaf on every tree slept, dreaming of the warm sun and winds that would come the next day. He looked across the river, so wide it appeared more as lake than river, and he wondered where the day had gone. He turned and looked longingly at the three ladies in the fountain. He reached into his pockets for coins but his pockets were empty. He remembered wishing earlier. How long had it been? How long had he been standing by the river?

He was hungry. He walked toward the fountain looking at the one he thought of for some reason as a bit of a ditz and feeling strangely as though he could almost imagine her thighs wrapped around his waist. He walked past the fountain thinking about the relationship between Incan architecture and the work of Andy Warhol. These thoughts would eventually lead to a unified theory of the arts that would make Rollo the greatest art theorist of all time, even though he would never be able to actually sit down and discuss a single one of his arguments without losing interest and turning his attention to something else like perhaps a mote of dust riding the tide of an exhaled breath.

He passed by the fountain without noticing the faded stone outline of an insect much like a ladybug pinned on the robe over the left thigh of one of the ladies.

***

He lived for another forty years. He never married. He never had sex. He worked day and night on his unified theory of the arts and he sculpted in stone. He was never lonely, feeling in some reach of his being that he’d reached some inestimable height from which he was slowly falling back to an world that he would probably never reach. For the most part, he was content.

He died in a car accident. The doctor who performed the autopsy was surprised to find no brain in his skull.

NOTE: This story was originally published in Twisted Tails VII: Irreverance by Double Dragon Publishing, currently out of print.