Adam and Eve: A Romance

What if Eve had found Adam uncouth, homely, and insensitive? Would she have been able to refuse him? Would she have thanked him for his gift of the marrow of life, but declined to join in the first great union of flesh and soul? “Adam, dear, I am ever so grateful for your rib, but let’s keep our relationship as it is. Can’t we just be friends?”

All this and more Tristam lay dreaming one dreary April afternoon. Smeared with grease, the window to the city park was his porthole to Eden. There was the garden; there were the women. He imagined himself as a somewhat more benign Lucifer sitting on his throne in Pandemonium, gazing with discontent at the peace and love which dwelt in the garden park – for Adams and Eves were anything but scarce in McGitzer Memorial Park.

There was a fellow wearing yellow-tinted glasses who must have worked in an art emporium. He had tousled hair, charcoal-colored clothing, and wore a constant sneer which would have given Beelzebub the shivers. He was holding hands with one of those blonde bombshells who always fall for guys who, at the drop of a hat, can nonchalantly discuss the beautiful and the sublime.

Sitting across the way on a park bench were two disgustingly romantic youths, cuddling and whispering and being generally and annoyingly demonstrative. The Adam in this duo must have been a college student: his hair was bleached a striking lemon and he wore more jewelry around his neck and wrists than a Persian sultan. He had that unmistakable look of the kid in class who was always looking over your shoulder during the biology test. Yet he also was the type to always get away with his little sins because the girls loved him, and ergo he achieved that insuperable classification of cool.

The Eve of this couple was your typical pop diva wannabe: she wore eye-shadow darker than death and sported a face sprinkled with glitter, which is – one guesses – supposed to look attractive to the male species. As he was watching this couple, Adam puckered up and leaned over to smooch glittered Eve. Tristam couldn’t help it: when he saw this, his brain immediately had an unwelcome sensory connection and without warning into his mind’s eye flashed the image of one of those Japanese puckerfish which make their living cleaning fishbowls.

Tristam thought the canoodling in which this couple was engaging was beneath the dignity of man and woman, so he diverted his eyes and began to observe a woman with long black hair and wearing a plaid skirt on a nearby bench. She was alone and apparently reading some weighty tome, in which her face was buried. Probably just some sociology textbook, but Tristam romantically fancied that it was a volume of Milton’s verse. Wouldn’t it be heavenly if he just walked over and began to chat with her and she brought up the subject of Milton’s views on classical oligarchy and… well, such are the caprices of love-starved students of Renaissance lit. But still – what would transpire if he just walked up to this goddess of paradise and quoth to her, “Thou art woman”? It just happens that he was in such a state that he nearly arose from his perch right then and went down to the park. Mercifully, before he took this drastic step the “woman” on the bench put her book down and took out a long cigarette and began to puff heavily. Now, these days much is open to redefinition, but certainly it is allowable to put woman in quotations, for when her book was laid down, Tristam saw that this Eve sported facial hair. In fact, “she” bore a mustache which would have put any trailer-town redneck to shame. Darn Goths, he muttered, they confuse things so.

The ringing of the telephone brought him out of his reverie.

“Yes?”

“Hey Tristam. It’s John. I heard you haven’t been to class for almost a week now. What’s eating you?”

“Love. Pure, unspoiled love.”

“Hey man, that’s great! Who’s the ill-fated chick?”

“That has yet to be determined.”

John paused for a fleeting moment before replying, “Sure, pal. Didn’t you just say that love, pure unspoiled love has kept you holed up?”

“Of course I did. The sole reason my love is yet unspoiled is because I have yet to share it with anyone.”

“Dork. Hey, why don’t you come to the Empyrean tonight?”

“Neither flood, nor fire, nor even the breaking of the world shall keep me away.”

“Is that a yes? Good. Lighten up before you come, alright?”

“Will do. The servants of Dionysus shall minister to me and make my lips sweet with fine wine.”

“Gotcha. See you at seven post meridiem, then. I have to run now.”

So it was that our protagonist found himself that evening sitting at a booth in the Empyrean ordering his dinner precisely at seven o’clock, though he knew that John was always – punctual postmodernist that he was – at least twenty minutes late to any engagement. Yet classic punctuality was one of Tristam’s idols. Structure was more than a poetic ideal – it was a way of life. So he sat idly looking out the storefront window, waiting for his dinner partner to arrive. The restaurant was packed. Half the student body came by on Friday nights for dinner and a Guinness. For Tristam, burgundy was the drink of choice. Nothing like burgundy to stir the poetic fire.

What is it to live without love? Better, what is it to love without living? A sonnet. In a sonnet, a sestet always brings resolution. But what of a life that is an unfinished octet? What of a paradise lost but never regained? Love. Love is clichéd. There is no reincarnated Eve. There are only fig leaves. Fig leaves. Coverings for what we have lost. Innocence. Romance. Poetic symmetry. Couplets. Grace undimmed. Couplets are… cheesy.

“Excuse me?”

It isn’t possible for Renaissance students to be startled. The weight of the ages is too heavy a burden to effect anything that demonstrative, but if they could jump, Tristam certainly would have.

He made a vague guttural sound in his esophagus.

“I feel rather boorish to ask, but every other table is taken. Would you mind terribly if I sat down here?”

“Yes.”

“I can see you were lost in your thoughts. I promise not to talk.”

“That is too much to ask of a woman.”

“And I suppose it is too much to ask of a man to allow a lady to have the only remaining seat in the whole place?”

Up to this point, Tristam had not looked up at the intruder. But at this last offense, he rose and was going to hurl a witty metaphorical rebuff when he noticed that his would-be victim was rather more worthy of a sonnet than anything else.

She stood as a silhouette against the crowded pub atmosphere, her hand on her hip, her head slightly inclined, her green eyes looking straight at him, through him. Until this moment of epiphany, he had never understood the reality at the heart of the image of fire in the eyes. Yet those eyes burned him now, like the very fires of the Underworld.

“Excuse me. It appears that while I thought I was playing the jester, I was merely the fool.”

“That’s rather lame,” she said as she took the seat.

“Of course,” he mumbled. “Yes… I suppose you are here by yourself?”

His eyes were riveted. He could hear the blood pumping in his ears. He didn’t like it.

“I thought the consignment of this chair entailed my silence.”

“Did it? Then I revoke my claim. Ha! Say, did you know your face is perfectly symmetrical? No, really… Please, don’t leave.”

“I think there is another table open now.”

“That’s rather unfortunate. No, sit down, if you please.”

Seizing his last hope, Tristam snapped his fingers for the waitress and ordered two pints of Guinness. Slumping intractably, the girl fell back into her chair.

“Ah, that’s good of you, I must say. I think you might be interested to know what I was meditating on before you arrived.”

“Go ahead.”

“Yes. I will. So it all has to do with his blindness, of course –”

“His blindness?”

“Right. It was all a shift of metaphor: ‘Light is spent,’ and all that –”

“Metaphor? Light? You wouldn’t by any chance be talking about Milton?”

“Who else?” Tristam grinned widely.

At this point, the waitress re-entered the scene with the drinks. Placing the mugs on the table, she informed Tristam that his dinner would arrive shortly. Raising a knowing eyebrow, she asked if he would need a double order.

“But of course, and thank you.”

When the waitress had gone, the girl propped her elbows on the table. “So? You were saying?”

“Hm. About Milton. You know how the cosmology in Paradise Lost portrays the supernatural source of all True Light?”

“Naturally. You mean how before divine creation, there was no light. Only ‘sable-vested Night,’ and so forth.”

“Exactly.” Tristam was getting into the swing of this. “What’s your name, by the way?”

“Evelyn.”

“Evelyn.” The name rolled over his tongue like fine Chardonnay. “Of course. I could have guessed,” he muttered. “Anyways, I was going to say that even the semblance of light which lit up the dungeons of hell was only darkness made visible by demoniac fury…”

Things were going swimmingly. In fact, as Tristam would later reflect, they couldn’t have gone better. However, in every epic there is a slithering serpent.

That serpent was the tardy John. And it was at this moment he entered by wiles unknown into the garden.

“Si vales valeo, eh? Hey buddy. You want to introduce me?”

The fell intruder smirked, and the fair damsel looked expectantly at Tristam.

“Have we met?” he asked with a disarming innocence.

“You might say that, old dreamer. Can I pull up a chair? What’s to eat?”

“I must say, my fellow, that I’ve met a lot of impertinent chaps in my day, but you head the list. In fact, you might well be the standard by which all impertinence is judged.”

“In usual form tonight, I see. Still, that’s a bit thick, don’t you think, pal?” Seeing Tristam’s impassive face, John tried another tactic. Turning to Evelyn he asked, “What is this joker up to?”

Brushing back a dark strand of hair that fell across her face, Evelyn glanced up at the intruder and replied, “We just sat down, if you must know. And we’d like to get back to our conversation.”

A light dawned in John’s mind. He finally understood the plot. And, if he hadn’t been treated so sourly by his friend, he might have taken it in stride and played along. But, under the circumstances, he felt some recompense ought to be dealt out.

“Let me guess,” he started smoothly. “He’s been talking to you about Milton, hasn’t he?” Seeing that the girl’s attention had been arrested, he continued. “It’s his favorite trick. But until now, no girl has fallen for his metaphysical schlock. They were all too smart.”

A cloud of worry spread over Evelyn’s face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s all about metaphor and sable-vested Night.” This last reference sounded terribly weak and cheesy, especially to Evelyn herself.

“Has he really said all that, in this short of a time? My dear chap,” he said turning to Tristam, “you amaze me.”

It had gone too far, Tristam knew. An instinctual fear as old as Creation had arisen. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he realized that unless he took action, history would repeat itself: a second Fall would occur.

“Begone! I know you not.”

“How many drinks have you had?” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Alright, alright,” he hissed. “I’m gone.” And he promptly turned and walked out the door.

Tristam could almost sense the wheels of history grind to a stop. The paradigm had been broken; the fall averted; the world – as he knew it – had been saved. Dreams of metaphysical bliss swiftly floated through his mind as he looked on the admiring Eve.

“Sir? Your dinner is ready.”

The waitress put two plates on the table. The food smelled rapturously delicious, and Tristam commented on this fact to his partner.

“Delicious? Aren’t these barbeque ribs?”

“What else? Here,” he said as he extended a plate to her. “Have one of my ribs.”

“I hate barbeque ribs.”

“Oh, I see.” And Tristam really did see. Quite clearly, in fact.

He rose from his seat. “Have a good night then.”

And he left.