She's trying to train bumblebees and snails to perform in her new show at the theater.
She wrote the script over two weeks in the late summer, when the air was still hot and thick. It has to do with a love affair. "Romeo & Juliet with snails and bees!" she says.
She says that few people seem to be aware of the age-old conflict between snails and bumble bees. Apparently it has been going on for ages and ages and she thinks that it's about times someone addressed the issue in dramatic form.
She will have actual snails and actual bumble bees on stage but the dialogue will be spoken by actors in black outfits, standing behind their snail/bee characters.
She explains this to me while we're laying naked and post-coital.
She is sweet and wonderful and I don't know how she thinks of these things. I think that she finds them hidden between the lines when she reads the dictionary.
She asks me to go out with her to capture some more bumble bees and some more snails and I agree to go because the weather is still warm and she will probably wear a skirt. Which she does, and we end up kissing as the sun sets and don't catch any new actors.
She inherited money from an old aunt who no one knew was rich. She bought a car and then we drove around until we found a small theater that she liked and then she bought it.
She called the theater Buttercup because that's what I call her.
She is my Buttercup but her Buttercup is a hundred year old building made of brick. The building is ancient, but the insides change as often as her mood.
She asks me what I think the set should look like and I tell her I think that the set should be very small because snails and bumble bees are not very large. She says that the backdrop should look like that classic green ant farm motif.
She slips into bed with me at night and when she snuggles my shoulder we go to sleep but when she bites my earlobe I know that she wants me to sex her.
She always wakes before I do and when I wake she is smiling at me with eyes big.
She seems to be very happy now and I think she deserves it. She spends most of her time instructing the snails in their box and the bees in their tiny aviary.
She cast the speaking parts and rehearsals begin. People and snails and bumble bees. The bees prove to be most difficult. We try and tie their bodies with thin, invisible string so that they don't buzzzz all around the stage but that works only poorly.
She takes out ads in the local papers and she advertises on the internet. Tickets start to sell pretty well. We set up a camera so that we can broadcast performances live online.
She gets nervous as opening night approaches.
She snuggles up to me in bed and whispers in my ear all of her fears and I know that it feels good to her to purge that way, to release those fears into the world.
She is always very sweet on the days after those purges. She goes back to the bumble bees and talks to them all day and when the sky gets dark she comes to me and says that the bumble bees seem to get it now. They are ready for the show.
She wears a little black dress on opening night and she makes my mouth water and before the curtain I push her into a dark corner and kiss her hard and touch her inappropriately.
She doesn't breath at all during the performance. She crosses her fingers.
She is happy. I can see her eyes through the darkness backstage. She is so pleased with the actors and the snails and the bumble bees.
She isn't sure if the audience really understood the show, but she knows that there was only a slim chance that they would get it in the first place. It's not about their comprehension, it's about telling the story the way it needs to be told.
She slips under the sheets that night and kisses me for a very long time. She wears nothing and her body moves against mine and we never get to sleep.
She is my Buttercup and she is inexplicable but lovely.