Trilogy For Three Rectangles

The enlarger clicked off for the third time and Matt developed the test print. Emerging from the dark room, he concentrated on the close up of the orange's flattened peel: three unequal, slightly blurred, horizontal rectangles stacked vertically. Making his final selection, he pitched the test print. . . .

The Wehrenberg at Halls Ferry 14 Cine played LadyHawke to intimate scattering of singles and couples. Life imitated art in its silence as the sunrise caressed Navar's fur. Half human and half wolf, he drank in Isabol's beauty. The gold sun rays slid inevitably up Isabol's slender body and illuminated the longing mirrored in her face. The lovers' strained toward each other but, just before they touched fingertips, with Navar's transformation to human nearly complete, Isabol's blue, almond-shaped eyes were consumed by the round, light-brown of the hawk's eyes. Navar's rage boiled over into a primal scream but was cut short by the mechanical clattering and clicking of the projector. Moans and muffled cries rose as Navar's image flickered uncontrollably across the screen and finally froze in a permanent grimace. The outer frame darkened immediately to a red burning increasingly to brown and advanced greedily inward. Simultaneously, a small rectangle of red with a semicircular right edge bloomed in the upper sixth of the screen. The lower third throbbed into a forest-fire of orange on red viewed from the rectangular faceplate of the asbestos helmet. And, in the middle, hurtling forward, the bright nova orange of the sun glowed a giant rectangle until engulfed the film in flame, leaving only the white quiet of the blank screen.

The thin red canopy, mounted on matching red poles and red railing bolted to the orange boat, framed the distant wheat field. The wheat blazed golden-orange and danced in the pulsing orange sunset. Camille stared at the shoreline farther away than she could ever swim. So much life and light that shore seemed to offer that her eyes could barely stand its orange brilliance. She felt that surely it was passing her by while she and the motionless boat grew roots in the reflected burgundy of the calm water. Camille felt she would drown in the out-of-reach orange she longed to caress. . . .