Beads and Candy
- Timothy Agnew
- Apr 25
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 2
Agnew’s prose is hypnotic in this meditative character study about disconnecting and revival between two people in a beautifully decaying New Orleans setting.
The city’s beauty and rot mirror their relationship — romantic, sensory-rich, but crumbling underneath.
A fascinating vignette of a relationship and disconnect. — Zoetrope
This is a preview of the first piece for my new short story collection to be published soon.
In India, you’re taught that there are certain qualities that make you a divine human being. — Deepak Chopra
They had breakfast in the little courtyard at the back of the house. Surrounded by larger, American townhouses, a testament to the age of the old house, the 1920s shotgun cottage, raised on brick piers and garnished with lacy Victorian motifs, now sat in the shadows of a progressive New Orleans.
Leti made him a bowl of fried eggs over buttered grits, with avocado, bacon, and a side of fresh fruit. He made them coffee using her stainless-steel French press, and she instructed him to wait five minutes before plunging the coffee.
Under an ancient Spanish oak, he closed his eyes and felt the morning sun bleed through the branches. He opened them and studied her smile.
“I want to draw your lips,” he said, sketchbook in his lap.
“I’ll pose naked if you want.”
His phone pinged. He typed a message and set it back on the table.
“Who was that?” she said.
“My daughter. Teens. Always a new issue.”
She stroked the front of her neck.
He put his notebook on the table and went and sat on the edge of her chair. He kissed her ear and her nose ring and her pufferfish lips. He slipped his tongue into her mouth and tasted buttery avocado and doubt.
He’d been in New Orleans promoting one of his self-help books months ago and she had sent him a message after a podcast entitled Finding Your Construct.
“Sorry I missed you in NOLA. If my construct is still being assembled, where am I?” she wrote.
“You are where you need to be,” he had replied. He couldn’t recall where he got that one. Chopra?
The conversations had gone on for six months and they still had never met. He saw her in the chat boxes during podcasts. They eventually sent pictures and began to converse over the phone.
Initially, he enjoyed only emailing back and forth when no one hand wrote anything, when cursive writing was no longer taught in schools, listening to her typed words, her tone, the intonations one never gets from verbal communication. Words get wasted, lost.
“I want to know you through our words,” he told her. He knew he could help her, it was his gift, a gift that he liked to believe came from East India American parents he barely knew.
The first night they slept together in the New Orleans house, he woke early, the full cerulean moon still hiding in the window.
The room was small, and the entire cottage had original terrazzo floors that spanned the entire floor plan. The rectangular design elongated everything, creating a maze-like effect.
At first, he forgot where he was, believing himself to be in a hotel room or his Bogota flat. She stirred and at first he thought she was dreaming.
Leti’s spiraling, Creole hair framed the pillow, hiding her brown porcelain face. She was on her side, facing away from him in the bed, her hand buried deep between her legs in a measured stroking that reverberated across the mattress.
It aroused him. He wanted to touch her shoulder, kiss her neck, join her, but his curiosity stopped him. He waited and watched and listened to her breath and how it changed with the shape of her mouth as it twisted into rapture.
Why had she not awakened him? He was naked next to her. It troubled him and created a sexual malaise in his body that he’d never felt before.
She sighed and lifted her chin as though looking over her shoulder at him. Did she know he was awake, that he was watching?
He turned toward the wall and let the blue moon swallow him...
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