In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

ight in here. Every movement was an iconic gesture, each careful step
had the cadence of a hundred centuries. Next to Ula the tourists looked
like blind peasants stumbling around.
"What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Ula demanded and
stopped in front of a roman painting fragment of a winged wild eyed
creature with punk hair and pointed ears that looked suspiciously like
an elf. Where was this going? Penny wondered.
"So, Penny, when you recover from your spell of Stendhal
syndrome, why don't we continue our discussion of E.L.F. and
difference waves and their modulation of the human psyche? Because,
isn't all art modulated by a sublime agent, the invisible muse or angel?"
Before she could respond Penny's eye caught the dried blood
on Ula's hands and sleeves as she swept her arm around to the lilt of
her words. They were back at the stairs, beneath the marble wings of
Nike, who rose above the roar of a thousand living languages.
Dizzy again, Penny grabbed on the low wall and sank onto the
bench slab. Ula remained standing, patient as the marble that
surrounded them. Penny shut her eyes to absorb the torrent of
humanity flowing up and down the stairs.
Work was always the answer at times like these. "Can we stop
for a minute? I gotta get this."
No one would approach the bald stork in her flapping robes.
Penny put on her headphones, and set up the speakers eighteen inches
apart at the foot of the Victory, with the minidisc machine on the stone
ledge. She handed Ula the new ear buds, and with her fingers on the
tiny wheels of the wire control, toggled to balance the sounds. Ula's
pale eye sparked for a brief instant as she inserted the buds.
"Stand there, and don't move. Don't even breathe."
The rush of sound filled the space inside the disk. The
movement of the sound waves that bounced off the marble and
limestone surfaces; off the folds of Victory's chiton, the grooves of the
feathers in her outspread wings were magnified by the Escheresque
volumes of the staircase. And it was all captured in three, no, four,
dimensions.
Her face upturned and beatific Ula stood motionless beneath
the colossal goddess.
After ten minutes Penny turned off the machine, and replaced
all the components. Ula silently handed her the ear phones and they
both merged into the descending crowd.
"Anything else you wanted to discuss, Ula?"
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