The Turtle and the Butterfly

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A sneak preview of Rachel's short story featured in the League of Utah Writers Anthology: WE ARE DANGEROUS.

The Turtle and the Butterfly: A Fable
​By Rachel DeFriez
 
“Turtles,” Paul, the Peruvian jungle guide, pointed towards the shore. The clunky hum of the motor waned as they slowed to get a better look. “They’re cold-blooded. After rain, they move more sluggishly. They come to warm themselves in the sun.” 
Natalie pushed back the hood of her rain poncho and swiveled to see. A tattered tree trunk, gray with the wear of rain and sun, hovered a snout’s breadth above the river. Broken branches like flailing limbs protruded from the brown water. Natalie scanned the shore beyond. “Where?”
“On the log.” Paul pointed again. Natalie liked her guide because his English was excellent, considering he’d grown up a child of the Amazon. The occasional demise of an article, a forgotten tense, a lost “s” only added spice to his narration, and her Spanish was limited to the vegetarian items on the menu of her favorite Mexican restaurant. 
Squinting, Natalie followed his finger and spotted a rounded helmet squatting on the trunk. “Turtle!” she exclaimed, grinning. The warmth of her smile could melt the stone of a weathered gray statue.
Tall, svelte, elegant, Natalie’s natural, flamboyant beauty had allowed her to fund her education by dabbling in modeling. Beauty never lacks appreciation, but in her case, it camouflaged a sharp intellect with a quick grasp and a voracious appetite for knowledge. She graduated in marketing with such distinction that one of her professors recommended her for a coveted entry-level position in a local, well-established, highly successful investment firm. In one week, she taught herself financial modeling and outshone all the other plodding male finance majors to win the position. Setting her sights on a promotion to portfolio manager by thirty, she hovered easily above her male colleagues. Having fluttered up the ladder to an office with a window overlooking the asphalt and concrete of the city, she ventured out to the rivers and towering canopies of the Amazon to learn the ways of the jungle.
“Turtles.” Paul emphasized the “s.”  Another lumbered up the trunk. Two or three others reposed on smaller branches. 
Natalie leaned over the edge for a closer look. The boat rocked. “Butterflies!” she exclaimed. Above the wrinkled head of the turtle hovered a flickering trio of wings. Above all other living creatures, Natalie loved butterflies. The image of a neon symphony fluttering above the drab shell of the turtle triggered in her a rare moment of the sublime amidst the raw violence of the jungle. 
As one of only three women working at the small-cap investment firm, Natalie fancied herself a shimmering stained-glass window in the dingy gray architecture of a traditionally male-dominated profession. Naturally, she imagined the butterflies benevolent, bestowing their vivid charm upon the slow, wrinkled dullness of the turtles. Twisting the lens until the colors sharpened, she snapped a photo: blue, purple, and green iridescent wings perched upon the dull nose of the sluggish nomad—perfection in the balance of opposites. “How lovely,” she sighed, overwhelmed by a breath of romance.
“Not really,” Paul remarked. “Not when you know why the butterfly sit on turtle’s nose.”
 
***
 
WHY THE BUTTERFLY SITS ON THE TURTLE’S NOSE
The handsome ones never cry. 
Sylvia’s thick, black eyelashes fluttered as the strapping young male approached. Square jaw, lips round and thick, candy really—sweet, but offering no substance for survival. Arms cut and trim, legs tanned and sculpted, his tank and shorts were more of a social decorum, plumage to accentuate the desirability of the male. Three benches lined the path between him and Sylvia. The park’s pines, oaks, and maples cut a teeming green jungle through the heart of the concrete city. The tune of tropical colors in Sylvia’s silk dress lured the runner’s eye, but it was her symphony of auburn hair, green eyes, and lithe figure that trapped his gaze. 
A ray of evening sun sliced through the slate clouds of afternoon rain. A sheen of sweat glistened on the man’s flesh. Sylvia had survived on the salt of sweat before, but it was the salt of tears Sylvia craved—man tears.
Only tears could fill the empty well her father had left behind. His thirst for nectar unquenchable, he had flitted from blossom to bud and abandoned her, small and fragile, to the care of her wilted mother. Sylvia wanted an apology. But the apology never came—no tear-stained letter, no rainy night knock on the door, no haphazard meeting in the liquor aisle of the neighborhood grocer. She grew to crave the salt of tears he had denied her. With thin threads of anger, loneliness, and abandonment, she spun a cocoon around her deprived childhood. When she emerged as a woman, she found she had sprung stunning wings of vengeance and an insatiable thirst for tears. Wielding the tools with which nature had endowed her, she harvested those tears and poured them into an abyss she could never quite fill.
Lifting a cell phone to her ear, Sylvia extended a willowy finger. The very tip of her painted nail lightly grazed the male’s flesh as he passed. Their eyes met. Their scents mingled. Glancing over her shoulder, she luxuriated for a moment in the admiration he splashed over her in his wake.
Turning her face to the stream of light across the path, Sylvia laid her fingertip on her lip. The sweat of longing trickled across her tongue. 
Her nose crinkled.
No substance. Little flavor. 
Salt squeezed from hard labor and dedication could not hope to rival the luscious texture of salt stewing in the savory emotional soup of a tear.
At a bend in the path, the bars of the jungle gym rose out of a square of shimmering sand. Sylvia’s heart quivered. Children—such sweet tears so easily drawn. Like monkeys, they frolicked, squealing and chittering, rolling and racing, swinging and spinning. She was a favorite with children, but oh, the howling ruckus to be endured for provoking an easy sob! No, no, the trick with toddlers was perception. To comfort a howling child into gentle weeping was to sip with impunity the nectar of the jungle’s most tender buds. 
She slowed her step as a small boy clambered to the top of the slide. The retiring sun bounced off the tongue of blue plastic. The boy maneuvered his stubby legs beneath him. He teetered. The luck of the jungle was with Sylvia. She was passing just at the moment of his very first try! There would, most assuredly, be boy tears.
The child lost his balance, plopped onto his rear, and careened down the slide, flailing like an upturned ladybug on his back. Taking flight at the end, he crash-landed in the sand. More astonished than hurt, he stared momentarily into the clouds before releasing a heart-wrenching howl.
Sylvia had timed her approach to perfection. Her lip curled in anticipation. The electric blue stiletto of her sandal veered from the path and sank into the sand. Cooing sympathetically, she bent and brushed the child’s hair from his eyes. “Poor baby,” she murmured, the jubilant colors of her silky sleeve caressing his chin, “weren’t you so brave?” Perfectly calculated, her words quieted the howling into weeping. “That’s right, sweet boy, cry a bit and you’ll feel much better.”
Nectar welled about the edges of his irises, and a juicy, round drop hovered at the corner. She reached a hand to gently lift his head. The drop dribbled onto his plump cheek.
By this time, the mother, hovering near a much smaller female, had spotted the accident and was charging, baby on hip, across the sand. Nature had endowed Sylvia’s face and form with grace to dispel all suspicion of malevolence. The face of a comforting angel fluttering above her son’s nose met the mother’s anxious exclamations. “Caleb, what happened, kidlet? Did you fall?”
Sylvia’s thumb brushed away the tears. “What a brave boy!” Careful not to disturb the tear glistening on her fingertip, she bundled the toddler into his mother’s empty arm, waving away her maternal gratitude, apologies, and self-recriminations. 
Back on the path, Sylvia fairly sucked at her thumb. Inhaling deeply, eyes shut, she captured for sublime seconds the savory sweetness that quenched her raging thirst for tear salt. Shivering to her bones, she exhaled deep satiation. 
Only the evening’s main course could hope to rival such an aperitif.  
 
***
 
Natalie poised the camera on the bench beside her. This time of year, the boats normally cruised full to the brim with tourists, but COVID had emptied them. “And?” she asked. “Why do the butterflies hover around the turtle?”
Paul smirked. “You remember, I tell you about soil in Amazon? Is poor and weak.”
Natalie was a quick learner. She forgot nothing; she observed everything. “Yes, that’s why the river is brown. The rain washes all the nutrients in the soil out to the river.”
“And without nutrients, there is no salt. There is little salt in the jungle. Everywhere, all life thrive upon the tears of the land, but the jungle does not cry. This is why macaw congregate at cliff edge to lick salt trapped in stone. This is why butterfly hover above turtle when he is cold and slow. The butterfly bite his eye, hoping for tears. Hoping to lick salt.” 
 
***
 
WHEN THE TURTLE IS COLD AND SLOW
In the park, benches dotted the path that led to the steps of the museum. Beneath a blooming magnolia sat Bentley. Not even a crisp, Ermenegildo Zegna suit could camouflage the slouch of his shoulders, the slack of his chin, the nervous glancing about of a child accustomed to neglect. At the sight of Sylvia’s approaching rainbow, his entire face beamed, and he sat arrow straight. 
“Bentley, darling.” She leaned to brush his cheek with her velvet lips. “Have you been waiting long?” 
He often waited long. 
Extending shapely, purple-tipped fingers, his wife took his hand and tugged him down the path to her favorite restaurant.
The other clients raised their eyebrows and stared as Sylvia and Bentley strolled to their table. How did he, a dull, lumbering man, merit the company of such a flamboyant, clearly superior species of a woman? Bentley’s ego inclined him to believe that his charming, extrovert wife was attracted to the gentle soul and intriguing mystery hiding inside his dull shell.
Oh, how he needed that shell. A predator of Wall Street, his father clung with sharp claws to the lofty ledge of the one percent. Daily, he lanced poisonous darts of disappointment and disdain at Bentley.
The waiter pulled out a chair near the window for Sylvia. Her seat reigned over the restaurant’s view of the park below. She tittered with delight as if this were the first time such an honor had been bestowed upon her, as if she hadn’t expected such preferential treatment, as if she didn’t know that her charm and poise subdued all who met her. 
Even Bentley’s father loved Sylvia. 
She was the only choice the young man had ever made that drew the old tyrant’s approval. At the sight of her, his father’s iron jaw relaxed, glossed over with a childish desire to capture in cupped fists Sylvia’s flighty color. The image of his father, one of the jungle’s big cats, reduced to obsequious servitude, coaxed a smirk to Bentley’s lips. Satisfaction puffed his chest as he watched the waiter dote on his wife. 
And then, his eye twitched and a bitter aftertaste puckered his lips. Bentley had thought his father incapable of love. He’d grown to accept the reality. His father was not programmed, like Alexa, with words of approbation; the hunting instinct robbed him of the time to nurture. Bentley had found comfort in the consolation that a man who loved no one showered him with the trappings of wealth: Newport mansions on both coasts, Armani Privé and Kiton, I-gadgets, luxury yachts, and vacation villas on Lake Como along with servants to fulfill his every want and need—nearly. The son imagined such shallow offerings were expressions of the deepest depths of his father’s affections.
Until Sylvia fluttered into their lives and pricked his eyes. The bubble of illusion popped. It was only Bentley that his father could not love. 
Tittering with gratitude at the small deference shown her, Sylvia perched her lips briefly upon the waiter’s cheek. His chest bloated, and his eyes narrowed with color lust until they met Bentley’s and the lust melted into envy. Envy of Bentley. With Sylvia on his arm, Bentley was enviable. The sting in his eyes receded as he basked in a new wash of satisfaction.
Around the couple, vintage wines bloodied sparkling crystal goblets. Silver forks chimed against white china. A faint scent of cooking flesh tinged with garlic and rosemary hung about the table. Laughter barked through the din of conversation. Abundance and avarice trickled through the wooden tables. A jungle of tropical plants camouflaged the skeletons of concrete and pipe beneath the mirage of affluence. Framed by the candy-coated twilight staining the window, Sylvia’s harmonious color hovered, fragile and yet omnipotent. 
“I think I’ll order the filet mignon. Maybe champagne.” Bentley nodded, reassuring himself that he deserved a bit of self-indulgence.
“Are we celebrating?”
 “I closed the Murdoch deal today.” Bentley’s chin rose. “My father said they would never sell, but they did.” 
“Clever boy.” Lips puckered in an air kiss, Sylvia reached across the table, bangles tinkling, and squeezed his stubby fingers. “Of course, they did. You have finesse. You don’t rush. You don’t intimidate. You’re safe and solid.” 
Bentley basked in the warmth of her approbation. His shoulders squared. His neck rose high above the collar of his white shirt and silk tie, soaking it in. The complement warmed his blood and flushed his cheeks. He wanted more, but Sylvia’s gaze fluttered, restless and bored, about the restaurant. 
The waiter returned with sweating glasses of ice water. 
“The garden salad. Sea salt on the side, please.” Sylvia survived on salad. She consumed troughs of lettuce. No wonder she kept the willowy figure Bentley could not hope to rival. What did it matter, though? He was sure that Sylvia scorned such shallow attributes as a handsome face and sculpted chest. She craved something deeper in a man. Something she found in him. 
The waiter nodded and turned to Bentley. “Sir?”
“Uh, yes.” He’d forgotten what he’d planned to order and fumbled with the menu until the words caught his eye. “The filet and…” he scanned the wine menu.
Sylvia’s glance finally lit upon his nose. She leaned across the table to whisper, “You’d better get the salad, darling. Your suit is looking a bit tight around the middle.” 
The barb pricked his tender, bloated pride. Humiliated, he glanced at the waiter. The man’s face didn’t flinch, but something subtle had changed. Rather than tilting his head toward Bentley as he waited for the order, he looked down his nose. Bentley’s eyes stung. He nodded, sucking up the air from his deflated ego. “I’ll have the wedge,” he mumbled to his plate. The waiter nodded, collected the menus, and left. Bentley’s neck folded back into his collar. His shoulders sagged. 
“Bentley, love.” Sylvia reached across the table to place her hand on his. Her touch, like a flint, sparked psychedelic swirls of life in his veins. “Look at these young men.” With a gesture of her free hand, she circled the room. “What do you see?”
Beyond the looks of perplexed envy, he hadn’t really noticed anyone in the restaurant but Sylvia and the waiter. For the first time, Bentley detached his gaze from his wife’s face and glanced around sullenly, taking in the animals behind the faces. “A pack of next-gen cubs dining on the spoils left by their sires.”
“Exactly! Look at them. Are any of them wearing suits?”
Bentley was, indeed, the only man in the room decked out in a jacket, a white shirt, and a tie. “No.”
“You see. Perhaps you shouldn’t wear the suit. It screams archaic. Unevolved.”
“My father always wears a suit. He says a power suit gives you an edge at the table.”
“Oh, your father.” She dismissed the patriarchal monolith that cast its inescapable shadow over Bentley’s entire existence. “Your father still works from an office. The suit has become a joke, a mark of impending extinction, a symbol of the beast left behind in the evolutionary race.”
Bentley’s eyes stung again. What she was saying was that he was a joke. He hadn’t sniffed out the changing environment and adapted. 
The sun sank below the horizon, the pinkish hues faded to gray, and a subtle chill swirled about the window seat.
“The man in the room with a suit is the lowest power man at the table. He’s at the bottom of the food chain, not enough confidence to break the old mold and be himself. He’s wearing a skin that no longer fits. Perhaps it’s time you shed the skin, dear.”
“I never noticed…” Bentley receded easily into a protective shell of apologies and excuses. 
“Of course, you didn’t. Why would you? You’re not the scheming, grasping sort, are you? It’s what I love about you. You have a tender heart.” Her smile melted his pain and rounded the pointed edges of her observations. 
Pulling off the jacket, he draped it over the back of his chair, undid his tie, and folded it into the pocket. He rolled his sleeves before slicing into the iceberg wedge dripping with Roquefort and bacon.
“Do you want to share an entrée?” He already knew the answer and yet hoped they might order something more substantial.
“No, I hate feeling too full. I want to enjoy my dessert.”
Nodding, he swallowed the empty gnawing in his stomach and reached for a warm roll and the soft butter. 
“Speaking of your father,” Sylvia sprinkled a pinch of salt over her lettuce and a solitary black olive, “he’s asked me to the yacht—some Mediterranean junket out of Monte Carlo he’s planning for clients. He invited me this afternoon at lunch—begged me, really.”
Bentley’s knife froze in mid-slice, as if the blade had struck a stone hidden in the leaves. His heart pounded desperately, stalked by the image of bared teeth and claws this invitation conjured in his imagination. A deep breath—inhale, exhale. He clamped his jaws tight. His words mustn’t spit the lava that welled up in his chest. Why would his fingers not stop trembling? His face mustn’t reveal the revulsion and turmoil inside. He cleared his throat of brine. “You? Or us?”
“Just me.” Her tittering giggle did nothing to lighten the mood. “What use would you be on a yacht, sweetheart? You know how sick you get.” She leaned across the table, her eyes brimming with pity. “You don’t even speak French. Besides, your father absolutely insisted you mustn’t come.”
Bentley couldn’t breathe. He pushed back his chair and walked behind Sylvia to open the window. Old and rusted, it reluctantly cracked an inch. Bentley gasped at the cool night air.
“You know, your father has struggled with these social events since your mother died. He absolutely needs me. Besides, it’s critical you stay here and manage the Murdoch deal. Your father doesn’t trust anyone else to handle it with your finesse.” Sylvia’s smile urged him to swallow the baited hook. 
Bentley dropped back onto his seat. The quiver of his chin, the sting in his eyes betrayed him. It was all too much—too many rival emotions, too many shifting hormones. He couldn’t hope to float above them. The tides swirled and rose until they pricked at the whites in his eyes.
“I don’t want you to go.” Tears welled up and spilled out with the words. His world swayed beneath him, a broken log adrift in the torrent of a voracious river. His legs trembled, unsteady on the wooden seat, threatening a tumble into the rushing tide.
“Ah, darling Bentley. You’re jealous! Of your father? His clients?” She dismissed both with a flutter of her fingers. “Don’t worry, my pet.” Leaning across the table, she brushed her thumb beneath his eye, smearing the tears from the bridge of his nose to the top of his cheek. 
His tremors calmed and the waves receded. 
“I could never love anyone as much as I love you.”
 
***
 
Her mouth open, Natalie sat in silence. The boat’s motor hummed to life. She glanced back at the log. When the turtle had taken all he could stand, or perhaps when his blood had warmed sufficiently, he toppled desperately off the dead trunk into the water.
One butterfly, vibrant purple and black, fluttered across the river to the boat. Intrepid, it landed precariously on the slowly accelerating bow. Its beauty seemed so delicate, so ephemeral. Natalie picked up her camera and twisted the lens. Her perspective had changed. Click. 
Slowly, a faint smile curved the corner of her lips as she watched the deceptively fragile, glamorous butterfly cling bravely to its perch against the growing wind. 

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