The Congress House was alive with activity. A band of troubadours played in the corner incorporating tuba and trumpets into their vulgar telling of the escapades of pleasure seeking women in their dark cabaret compilation of brass and string instruments presided over by booming percussion from a large teiko drum played by a small man in a floral dress and large brimmed hat. A buffet of sugary snacks was laid out for the attendees to consume with an assortment of sweet fruit-flavored beverage. A crowd of people in all shapes and sizes gathered at the buffet. With arms stretched out, hands grabbed sweets to pile on paper plates of red and yellow. Orange napkins were stacked on the blue tablecloth untouched.

Everyone in attendance was dressed in ostentatious color. They all had their faces painted with a base of white make-up and exaggerated features drawn atop natural ones.

Lyrics ceased and the music changed to only sound the percussion instruments while everyone dropped their plates of remaining snacks into a large barrel lined with white plastic trash sacks. Each clown moved to the beverage table to take a red tumbler filled sugary beverage, pouring it into their mouths before disposing of the plastic cup in another trash receptacle. They moved from the beverage table into their chairs not leaving space in between one another to sit on rows of plastic molded seats. Sounds of bells dinging and horns honking were heard as clowns moved close to each other and they laughed with each abrupt noise that startled one another. Behind the laughter and personal noises growing from the crowd of clowns was an increase in the drumming sounds ushering the clowns into louder exchanges until a small gentleman appeared to rise from a panel in the floor.

His top hat was the very width of the panel and it appeared as though he was a part of the floor rising into existence. The hat tapered after growing to four feet long so it fit around his head. His forehead was accentuated with dark purple make-up under his hairline. He too wore a white base on his face with elongated features giving the illusion of unnatural height. The jacket he wore was blue and yellow vertical stripes. A long necktie covering the buttons on his yellow shirt was made from silk and contained stripes of the whole color spectrum. His pants were tight continuing the illusion of height and the boots on his feet were shiny red vinyl with soles six inches thick.

As his body emerged from the floor, he spread his arms as well as his fingers that were covered in tight satin gloves to stretch his back lengthening his posture.

"Welcome, welcome," the man exclaimed to cheers from the crowd and a crescendo that turned abruptly to silence from the drums!

"This evening we assemble to once again discuss Burgeon Breaking," The crowd erupted with cheering and the master of ceremony smiled showing his stained and crooked teeth.

"The youngsters have bounded over barricades and are braced for beckoning from the brethren of clowns!"

Again the crowd erupted in cheering!

"Many of you have pupils for whom you have provided precepts of proprietary performance in panache and pizazz!

"It is time to take those you have in your tutelage and have them treat us to the tricks they have tamed with the intention to titillate and tickle the throng!"

The master of ceremonies went on for hours speaking in alliterative statements interrupted by the distribution of sugary fruit flavored drink. He partnered up clowns to review outlines of performances of the youngsters each had in their charge and finally had the group break into workshops to discuss execution of their presentations that were due for the next meeting.

Each clown was to bring the child in their charge to perform an act that provides core values of clowning. There were guidelines for the attire and the content. Above all, there was to be nothing suggesting the clowns of this congress were sad.

At the close of an hour in small group discussion, the master of ceremonies called everyone in to a snack break where the clowns ravaged the snack table once again pushing syrups and sugars into their bodies while the troubadours belted music once again from their instruments until the table was empty and the clowns were chewing on the napkins looking for additional sweets.

The master of ceremonies pulled everyone back into their seats and instructed them to review the tenets of clowning, intoning the ending of each point after he coaxed them with the beginning.

"We shall be a presence of live performers on the stage,"

"-Never on the street."

"We shall be a presence of joy and laughter,"

"-Never sorrow, nor grief."

"We shall protect the history of clowning,"

"-By Controlling Legalized Oddities with Nonsense and Shenanigans."

"And if any of the tenets are bent,"

"-We shall break the one who has bent our rule."

Beatrix poured more wine into two tall hand blown crystal hocks with hues of amethyst and ruby.

Dottie rolled a prescription bottle over and over in her fingers and placed it down seconds before asking her girlfriend, "Bea why do you take this garbage?"

Beatrix pushed the bottle of pills into the pocket of the long sweater she wore and said, "When I am sinking, it helps keep me afloat."

Dottie drank the wine in almost one mouthful and continued, "Have you read the side effects?"

Beatrix rolled the stem of the hock between her fingers as the wine inside threatened to jump over the sides to stain the linen table cloth. She looked blankly through the eyes of her girlfriend, smiled in her defense and said, "My favorite is sudden and unexplained death."

Dottie let out a guffaw nearly spilling the wine from the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away with a paper napkin and said, "What the hell is that?"

Beatrix continued smiling while she asked her own question, "You ever see clothes lying on the ground?

Dottie nodded.

Beatrix took a mouthful of wine and her throat gulped while ushering the libation into her esophagus. "Ever see the whole outfit? Like shirt, pants, socks and shoes," she asked while raising her eyebrows?

Dottie placed her empty hock on the table and steadied her grasp flat to the linen cloth as she nodded.

"Sudden," Beatrix said elongating the syllables to emphasize the words, "And unexplained," Beatrix continued interrupting her words with another sip of her wine, "Death."

Dottie squealed with delight losing her breath in laughter!

"The only other explanation," Beatrix revealed, "For the absence of body while clothing remains," she continued as she held up her finger before saying the words, "Is rapture."

Dottie poured more wine and steadied herself before asking for clarification using just one word, "Rapture?"

Beatrix nodded and said, "Rapture. Taken into the clouds." Beatrix shrugged her shoulders.

Dottie spread pungent creamy cheese on to a toasty slice of bread. She picked it up between two fingers and ushered it delicately over her tongue feeling the texture of the washed rind and smelling the aroma of the age through her palette. Her girlfriend continued to talk.

"This morning, while walking to work, I saw," Beatrix paused and exhaled before saying, "discarded on the street, big red floppy shoes, blue and gold polka dot shirt, blue satin pants and a curly blonde wig."

Dottie interrupted with the question, "Did you get a photo?"

Beatrix shook her head in negation, "I just stood there looking at the empty clown." Beatrix emptied the wine from her hock into her mouth and as her girlfriend poured more, she said in a hushed voice, "It made me sad." 

The sun was hot and the hem of the grey linen pants Beatrix wore kept catching in the heel of the ankle high boots she wore on her feet. She felt unbalanced and a throb behind her eyes was making her vision blur. She shifted the weight of her purse from her right shoulder to her left and wiped a bead of sweat from under the rim of the ovular sunglasses resting on the bridge of her nose before feeling overwhelmed by the weight of her sky blue striped seersucker blazer. Beatrix placed her travel mug of iced coffee on the sidewalk, removed her purse completely from her shoulder and lay the heavy bag on the ground before her and then peeled the jacket from her body, folded it over the bare skin of her arm, and then picked up her things with the intention to get on with the walk to work.

But the distraction that presented itself before her eyes did not allow the continuation and Beatrix stood hunched over, looking to glitter on the sidewalk. The glitter floated in a swirl of air and then lay flat on the ground unmoving. Over and over again, small flecks of metallic dust moved for a moment and then settled.

Crouching over the glitter, Beatrix saw in her periphery a single feather float in the air and settle near the glitter. She turned her head to see more feathers, strips of rainbow satin and broken balloons lying strewn on the ground. There was a message board wrapped in gingham print cotton fabric with elasticized lace and thumbtacks that held postcards, photos and notes, broken in half as it was used for the blunt object in a situation where one possibly received an unexpected blow to the head and neck. Beatrix rose on her heels and as she rose, she grasped the handles of her purse so when she stood, her purse hung down at her calves. She took an inventory of what appeared to be remnants of fun. But then she noticed several closed plastic trash sacks on the curb. Someone cleaned up, she thought, but there was open frivolity for which no one cared.

Beatrix looked around her to discern the space in which she stood noting the street signs hanging perpendicular and in a moment remembered months before when she saw the clown rapture on the sidewalk of the same street. She pressed her memory to recall the exact location and was unable.

Beatrix shook off the reminder about the empty clothes and returned her stare to the mess on the ground. She thought it to be a complete contradiction to the neat plastic bags holding the rubbish.

Beatrix wondered silently about the contents of the bags.  If this is the mess that was left out in the open, then what feculance could be concealed?  Beatrix did not open the bags to explore.

Beatrix collected her things and looked at the building she stood before and noticed the word CONGRESS carved into a panel above the door. She knew this was not a congress building. She then questioned that perhaps the word did not always mean the thing she thought it meant and made a mental note to look up the etymology of the word when she had time.

"Madam, do you need help?"

The voice boomed in Beatrix's ear as she stared at the word over the door. She nodded and felt someone touch her elbow.

Realizing she implied an affirmative sentiment and intending the opposite, she quickly corrected, "I really am fine. I was just," she said and realized she did not know how to explain what she was doing on the ground hunched over her things and suspicious of the things surrounding her. Beatrix shook off the hand of the stranger and continued in the path to her workplace noticing his stare followed her as she turned her head to assure she had collected all her things from the sidewalk.

Beatrix worked in a specialty paper shop. She knew it was a dying trade and still, she went to classes to learn how to make paper and to make things from paper and enjoyed the way it felt on her fingertips. Beatrix liked the way paper smelled and the way in which people touched the greeting cards hanging on the walls. She especially enjoyed when she noticed people slide a handmade card from the protective plastic sleeve and smell the aromas of almond or pine that lingered from the wood fibers in the pulp. She wondered if they knew exactly what they were smelling or if there was an unknown involuntary sense memory that triggered a nostalgia. She spent her free time reading books so that her fingers could dance across old pages of old books noting the varying aromas triggering a nostalgia of her own, remembering all the characters with whom she became acquainted when she retreated from her less than stellar childhood. Beatrix ordered scented papers and folded origami animals to hand to people she met in her life. She was fascinated at the versatility and the utility of paper. She used paper to write notes instead of leaving messages on electronic mail and sent cards when she thought fondly of someone. She was even known to send a card when she was displeased with someone.

"Sorry I'm late," Beatrix apologized when she walked up to the door to unlock the building, "I was running late. There was a line in the coffee shop. And then," she paused as she swung the door open.

"It's okay. I just got here," her co-worker assured as he picked up the things she lay on the ground to free her hands so she could unlock the door and then lay them on the inside of the shop while Beatrix locked the door behind them.

Arthur explained he too had a tough morning after an exhausting night as well, but Beatrix blocked out his words from her auricular path and continued in her routine indecisive if she wanted to share the oddity of the glitter with her co-worker or spend more time alone sorting it through her own thoughts.

She pulled a coaster from the top left drawer of her desk before placing her iced coffee down and hung her jacket on the back of the chair at her desk. She hung her purse in the closet and as she locked the door, she listened to the tumbler engage the lock as she turned her fingers. She thought again to the stranger who came up behind her on the corner in front of the Congress building and could not recall hearing his footsteps. She shook off whatever half thoughts she had, reiterating the distraction that lay before her and pushed all of it from her thoughts to begin her workday.

Arthur called from the front of the shop, "I'm unlocking the door."

Beatrix closed her eyes and thought she was not ready for interaction with strangers but it was the nature of the job and his call was merely an announcement of the time.

Beatrix booted up her computer and immediately conducted a search to determine what congress was home in the building three blocks away. She found nothing. She assumed it was a relic of the colonial buildings in the city, but did not know the right keywords in which to have the search engine produce informative results. Hours went by before she gave up the search. She looked at the bangle on her arm holding the time and realized half the day had passed without any interruption. She assumed it was because she appeared busy and not that patrons have been sparse, hearing the shopping traffic around her.

Beatrix thumbed through the appointment book and saw that she had an afternoon meeting with someone to choose custom invitations and decided to take a lunch break. She walked to the front of the store doing a cursory view of staff coverage, retail exchange and interaction with the patrons. Satisfied with what she saw, she pulled a cashier aside and explained that she was going to The Draughthaus for lunch.

"Bring us back," were the only words the cashier expelled before someone arrived for a transaction and Beatrix glared at the cashier indicating the words she was approaching were inappropriate.

The Draughthaus was a bar that served food and although the cashiers had time for a lunch break and there would not be judgment if they spent their personal time in the bar having a beer with a sandwich, she would not return with alcoholic beverages for her staff regardless of how amusing the cashier thought the quip to be each day she said it.

Beatrix arrived at The Draughthaus and took a stool at the wooden counter in the window ordering a sandwich with a side salad and non-alcoholic iced tea. She frequented the bar but felt the food stood on its own merit without the need or desire to drink alcohol simply because she had planted herself on the interior of a building offering intoxication.

Beatrix stared out the large leaded glass window giving a tessellated view of the outside world and specifically, of the white building she squatted before in the morning. She looked at the word CONGRESS over and over again to see if there was something she had not seen in the quick glance of the morning. There was nothing unusual about the word. There was nothing unusual about the letters. There was not even unusual space in between the letters indicating it may be an acronym for something else. The word only read CONGRESS.

Congress, she confirmed in the bit of research she conducted in the morning was a meeting. She pressed her thoughts to remember what she read on the computer.

A formal meeting.  An assembly.  A discussion.  Promotion of a matter of common interest.  An arrangement.

Beatrix stroked her fingertips over her forehead to relax the muscles in her face. She strained to see through the gossamer curtains behind the clear glass of the window across the street. She looked for movement and saw none. She looked at the space in front of the building where the rubbish had been earlier in the day.

A city street cleaner walked past the window and spun a straw broom in her view distracting her from the building she was watching. Did the street cleaner sweep up everything that was outside the trash sacks? The trash collectors she had seen in the neighborhood only took bagged items placed in receptacles. She had even known some of her neighbors to receive municipal fines for not adhering to the regulations for recycling and refuse disposal. There was no way, she thought, that they would sweep glitter and feathers from the sidewalk. 

And, while her attention was drawn to the jovial way in which the street sweeper pulled waste into a dust bin, she saw with the corner of her eye, a door close on the side of the white Congress Building. She looked intently to the side and allowed her eyes to move only to look at the front door sweeping past the windows dressed in light curtains to see if whatever or whoever was responsible for the movement on the side would cause movement within the room she could see through the window.

She pressed her memory and wondered if she ever noticed activity in the building. She had sat at this very counter many afternoons and walked past the building almost daily.

Her thoughts tried to reconstruct the man from the morning. She pressed her eyelids tightly together and wondered if he wore a suit and decided he could not have been wearing a suit with the heat of the day. She corrected her thought with the notion it would be unusual to be wearing a suit with the heat of the day. She remembered a hat but could not recall a color or shape. She thought to the day when she saw the empty clown and placed a conical party hat on his head before shaking her head to dislodge the thought. He was not wearing a hat, she decided. She thought he may have been wearing a dark tee shirt and blue denim jeans, then thought he was not wearing dark colors but something light in hue. Red? She corrected herself again, it was not bright. It was light. Green. She decided finally it was a lime tee with a v-neck collar and blue jeans. She could not visualize a belt, and then questioned perhaps suspenders and thought certainly definitely blue suspenders.

The bartender walked over to Beatrix, placed his hand on the small of her back as she remained on the stool with her chin resting in her palm.

"You going back to work today or can I bring you a beer?"

She smiled recognizing his Belgian accent and was pulled back from the irrational thoughts she was having into the time and space in which she sat.

"I have a meeting at three. Beatrix explained and turned on the stool to face her friend. She looked a the time on the silver plated watch dangling from her wrist before saying, "I guess I better go; it's already two-thirty."

Andrew nodded and said, "I'm not kicking you out, and you are always welcome to return," before handing her a slip of paper indicating the cost of her lunch.

Beatrix sighed, paid her bill, walked back to the shop and asked if her appointment had yet arrived to which Arthur shook his head in negation.

Beatrix readied herself for the appointment still thinking about the sights she had seen throughout the day and considered that she may have fabricated portions in her head.

Beatrix pulled a velvet cord through a grommet fixed to the wall and clipped it to another grommet. The separation occurred to give the custom shopper privacy and urgency while providing an air of patience and importance. She cleared a large circular table of the paper bits others had placed during shopping and pulled samples from a file laying each piece of paper with care and precision on the table. She lay five very different styles of invitation with various grammage. She lay in the center of the table some ornamental folded paper items and then went back to her desk to wait, reviewing details in the appointment book such as the appointment's name and preferences revealed on the phone.

Her appointment arrived and Beatrix asked what the shopper had in mind so that she could take time to look at the person sitting before her. Her client sat in the chair next to Beatrix using small words but moving her mouth in big movements. With every word, she seemed to move closer to Beatrix and Beatrix felt herself inching away. The client's face sparkled. She had a sheen of moisturizer that made her skin glow under the bronze make-up she wore. She wore black eyeliner and mascara that clumped together the lashes in sharp points. Her eyelids hosted shadow of purple and red. Everything about this woman was sparkling and colorful. Even the neutral hues on her skin were vibrant and sung in the light of the shop.

When she elongated her finger to point to the items she preferred, Beatrix noticed her fingernails were polished with a lavender color. The skin on her hands held the same shine as the skin on her face. Beatrix was fascinated at how shiny this woman was before her.

And without surprise, at the end of the meeting, Beatrix prepared to place a custom order for the invitations containing three differing weights of paper and adorned with glitter. It was the most complex of choices Beatrix laid out and she would have guessed this client wanted nothing less than complex.

Beatrix returned all the choices to their places on the wall and in the files before sinking into the chair behind her desk, keeping the velvet cord draped to separate the store from the custom papers and sat in silence looking at a blank computer screen to appear as though she was engaged in work, but really only waited until she regained the stamina to say goodbye to her staff.