In the beginning they would meet, coffee, share amongst themselves the pages of the folio. Damning Contracts to be laughed or gasped at, mocked, marveled over, translated. The rustic turns of phrase, the bargainers reward, pulled straight out of fairy tales - that every chance should favor this one - that for this his music would be played forever, for boots nightly to be filled with gold, this for power, this one for love....
A shared passion, then, for reading, the arts, and it does not hurt that she is beautiful, or that he is handsome.
Share the pages, pore over them, laugh again, read phrases aloud, find references to other famous, obscure personages that made the worst of bargains, read them while listening to Tartini, Robert Johnson, Paganini, the Devil, it seems, favored musicians. Writers, dilettantes, statesmen, scholars, magicians, Popes and various other officers of the Clergy, find and review the paintings of Haizmann, Botticelli's "Map of Hell", compare, collate, find references to the spells used to conjure the demons, the devils, the Dark Lord is busy and has no time for people that can't read directions, follow protocol, yet for all that he's appeared, unbidden, to no end of shepherds, disconsolate lovers and ruined politicians.
This is the beginning. These are the words they know, the folio of diabolical contracts laid aside now in favor of trifles, books shared, poems, passages, until finally entire books are read to each other, her voice, his voice, each made for the others ear, share tastes, and in this there is the balance of the familiar and discovery, they share certain passions, enthusiasms, and are each led a little further into the others world, devouring it as well, growing in the most pleasurable of ways.
It doesn't take long. Somewhere along the way the gallons of coffee turned into liters of wine and you woke up with your face nuzzled into her neck, that great bee-hive of hair.
And these are the days my friend, these are the days.
The long habits of solitude are broken, they twine themselves into each others lives with gifts and small presents. Tokens. A heart-shaped pendant, carved out of Unicorn Ivory, given casually with an careless description of it's value. A macramé vertebrae, some sort of familiar, a house-goblin. A painted Dutch ceramic candlestick, from the 1920's. A fine old-gold men's watch. An unedited 12 volume edition "The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova". A violin.
The gifts grow increasingly rare and preposterous, days passed in curiosity shops, antique shops, thrift shops, garage sales, finding treasures to divide amongst themselves. It would seem they'd known each other forever, so alike they are, so more they become. To go from one home to the the other is to step between two rooms in the same house, no one could tell, from the library to the studio, the kitchen to the shop, that they'd left, driven from one house to the other, one apartment to the other, the grammar of ornament was the same.
And days foreshadow nights with a shared glance, a brush upon her, a touch, this intimacy, it intoxicates, fills the head, and the nights, the nights;
...falling into his or her rumble-down-filled bed, the mattress sags and brings them together, in under covers and then above, his breath on her neck, legs spread or behind her ears, upon her knees, we know this, everyone knows this, the fervor of endless love and early mornings.
This is the beginning.