by Mon D Rea
“Oh right! Sorry, Chester. Guess I lost track of time again.” Her hand sweeps a stray strand of brown hair up and out her face and now Sephtimus can’t stop staring because her eyes are these unfathomable blue lakes.
“Is - is OK.”
She knows my name, he thinks. Or his.
She puts the book away and fishes for her compact inside her huge designer bag. All the while Sephtimus is left gawking by her table. Faster than a spiral of dominoes, the moment of indecision spreads over him and takes over all motor and verbal functions. Every instinct’s telling him to turn around and walk away, turn around and walk away before he humiliates himself. That’s when Lessa notices he hasn’t left.
“What is it this time? Did I forget to get the check again?”
Sephtimus shakes his head loudly because his tongue refuses to work. He struggles against stage fright like a swimmer in a surprisingly deep part of the sea and battling one overwhelming wave after another. It’s certainly a whole lot easier to just keep his mouth shut and swim back to shore.
“I…”
Just say good night and turn around this was nothing but wishful thinking right from the start she’s looking at me looking at me waiting for me to say something anything –
“I’m…”
Those eyes of the lightest blue shade are trained on him.
“Yes?”
“I’m…”
He takes a big gulp but his Chester throat feels parched.
“I’m… I…
She stares at him. His own Chester pupils are the wide apertures of a camera.
“ …hungry,” he manages to gasp out at last. “I’m hungry.”
Sephtimus feels like a balloon blown up almost to the point of bursting, now deflating.
But she’s still looking at him as though he’s a curious thing that came out of her usual meal of sugar-free cookies. So the next thing he recites is: “How about you?”
She smiles. And all at once it’s like another light has been switched on in that corner of the coffee shop. The beautiful, warm smile infects Sephtimus and he grins like a buffoon. He’s an adult human grinning and blushing like a prepubescent youth while all around him in various listening posts, muted sighs of relief go off among Chester’s friends and supporters.
“As a matter of fact, yes, I’m famished.” She has finished putting all her stuff away in her bag.
“Are you allow to eat?”
At first, she looks at him as though she’s about to take offense. Then marvelously, incredibly, she laughs. A spontaneous, uninhibited, clear-as-crystal sound that also falls like rain after a long dry spell. Sephtimus has made a mistake but Lessa’s brain heard his question the proper way, which it so happens is a really clever thing to say because, being a model, she’s unnaturally thin.
“You’re funny,” she says. Sephtimus flashes an even wider grin.
****
Moving in style actually means leaving behind Lessa’s red Bentley (or for that matter, Sephtimus’ majestic-in-a-haunted-castle-way carriage). The reaper leads the bewildered model to the back of the coffee shop and to the real Chester’s faithful steed: a three-speed bike that’s two sizes too big for him. But unlike Chester’s original which is often found leaning against the dumpster, this one stands on its kickstand in the middle of the back alley, its frame polished and gleaming in the moonlight and its rear rack and fenders evoking nostalgia.
Lessa approaches this with eyes filled with emotion. For a moment she’s transported back to a day in her childhood when her father presented her her first bike. This particular scene has been clearly preserved in her memory because it’s one of the few occasions when Mr. Conti, the overprotective single father he was bound to be, actually lowered his guard. Lessa remembers wishing for a bike on her eighth birthday but not having enough courage to tell her father, only to be taught that day that fathers didn’t need to be told.
She remembers walking to the park with him and the bike between them, which is white with yellow fenders and streamers on the handlebars; her Papino still giving last-minute reminders and not quite giving up the role. Afterwards, whenever she skinned her hands and knees (there was a lot of that), he was always there to patch her up. Each time he wondered if he wasn’t making a mistake all along and they had more than a few fights on the subject. In fact, on his “first” deathbed, just before his face loosened up in resignation and utter serenity, her Papino’s parting words had been:
“I’m sorry I didn’t let you fall plenty enough. I couldn’t teach you to pick yourself up; and now it breaks my heart to know that at the greatest fall, I won’t be there to catch you.”
Now Chester’s handing her a bike helmet that’s the same matte white affair. The touch of destiny is so pronounced she can’t stop the tears from welling. Of course she’s completely clueless that everything has been researched and orchestrated.
“Why you cry?” Sephtimus asks.
“Oh I just remembered something. I’m fine. Sorry I’m such a crybaby.”
But she isn’t. Either way, the real reason Death asked is because he still hasn’t grasped the concept of human tears, of miraculous water being produced by glands overcome by stress and its protein-based byproducts.
****
To Lessa’s excitement, Chester lets her ride the huge bicycle in her designer leggings and stilettos while he side-saddles on the rear rack with her Bottega Veneta bag slung over his shoulder. The truth behind this is Sephtimus’ lack of confidence in balancing a bike, although he has spent half a human-sized day training for this exact scene and I promised I’d literally be there for him, holding the rear rack in my transparent hands.
Chapter XV: The Bucket List
Models are simultaneously both the catalyst and the product of the world they live in. The fashion industry which has been arousing, feeding off, and slaking the illusions of billions and billions on the planet is a double-edged sword that wounds even the select few who wield it.
Lessa has seen it all: people frying their brains with drugs, an anorexic friend starving herself to death, another slashing her wrists with a broken perfume bottle. Countless others blindly chasing the glitter but left in the end with lives as fake as moissanite. She has stood shoulder to shoulder with them on the same razor-edged cliff, drunk and stoned out of their minds from all their desperate attempts to plug the diabolical hole inside the human heart.
Despite her young age, she has been propositioned too many times, offered deals by the devil atop the dizzying stage. She has learned to use her body as a separate extension of her mind and soul, passed from one stranger to another in a train of loves without reason or consequence. And yet whenever it came time to jump and no matter how far over the edge she was, somehow she always found the strength to pull herself back.
She supposes it’s because of her unique experience with death. She has watched all her loved ones hold on to and finally give up the ghost, one after the other in some evil, pestilential deathwatch, which was both an act and a literal timepiece buried in every foot of wall in the house of Conti; the weakening heartbeat its unforgiving hand. The experience rewarded her with a sort of post-curse luck. She has confronted earlier in life the emptiness that would crush lesser people and precariously succeeded in easing it down to manageable size.
Her trauma was what set her apart from the other girls – all of them beautiful, young and perfect, all of them driven by ambition and worthy of love. In the end, she was one of the lucky few who didn’t fall in over their heads. A survivor. She realized it was either you entered the modeling world empty, which was tragic, or full, which was rare. But she was one of a kind in that she came completely empty but her body rejected all the ambrosia it took. She knew that no matter how many times they slapped and stomped it out, the hole in their lives would always slide back on top like a shadow.
At rare moments when she’s asleep and her subconscious is at its strongest, the realization hits her with the full force of the obvious, t
hat she’s been under the wing of a supernatural benefactor all along. And her skin pricks into gooseflesh to warn her of something her mind can never bring to light.
Everything Lessa has gone through in life has made her nearly impossible to seduce. If your average female has antennas tuned in to every insecurity a man’s covering up inside himself, Lessa’s a bloodhound that can sniff it out from miles away. On one hand, this means dropping the tall-dark-rich-and-handsome package was a good call. On the other, it plunged Sephtimus’ chances to an abysmal low.
****
They end up at a well-kept diner where the waitresses glide in rollerblades, cute majorette skirts, and the customary Halloween pumpkin hats. The milkshakes come with tiny umbrellas and the pancakes with toothpicks stuck in them. John Lennon, Karen Carpenter and John Denver are playing on the speakers. All these are perfect for the occasion because Lessa has of course been wined and dined through most of her teenage and adult life so nothing less than extraordinary would impress her. But sitting there snug between scrubbed tabletop and ‘60s-style booth, fake cobwebs and skeletons hanging from the ceiling, she sees everything in a special light.
“Happy in your work?” she asks.
In a flash, images of pleading souls being dragged into the fiery pits cross Sephtimus’ mind and he’s gripped with alarm. “Work?”
“Yes, at Brew Bear.”
“Ah yes!” Relief washes over the reaper like cold water from a fire-truck after the blaze on Chester’s cheeks. “Yes, I’m happy. Every day… but no Tuesday.”
“Except Tuesday? Why’s that?”
The vision of her looking at him with those large liquid eyes that have the power to weaken men’s knees has two contradictory effects. First, he basks in the reality of it, that he’s finally talking to such an attractive human being, but at the same time the idea incapacitates him from uttering a word.
“Tuesday I wear big bear costume, call customer come in from street.”
“There’s a Brew Bear mascot?! How come I didn’t know this? Oh you’ve got to show me.” Her eyes sparkle above the whipped cream of her PB and banana milkshake.
“Oh, please no…” Chester groans.
“Why not?”
“Is so hot. People take picture and post in FB. Inside I’m sweat… like sauna.”
She makes a small, irresistible giggle.
“After laundry,” Sephtimus says teasingly, “you maybe want to try it?”
“ME?” Lessa flashes her reaction at him. A cute, open look of incredulity (with just a hint of panic) in the shape of her eyes and lips. “I don’t think so. Absolutely not.”
“Come on. It be fun!”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. You see, I have very bad coordination.”
“You wear maybe 7 inches heels every day as model. But you are afraid of wear bear costume… Interesting.”
“Am not,” she pretends to glower at him and hides her smile behind an elegant sip from the straw. “That’s different.”
“Do model fall on stage? Is often?”
“Yes, more often than you think. I’m always afraid of falling down.”
“Did you? One time?”
“Thank God no.”
“Do the audience, the boss be angry?”
“No, actually they don’t. They clap when they see a model fall and get up.”
“Then… is good you fall down more, no?”
She smiles softly at him. She looks at the waitresses as they glide on their skates and serve the other tables.
“Do you know skating?” Sephtimus asks.
“No, no. Well, I used to. Many years ago, when I was just a teenager.”
“I go to ice-skate with friends last week, in mall. I fall down many times so people look at me and shake their head.” Chester laughs. “But I notice something. I know best skaters are not people who don’t fall… best skaters are kids. They fall down many times but they not care. Kids don’t afraid falling on butt.”
“Hmm. You know what, that makes perfect sense.”
“Will you come with us sometimes?”
“Maybe,” she answers with very fragile commitment but with a light in her eyes.
“If you come, I promise I wear bear costume on ice.”
“Seriously?” She grins. “You’d do that?”
“Yes,” he answers. “Anyway, it in my bucket list.”
“A bucket list? Isn’t that for teenagers?” Those fathomless, edge-of-heaven eyes.
“Nobody too old for bucket list. My job in Brew Bear is in bucket list too.”
“Oh you mean you really wanna help people by making hot cups of coffee?”
“Yes, specially very hungry Italian models.”
“Oh thank God,” she says laughingly.
“Yes, I think…”
“What?” she prompts. Dazzling. Disarming.
“Everybody should have bucket list. Age isn’t matter. Anyone can disappear tomorrow.”
She looks at him, deep in thought. But her face won’t betray her feelings.
“What you thinking?”
“Well, all this talk about bucket lists. It’s too morbid for a first date, don’t you think?”
“Oh so sorry,” Sephtimus tells her. “I didn’t know this is date. If I know, I talk stock market.”
Lessa smiles. The Beatles has started playing a dark piece through the muted speakers.
“But we not talk about death, Lessa. We talk about life.” Chester points to the ceiling where the words of “Happiness is a Warm Gun” are wafting. “Speaking of John Lennon, he said: ‘Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans’.” Sephtimus repeats the words carefully, just as he has practiced them plenty of times.
She looks at him thoughtfully.
“You’re deep,” she finally tells him. “You just keep surprising me, Chester. You’re not what I expected you to be at all.”
“What you expect?”
“Well, first off, you’re clearly too smart for a barista. And you’re funny and not really shy. Why, a girl can say you’re a genuine Superman hiding behind these glasses.”
“Maybe I’m tired of be judge. And judge other people also by what my eye can see.”
This one is also practiced. Lessa nods and holds his gaze a while.
“Now is my turn,” he says. “Do you like your job?”
“Me? Sure. Every girl’s just dying to have my job, to be me. I’m perfectly happy. Can’t wish for anything else.”
She sits back and takes a sip of her drink. He just keeps staring at her.
“But…?”
“What do you mean “but”? There’s no but.”
“There’s always but.”
Now she considers him with a cornered look on her face, wondering whether or not she should tell him – and what exactly.
“Well…”
“Yes?”
“It’s not easy to explain.”
“Try it.”
She never thought his eyes could bore this deep into her. She looks at him, unable to decide. Finally, she lets out a deep sigh and says:
“I think that life rarely turns out according to plan like everybody wants it to. And those desperate to have control of their lives have it worse…”
At least his sincere interest is encouraging.
“It was a whole lot easier when I was young. I was pretty sure what I wanted to become or what kind of life I wanted to have. But now, if the younger me saw me, I don’t think she’d approve.”
She feels like she’s talking too much, but then he doesn’t seem to mind. And she doesn’t think she can stop either way.
“I had a friend once who… felt exactly like this. She took the battle for control farther than anyone else I know. You hate what you’ve become. To feel better you borrow the life and happiness of another person. And for a while, you do feel satisfied; but eventually you realize it doesn’t quite fit. There’s always something missing. Something gnawing at the back of you
r mind. A bit like the pea in that fairytale, you know. The one stuck under layer upon layer of bedding, making you lose sleep, night after night, bruising your skin and driving you mad. When it gets too bad, you start borrowing another life, another mask. And you keep doing this, again and again and again. Before you know it…”
Sephtimus remains quiet.
“You don’t know who you are anymore. You lose sight of yourself. You lose your soul.”
A pause.
“I think I know what you mean,” Sephtimus tells her with complete honesty.
****
A conversation with a girl shouldn’t be boring or fawning. What it should be is funny, straightforward, and original; and with an attractive woman, all the more so. She should be spoken to not as someone special but as a normal person. This will catch her off-guard because she’s used to being treated just the opposite way.
You have to really listen to what she’s saying. Don’t talk about yourself but try and make her talk about herself; she must work to impress you or catch your interest. Hitting the ball into her court is both a relief and a devious trick. All in all, an assertive, playful, and charged conversation works like a charm.
These were the rules I hammered into Sephtimus in between lessons on practical communication. And yet for the most part, the ideas he has about chatting up the opposite sex come from all the time he’s spent watching people through the Lachesis monitors. Add to this his mind-reading ability and you have a strong contender for Mr. Sensitive.
****
Lessa doesn’t know what’s happening to her or what this dark horse of a man is doing that’s making her feel this way. He’s a wild card. The wildest one in the deck. Perhaps that’s what’s at the bottom of this strange attraction all along; all her life she’s dated men of all shapes but every one of them cut out of the same cloth: loaded, charismatic, competitive, deceptively perfect. Manchester – Chester – is different from them all because he’s never made a claim on any of that stuff. In fact, he’s an underdog but he’s also one of a kind in that there’s something mysterious and frighteningly exciting about him.