Pulse

by
Tim Lejeune
©2002

There was no two ways about it: she was stunning. Carefully, she adjusted her skirt. She knew how to dress, she knew how to walk, she knew exactly how to stand still and absorb the looks of admiration. It wasn't that she was perfect - her breasts were smallish, her face was large and round and just slightly asymmetrical (the skin of her nose ran into her cheek higher on the left side than on the right, making it seem, at the first look, as if she'd been taken apart and the last click to slide her face back into place just wouldn't work) and, most of all, under those stylish garments and the cleverly applied make up she was pudgier than she would care to show on any occasion.

Mirrors don't lie on occasions like these, though, and however imperfect the smaller details may have made her, the whole was simply irresistibly sexy, and she knew it. Every bit of it. It was no small victory to finally have won a date with Wild John Silver - the nickname she still used to refer to the man who later turned out to be called 'Bob', which she thought was rather drab. He'd not been an easy catch, though the details on the Rendez-vous website had from the start shown that it was a perfect match: they liked the same movies, they liked the same books from the same authors, they listened to the same kind of music, and both disliked thoroughly being on the damn blind dating scene. He was sceptical - as much as she was - refused to send her decent photographs of himself, refused to talk on line more than once a week, and his emails were… so cryptic, sometimes. She liked it. All of it. He'd been acting like wounded prey, and the hunt was about to get interesting.

She knew of his ex-girlfriend. What else does one do, on sites and chat channels created for the sole purpose of finding love, than talk of love lost? She'd had to tell her own story so often now, that she'd synthesised it into a credible, yet tragic three lines, which she could narrow down still to one, basic thought: she deserved far better than what she got. She did.

She smiled her good smile, the one with the twinkle in her eye and the shyness on her lips, lift her skirt up a bit more again, and walked out of her house on high heels and dreams made off electronically whispered vows.

Her legs had always sufficed to make me loose all my senses, when she decided to showcase them, in the long drawn evenings of summer and early fall. I couldn't pretend it was the heat that made my thoughts sticky and my mouth dry, because she was aware of her attraction over me, as much, I guess, as of mine over her. It had been… five years, now, since we had been that close, but her body had lost none of its glory - as that of a young woman shouldn't - and her stride none of its pride, a self conscious step, not a whoring one.

I recall her excited monologues about 'Wild John Silver', the deus ex machina come to save her from the miserable existence that had befallen her after her last, psychologically unstable and overall nitwit lover had dropped the curtains on their tragicomedy. He fit the bill, this late night cowboy, he was Mr Perfect, and obviously all what had previously come to pass would now have to be viewed as leading up to this slightly miraculous union of souls. After every weekly conversation, she'd come to me and talk and talk, feeding me all I had to know.

The story she had gotten in return for the curriculum miserea of her own love life, was, I'm afraid, born out of laziness. It told of the same adventures that had befallen us when sunsets could make me cry and my words stirred her deepest, darkest femininity. I remember reading that in her diary when it was too late to change anything, amazed at how much she had clung to my act, numbed by how deeply she had fallen in love with a man who never dared to think she was for real, and how I was the first human being able to make her feel like a woman. Not a child. Not a girl. Not a piece of flesh, a daughter, a pair of legs walking down the boulevards of the city. When I touched her, she wrote, she could feel the magic. The union was to be miraculous, yes, but I don't think this was the kind of miracle she had in her anxiously romantic mind.

She stopped. She had given up ladies' night for this. All the girls had wished her good luck. She looked. I had obviously sent her pictures of some dope I had found on the web - some American, I think, who'd posted just the right kind and amount of images to service my needs, to create the intelligent, shy, sexually perverted Bob, hiding behind the big mouthed, desperate and easy going Wild John Silver. Not exactly easy, but once you put bits of yourself into the persona, everything else flows from that. Plus, like I mentioned, I had constant feedback about my own performances. How she had not figured me out after all that time - the charade had begun shortly after we'd gotten reacquainted through a short note by her hand, letting me know her nozem had given her a one way ticket to Dumpsville and she needed someone to talk to, and had lasted up to now, 5 weeks later, or was it 6 already?

Puzzlement breached her perfect face. She is searching. She is scared. This shouldn't take long. Come on. She has to find me before total despair hits her. She has to look into my eyes and understand. Come on!

I rise from my corner and, slowly, I start making my way towards her. She has her back turned to me, but she should be turning around… now.

Now.

"I have no time for your crap right now," I silence her, stifling the surprise on her questioning lips, along with the anger bubbling up, growing stronger, and, somewhere, in the back of her head that eerie feeling of alarm at things not being as they should be, at reality playing tricks she could not possibly have foreseen.

I reach out to her forehead. However much I prepare for this, I never get used to it. My fingers touch her third eye - mathematically, a finger's width below the horizontal axis between her blonde curls and her fair eyebrows, and spot on the vertical axis of her tiny nose, her beaming face, her haunting being… I cling to my feelings, as reality falls from us, I cling to certainties. I conjure up the images of her naked upper body, the smell of her kiss, the soft admiration in her voice, the silent, devoted looks we once shared, all the things we once shared, her fear of being alone, our fear… and call her up, out of and away from the darkness. Have you ever had a dream, where you were falling, and then you'd suddenly wake up? That split second sensation, where your mind thinks you're accelerating ad infinitum, and your body is trying to tell you you're on solid ground, safe under your covers, is how this stage feels, but much stronger, and prolonged. Then, when there is nothing but black mist, and time has no grasp over us, and I know I cannot live without her, everything turns blue, like a wind radiating away from us, and turning the plain darkness into a cool ocean's breeze. I can speak, at this point.

"I'm going to give you something, which I have never been given." She is in shock. I let my hand fall down to my side, releasing her from the choking embrace that kept her alive through the experience. There is a little bit of spit, and snot, running from her face. Just a trickle. Even like that, her eyes popping out, her back slightly arched and her arms halted in a gesture of wildly flailing, as if her body is unsure whether it was truly experiencing mind wrecking pain and pauses to question its own movements, she is quite attractive.

"I have awakened in you a consciousness. You can feel it. You know. With it, of course, come certain… abilities." I look closely at her eyes. She is clearly recovering. She looks at me, and realizes who I am. My words, too, start settling in. She is starting to assimilate - how marvellous the dance between the base instinct of survival and the millennia of thought now coursing through her consciousness - but will she be able to fit me in?

"You were a toddler once, that could barely walk. Now, you can fly." Her expression did not change. She didn't nod, or blink, or give any sign at all of understanding, or even hearing what I said. If it wasn't for her mind working overdrive, and the gradual turning of the sea that beset us from blue to red, with dark spots gathering around her and a soft yellow aura glowing about me, she could just as well have rejected my gift. It is always tricky when you insert a foreign element into a system, that is keen on keeping things as they are thankyouverymuch, for you could destroy both the element and, which is worse, the system. This time though, I have gotten it right. Our union has indeed been foretold. Everything fits the bill. Everything is perfect. I just can't let her slip.

I felt reality forming again, around us. The colours were flowing, shaping into objects, contrasts sharpening and the timbre deepening with every moment. I reached out again, and caressed her face, like I would have, so long ago. Gently, her body reacted. She became less cramped, and her eyes lifted to meet mine, in a glimpse of recognition.

"Now that it is yours, you must choose what you do with it. You will encounter many beings that may solicit your council, and it is up to you to heed them or to ignore them. This is my true gift to you, girl. Accept it."

And with a final swirl, even the light brown glow between us flowed back into its proper colour and density. I smiled, and nodded at the bar.

"Can I get you something?" I asked.

"Yes. Yes, I believe you can," she said, finally.