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magicforest
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eyedreamism_ii: new
I am sitting in the lounge of the café, letting my eyes wander into space and feeling the steam of my cappuccino curl upwards and around, warming my face and fogging up the lenses of my amber glasses. I occasionally pause to take a sip, but without any particular necessity. The man who made this place was a master of ambience (or as others would put it, vibe). Cell phones are not only banned, but the type of people who own them are discouraged from entering the atmosphere. Nobody here has any long-term goals, nor short-term wants; they have no variables or policies or designations, and there is an appalling lack of synergy. This place is solely for the dreamers who will inevitably spend (or as others would put it, waste) an afternoon staring into nothingness and prefer to do it with others who understand the sanctity of this activity (or as others would put it, inactivity).
My slack is tainted, however, because I am increasingly distracted by a good-looking young man sitting neatly at the table opposite my round armchair, newspaper in hand—he is not a regular; no regulars at the café have any interest in the outside world’s political melodramas, nor in long columns of stock quotations, nor in terrifying editorials about the type of airborne disease that is always identified by an initial symptom of paranoia. He must be a sort of drifter.
The young man fingers his paper innocently, but he looks over the top of the pages in a mischievous way, a smile playing over his eyes, impish, boyish. I think for an enticing moment that he’s looking at me, but his gaze is focused on a smiling chestnut-haired woman who has just come in. She is dressed modestly in rosy colours. She looks oddly similar to him; I pin her as a girlfriend or a wife.
He stands and they embrace over the table. She orders camomile tea and he orders, strangely enough, milk.
“How are you?” he asks her as they sit.
“I’m good,” she replies, folding her hands.
“What’s bothering you?” he says directly. I like that.
She looks up at him with wide, startled eyes. Her raspberry mouth opens and closes, opens and closes. She says slowly, “Do you think that I’m pious?”
The man breaks into a beautiful grin. “Pious?”
“I’m either pious or sinful. I don’t know which.”
“Who on earth gave you this idea?”
“I mean, either I’m acting better than the Lord, or not good enough, and—”
He laughs incredulously. “You went back to the church?”
She reddens. “I wasn’t going to, but—”
He shakes his head. “But he wanted you to.”
“Well…” I can see that what she needs, more than counsel or sympathy, is a distraction. This is what most people need.
The young man straightens and waves a long finger at her, gravely. “If you are pious or sinful, my dear girl—” He takes a comical sip of milk—“Then bananas grow downwards.”
She looks at him blankly. “Bananas do grow downward.”
He looks as though he has won a chess game. “Do they?”
She stares again and then laughs rapidly. “I’m not that gullible, you know.”
“They grow pointing up.”
“They do not. They couldn’t possibly support their own weight.”
“Perhaps they grow towards the sun.”
“Oh, really? Then why don’t apples grow upside down?”
“Hmm.” He strokes his chin with a long hand absurdly. “That’s true. So why do bananas grow upside down, then, Rebecca?”
Her right hand is a fist around her tea spoon. “I never said that they grow upside down. You did. God!” Rebecca is reminding me of one of my friends, who says God just like that.
He smiles maddeningly. “Maybe bananas don’t grow like other fruit because they aren’t fruit at all. Perhaps they are herbs. You know. Same family as orchids, palms…those lilies you like.”
“Bananas. Herbs.” She smirks, almost demurely.
“Let’s say, hypothetically, that the banana is the largest plant on earth without a woody stem—”
“I always thought that African baobab trees were pretty substantial.”
“Yes, but baobab trees are dangerous. Banana plants are not. The stem is about ninety-three percent water, thus making it very fragile. The fruit is swathed in leaves. Every banana, called a finger—”
“How are baobabs dangerous? And a finger? Then what is a group of bananas, a hand?”
“Actually, yes. And as for the baobabs—my gosh, Rebecca, don’t you ever read?” His prim schoolteacher’s voice with his aghast indignance is pushing all of her buttons, I can tell. I would normally find his behaviour quite an irritant, but I know that he is consciously doing it. I am also quite pleased that he knows the danger of baobabs. Few souls are familiar with that allusion.
The woman blasphemes under her breath. “How did you get to learn so much about bananas?”
He shrugs. “The distinctive biological growth of bananas is something all authentic grown-ups know. You’ll learn it too, dear, when you’re older.”
She flushes in anger. “You aren’t older if we’re twins, you daft idiot! You’ve just been trying to make me—”
He holds out an index finger and pauses her. “Not quite,” he says sternly, “I’m seven minutes your elder. Sometimes you forget that.”
She throws her spoon at him—I open my mouth in unconscious delighted horror—which hits him directly on his left eye and then clatters into his milk. Then she picks up her bag and coat, and marches furiously to the door.
“But Rebecca! We just proved you aren’t pious!” he calls out disappointedly, one eye open, the other fastened shut firmly, already glowing pinkly.
The door shuts behind her. He looks unhappily at the empty seat in front of him and then turns to stare directly at me. “She’s gone?” I nod sympathetically. He processes this bit of information. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he says pleasantly. I can’t help but laugh, but he turns sullen. “She’s going to tell Mother about this.”
I shake my head dismissely. “Les grand-hommes.”
“What does that mean?” he asks interestedly.
I grinned. “It’s French, for grown-ups. From Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I heard you mention the baobabs. Come now, don’t you ever read?”
He jumps. “You use my own sword against me!” he cries out, applauding me in approval, his face stretching into a delighted grin. “Well done! Well done indeed.”
I extend my hand, and with his lack of vision he waves his arm around for an awkward moment before I meet it and we shake formally. He smiles. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he says, gingerly rubbing his eyelid. “My name is Ethan.”
is so sorry for letting you down
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041005
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