THE STORY ENDED

City break

Part five

It mustn’t had been more than five minutes from the actual moment Ras had slept -it took him a lot that night to feel relaxed and to convince himself that he should get some sleep- when he opened his eyes again and he saw Lilly opening the door of his bedroom very slowly, trying not to make a sound. At first, he thought that he may was dreaming but by the moment Lilly was laying curled up beside him, with her body touching his and his arms around her, he had remembered that he had gave her his spare key a long time ago, even only a week after they had met. Lilly started talking although Ras told her that this would be unnecessary and he was just pleased to have her laying in his hands, like almost a wounded sparrow would do as it was finding shelter under its mother’s warm wings. “I only care you are here…” were the precise words he used.
Although Lilly had missed that unprecedented sense of safety and complete tranquility she only was having when she was inside Ras’s hug, she preferred to ruin this feeling and tell him everything she had.
First she said that Awndrey had gone away and by that moment he would be at the bus station, waiting the next bus for his home to come. She said that after “TIM’S” they had gone at her apartment but they found out that a tube or something had broken from her bathroom and the whole house was like it was hit by a storm; but she added that she didn’t mind about that because either way she was planning to spend that night at his place; she had missed him unbearably. After that she said that Awndrey had visited her because after his aspiration to find the “fertile land” he was hoping he would, many years before, when he had abandoned her and his house, had failed, he felt like he wanted to reinvent himself and his past and maybe his future along her, but Lilly didn’t give him a chance to hope that this could ever possibly happen again and she also said that the urgency he alleged, was part of his plan to make her run back to him. She admitted that it was so foolish of her to tolerate him all those days but she explained that if she had acted differently she would have become as him and she didn’t want this to happen, for nothing.
That same night she also said that she had started feeling tired and trapped living in that faceless city. She called it a junk city and she said that she didn’t know if she was able to withstand anymore its people’s cruelty and indifference and she said that she was tired of the fact that she always had to be in vigilance and watchful in order not to get smashed by the stronger and the faster ones. That moment, a strange coherence evolved inside Ras’s drowsy head between the words junk and jungle, which was quite bright for the intermediary state he was, between sleep and awake, since regarding Lilly’s way of seeing that city, the word jungle could depict it, as well.
At the end Lilly said some more things but Ras wasn’t able to recall any of those at the morning when he woke up. All the time she was talking, the whispering tone of her voice was filling him with a invigorating but at the same time unwinding warmth and after a point he wasn’t able to distinguish the words she was murmuring. It was enough that she was there in his arms again.
Maybe if he could remember what she had said he would know why Lilly wasn’t still there at the morning, with her beautiful skin sparkling by the daylight and only her perfume, imprinted on the dented pillow, was the only evident clue which was confirming that she had been there last night and this wasn’t just a pleasing dream he had. Only the perfume and the left keys on the scratched night table, which were witnessing that Lilly had in truth been there last night but she never would again.





End of story

THE FIFTH IS THE LAST ONE

City break

Part four

“And doesn’t she cook just delightfully?” Awndrey asked Ras, though it sounded more as an indisputable statement than a question, while the three of them were waiting for the desert to be served. Ras, who was sitting on the other side of the table, gave a feignedly kind look at Lilly as he nodded puzzled “Well, I guess…” he cleared his throat “I mean I believe you, though I didn’t have the pleasure yet” he managed to say giving the best of his self not to sound too dry. “Tell me you’re kittin’ me” Awndrey responded cheerfully. He was in a very good mood that evening and every time he was saying something his voice was witnessing it. “You know each other for a month or so and you haven’t cooked for that good man yet…?” “Not even your famous pancakes…?” he swerved to Lilly’s side, who was sitting right next beside him. “I plead guilty” Lilly raised both of her hands and returned the kind glance –genuine this time- to Ras who was sitting across the table.
The atmosphere of the company that evening may seemed cheery and admirable for the rest of the people who were sitting at the scattered tables around them and were mostly occupied by middle- aged yappies along with their housewives or their fiancés or their secretaries (some of the women were combining both of the last two attributes), but in truth, if you were observing really carefully, you could discern that there was so much tense in the air that it was like as a bomb was waiting to explode and it was just a matter of time when this would eventually happen.
Most of the night was spent Awndrey talking about Lilly and every single common experience they went through together in the past and this was making Ras feeling that the blonde woman with whom he had spent every single day of the previous month of his life, wasn’t a familiar person anymore but a total stranger. That wasn’t true of course, but that was the way he was feeling at that moment.
Even though Ras had an already shaped idea about Awndrey before he even met him just by Lilly’s descriptions and his own assumptions, he was the kind of man who was giving you the impression that he was pretty confident about himself and was never asking for verification or any kind of compliments by the others. He also had an undefined way to command and exude a sense of respect and veneration to everyone who was surrounding him everywhere he was going. These feelings maybe were boosted and enlarged by his masculine squared features of his face and his striking height.
Ras was kept scrutinizing the features of Awndrey’s face one by one from his chin to his cheek bones while they were having their pie filled with spade marmalade – it was a very tasteful pie- and he was kept thinking that this man was probably the more masculine and the more confident version of his own self. In a mysterious way, Awndrey was looking, talking and acting the way Ras also wanted and was trying but never managed to, simply because he wasn’t made in this way.
Every time Awndrey would open his mouth he would always have an interesting story to narrate about his turbulent life in the different places he had visited during the recent period of his life –the period after he had left his hometown- searching for a promising occupation as he said but he never did, maybe his expectation were way too high, and every time, Lilly was all ears. Meanwhile, Lilly hadn’t found until that moment the chance to inform Ras about the real purpose of Awndrey’s visit and the reason he asked for her help but the important thing was that as he said sometime while they were at “Duke”, he had decided to arrive for his hometown the upcoming day.
When bill was left enclosed in a silly envelop with the name of the restaurant and its address printed on it upon the table, Awndrey insisted to pay it all just by himself. Ras had thought that they should split the cost, because it was one of the most expensive restaurants of the city and Awndrey may was not aware of that, but even after he saw the inscribed price Awndrey remained adamant. Ras realized that it would be impossible to alter his mind, so he retreated. Now, what about calling this, a punch on the stomach…? A punch to this already wounded virility…
Because, if you really think about it and if these two men were likened to two mammals in a jungle and Lilly to the female one who would have to choose the one of them with whom she would inseminate her descendant, then Awndrey would be the uncontested dominant; the one who would win the fight between them. For this reason, (ok, Ras didn’t have the time and the clear mind to get it that far), Ras had spent the entire time at the restaurant feeling awkward and uneasy and Lilly had surely figured it out, since she was giving him weird and conspiratorial glances every time he was overdoing it with scratching the table’s refined cloth or with moving his fork nervously and intolerably fast up and down.
On the way back after the dinner, they shared the same taxi. They were going to the same direction, though Lilly and Awndrey would continue for a drink in one of the city’s innumerous bars but Ras said that he had an early morning waking up, when he asked to join. That was a horrendous lie but Ras swore he did when Lilly pushed him a little further to change his mind.
Ras sat in the front seat and the rest in the back. In the five minute distance until the Glorent street where the bar “TIM’S” was located he wished many times that the taxi driver were more talkative. The man hadn’t say a word even when Ras told him about the places he should stop, but he was not to blame because he may was going through a tough situation or he was just reticent by nature. But whichever the reason was, Ras wished they could exchange a word or two during the drive, because the other two were whispering and laughing and teasing each other, and whispering again and the exclusion his front seat was provided him, was making feel really uncomfortable.
When the taxi stopped outside “TIM’S” Lilly signaled to the driver from the outside to descent the window from the passenger’s side and she bent to wish Ras “goodnight”. He tried to smile and though he thought that his face muscles wouldn’t follow, he smiled. Lilly said that she would call him “first thing in the morning” and bent a little further to kiss him. They hadn’t kissed for days and Ras thought that they hadn’t for ages. Only a moment later Lilly was holding Awndrey from his leather jacket sleeve, leading him to the bar’s entrance. The tall man turned his face to the way where the taxi was standing and was about to get back in move again and when Ras raised his right hand to sign “bye”, Awndrey blinked him instead of doing the same. It was a blink which was meaning many things. Though it could be taken as a mark of intimacy, Ras took it as a very sarcastic and abhorrent signal. He felt enraged. That man was capable of driving him to the edge just with a simple blink of his eye. Could it be a sign of a man telling to another that at the end he was the prevailing one? The one he had won over the female mammal? Well, some could say it could.

IN THE MIDDLE

City break

Part three

Three days after the day of the big frustration and confusion, Ras was getting dressed to meet Lilly. At the upcoming dinner they wouldn’t be just the two of them but an old friend of hers too, Awndrey, for whom Ras had heard most of his story from Lilly.
As Ras was many times told, Lilly and he used to have a very intimate bond while growing together in their hometown but Ras hadn’t got completely the kind of relationship they used to have. They used to be a couple for a long time definitely, but it wasn’t just for that. For certain, that guy, named Awndrey, had hurt her when he left their town a couple of years before she did and ever since they hadn’t met until last Monday that he showed up absolutely out of the blue. This was in fact and the reason Lilly hadn’t met Ras at “Napolitano” while they had arranged it from the previous day. As Lilly explained him hastily when he had called her, she had to pick her old friend up from the airport and for some reason she couldn’t say at that moment, he was in great need of her help. Of course, Ras was very bewildered from her behavior, since he knew that they had lost contact for many years and the last time they had talked, that man had left her a very bad taste. Though it is true that Ras had never met him before, he didn’t have the best idea about him, probably because of the fact that even though he had hurt Lilly, it was obvious that he was still remaining a big chapter in her life with remarkable influence in her decisions.
As if his distaste for that strange man wasn’t by itself already enough to make him refuse to attend the dinner at the restaurant, Ras tied his tie’s knob so exquisitely that someone would think that he had learned to do it a very long time ago and he was perfectly ready to meet them.
A quarter later, he found himself crossing the city’s central park on his way to the meeting point outside the fancy and high-priced restaurant “Duke”. He knew that if this was a couple of hours later, crossing the park would be extremely dangerous because by then that quiet but half-lightened place would become a stamping- ground for any kind of junkies and whoever you could imagine that could harm any passer- by who was ignoring the jeopardy in being there late at night for any reason, in order to attract some money. However, until then, park was still crowed enough to provide him with the necessary sense of safety and despite that, he wasn’t intending to prolong his staying there. All he needed was a couple of minutes to sit somewhere and get himself together before he meets Lilly and her friend.
During the last days Lilly had called him many times but every time he was pleading excuses to avoid her. Ras had felt disappointed and betrayed the day she stood him up for that other man and she disappeared without informing him first. Because of all the upheaval that aroused, he had started seeing their relationship from a very different aspect. After all those days of introspection, he came to realize that the thing that had bothered him the most was that she had gave him up or their schedule or her priorities just because that guy Awndrey, whose intentions were remaining still inscrutable, told her to. Ras doubted if she could ever do the same if he had acted similarly.
At one hand, Ras was even afraid to answer himself who was playing the leading and most influential part in Lilly’s life and her decisions and on the other, he was riled with himself to even think this way, while he had never asked from Lilly to give something more than what she had and mostly he wasn’t keen on offering anything further, either.
Apart from going from to work all those days, Ras nearly did nothing else. He didn’t meet any of his friends, he didn’t call his parents to see what they were doing and above all, he didn’t stop thinking about Lilly. He was really confused because though he knew that they formally weren’t partners and their complex relationship was grounded in independence, it was still a slap in the face that he was left aside when the man from the past came into the scene. Or someone could say that it was a slap in his egoism that he was feeling displaced and stranded on a distant corner.
The unawareness of the reason of Awndrey’s comeback was a supplementary burden. “What is he looking for….and why did he show up so abruptly…” was troubling Ras all those days he decided it would be better for him to keep them away.
To kill time, Ras tried to get into writing, as many times had done in the past when he was feeling lonely. Funnily enough, he didn’t manage to write a word, though some of the darkest periods of his life were converting him into a very prolific writer. An unpublished one, but that didn’t matter because that was not his goal. Making up stories was not for the public but a personal way out from what was hunting him each time. It was a kind of a psycho-therapy Ras was practicing to himself to feel free when he was feeling he wasn’t able to otherwise. In the space from last Monday to that current moment writing hadn’t proved the most suitable solution because basically, he could think of nothing else but that once again he found himself on the fringe of a situation. And that passive reaction he had adopted, had made him refusing dealing and solving the matter out, face to face with Lilly or that strange man. Every single time that Lilly would call him in order to arrange a meeting, he would turn her down. Every single time except for that last one that day, when she called him again and Ras decided to confront whatever it was that they had to say. That sudden anastrophe of his mind was the result of the imminent dinner. Ras thought that he should get dressed the best way he could for the purpose, to feel charming and self-assured and claim her undivided attention back. “I will show out my “glorious” self and I’ll stop acting the way only fifteen year old boys do, for Christ sake” he said in front of the bathroom mirror as he was getting ready, in a moment of superfluous buoyancy.
At the park, only few moments before he meets them, and while sitting in one of the benches beside the artificial lake that optimistic feeling which had overwhelmed him had abandoned him and was replaced for once again by nonplus and insecurity. Although, beside his enormous distress, he didn’t miss to notice that the scenery from the last time ha had gone there, a month and few more days ago, had been slightly differentiated but it provoked a great impact upon him. The lake seemed very much lifeless and -if we could use the verb- naked because its visitors were not there anymore. It was cold for good by then and it was some time ago since the ducks had flew away for their warmer next destination. This alone, made Ras see something he already knew. He realized that when some things are meant to change then they will. And even though sometimes this seems wrong it’s always for good in the end.
Ras stood up unwillingly, -any further postpone would make him be late and he didn’t want that- and he thought that if things between Lilly and him had changed or would be, he would come in terms with it and would get over it because that’s the only thing he had to do. Even if he consciously knew that this could be a little bit more painful than the ordinary because it was irrefutable that they used to have such a great time together.