Justin was on the bus, away from the café. He was going back home. His now-defunct romantic relationship with Solene had gone to hell, before it’d even started. His plans with her… His dreams to be with her… Her lips… Her eyes… Everything was a lie. Solene had led him astray all along. She had betrayed his love… And now, Justin was trying to forget all about it. But he knew he couldn’t. Not really.
Jaime Blaine had indeed showed up, his beady eyes set in an oil-slick face that twitched every time he blinked. But that little defect aside, he had some goddamned good looks, Justin thought. Also, he didn’t quite see in what regards Jaime was – as pertaining to Solene’s words – so much like him; no sir, he didn’t see how at all.
A bastard… That’s what Jaime was. The scum of the earth! And why the hell had Solene been comparing him to that, Justin thought again. Was she trying to steamroll his pride or something? To bash it to the point where it was no longer recognizable? Justin started to hate her. He hated her for making him feel the way he was feeling right this instant.
Justin looked out the window, and the passing of the cars, along with the passing of the people on the street, provoked in him a giddy sensation. His body sort of bristled; the outline of the world went soft and unfocused. And Justin realized that he was shedding tears.
“Damn you, Solene Greaves,” he muttered under his breath. He’d never thought it possible before, but now he really hated everything about her.
“Is everything all right, young man?”
A mid-fifty-year old lady with an orchid tucked in her hair turned to him. She was sitting next to him, and was dressed in a kind of bridesmaid fashion. She was pretty good-looking in it. Justin barely acknowledged her. He wiped the tears off his face and even sniffed a little like a freaking snot-nosed kid. Before today, he’d never wept in public. What a humiliation, he thought. And over an insensitive girl!
“You know,” the lady with the orchid went on engagingly, “I have a boy just like you. And sometimes, for no reason at all, he just breaks down. Tears come pouring out of him as if he was a water fountain. He does it discreetly, too, so no one can see him. I know there’s a reason behind it. I mean, you boys have all kinds of drama playing in your premature lives, and a mother can hardly stay tuned to all of them. But he’s a big kid anyway, a proud kid, and he sees tears as a weakness. You know what I tell him to make him feel better?”
She was looking at Justin with her harrowing motherly eyes. He reluctantly looked up at her and she added:
“I tell him if tears are a weakness, then cry a river if you must. Let them all out. Let all the weakness out. It’ll make you stronger. And guess what? A couple of buckets later, he’s all bright and shiny. So you see, there’s nothing to worry about, boy; because everything looks better after a good cry.”
“Only a woman would believe in stupid crap like that!” Justin yapped all of a sudden. He didn’t know why he’d responded that way. But he wanted to get foul and violent with someone in some way. He felt the need to conjure up the demon within. “You’re supposed to be smart and intuitive creatures, and yet you’re so stupid and insensitive! So… so stupid! You don’t get anything of anything. So why don’t you mind your own fucking business and leave me alone!”
Appalled, the orchid lady gave Justin a look full of outrage. Her lips pinched into a scarlet pea. Her chin trembled with static shock. All across the bus, some passengers started darting ugly eyes in Justin’s direction. He swallowed hard and held his hands together in angst. They were lynching him with their smug stares. All those fake people…
The bus suddenly came to a stop; four pedestrians climbed aboard. Justin took the chance and quickly pushed his way through to get off onto the street. He thought one of the passengers would say something or even come after him. But no, they just scowled at him. And even as the bus pulled away, Justin saw their scowling faces caught within the window glass. They all looked like taxidermy specimens caught in the display window of the Wilderland Museum … Fake people!
Justin sunk his hands in his pockets and slouched down the street feeling rather depressed. He’d go the rest of the way towards the Condo on foot.
Jaime Blaine had won. And to show off his superiority, he’d even covered their expenses at the café. Justin had not asked for it. But Jaime had insisted. He’d also apologized for being late, explaining how the train he rode in on had been delayed, and how the receptionist at the Palladium Hotel couldn’t find his reservation.
“An awful day,” Jaime kept saying.
“You’re here now and that’s all that matters,” Solene had retorted after pouncing on him with sweet languor.
Justin couldn’t believe just how girly and soft Solene was being on Jaime, because he had always known her as a rather strong personality. Even though he enjoyed seeing this new façade of hers, the fact that she was putting it on for another guy was something he just couldn’t take. And that’s when he decided to call it quits. He couldn’t stand the sight of those two hobnobbing so closely while he was being the third wheel at the table.
A little while later, Justin registered the hallmark of Fraser Boulevard. The Flanagan Condo was a few blocks down. He quickened his pace. He hadn’t asked Solene where they’d be going after the café. Automatically, he quickly reminded himself that he didn’t care. She and her oily-faced boyfriend could’ve gone straight to hell for all he cared.
He reflected some more about his rage and ascribed it to love –– the phoniest concept of them all; invented by smart people to make the little people believe there was some good in life besides the pain and suffering.
The songs are all right eventually Justin thought with disappointment. In the end, love is blind.
Solene was fake, just like everything else in the world. And he had been a fool to believe otherwise. All of a sudden Justin regretted having ever partaken in her delinquent stunts in any capacity. In retrospect, he was viewing her logic as silly and ridiculous. The chaos she had been raving about in the café was in her. The chaos and the confusion. And in her confusion, she would consummate her relationship with Jaime. She would give herself to him entirely and begin her apprenticeship in sexual affairs.
To further demean his opinion of Solene, Justin pictured her in Jaime’s hotel room: Jaime slowly unclothing her… Jaime tasting her mouth… Jaime leading her to bed… Then the carnal act of love itself immediately prompting her erratic moaning… her heartbeat racing… her body throbbing, writhing in every which way as her honor was being taken away savagely and with her own consent…
Justin stopped walking. A scattered fury was rallying up in his clenched hands. A flash of murder was gleaming in his eye. He had to let it out. Justin reached down and picked up the first object his fingers found. A rock the size of a tangerine. Haphazardly, he pitched it away with brute force, and felt half his anger subside at once. However, the rock dwarfed in the air for a second, and then came down hard onto a car windshield, cracking and spidderwebbing it. Fear immediately strapped him up as the car alarm system sounded.
Justin realized he was on Pecker Street. And the car he had accidently vandalized was parked by a one-story house whose front door abruptly flung open. A stocky man in shorts came out running. Justin swiftly moved out of sight and flattened himself up against the decrepit stone wall of a nearby building. The car owner lunged to the broken showpiece. You could tell by the way he was scanning the surroundings that he was going to kill – if he ever grabbed hold of them – whoever had messed with his 1978 Dodge Magnum.
From his hidden position, Justin was peering at him, his heart beating hard, his jeopardy causing him to perspire.
Suddenly, the car owner shifted about and proceeded to canvas the neighborhood. He was moving away. Justin was safe but he didn’t dare move one inch. Not just yet. He put his head in his hands with relief. After all, he had just saved it.
Unfortunately, in about ten seconds, this would be a different story. As it happened, Justin noticed something
glimmering, over there across the topsoil; something rather round and bright like a miniature sun. It was about eight or ten yards away. And it was sort of beckoning to him. Justin moved closer to check it out.
It was a golden ball...
Mechanically, Justin stooped down to take it. That was it… the dice were rolled… Once more, fate was nothing but a number… A number in a binary system where zero equated to death, and one symbolized another chance at life... Unaware of the stakes at play, Justin’s fingers simply clutched onto the golden ball –– and nothing happened. So he began examining the precious object. His eyes, however, broadened in shock; they had registered an off-putting peculiarity. The smooth surface of the sphere was reflecting back Justin’s face in his entirety except for his ears. He closed his eyes and quickly reopened them. No question about it: his ears were not showing.
This is weird, Justin thought. He touched his left ear with his hand. And his reflection mirrored his gesture on the gap his left ear was supposed to hang in. He briefly gawked at this oddity. It wasn’t as if his ears were invisible while still occupying their normal place; because they were just not in place. They weren’t there at all…
This is definitely weird! Justin thought again. He then put the golden ball away in the velvet pouch, which had once kept the bracelet he’d offered up to Solene. He had been so upset that he had left the cafe with the damn pouch. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. He moved along, afterwards.
The absence of his ears on his reflection was getting under his skin. He was bewildered.
“Goodness! What is wrong with my reflection? What is wrong with me that’d make my reflection look like that?”
An old speech from Miss Stanton (the history teacher) came springing back to his memory:
“Sometimes a reflection can be far more present than the thing being reflected.”
Justin absently nodded to the words as he was remembering them.
In my case, my reflection and I are different because one of us is a phony… And obviously it’s me… I’m the fake one because the world is fake and I live in it! Just like everyone else out there. And I didn’t even realize it…
Justin pinched his ears.
I lost my ears just like a girl loses her earrings. And because I lost my ears, I lost my voice too, like one of those deaf-mutes. Goddamn it! That’s why I’m incapable of telling Solene how I really feel. That’s why I shut my mouth instead of speaking up from the moment we met. Now it’s too late. She took off with that guy; and she doesn’t like teenage boys. And for years to come, I’m gonna be alone and miserable in my little corner of despair.
Justin broke step and leaned on a grubby picket fence. His mental exhaustion was having such a weight on him that the fence seemed to lean with its burden.
I guess I can still ask Kane to hook me up with one of Joanne’s friends. It won’t be the same but at least…
Justin suddenly threw his head back as if rejecting that idea.
No –– That’s not gonna do anything save show me it’s with her I’d rather be. That I’m better off with her than without her, even if she thinks and acts crazy all the time. Because there’s only one Solene Greaves out there. And you only see her kind after every two or three lifetimes. Because she’s not fake… not like me or anybody else in the world. She’s… God’s perfect plan… The golden ball of my life.
And with a pepping smile, Justin felt his bulgy pants’ pocket where the golden ball lived (inside the velvet pouch). And so he kept on walking, at a relaxed pace this time, his depression wearing away.
And that Jaime guy… I bet she’s not really into him. She’s just using him as a tool to start up on that intimate part of a girl’s life. So –– it’s not a big deal really. Just a natural progression in one’s path to self-discovery. Everything will still be fine tomorrow, after all that sex business is done and dealt with. She’s still gonna be the same and ––
Justin came another five yards of his course at a slow pace. Then he stopped completely, his face suddenly fraught with doubt.
But I won’t be the same after that, will I? Goddamn it, Solene… Why did you have to tell me? I could’ve lived with it if you had told me after the fact. Knowing now is killing me ––
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY, ASSHOLE!”
Tuning out of his head, Justin looked up. Immediately, a cacophony of car horns kicked into his eardrums which, strangely enough, had picked up nothing one second ago. He then realized that he was standing rooted in the middle of the road and in front of a small wall of traffic. A disgruntled voice rose above the deafening din.
“Are you gonna move it or what?”
Justin quickly pulled away, off the road and onto the sidewalk. The same disgruntled voice shouted again:
“Dipshit!”
Justin didn’t bother to acknowledge the voice; there were more and more madmen behind the wheel these days. The traffic moved on. And so did Justin…
And so did Greco Barnett, too.
Incidentally, his two-door mini coupe was in the same traffic. And the jam had unnerved him a bit, for he was in quite a hurry to get to his music studio. I could’ve easily moved on with him, but I decided to see Justin through for now ––
Responding to a nervous impulse, Justin had taken out his cell phone and had dialed Solene. Instead of her, he got her friendly voicemail. This was an unexpected snag. His heart sank, while his head was overheating from conjecturing too much on her current doings with Jaime. He tried to call again and got the same voicemail. He then figured there was no point in calling a third time. The first call had come in too late. The train of her lecherous intention was already in motion... And as of this moment, he couldn’t board it and make it steer in a different direction.
Emotionally run down, Justin carried himself forward, steeply, with the knowledge of his legs complying to a brain which was no more, as if it simply switched off. The rooftop of the Flanagan Condo appeared on the horizon. Maybe there, in that home environment, his brain would switch back on… Or maybe, it would not.
Chapter XV
MR. BAGLEY AND ZOE BOND:
A MOMENT BETWEEN NEIGHBORS