Bitter Sweet Love (Michael Faudet) Page 5
A statue of the Virgin Mary wrapped in flashing colored fairy lights stood silently in the corner. Wooden shelves lined the walls, filled with wonderful old books, pristine 1960s Playboy magazines, various pieces of poster art, unscratched vintage toys, and a taxidermy fox with an amazingly intact bushy tail. In fact, everything seemed in perfect, mint condition for its age.
Inside an ornate cabinet I noticed a butterfly collection pinned to a yellow canvas and enclosed behind glass, surrounded by a gold gilt frame.
It was sitting among a collection of novelty mugs, shiny tobacco tins, war medals, and pocketknives with bone handles.
I carefully opened the doors to take a closer look.
“Can I help you?”
A young woman appeared from behind a heavy red velvet curtain. She was dressed in a black and white vintage tuxedo, complete with silk top hat and shiny black patent leather lace-up boots. Her face was a shade of moonlight white, with dark circles around her pretty blue eyes and smiling lips painted purple. It was difficult to guess exactly how old she might be. Somewhere between mid-twenties and early thirties maybe. In her hand she held a lit cigarette.
“Oh, I was just checking out the butterflies, the ones in the frame,” I replied, a little startled.
She took a long drag from the cigarette, blowing the bluish gray smoke upward.
“African. They’re in good condition, too. No broken wings. Are you a collector?” she asked.
“No, not really, just curious. My grandfather had something similar—well, I think he did, many years ago.”
Her eyes lit up and she stood to attention, clicking her heels and saluting.
“Hello, my name’s Sabrina and I’m the owner of the shop. Welcome to my alternative world of fascinating yesterdays!”
The words were delivered with an upbeat, almost carnivalesque ring to them, her delicate hand outstretched, waiting for me to shake it, which I did. Her grip firm but gentle, silver rings covering three of her slender fingers.
I felt a tingling in my arm, which was both alarming and pleasant, like a mild electric shock mixed with a relaxing post-massage kind of buzz. Within seconds, this wave of electricity swept through my entire body, making the hairs on the back of my neck rise up.
“Ha! I’m sorry.” She laughed, letting go of my hand quickly. “I sometimes have that effect on people.” She turned and walked over to the counter and stubbed her cigarette into a circular brass ashtray.
Any thoughts of the framed butterflies quickly vanished, as I clenched my right hand and opened it, repeatedly, trying to rid my fingers of the weird pins and needles feeling.
Sabrina walked over to the front door, turned a key in the lock, and pulled down a black blind. She turned and flashed me a smile.
“I think you will be my last customer for the day. Anyway, there are far more thrilling things to do than make small chitchat about African butterflies and stuff.”
“Well, I guess I should be on my way,” I said awkwardly, not sure what was really happening in this strange little shop.
“No need to rush anywhere,” she replied, reaching for my hand. “Come with me, please, I want to show you something pretty amazing.”
She took me by the hand and started to lead me toward the back off the shop, past the counter and toward the red velvet curtain. I didn’t resist or feel any more sparks of electricity, I just followed obediently like someone seduced by a dream, never wishing to wake.
The moment I emerged on the other side of the curtain the last thin shard of reality shattered.
—
My eyes were met with a blinding white light that faded in a split second, reminding me of an old camera flash exploding. Blinking furiously, the dark circles started to disappear and the sights and sounds of a café came into full view.
I found myself sitting at a round wooden table covered with a crisp white tablecloth. A cup of black coffee was in front of me, a croissant lay on a white plate by its side, and sitting across from me was Sabrina. The tuxedo outfit had gone and in its place was a striped tee and a short floral skirt decorated with daisies. A small black leather handbag hung from her chair. She picked up her swirling café au lait and took a sip, her eyes never leaving mine.
A cold panic gripped me and I felt my chest constrict, my mouth starting to grasp for air.
“Hush now.” She laughed, putting her cup down and gently stroking the side of my face. “The adjustment is always a bit freaky the first time. It’ll pass. See, you’re feeling better already. Now drink your coffee and just relax.”
I did as I was told and she was right. Somehow the first bite of the strong coffee sent a wave of calmness rippling through me. My heart stopped pounding and a pleasant sense of peace descended upon me.
I slowly became more aware of my surroundings.
Smartly dressed waiters zigzagging between the tables of casually dressed patrons, many engaged in noisy conversations, others hunched over a newspaper. Everyone seemed to be speaking French.
The more I turned my head and looked around, the faster I realized nothing made sense. Not the old cars whizzing along the narrow street or the vintage clothes worn by the pedestrians that strolled past me.
“1964, St. Germaine, one of my very favorite yesterdays. If you’re not going to touch your croissant, I’ll have it.”
Sabrina didn’t wait for a response. She took it quickly from my plate and started to devour it, the buttery, flakey crumbs sticking to her orange lipstick.
So many questions rattled around inside my head, each one seemingly ridiculous and insane. How can you possibly make sense of the impossible?
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “The hows and whys of it all, but believe me, you don’t need to know. It just is. I can tell you this much, you will return to your world, but not before we’ve had a little fun in this one. Come on, let’s get out of this joint and take a look around.”
I followed her cue and stood up. Sabrina took some crumpled notes from her handbag and slid them under the plate.
The rest of the morning was spent ducking in and out of the various shops that lined the avenue. Bookstores, fashion boutiques, and cute little places that sold all manner of bits and pieces. It was a shopping trip, and it wasn’t long before Sabrina was clutching several bags, filled to the brim with what she called “future merchandise.”
“I can’t resist a bargain,” she laughed. “Can you imagine what I can charge for all of this when we return?”
That’s when it hit me. The secret to her “alternative world of fascinating yesterdays” shop. Sabrina was a time-traveling entrepreneur who bought in the past and sold in the present. It also explained how the stock in her shop looked so new and in perfect condition.
“It’s incredible. How do you do it? How did we travel through time? This is fucking crazy.”
Sabrina gave me a quizzical look and then smiled. “No, silly, we didn’t time travel anywhere. I just opened the door to a parallel world. There are many doors and countless worlds. I just happen to love this one. It’s all about manipulating quantum physics really, when you know how, it’s easy but far too complicated to explain in an afternoon. Just think of it as falling down a rabbit hole.”
We stopped outside a black door of a narrow terrace house. Sabrina off-loaded the bags into my hands and fumbled around in her handbag. She took out a key and opened the front door which had a small brass number 42 attached to it.
“Come on inside. It’s not much but I call it home.”
I walked inside the short hallway which opened on to a small lounge room. The walls were painted an emerald-green color. Two brown leather chesterfield chairs and a circular coffee table sat on a carpet of lime green. I put the bags down on one of the chairs and followed Sabrina up a set of stairs that led to her bedroom and a bathroom with a rust-stained sink and a claw-foot bath.
She turned on the taps and placed a plug in the bath.
“Now, why not get out of those clothes and
freshen up? I’ll leave a dressing gown on the bed for you. Place your clothes outside for washing. Oh, and don’t drain the bath, I’ll use the water after you’ve finished.”
I had long given up questioning anything and watched her walk out of the bathroom.
My naked body sank beneath the hot water. All traces of my hangover had long gone, replaced with a strange euphoria that swept over me. I closed my eyes and focused on a piece of verse, something that I had been struggling to finish.
Love is a rare rose, the perfume intoxicating—
picked by fingers oblivious to the thorns . . .
“I thought you might want this.”
Sabrina’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts, my eyes opening quickly and hands frantically trying to cover myself.
She was naked.
A bar of purple soap held in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other. I cast my eyes downward, trying not to look at her, the image of her pert breasts replaying over and over in my mind.
“Ha! I never took you for the bashful type and from the look of it, not every part of you is shy,” she laughed.
I could feel myself getting hard and my hands could barely contain the erection.
Sabrina placed the glass on the floor and stepped into the bath, her long, milky white legs straddling me as she lowered herself into the water. I looked up into her gorgeous blue eyes and let out a deep moan as she took my hard cock with one hand and guided it deep inside her pussy.
The electricity I had felt when I first shook her hand in the shop returned. It was even more intense. She pushed her hips down to meet each thrust of my cock. Her arms wrapped around my neck as we fucked, hard and fast, sending splashes of water flying out of the bath. Sabrina’s final scream bouncing off the bathroom walls. Her orgasm triggering a flash of blinding white light.
—
I was woken by the tickling of a small white terrier dog sniffing my face. My sleepy eyes opened and the old man in the olive- green suit slowly came into view, peering down at me.
“Are you all right, son?”
I sat up, my head feeling dizzy, and realized I was lying on the beach, my nakedness covered by a robe with a blue paisley print.
“I think I’m okay,” I replied, looking up at the old man.
He gave me a polite nod and continued to walk along the sand, his little dog trotting behind him.
I started to brush the sand from my hair and noticed a large parcel sitting next to me. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a black velvet ribbon.
Suddenly my memory came flooding back to me. The shop. Sabrina. The café. A black terrace house. A tiny bathroom. Fucking . . .
And then nothing.
It was like time had been neatly compressed. The hours reduced to minutes. I was back to the reality of a setting sun that hadn’t set. The waves breaking behind me, the boardwalk in the distance.
I opened the parcel carefully and discovered the framed African butterfly collection inside with a handwritten note attached to it.
I thought you might like this. A little something from another yesterday. Your grandfather was such a lovely man. Sabrina. xo
P.S. Come by and collect your clothes sometime.
A smile crept across my lips. As the missing piece of verse wrote itself in my mind. The final words written by another’s delicate hand.
How can you possibly make sense of the impossible?
Perhaps you don’t even try.
—
Love is a rare rose, the perfume intoxicating—
picked by fingers oblivious to the thorns.
A pleasure found
in the sweet pain of discovery,
and when it wilts
how can we refrain?
From bloodying our fingers—
again and again.
Possessed
You stole my life
and possessed me,
a body held hostage,
unbuttoned
and bound.
My beautiful surrender
a ransom paid—
With ruthless kisses
upon trembling lips
which utter
not a sound.
I Remember a Time
I remember a time when life was simple.
No grand expectations to weigh me down or the drudgery of responsibilities to hold me back. Living the cliché of footloose and fancy-free. A few jangling coins in my pocket for the morning newspaper and just enough notes by the end of the week to throw across a nightclub bar.
It was a hybrid existence of lectures by day and hanging out with good friends at night. Smoking joints in the shared apartment, listening to the mournful wailing of The Cure, and avoiding the razor-sharp claws of our resident crazy cat called Spooky.
Somewhere in between the playful chaos and outrageous laughter, there was also enough time to hold down a part-time job. Stacking supermarket shelves three nights a week.
Girlfriends came and went like the change of the seasons. The giddiness of love often replaced with the tears of regret, played out in my corner bedroom with the ebb and flow of powder-blue cotton sheets.
Of course, the years rolled by as years do. Friends drifted apart, more keys got added to the key ring, and Spooky slept soundly under a rose bush.
The Friday night happy hour was replaced with Saturday night martinis in flash restaurants, the names of which I struggled to pronounce by the time dessert arrived. The part-time job was left behind in the dust and a 60-hour a week career stole what was left of any imagination.
I found myself aboard a miserable train hurtling toward middle age and oblivion.
Little did I know then, a fellow passenger had other ideas, a very different plan for my life.
A Sunday morning phone conversation changed everything. Her words a siren’s calling, forcing my hand to pull the emergency brake, bringing the spinning wheels to an abrupt stop.
We stepped onto the platform together, hands held and hearts beating.
And life suddenly became simple again.
Room 613
It was the start of a spectacular day.
A generous sprinkling of late autumn snow had fallen overnight, coating the jagged teeth of the mountaintops with a blanket of icing sugar whiteness.
Six ducks rose up from the surface of the lake.
The flapping of wet wings breaking the stillness of the crisp morning air as they soared upward into the brilliant blue sky.
I closed the terrace windows and slowly walked back toward the unmade bed.
As hotel rooms went, this was a great one. Spacious, tastefully decorated with contemporary Italian furniture, a shiny stainless steel coffee machine, and a fireplace with real flickering flames.
Even the bar was something special.
Far from being mini, the full-size fridge was well stocked with all the spirits you’d expect and wonderful boutique craft beers I’d never seen before. The side door filled with half bottles of French champagne, Grey Goose vodka, and wine sourced from the local vineyards.
Of course, all this luxury came at a ridiculous price.
A minor detail deftly settled by the outrageous and outspoken girl with dyed pink hair and matching lipstick. A close friend of mine with fringe benefits and a seemingly unlimited trust fund.
Flopping onto the bed, I reached for the room service menu and scanned the breakfast options.
Smoked salmon bagel with cream cheese, capers, and fennel shavings instantly caught my eye, as did the toasted ciabatta with truffle brie, drizzled with a lemon-infused olive oil.
Sophia wandered in from the palatial bathroom, beads of water clinging to her pale skin, a white fluffy towel wrapped around her waist.
“Perfect timing,” I said. “What do you fancy to eat?”
Her hand reached beneath my boxer shorts, gently caressing my cock until it hardened.
“This,” she replied, a mischievous smile lighting up her face.
—
Sophia stood at the window, the afternoon sun streaming into the room.
She turned and gave me a faint little smile before replying.
—
“I’ve always longed to turn the last page of a romantic novel but it seems my life is destined to remain a book of short stories.”
The Park
We walked most mornings,
a trail of bread crumbs
in our wake,
ducks diving in the pond,
pigeons pecking
on empty pathways,
beneath a rainbow sky.
Sparkles of watery sunlight
clinging to your hair,
a head turned—
your smile
reaching out
and touching mine.
Raindrops dripping
from dying leaves,
in the little park
of make-believe,
our secrets kept
by bonsai trees.
Summer Storm
She was wild, unpredictable, beautiful, and dangerous. Impossible to resist. A summer storm in a bikini.
Persian Fairy Floss
Persian fairy floss
pulled apart
by sticky fingers.
Your laptop open,
pupils dilated,
a Hentai clip
playing on a pillow,
my hand
between your legs.
A soft moan
quietly spoken,
from lips