5/25/2009

Bizarre Love Triangle, ´09

She slips the jacket of my suit over her bare shoulders and the three-pronged arched necklace dangling from her collarbone twinkles under the soft lighting within the ballroom. The sweet smell of her perfume will linger on the jacket´s fabric as I wake up alone on a Sunday morning at my place, but content and fulfilled anyhow.
She smiles at me so gently and her upper lip curls up a tad at its midsection, forming a light cleft not unlike that of a cat´s, which trace is further made stronger by her slanting amber eyes and the almost feline way her wavy blonde hair cascades over her black dress and my own navy blue jacket, cut short and in layers.

She tells me of this new boyfriend of hers, also blond of course and about 5´10” tall or something (I´m 5´7” by the way— for your information). And he´s French, to boot, naturally lives in Paris and works for Air France, that´s why it´s so easy for him to dish her out air tickets to Canada or wherever every now and then.
I start thinking of it´s probably the first time I´ve ever thanked an ocean for existing but the very notion of the Atlantic spreading out eastwards between myself and my now-imaginary Calvin Klein underwear modeling-nemesis soothes me into the rest of the wedding reception. I smile back at her, ask if she´s any warmer.
A little, she says, then thanks me in a whisper as we find the way to out table.

I´m calculating, for the rest of the evening past the dinner and once all the non-octogenarian guests of the wedding have all swarmed to the dance floor, including ourselves, how long I actually have to make my move before the night is through.
I think of my globe-trotting rival, his being French and this wonderful, dream-come-true girl at my side hailing from Chile—and of their chance meeting down here under Brazilian skies—and this funny little analogy runs through the back of my head: Angels and demons clashing upon Earth, raining fire and brimstone over Man, who can do nothing and is inevitably caught sandwiched between some eternal manicheist ballet. But then the deejay shifts both the tempo and decade of his songs: Abba melts into New Order and nears the inevitable end of the 20th century with some crap in Spanish: Another decade and all the chariots will inevitably turn back into pumpkins.

I´m thinking of the Devil, yet again though, and something about time being too short and the Devil sending in his beast with wrath and stuff, and I almost mention her that, actually thinking for a moment I´m so cool because I´m really getting it from the Bible, from the goddamn Book of Revelations, but upon second thought I´m just probably recalling some song by Iron Maiden or whatnot. Then I make a mental note so as to go easy on the rock stations from now on, and fish my endless pool of lowbrow junk pop culture for a better analogy for the unfairness of the situation:

“So hey about this whole Air France thing,” I ask her as we leave the dancefloor for the bar and yet another round of sake with strawberries, “You ever seen that movie Aliens versus Predator with like, the two races of monster in it doing their battle on Earth? It´s god-awful but makes a guy wonder, I´ll give you that, for instance...”