Chapter Two
“Thank you for calling Craft and co, You have reached Jeth Martin. I am currently unavailable to speak at present. So please leave you name and number and I will get back to you as soon as possible.”
“Stupid Jeth,” I hissed snapping the cell shut: before throwing it back in my handbag, feeling the strong urge to throw it at the strange woman who sat in the booth in front of me, sipping her drip, yakking endlessly on the phone with annoyance.
There was no point in leaving a message. If he was not picking up now he was obviously preoccupied. Preoccupied... too preoccupied to meet with me, his lover, as we had arranged, as we had planned weeks ago.
“Bitch,” I muttered to myself, angrily.
Not only was I angry with Jeth. I was furious with myself for ever believing in him. How could I have been so foolish to believe in his promises: promises he never kept.
I had never been outside longer than an hour, masquerading as I was and I sure was not about to make it abundantly apparent to the people who knew me, that I was something, someone that they would never understand, nor accept.
Jeth. Why had he done this to me? What had been more important than this, than me, than leaving me sitting here alone, waiting, hoping. Hoping he would show up and make my dreams become a reality.
My emotions were becoming vague. My happiness scarce.
I had been shown up, stood up by the man who had promised me the world and worse yet I had been shown up as “Her”.
I pushed my empty mug away, wiping my mouth clean, hindered. The coffee tasting foul on my tongue, on my teeth causing my mouth to become parched and desperately dry.
I grunted, baffled. Before even having the chance to escape I was once again confronted with the service of the pin-up waitress. Her arm already extended. Her body towering over the booth, ready to pour me another round of the sickly,bitter liquid.
“No more coffee,” I groaned. “His” voice deeply becoming apparent.
I held back a sigh and waited. I had no strength to hide my secret, nor was I ready to put on a smile and act politely in her intolerable presence. I instead brushed her hand away, careful not to burn myself in the process and cocked my head to the side, waiting for her reaction.
Ms. Cherry raised her eyes. Her blond, wispy, eyebrows thin fluff under her electric, bleached hair.
“Freak,” she muttered, retreating the boiling kettle away from the table. Her hands grasping the mug from beneath my fingertips, making it her cause to veer as far away from the “Freak show” as possible.
I extended my hand, glaring unnerved in her direction: bitter with her disrespect and inhuman decency.
They were all the same. All of them. Another scene, another day, another word.
Did they not know that I was human too? Or did they not care? Would they ever?
I was unsure, uncertain and unable to answer my own question.
I would one day.
I had made it a personal promise to myself and it was times like these when I got closer to the truth.
Times when naive strangers took a personal stab at me with no justification or no idea about who I was or where I came from.
It was times like these that crushed me deeper into the hole of fear, but readied me for the night ahead hour less writing and I had an idea in mind for the Cherry, Pin-up, bitch.
I could fee myself sinking deeper inside, deeper in sadness and embarrassment. My glare fading to a troubled frown.
I would not let her see my weakness. I could not let her see that her cruel, daggered comment had got into me and who was she anyway?
I could answer that well.
She was another narrow minded, lower-class, bigot. One more enemy to society and one more tragic soul to stay away from. In her case, as far away as my sanctuary as possible and that pained me.
I hated Jeth.
How could Jeth have been so insensitive? How could he have left me, alone, sitting in a place like this? Dressed the way that I was? Dressed for him and only him? Being the man that I was?
It was immoral. It was humiliating and I wanted to bury my head deep in the dirt of my backyard, so deep that I would suffocate and wake up to realize that this was all just a manic nightmare. That this was not happening. That I was not so lonely.
I reached into my handbag, taking out my David. J, designer wallet.
I expected the best. I earned the best. I was the best when I was “Him”.
The pin-up bigot stared at my hands:outreached. Her mouth crippled in disgust.
“There is a coffee shop down town, east, off the corner on Holland street. I think it would be more suited to your kind.”
My kind?
I could smell the coffee in the kettle. The hot steam exhaling, drifting, reminding me of the anger I was pushing down deeper inside of me.
I took out a twenty, throwing it on the table.
There were a million spiteful things that I wanted to say to the woman, knowing most of them would lead to me back handing her the “shit-don't-stink” expression of her face.
I instead turned my heel with my dignity still in shape, heading towards the entrance not turning my back once.
I did not deserve this derogatory service. I would be the better person.
Ms Cherry need not worry. There was no way I was coming back to this place: sanctuary or not and I had made a note to myself to file a complain when I got home. Luckily for her, home was where I was headed.
I could not stay in the daylight dressed like this: not any longer than I already had.
Jeth had taken his chance and blown it. I was not waiting around in humiliation any longer.
I held my head up high, tossing my hair behind my shoulders. The pain now burned me deep. My anger sizzling into the dread of loneliness.
Jeth had a reason. He always did and I loved him: no matter how much I was hurting right now. But for now I needed to wipe myself clean.
Erase "Her".
© Tennille Chase 2008
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