The air in the lounge had been borderline suffocating. My glass had almost slipped from my hand as I brought it to my lips due to the perspiration on my fingers. It was not so much the sweltering heat of the evening, but rather my nervousness that had gotten the better of me. If I did not calm down I would turn into a puddle soon. Not to mention the effort I had put in to doing my makeup just right and applying the exact amount of perfume to the soft skin of my neck and wrists, and of course, the red dress would all be for nothing if I continued to perspire.
It was all a bunch of sillyness really. And the biggest silly of it all was the dress. I knew it. I had asked myself what I was thinking when I had bought it. Even if I had just bought it I would be able to forgive myself, but I specifically went looking for it, knowing full well that this grand sherade I had meticulously thought out would amount to absolutely nothing but tears. Yet still, I could not restrain my feet from carrying me through the roads in town, strolling past all the store windows. I could not stop my eyes from wandering over the displays and the mannequins. I could not even stop myself from trying the blasted dress on when I finally found it, and I could not stop myself from buying it either. Rediculous, truly rediculous.
I sit there, on the emerald sofa, glass in had, wondering just how much of a fool I am about to make of myself. The sigh I release as I place the glass back on the coffee table is dismal and as much as I want to collapse back on to the sofa I decide it is probably best if I move to the belcony. I would go and change out of the dress and into something less desparate but my guest is set to arrive any minute now, so the only resort I have left is to move to the balcony in order to save what is left of my frayed nerves.
The instant rejuvenation the evening air offers is a brief reprieve from my overbearing sense of disappointment in my complete lack of self preservation. All because of a red dress. In fact, the red dress was not the primary source of the issue, the source was in fact, a great deal smaller.
I had been sitting at a corner Cafe nursing a cup of coffee some years ago. The table I sat at had been right next to the entrance, and was the one I reserved every morning at eight for half an hour. I had already read my paper when a man I was not familiar with had slumped himself into a seat at the table on the opposite side of the door. He carried a satchel with a great number of sheets of paper sticking put here and there, a pen stain on the bottom left side of the bag, a pair of gloves clipped to one of the rings on the strap and a pair of spectacles peaking out the front pocket.
When the waitress came over to take his order he replied with “I’ll have whatever she is having, to go, please” while gesturing towards me with a shrug of his shoulders and a slight nod of his head. When the waitress left he carried on by saying “I’m too tired to care very much about what coffee I have.”
“Hangovers will do that to you.” I replied. To which he laughed briefly.
“I’m not hungover,” he said simply “I was interviewing a rockstar that lives around here last night.” at that I almost spat out my coffee.
“You don’t meanโฆ” I said sceptically.
“Precisely,” he smiled. “So I think it’s rather self explanatory how it is the evening ended up going, but I was working so I wasn’t drinking,” he explained, “I was, however, rather close to a couple of men with a funky smelling cigarette and so I think that is the cause of my blinding headache.” I tried to control myself, but burst into a fit of giggles.
“I’m so glad my pain amuses you” he says in the midst of my laughter.
“I’m sorry” I said, placing my hand on my chest to calm myself “it’s not so much the fact that you’ve gotten yourself a migraine off of second hand smoke, it’s just-“
“Yes?” he interjected curiously with a slight upturn of his lips
“You seem so ordinary.”
“Ordinary?”
“Yes,” I giggle “orginary.”
“Well,” he says, pulling a pen from his bag and bringing out a postcard from the front pocket, “I’ll have to immediately write to my sister telling her about a mad-woman I met at the coffee house who had the audacity to call me ordinary.”
“You can’t exactly do that without your glasses can you?” I ask pointedly while referring to his spectacles still peeking out the front pocket of the untidy bag.
He looked to the bag, the spectacles, did an almost unnoticeable head shake, and lifted his gaze to meet mine. He had a look of amused bewilderment, the look you get when you just witnessed a magic trick happen before your eyes; you didn’t know exactly what had just transpired, yet you found that somehow you find the one side of your mouth turned upwards in a smirk at the very nature of simple astonishment. And so our eyes stayed on eachother, as I found my own expression mirroring his; equally astonished.
It was not until the waitress had repeated “Sir, your coffee” for the forth time that we broke eye contact rather sheepishly. Embarrassed at the whole situation, I turned my attention back to my now cold coffee. Out of the corner of my eye I was mildly aware of him paying the waitress, her going back into the Cafe and him emptying about five sugar sachets into his to go cup. Then I heard the scraping of his chair as he got up and dared myself to raise my gaze as he was slinging his satchel over his arm.
Once he did, he looked at me, smiled again, then looked gown at his bag, and rifled around in it for a few moments, then felt the pockets of his trousers, growing a bit antsy, and finally feeling the pocket of his large tan coat. From there, he pulled out a pen, retrieved the post card he had discarded on the table earlier and began to scribble a note on the back.
“Look, I’m going out of town this evening,” he said as he turned to me, “but I’ll be back next week. If you like, give me a ring and maybe I can introduce you to that Rockstar fellow.” He placed the postcard on my table, and looked at me once again.
“It was lovely to meet youโฆ” he said, waiting for me to give him my name. Looking up at him, I found myself on the verge of blushing.
“I’ll give you my name after I meet the Rockstar,” I said, with a laugh playing on my lips.
At that he nodded and let out a low chuckle.
“I can live with that.”
I did meet the musician, though he failed to live up to my expectations. And so it was at that Cafe, all those years ago, that we became friends and I let that damned girl in the red dress on the postcard work it’s way into my mind. And here I am nursing a cocktail instead of a coffee, and hoping, beyond hope, really, that there is something more to the years of wishing that I lived in that postcard.
At the very least, the breeze had calmed my nerves, and I’m sure the alcohol had contributed to that. Nevertheless, I felt more comfortable in my dress, less nervous. Then, finally, the doorbell rang, and I knew I had to step out of the postcard.
By: Leilah Bhyat
And another thing 