by Annie Jocoby
He looked at me some more, his beautiful eyes sizing me up. He took his cards, and looked them over, and then looked back at me. “No, Dalilah, I’m serious here. You have a phenomenal talent, and I know what I’m talking about. I’ve studied all the masters, just like you, and I know a once-in-a-generation talent, and you definitely are that.”
I felt just a little bit uncomfortable at his fawning. Deep down, I kind of knew that he was right. I was talented, I did have something unique, and I did throw it all away. I needed to work on my confidence again, and, truth be told, Luke was actually helping in that department. Still, I wasn’t good with compliments. “Uh, thanks. Now, let me pick up some cards and discard some.”
I saw him visibly get just a little bit frustrated, and then he shrugged his shoulders. He picked up some more cards himself and discarded some more, and then announced that he had the necessary hand to lay it down.
Eh, beginner’s luck. I transferred some more cards, but, before I knew it, he had gone completely out and I was stuck with all the cards in my hand. I sighed, and counted up the cards “Well, this game is getting off the ground wonderfully for me,” I said sarcastically.
He smiled his goofy smile, his dimples broadening on his cheeks. “Card shark, huh?”
I didn’t want to tell him that I was, actually, a card shark when I really wanted to be. I had mastered the art of card counting, not that it would have mattered much in this game. “Beginner’s luck. Don’t get too cocky,” I said teasingly.
But, the next few hands went the same way. Luke was really starting to take to the game, and I didn’t mind that he was. I wasn’t overly competitive, really, and was happy to see that he was winning.
“So, Dalilah,” he said, casually laying down yet another hand. “I can’t help but wonder what happened. I hope that I’m not prying.”
“It’s like this, Luke,” I said, finally being able to lay down a hand of my own. “I was a young child when I was getting all of this attention. Just 11 years old. I suppose you also read in this article that I have a very high level of, well, smarts.” I hated to talk about myself in this way. It always sounded so pretentious and obnoxious. Yet, I had to discuss the issues.
“Yes,” he said. “Your overall level of intellect is astounding to me, to say the very least.”
“Well,” I said. “What nobody tells you about prodigies and geniuses is that our emotional maturity is virtually the same as anybody else our age. So, it’s very difficult to be advanced. Critics certainly didn’t understand this. They saw my work, and just assumed that, because I had the skill set of an adult, I also had the maturity of one.” I shrugged. “Not so much. I was absolutely devastated by the avalanche of crap that came at me after that Jacobs article. I couldn’t function after a little while. My father tried to hide all these magazines and articles from me, but, of course, I had the Internet, so I was relentless in seeing what the critics were saying about me. It was all so glowing until that Jacobs article, and then they suddenly turned on me en masse. And I know it might be difficult to understand, but I started to lose my identity and my inner core. I was virtually silenced by my own critical voice.”
“Okay,” he said. “How can we bring that back?”
“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. “I guess that I just need to become fearless again. I wish that I knew how to do that.”
The next record dropped, and the card game continued. We talked a bit more about what was going on with me, and I commented about how much I loved his work as well.
“Let’s just form a mutual admiration society,” he said with a smile. “I think that we are completely enamored with each other’s work. Perhaps we could be each other’s cheerleaders. I can help you get back into it, and you can help me not lose hope that I need to just go back to Maine and become a fisherman like my dad.”
I was startled at such a suggestion. “You can’t become a fisherman,” I said. “I mean, not that being a fisherman isn’t a noble profession. It is, of course. But you have too much talent to do anything else but art.”
He smiled, and blushed. “Well, your words and about $7 can get me a nice cup of Starbucks coffee. But thanks.”
I dealt the cards. “What about Nottingham? He sees your talent. He hired you, after all, to paint me.”
Luke shrugged. “Well, I might as well come clean right now. I got that job because of a sketch I made of you.”
“Of me? I don’t understand.”
He looked uncomfortable. “Please don’t think that I’m a stalker. But I saw you on the bus. I was on my way to see about a commission, so I was in the city. And you got on the bus. And, well, you lit up the entire city. So cliché, I know, and I’m sorry. But that was the only way that I could describe you. You just looked incandescent. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.”
I felt myself blush, which was a different reaction for me than was usual. I mean, I had heard men talk like this to me before, but I had never heard such words delivered with such passion.
I didn’t say anything, but just stared at my cards. My hands were shaking, and I actually felt tears forming. Why I was about to cry was a mystery to me. I only knew that I was moved by what he was saying.
So he went on. “So, anyhow, I had a really shitty evening that night. I came home to see that I had been robbed, again, and I needed something to cheer me up. I immediately saw your face in my mind again, and I, well, sketched you from memory.”
I was becoming overwhelmed at his words. He was obviously infatuated with me, somehow, from the moment he saw me. Like my father was with my mother. And something inside me was screaming that I virtually felt the same way about him when I first met him. Perhaps I wasn’t acknowledging as much, that I felt a thunderbolt when I met him. But his words were bringing these feelings to the surface, and they felt more than a little bit uncomfortable. Mainly because these feelings I was having for him were still so alien for me.
So, instead of acknowledging to him how I was feeling, I made a little joke. “You weren’t robbed,” I said. “You were burglarized.”
“Come again?”
“Well, lots of people get these two terms confused. A robbery only happens when something is forcibly taken from somebody else. Like a when a little old lady gets her purse snatched. That would be a robbery. But when somebody breaks into your home and takes stuff, that’s a burglary. It’s a different thing. Kinda like the difference between jail and prison. Those are other terms that people always get confused.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “Thanks for the criminal justice 101 lecture.” He grinned, but I could tell that he was a bit nonplussed that I hadn’t addressed the evidence of his infatuation-at-first-sight.
My hands were still shaking, and I swallowed hard. It was difficult enough for me to be feeling this way about Luke, but to put my feelings into words seemed impossible. I hoped that I didn’t quite scare him away with exterior coldness. Inside, I was feeling completely warm and fuzzy about all that he was saying to me. It was just a shame that I couldn’t outwardly express how I was feeling on the inside.
He was carefully studying me as he laid down some cards. “Dalilah, I think that you’re looking a bit red in the face. Perhaps you’re allergic to this wine.” He genuinely looked concerned about this prospect.
“No, uh, no. I’m not allergic. I’m just, uh, feeling rather…”
It was then that he suddenly, and without warning, put down his cards and planted a soft kiss on my lips. I inadvertently lost my breath, as I bit his upper lip just a little bit. The tingles that I was feeling at the diner became magnified times 1,000, it seemed. This feeling was like nothing that I had ever in my life experienced. His lips were warm and he smelled of caramel for some reason. He put his hands on the sides of my face as I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck and brought him closer into me. He put his hand on my waist as he hungrily seemed to devour me with his lips and tongue. He was an amazing, passionate kisser, and he seemed to put every ounce of h
is being into it.
He laid down on top of me, his rather nice hard-on poking through his jeans. But, then he blinked rapidly, and suddenly stopped.
I looked at him quizzically, wanting, more than anything in this world, for him to continue. Usually when I was with a guy, I simply wanted the whole thing to be over with. Nottingham was the exception, but that was only because I was so intrigued with the sex games. But, usually, I could care less about the men that I had been with.
But with Luke…I felt that I just didn’t want him to continue, I needed him to continue. My body was crying out for more of his kisses and was crying out for him to strip off my clothes and make love to me. Every cell in my body seemed to be screaming for him to continue. I also realized that I had been breathing extremely heavily.
He kissed me again for several more minutes, gently yet forcefully. He then lightly brought my wrist up to his mouth, and he nibbled on it. This, too, brought shudders to parts of my body that I had never even thought about before.
Then, just like that, he stopped again. He shook his head. “So sorry, Dailah. I don’t know what got into me. That won’t happen again.”
NO! He obviously didn’t know that my body, and my mind for once, was begging him to continue. Craving for him to continue. I blinked my eyes, and tried mightily to catch my breath. I was a runner – I tried to jog about four miles a day to stay in shape, which, of course, seemed to be contradictory to my other unhealthy habits, namely my drinking – yet I was feeling my heart race as I had never felt before. And this feeling like I was underwater and couldn’t breathe – that was something that had NEVER happened to me before.
After a few minutes, I finally recovered enough to speak. “That’s fine, Luke. I mean, I liked it. I mean, I want that to happen again.” I was talking like a moron, I was well aware of this. Yet my thoughts were scattered and jumbled and I couldn’t tell which way was up anymore.
His face was completely red, and he just shook his head. “You’re my muse. Perhaps that’s all you should ever be.”
“If I’m your muse, then you shouldn’t keep me at arm’s length. You should envelope me in your strong arms and make me feel like you just did.” I put my hand on his leg, and I lightly kissed his cheek, but that was all that I did. For some reason, it just didn’t feel appropriate to be aggressive with him. I wanted him to continue to make the moves on me. I was feeling shy, which was another alien feeling for me.
This Luke was suddenly making me feel different on so many levels. It was all very foreign and strange for me, yet wonderful.
Luke cracked his crooked grin and put his arm around me. “Oh, Dalilah?” he said, softly. “How did I just make you feel?”
“When you kissed me, I don’t know how to explain it. It was like I came alive. That’s the only way to say it. I have been so numb for so long that I have forgotten how to have authentic feelings. But I’m suddenly starting to remember.”
Then, to my utter dismay and chagrin, I started crying.
Luke was alarmed. “Dalilah, what is it? Why are you crying?” He put his strong arm around me, and put his hand in my hair. I could hear his breathing, strong and regular. His heart was also audible in my ears. Boom, boom, boom.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I just realized that I’ve been numb for nine years. I had such passion when I was very young for so many different things. I was able to translate all of those strong feelings onto the canvas. But when I lost my voice, I lost myself. My passion and feelings. Gone. But when you kissed me…”
I swallowed hard. He was still looking at me, his goofy grin gone. Instead, he had a look of concern in those gorgeous eyes. “Go on, Dalilah,” he whispered.
I shook my head. “I remembered. I remembered what it felt like to actually want something. To actually care about something. Isn’t that crazy? It was like something was actually triggered in me when you kissed me. It was like a flashback. A flashback of how I used to be.”
I also wanted to explain to him that I was feeling regret, too. Regret for how I was wasting away. I had everything given to me at birth, and I chose to throw it all away because my feelings were hurt. I was feeling more than a little bit silly, too, for making excuses for my absurd lack of motivation over these past nine years. If I knew somebody like me, I would want to strangle her. Slap her to try to wake her up. Tell her to quit whining and get with it.
And explain to her how to be fearless again.
Luke was still looking at me with those eyes of his. I was feeling more than a little bit mesmerized by them right at that moment. He stroked my cheek gently and said “it’s not crazy at all. Sometimes it just happens that way. Something small and insignificant will catch your attention, and, just like that, you’re spun back into the past. It happens to me all the time.”
I wanted to tell him that his kiss wasn’t “small and insignificant” to me at all. That it was everything. But I somehow didn’t have the words to express these thoughts. So, I just nodded my head, and silently willed him to continue.
But, he didn’t. The mood seemed to be broken with him, much to my dismay, because he started getting up off the floor and said “well, Dalilah, I’m going to refresh my drink, if you don’t mind. I see that you’re empty too. Do you mind if I refill yours as well?”
“Sure, Luke, that would be great.” My heart was still racing, as I had yet to recover from the overwhelming feeling I had when he kissed me. I looked down at my hands, which were shaking, still.
Who was this Luke Roberts, and why did he have the ability to shake me to my core? When nothing, and nobody, else ever has had the same ability?
He refilled the two wine glasses and sat back down next to me. “Okay, then, where were we? I think that we were on the seventh hand. Remind me again what we’re looking for here?” he said, as he shuffled the cards.
“Um, two sets of four,” I said. “Looks like this might be a long hand,” I said, looking at my cards, which were nowhere near forming the two sets of four that I would need to lay them down.
“Two sets of four,” he said, looking at his own hand and motioning to me to set down some cards and pick others up off the pile. He furrowed his brow, his grin and dimples back on his face. He shook his head and laughed a little bit, which I was already picking up to be his “tell” that he didn’t have a very good hand.
“So, Luke,” I said, as the game went on. “What kinds of things do you think about when you get some kind of trigger? You were just talking about how little things spin you into the past.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes I miss the old man. I mean, he’s still alive, and living in Portland, Maine. Still just as crusty as ever. But I don’t necessarily see him as often as I would like, and there are times when I genuinely miss him. So something small might remind me of him, and I get nostalgic for stuff. For the days when he was my pop, and I was his little tyke, and we spent long days trying to catch fish in the river. He was an expert, of course, but he always wanted me to be the one to bring home the prize catch.”
I listened to him, charmed already at his story. “Go on,” I said, not wanting to interject with my own stories of my youth, which is what I would usually try to do in such a situation. Instead of listening to the story, I had a bad habit of interrupting with my own stories, but I didn’t want to do that here.
He shrugged again. “Eh, anyhow, he had this organ that he bought one time. My mom thought it was the silliest goddamned thing in the world. But my pop loved it. He played it all the time. But he got tired of it, and eventually it started gathering dust, so he gave it away. But, you know what? I came across an organ just like it in the Salvation Army one time, and it really triggered strong emotions in me. Silly, insignificant, but that organ really took me back.”
I took a deep breath. “How is your relationship with him now?”
“Strained. He thinks that I’m wasting my life out here. Thinks that I need to get a real man’s job, like he has. Sometimes I think that he might be right
about that.”
That startled me, to say the least. “Why do you say that?”
“Well,” he said, finally laying down his hand. “Sometimes you just have to admit defeat and set aside your dreams for a better life. There are too many starving artists in this city as it is. I don’t want to be one of them for too much longer.”
Suddenly, I started feeling anxious. It sounded like he might not be in the city for much longer. And, for some reason, just imagining that he might leave town was something that was inconceivable to me, and would be devastating.
“I don’t think that giving up on your dreams would ever qualify as having a better life,” I said. “You might make more money doing something else, that’s true. But true happiness comes from following your passion.”
“I know. But true happiness also comes from not getting stuff stolen all the time, and having something to eat that doesn’t come from a box labeled Ramen Noodles.” He smiled and laughed a little. “Not that this describes me. I’ve got bars on my windows to keep out the burglars. Not the robbers, but the burglars. So, hopefully the problem with getting stuff stolen won’t be for too much longer.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. What I did know was that he was wickedly talented, and just needed the right break to come his way. He was still quite young, too. He just hadn’t had the time to make a name for himself.
I also had to admit to myself that I had no idea what he was going through, as far as his fear of abject poverty. I was privileged, I knew this. Yeah, I was also stubborn, therefore I steadfastly refused for my mom and dad to give me any money at all. No matter how much they begged me to take it. But, at the same time, I also had to admit that they were a safety net. It would take a lot for me to swallow my pride and ask them to support me, but, if it came to that, I could do that. Luke, on the other hand, didn’t appear to have the same safety net. So, I didn’t know where he was coming from. I really didn’t have the fear, as he apparently did, of facing living on the streets if things didn’t work out.
