Soul for Sale
by
Cate Masters
PUBLISHED BY:
Cate Masters on Smashwords
Soul for Sale
Copyright © 2011 by Cate Masters
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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For Gary, who keeps my soul nourished.
Special thanks to Eternal Press, which first published this story.
Previous reviews described it as “outstanding,” a “riveting read… I couldn’t stop until I hit the last page.”
Read more reviews, view the trailer and more at http://catemasters.blogspot.com/2007/12/one-soul-for-sale-contemporary.html
One
“People put the most bizarre items up on uBuy.” Madelyn watched the cars cruise by from her window seat in Sal and Al’s coffee shop. October leaves skittered along the sidewalk and swirled between the feet of passersby as if playing tag.
“Someone listed his house for sale. Can you imagine?” Gwen sipped her latte. “I found the cutest circus coat though. Black with long tails. Perfect for my standup act.”
“You always find great deals.” If only Madelyn could stumble across something online, or anywhere, to help her. Lately, she felt so lost. Immobile in her life, while the rest of the world rushed by, a stationary spectator to her own dull life. The universe apparently tossed items Gwen needed directly in her path. All her friend had to do, it seemed, was close her eyes, make a wish and wham, it appeared.
“So do you. You got that cool vintage poster last week.”
In the stark morning sunlight, Gwen’s bewildered face, bordering on irritation, roused Madelyn from her funk. A feat, these days.
“Right.” She forced a smile. “I just wish I could find something useful. Something to help me in my career, like you do.”
Gwen snorted. “Career. Funny. Maybe you should be the comedian.”
“Hardly. You’re going to make it big in standup, very soon.”
Gwen had revised her act for months, perfecting it so she could one day actually perform before a crowd at a comedy club rather than the occasional open mike night. Or in front of her bedroom mirror.
“We’ll both make it big soon.” Gwen shifted in her seat. “Hey, how was your date last night?”
Ugh, the last thing she wanted to talk about. “Well…” She let the sentence hover. The ending was such a letdown.
“C’mon, how’d it go?” A rapt audience of one, Gwen leaned forward.
Madelyn shrugged. “Okay. At first.” The post-date follow-ups were like their own comedy routine at this point. She almost expected a ba da dum after delivering this line. Timing was so important.
“Oh.” Gwen slouched, as if the helium in her happiness balloon was being siphoned slowly away.
Madelyn hated to elaborate, but her friend waited for at least the Cliff Notes version.
Making her tone upbeat, she figured she might get points for delivery, at least. “Dinner was nice. The movie wasn’t, the usual nonstop action flick guys seem to like with third-grade dialogue and exploding cars.”
Gwen’s back straightened as hope again rose within her. “And afterward?”
Madelyn hated to deflate her friend again, but Gwen did ask. “Afterward was a continuation of the usual nonstop action, third-grade dialogue thing. On his sofa. Then I left.”
Gwen heaved a wistful sigh. “So Steve’s another one-hit wonder?” Her exasperation with Madelyn’s woeful love life wasn’t near as heartfelt as Madelyn’s own.
“Following the longstanding trend.” Madelyn gazed out the window, adrift as a leaf. “Everything’s on a downhill slide. Work, dating, all of it. Sometimes I think I have to sell my soul to get what I really want in life.”
“Well, that’s easy. Put it on uBuy.” Gwen shook her cup to stir up sugar from the bottom.
“See, that’s why you’re the comedian.” Madelyn reinforced Gwen’s dream at every opportunity. Her friend reciprocated by being Madelyn’s best cheerleader for her art, though lately, her sketches were as uninspired as the rest of her life.
Wistful, Gwen said, “I try my best.”
Their meager salaries didn’t allow for luxury, so neither was a stranger to the allure of uBuy. Besides supplementing their wardrobes, Madelyn and Gwen loved uBuy for its oddities. The odder an item, the greater its appeal. Madelyn’s desktop swaying, ukele-strumming hula-skirted Gumby was testament to this. Gwen collected memorabilia of famous comedians; Groucho Marx was a favorite.
On that level, Gwen’s offhand suggestion appealed to Madelyn. “Maybe you’re right. I should list my soul, just for kicks. To see what response I’d get.” Maybe some cute guy would buy it.
The notion vanished from Madelyn’s mind at the sight of a stunning man outside. Standing by the newspaper vending box, he checked his watch. His black shirt, black sport coat and black slacks set off his dark features. So perfect, he looked out of context with his surroundings. When he glanced up at her, shock waves rumbled through her nervous system like an oncoming storm. A rush of heat engulfed her.
“Madelyn? Hey, what’s wrong with you?” Gwen’s voice sounded distant, as if it traveled through a tunnel.
She snapped her attention back to her friend. “Nothing.” In truth, Madelyn knew her universe had just shifted.
She slid her gaze back to the man. Watching her, his face registered amusement but his black eyes seared into hers with a Svengali’s urgency. She felt riveted. A static buzz erased the background noise of the coffee shop.
Gwen squinted as she searched out the window. “What’s so interesting out there?”
Blinking, Madelyn broke away her gaze. Her head might have been a hot air balloon – light and empty. “That guy is incredibly gorgeous.” She sipped at her tepid coffee.
“What guy?” Gwen strained to discern him among the passing throngs of people.
Ducking her chin, Madelyn tucked her hair behind her ear. “Don’t be so obvious. He’s right there, by the newspaper vending box.”
In the angled sunlight, Gwen’s arching neck made her look statuesque. Madelyn fixed it in her mind so she’d be able to reproduce it on paper later. She wished she hadn’t forgotten her sketchbook; she could have at least gotten down the basic lines. But now, she felt so shaky and unfocused, any rendering would have failed to capture the grace of the true lines.
Gwen continued searching. “I don’t see anyone special. Is he hot?”
“There’s something amazing about his smile...” But the Evening Gazette box stood deserted. His disappearance created a palpable void, like a black hole tugging at her, tugging her half out of her seat trying to find him again. Up the street and down, no one in the crowd vaguely resembled him.
“He’s gone. I thought for sure he’d come in, that he’d come...” For me might have sounded a bit insane, but somehow it held a ring of truth. His vanishing act felt like a severed opportunity. Disappointment gnawed at her, and fueled the general dissatisfaction that had festered within her for years. She wanted more than this emptiness that had gripped her.
“He smiled at you?” Gwen couldn’t disguise her intrigue. Her lips curled like the Cheshire cat’s.
Surprisingly, the image of him was sti
ll vivid in Madelyn’s mind, burned into her consciousness. “Did anyone ever look at you like he could see inside you? Like he already knew you?” It was as if they’d communicated telepathically, but the transmission had been garbled and she didn’t know what he’d said. The need to reconnect was overwhelming.
Gwen arched her brows. “Wow, that must’ve been some smile. He was probably just waiting for someone.” She pulled her cell phone from her purse to check the time. “We’d better get going, or Evelyn will have our asses.”
Madelyn gave a bitter chuckle. “No way. Then she’d have to do her own reports.” She put on her coat without further argument. Best not to tempt fate. Her job as membership coordinator at the Whitney Center for Arts and Science was a day job, something to pay the bills while pursuing her real love: art. For now, though, she couldn’t live without the biweekly paycheck.
Once outside, Gwen hurried her down the street. Madelyn kept her pace slow, certain the man was still close by, though she couldn’t see him. The newspaper box and the sidewalk hummed with his essence. The air shimmered because he’d walked through it. His presence had tweaked the world a little brighter, and gave Madelyn something to look forward to.
When they reached the glass double doors of the Whitney Center for Arts and Science, hope thudded to the ground like a lead cannonball. No chance of finding him now.
“Life sucks.” She trudged past the children’s exhibit, up the flight of stairs to the offices next to the Imax theater entrance, opposite the ticket counter and gift shop.
Evelyn stood outside her office, arms folded, head tilted. She aimed her critical eye at a framed giclee, which a workman was hanging. Repeatedly, if the man’s heavy sighs proved any indication.
As they approached, Evelyn swept a cold appraisal over each. She pressed her lips together and drew up taller, as if bracing herself. “Oh, good – there you are. Several customers were here already, Gwen, looking longingly into the gift store window. Can you please open up?”
A quick scan of the corridor revealed no one, but Gwen didn’t challenge her supervisor. “Right away.” She flitted the short distance down the hallway.
Madelyn said a breezy good morning and opened her office door. Her sanctuary, out of sight.
Everything about Evelyn was sharp, in every facet of the word. Her clothes were all in the latest style, pressed to creases that could slice any person who stood too close. Her nose, her cheekbones, even her knees were bony – angles jutting in relief against her taut skin. Her shrill voice, could a listener’s ear have been cut, would have the capacity to do so. Her quick mind matched her quick eye, and she always caught the least infraction, but never, it seemed, any works of good.
Madelyn rendered several etchings of Evelyn in various guises: an evil Dragon Lady, a sadomasochistic Dominatrix, a Doberman bitch eating her own puppies as they nursed, a tight-lipped Schoolmarm. The last would torture her supervisor the most, being the least exotic, so it was Madelyn’s favorite. Like a little girl changing the outfits on a paper doll, Madelyn loved to imagine Evelyn in each guise, depending on the situation. This mental device helped her release any anguish her supervisor attempted to inflict.
The Schoolmarm stepped into the doorway. “How are those membership reports coming?”
Madelyn worried the woman had a wooden ruler hidden on her person, ready to bring down on idle hands. She plastered on a smile. “I’ll have them by the end of the week, as I promised.”
“The final report is due at the end of the week,” Evelyn snapped. “Get a draft to me tomorrow.” She glanced at her gold watch. Her breathy tone hinted at exasperation. “I have to run to a meeting. See you after lunch.”
Ah, a reprieve to work without hassle. At least until this afternoon.
Madelyn positioned herself at her computer, but the predictability of the monitor screen couldn’t hold her attention. Her thoughts still felt mired outside the coffee shop, riveted by the dark gaze of the beautiful stranger reaching to her across the sidewalk, through the window as if no barrier could contain it, as if no distance existed between them.
Two
Before, the smallness of Madelyn’s apartment had always felt cozy, and each room enveloped her like a warm embrace. Tonight, it made her claustrophobic. She wanted to push away the confines of the walls, like Superman, like long-haired Samson, to make each room airier to hold more breathing space, expand them so they didn’t feel so self-containing. Suffocating.
She paced past the sketches littering her dining room table, then sat on the stool near the easel holding her sketch pad. The blank page taunted her. The charcoal pencil in her hand felt mute, no matter how hard she pressed her fingers against it to squeeze out some life. At times, the pencil almost acted as a divining rod, conducting the electricity of her inspiration from deep inside her – beyond her, it sometimes seemed – to the page. Images took form as if predestined. She understood what Michelangelo meant when he said he saw the angel in the marble and carved until he set him free.
The pencil hovered at the page, but generated no electricity to conduct. With a frustrated groan, Madelyn stood. She wouldn’t know how to begin to render what she felt anyway – jagged lines, zig-zags of thought and images. The result would be a jumble of confusion.
Brutus, her gray cat, wrapped himself around her legs, and the rumble of his purrs vibrated along her calf. She picked him up, scratched under his chin as she carried him to the kitchen. She opened a can of cat food and spooned it into his dish. Absently, she shuffled through the day’s mail; all junk. Brutus licked his paws, then jumped to the window sill. In need of comfort, a warm body against hers, she picked him up, but he struggled against her so she set him in the window again.
“Et tu, Brutus?” Were males of every species genetically predisposed to be difficult?
The cat’s eyes closed to mere slits. He turned his head, his profile regal as he ignored her.
The sight gave Madelyn a spark, a charge. At the easel again, she picked up her pad and charcoal, and quickly etched the cat’s outline. In the background, she roughed in a pyramid, then a few Egyptian figures and symbols.
Brutus shifted his paws beneath him and watched her as she completed another sketch of him in a jungle setting, then another portraying Brutus as a Buddha-like figure, serene and wise. The results were passable. With a little work, she might be able to render something interesting, something Frida Kahlo-ish that would embody her beliefs, personify a period of struggle and growth in her life. Something that might intrigue another person, maybe even enough to buy a finished piece.
She couldn’t imagine it. Her life didn’t even intrigue herself.
One word echoed through her head: more.
With a sigh, she walked to her computer and logged on to uBuy to browse, and to clear her head. A handbag might cheer her. Scrolling through the items left her dissatisfied; everything appeared to be variations on the same design, not one original among them. Practicality had never been her strong suit. She searched aimlessly, hoping to run across a suitably quirky item to cheer her. Still nothing.
Like an alarm, the red Seller Login button pressed insistently in her consciousness. Her previous transactions had all been purchases, not sales. But how hard could it be to sell something online? Out of curiosity, she clicked the button and constructed a seller’s profile.
Of course, having gone that far, she was compelled to actually put something up for bid. A glance around her apartment revealed nothing she wanted to part with.
A smile crossed her lips. The invisible was sometimes worth more than the visible. In the field titled Name of Item, she entered: My soul.
The next field required more thought. How would she describe her soul, if she were to actually list it? She typed: Pure as the driven snow and quickly erased it. Snow hadn’t been pure since the eighties when the ozone layer started to waste away. She tried: Good as gold but deleted that, too – the description is more fitting for a heart, not a soul. Besides, someone might
construe it as misleading – a buyer would place a bid and then claim he or she thought it was the bonafide twenty-four carat thing.
Brutal honesty, she decided, was the best policy. For sale: one world-weary soul. Current owner has conducted many heavy searches through it, all fruitless. Am so desperate for my life to change for the better, I’ll sell my soul.
She listed it with a starting bid of $50. She considered a “Get it Now!” price but didn’t want to appear too easy. Her soul may be tarnished, but it still might hold some undetermined value. She wasn’t letting it go that cheap.
When she logged off, she couldn’t wait to tell Gwen; she’d have a good laugh over it.
Brutus still sat in the window, gazing outside.
“Time for bed, mister. Let’s not be playing with our noisy toys tonight, okay?” She scratched his chin. He growled.
“What’s the matter with you? Got a hairball?” Though not the most outgoing of cats, Brutus was usually receptive to chin-scratching.
He growled again, lower, his narrowed eyes focused on a point outside.
“What, is there a kitty out there?” She followed his gaze out the window.
On the walkway below, a dark figure – not more than a black silhouette – looked up. A chill ran up her neck. Like the wind howling through a tunnel, the indecipherable hint of a warning whispered indistinguishable words. They insinuated themselves in her brain, swirling until she was dizzy. Holding her temple, she stepped out of the line of sight to re-orient herself. After regaining her equilibrium, she made sure the windows were locked and double-bolted the door.
So as not to upset Brutus, she gave a nervous laugh. “Creepy neighbors.” She reached to turn out the light in the living room and paused. She’d leave it on.
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