by Cat Rambo
“Sure.” She licked crumbs from her fingertips.
“How do you make them think you’re the same person they’ve been talking to?”
“They come pre-fooled,” she said. “Ready to drop into the seat and talk to the one heart in all of the universe that knows them.”
“You disillusion them.”
“I teach them what the world is all about. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and what you can laugh at, you can live with.”
“Is this tied in with that crap Mike was spouting last night? You’re an Avatar?”
“A whatty-tar?”
“An Avatar. Mike said something about Avatars and Tarot cards and focuses.”
“Mike says all sorts of things and only ten percent of them actually makes sense. You should know better than pay attention.”
“Like any of this makes sense? Sasha, it’s just weird and awful that you do this.”
“Fuck you, emo-boy,” she said.
I guess I wouldn’t have minded so much if I hadn’t been having shitty luck with blind dates myself. I’d set up match.com and yahoo.com and OKCupid and FriendFinder and all the rest.
I got replies from women who wanted me to send them money so they could come visit, one hard-core rock chick in Alaska who said flat-out that she didn’t do in person but was fine with “long distance commitments,” and a Chicago woman who said she’d seen me at a poetry slam when visiting Seattle. She wouldn’t post a picture of herself, leaving me to believe that she was actually a fourteen year old boy.
But at least I was getting a trace of hope every night. I’d log on to the computer and check my messages, send a couple of Woo!’s or raves or whatever the flavor of the flirt was. And here was Sasha, skinny unappealing Sasha, dirtying the taste of it. Making it meaningless.
“You’re a sadist,” I said. “A goddamn sadist.”
“Do you think I really like it?” she said.
“Yeah, I think you do. You get off on it, the power of crushing people’s dreams,” I spat out.
“So I can sit here and watch them die, or I can give them a little closure.”
“Seriously, it’s screwed up,” I said. I stood and went in back to rinse filters.
Mike caught me there later.
“Hey, did you and Sasha have some kind of fight?” he said worriedly.
“I told her she’s a twisted fruitcake,” I said. “I know you’re a friend of hers, but the blind date crap…Jesus, it’s wrong!”
He held up a hand, forestalling me. “Yeah, well. It’s a long story.” He looked unhappy in his long-nosed, spaniel-eyed way. “Look, you know how she started coming here?”
I guessed. “Did she work here at some point?”
“No. See, I’d answered this ad in The Stranger personals, couple years ago, you see?”
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
“I stood her up,” he said. “I told her to meet me here at 10:30 on a Thursday morning, and I was so ready, but then there she was and I chickened out and just served her coffee and watched her wait. She waited half an hour, ate a warmed butter croissant and drank a hot chocolate and left. The next day she showed up at the same time and brought a book with her, something by Camus. Ever since then, she shows up three, four times a week, sometimes more.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“She’s an Avatar,” he said, his voice dropping in awed intensity. “You felt it too, didn’t you? Larger than life. It’s what’s so frightening, so appealing about her.” He stopped, looking at me as though the thought had just occurred to him. “You’re attracted to her, too, aren’t you? Is that why you’re so pissed at her?”
“I’m pissed at her because she’s acting out some sort of outrageous psycho-drama that you’re enabling and messing with people’s lives in the process,” I said. “Does she know you’re the one she was supposed to meet?”
“Don’t you get it?” he said. “It’s a genuine supernatural occurrence that happened. I brought her here and she became an Avatar. I don’t know how.”
My head throbbed. “I need to go home,” I said. “I’m going to throw up.”
“Go, go.” He flapped a hand at me. “But come back when you feel better and don’t fight with Sasha anymore.”
I didn’t show up for work for four days. I went out with old college friends every night to a hip bar in a former barbershop. Vintage hair dryers had been lined up like studded alien helmets along the wall and baggies stuffed with peroxide curls were thumb-tacked to the ceiling. Band after band sang each night’s anagrammatic lyrics in smoke-hoarsened voices. When I came back, I was still tipsy. Mike didn’t say anything, just eyed me and served up a jumbo mug of the coffee of the day, a Tanzanian roast, before I swept the floors and used clothespins to clip the day’s newspapers to the rope racks on the north wall.
Sasha came in a little before noon, pausing when she saw me. She laid her book —some Charles Williams title—down on the table in front of her while sorting through her pockets for bills.
“Clay,” she said, carefully unfolding the crumpled ones. “Clay, man, I wanted to say, with the blind dates, I don’t mean they can’t work. I’m sure they can, I’m sure they do.”
The words tumbled through her lips like pebbles, like diamonds, like some fairy tale princess speaking truths.
“The ones that end up here, those are the only doomed ones, you know what I mean? I’m not dissing the love thing. You’re a nice guy, and I don’t mean to be saying anything about that at all.”
The sun gleamed through the window and fell on her straw-like hair, as yellow as the daffodil. I said something reassuring and offered to buy her next coffee, and realized somewhere in the middle of that transaction that one thing Mike had said was true. I was attracted to her, an attraction as mysterious and unexpected as though I’d found an impossible door, opened a closet to find Narnia waiting instead of coats.
What could I do? I lapsed into silence. From then on, Mike and I exchanged glances whenever she came in, both of us acknowledging that lodestone pull, so elemental and so deep within our bodies that we couldn’t imagine wanting anyone else.
And I wondered about the Avatars. Was Sasha right, did she fill some cosmic gap? Were there others? Did I know them, had I seen them walking down the street or taking a double hot chocolate, no whip, from my hand?
When he appeared, when the magnet that governed our movements jolted in galvanic response to his presence, Mike and I both knew it instantly. It was something in the way Sasha’s breath caught, something in the way her shoulders shifted, the way she set down her cup and lifted her head.
He was clean-jawed as some young Galahad, and there was an aquiline elegance to the planes of his nose, to the curls that clustered on his scalp in Greco-Roman order.
His stare went to Sasha and for once she didn’t smile or beckon. She just sat there staring wordlessly at him, her eyes as wide as windows. He came over to her table in three graceful strides and stooped to say something.
“Yes,” she said, giving him her hand. “That’s me.” He drew her hand to his lips and kissed the palm, a gesture as startlingly intimate as though he’d taken off his shirt.
Was he an Avatar as well? Was his job to console selfless women? To pick up people in coffee shops? To piss off unrequited lovers? What role did he fill?
Mike and I stood side by side, watching, ignoring the customer trying to get a refill on her mocha. We stared while Sasha gathered up her things and the young man helped her into her jacket, tucking his arm around her hand.
For a moment she looked back, and it would have been the time to say something then, but Mike’s heel ground into my foot. I yelped and she half-laughed, and waved at Mike, and left.
“Give the poor girl a little happiness,” Mike said. “Breathing room.”
“Will she be back tomorrow?”
He shrugged, finally looking to the counter and the empty mocha cup sitting there. “Maybe.
I don’t know. Maybe she won’t be an Avatar any more.”
The customer gathered her drink after he refilled it and looked around, meeting my eyes. She took a step towards me.
It felt as though someone were watching me from just past her shoulder—I slid into focus. She opened her mouth to speak and each word was the click of an immense non-existent cog.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m supposed to meet someone here at two fifteen…”
I squared my shoulders, meeting her eyes. The bell over the door jingled as another customer entered: plaid jacket, crew-cut, elderly, his gaze scanning the shop.
“First off,” I said, leaning forward to touch her sleeve. “Everything I told you in my e-mail was a lie.”
“Dew Drop Coffee Lounge” was sparked by an incident where someone approached me in a donut shop, thinking I was her blind date. She was so pleased that I had a hard time saying I wasn’t the woman she was looking for. The title came from a restaurant in my home town, the Dew Drop Restaurant, a name that has always amused me.
DDCL originally appeared in Clockwork Phoenix, edited by Mike Allen, in 2008.
Narrative of a Beast's Life
Part I
An account of my family and village—our circumstances—childhood pastimes—Bozni’s fate—Adrato’s lesson
Like many of my fellow Beasts, I was born to freedom, in a small village named Dekalion, the confluence of five Centaur herds. The youngest of seven, I was a favorite of my family, not just of my parents and siblings, but of my aunts, uncles, and cousins as well. They named me Fino, which means “Quickwitted” in my milk tongue, and I grew up in an atmosphere of love and encouragement that any Human child might envy.
Since many have asked me of that initial society, I will set down what I remember of life there. Our village resided in the shade of sandstone cliffs, which overlooked plains of acacia trees and brambles. My people hunted, and the men had farms of cassava and gourds, corn and plantains.
The village was located three or four days inland from the sea, and only a scant number of our women went to trade on the coast or with other neighboring settlements. Only bold women, past their first childbearing and used to fighting, because slavers were common. The traders traveled in groups of five or six, armed with bows and spears, and took goods: bark cloth, carved water gourds, reed baskets. They brought back bright cottons and bits of metal, and sometimes dried fish, tasting of salt and smoke and unfamiliar spices.
When I was a child, my favorite playmate was Bozni, a clever boy perhaps a year younger than myself. We played together, along with our fellows, under the watchful eye of an elderly Centaur, Adrato. In the hot afternoons, he was prone to falling asleep in the shade, and we would play where we liked while he drowsed.
The town was a series of huts, woven of thorn and branches, thatched with grass. In the morning, pairs of centaurs would take clay jugs to fill them in the mud-colored river that ran near the village.
This river was not a safe place, and we children were forbidden to go near its shores, which naturally rendered them the most desirable of playgrounds in our eyes. We learned that dangling a branch over the deeper pools might bring a grim-jawed crocodile boiling out of the water.
While leaning out over a pool with a branch one day, Bozni was snatched by such a monster. The rest of the children screamed and ran for help, but I leaped forward, trying in vain to pull him from the reptile’s maw. I took up the fallen branch and beat the creature about the head, Bozni shouting and screaming all the while.
Alas! Try as I might, the crocodile withdrew further into the water, where it spun itself sideways several times as quickly as a child’s top. Bozni thrashed past in the foaming water—I believe he perished early in those moments, but the crocodile continued to shake the corpse.
I stood horrified, staring into the reddening river, and caught a last glimpse of his ensanguined face, barely visible against the water’s rusty color. By the time Adrato came galloping up, summoned by the others, Bozni was gone.
Adrato demanded an account of what had transpired, and forbore his anger at my inability to express the horrific scene I had just witnessed. Bit by bit, he coaxed the tale from me.
At its conclusion, we stared at each other for a long moment. He took me by the shoulder and pointed a doleful finger at the river. By now, the current had washed away any stain from the glistening banks, although the dents and troughs dug in the mud by the frantic action of Bozni’s legs bore testament to the struggle.
“That is the price of disobedience,” Adrato said sternly, and shook me once or twice. His demeanor impressed me so gravely that it would not be until I was an adult that I fully realized that in some cases, the price of obedience might prove still more costly. I was free then, as I said, and a child. I did not understand many things, and so I swore I would always obey, lest I meet Bozni’s fate.
Part II
My early education—anticipation of a hunt—a raid in the night by Shifters—my capture—our journey
We children were taught mathematics, which I took to with great delight and facility of mind. We learned nothing of the written word, but we were taught to calculate with cabi, which means “counting beads,” carved of ivory and strung on cords.
The arts of hunting and self-defense were also taught to us. When a Centaur youth came of age, he or she would kill a lion in order to receive the tattoos of adulthood along their arms and chest. As the day for my hunt came nearer, dreams of what was to happen filled all my nights. I made two spears for the purpose and Adrato promised me an iron knife for the occasion.
But a week before the ritual was to take place, a slaving clan of Shifters—who sometimes walked in two-legged form, and other times ran as hyenas—attacked us. Our traders had left that morning, and our attackers must have been watching for that signal. In the darkest hours of the night, they set fire to several huts and shouted angrily beside the windows, thrusting spears inward at the sleepers, before withdrawing.
In the confusion, amid the noise and flames, I ran in the wrong direction, fetching up against a fence and knocking myself sharply on the head. I reeled away into the darkness outside the village walls and was seized by rough hands, which pulled sacking down over my head, obscuring my vision and binding my arms. I kicked out, but my captors quickly secured me and I found myself trussed and thrown on a cart with several others. We tried to ascertain each others’ identities, but savage blows rained down on us with imprecations and commands for silence. The cart trundled into motion and we rumbled away.
The next few days we traveled in this manner. My companions in captivity were revealed as three other youths, ranging in age from myself, my age-mates Tsura and Kali, and an older boy named Flik. We tested our bonds, but our captors were evidently well-experienced at their brutal profession. They watered us and fed us with grain porridge, but so little that we were weakened by hunger and tormented by thirst, along with biting flies that crawled over us as we jostled along in the miserably hot sun.
Sometimes I tried to convince myself that my family would come for me, but at least a week would pass before our traders returned from their mission. They were the only ones brave enough to dare searching for us, but by the time they were set on our trail, it would be cold.
Part III
We are taken to market—I am sold to a new master—our journey and its hardships—a garden feast—the Sphinx’s name—we come to Samophar and are taken aboard ship
We were taken to a market in a city. None of us had ever seen such a place before and there were sights and sounds and smells such as I had never witnessed. The buildings were made of clay brick, laid together so snugly that no mortar or cement was necessary. Some buildings were built on top of each other, and stairs meant for no centaur led up and down the outside.
Here we were sold, each to separate masters. Mine fastened me in a coffle with other beings: a Sphinx of that city that had committed murder, two Djinni, and a snake-headed woman whose race
I did not know. Oxen drew the cart to which we were shackled, and chained on it was a Dragon, not a large one, but some eight feet in length. A small herd of goats marched behind us in turn, intended for the Dragon’s sustenance.
We traveled northward for three days, during which I picked up a scattering of my comrades’ languages, and they of mine. The Dragon, as it chanced, spoke the Sphinx’s tongue. As they talked back and forth, I listened and tried to make sense of what they said. I could not assemble the Dragon’s words into meaning, but they drove the Sphinx to silent tears. She wept all day and well into the night, and did not speak again for days.
I had never seen a Sphinx before and when at last she could be coaxed into speech, I gave her my name and tried to learn her own. But my companions informed me that no Sphinx speaks their name outside their own kind. I was much amazed at this strange practice, for it was the first time I realized that it was not simply places that differed from those I had known, but customs as well.
The Djinni were kindly disposed towards me, saying that I reminded them of their own child, who had been sold away from them. They tried to give me a portion of their food, but I refused it, even though it tempted me sorely. They were as hungry as I, and I had no right to deprive them. Even then I thought it unfair that one creature should eat while another starved, before I had seen how bitter injustice might be.
On the second day, we came across a village that lay in ashes. Its living inhabitants were all gone, but here and there in the blackened ruins were corpses: long-armed Apes and Centaurs like myself. Our master allowed us to forage in the gardens, although we were kept chained together, rendering walking laborious. While much was trampled, I found some yams there and put them in a sack I found to one side, along with stalks of sugar cane, two lemons, and a handful of orange fruit that I had never seen before, sized to match my thumb tip, thin-skinned, and full of a sour savor. We roasted our pickings in the guards’ fire that night, and considered ourselves to be dining as well as royalty.
