by Kris Buendía
I am looking at the roof of her apartment. I once dreamed of having my own but I do not complain about living with my mother.
“Make a party, parties with girls, alcohol and good banquet always impresses. Make it an elegant party. Not like the masked shit that is more than trite, but it has to be very elegant.”
“Lace and tuxedo?” She question.
“Yes, prince and princess” I mock but Mona takes it seriously. “Are you serious? Please do not say shit masked or disguised.”
“No, but it has to be an elegant party like the fucking royal wedding.”
“But without the coloured hats.”
“Of course.” She goes back to serve a drink for her and me. “As always saving me, as a gift you wil be invited.”
“Do not count on it”
“Come on, Cinder you wil go in a beautiful lace dress and nobody wil recognise you, besides, as I wil be organising it, you wil save yourself from your sisters. Something wil occur to me, you owe it to me.”
“I do not owe you anything, bitch.”
“Oh, hel yes!”
No way I wil go to that party. Not al the makeup of the world and the clothes wil make me become a Cinderel a of one night. One: because my sisters recognise me even in the shadow and two: they are no blue princes.
Maybe the greys do.
4
What is Mr. G doing at this time of the morning? It is the third time that I hide from him while I clean. I have done it at my corresponding time on different floors and have seen him in al of them. If I was not sane I would say that he want to meet around here.
I real y doubt it.
“Are you al right, Cinder?” Ask Mr. Clay.
“Yes, Mr. Clay.”
“The other day I could not congratulate you for your birthday.”
“I had a great time with my family and friends.”
“Good to know. You deserve something like that and more. My wife has sent greetings and reminded me to invite you to eat cake, so I bought one for lunch.”
“You do not have to bother, Mr. Clay.”
“Nonsense, it is a good excuse to share.”
I end my day as usual and said goodbye to Mr.
Clay. As usual three times week, I work in a caffe for rich people, Le Dome. It like to cal it like that because it is a caffe where you wil never see someone who is common. Only executives or executive servants come to this caffe or sit down to drink one.
Merit, my boss and also the owner of the caffe, she is one in a mil ion. She can afford serving her own costumers, or in her own words “top quality”
despite being the owner of the place, she likes to serve her own customers and be a good company.
I work for her three times a week or at special events, the rest of the days another girl comes in my place.
“I wil kil the next one who comes through that door with the same suit and asks for the same coffee as always.” Merit complains. I do not blame her I have prepared the same late during the last hour. And I have also seen the same black brand suit.
“Wel , it is better that no one comes in.” I tel her while I finish cleaning some cups and putting them in their place.
“I retract with the kil ing thing.” She says under her breath, which gives me the impression that someone has entered after hearing the bel on the door. “And that is definitively an expensive suit.”
I laugh softly. Until I realise that Merit does not serve the client. I feel that the skin of my neck bristles as wel as the presence that someone is watching me. The moment I leave the cups aside I realise that I have to attend to the client myself, so I force myself to look up and what I see next leaves me very surprised and nervous without knowing why.
Mr. G.
I stare at him as if I needed something from him when it is damn otherwise. His beard seems to have grown and the colour of his eyes has intensified. Now they are an intense blue. And his suit is always blue, the same blue that makes the colour of his eyes stand out. I realise the twisted reality that I had never seen him so close before, not even that time I almost col ided with him.
“Wil you stay stay me like that or do I have to go somewhere else?”
His voice, that grumpy voice moves everything in my interior and makes me land to reality. His eyes are fixed on me in a way that I can not decipher and something unexpected happens. I do not feel smal , neither with fear nor any sorrow, at least not one that forces me to lower my gaze like the first time we were face to face.
He is colder that I could have imagined and he encourages me to want to know what else is hidden in that look. In addition to indifferent… he suffers.
“I'm sorry, sir. Are you ready to order?”
It is the first time I see him here. Unless he visit the caffe on days when I am not here. Because he doem not even look at the menu or ask about the speciality of the day.
It is amazing that someone like him buys his own coffee.
“An Irish coffee” He orders firmly. “With five cups of coffee instead of six, without the twelve tablespoons of sugar, with al the whiskey glasses.
To take away.”
A what? Shit!
In that moment Merit returns to make presence. She winks at me and I ask her for help with a gesture.
“Right away, sir.” I turn around, turning my back on him and something tel s me that he keeps looking every one of my movements.
“Irish coffee?” I ask Merit. She tel s me the coffee preparation book for Irish coffee and its preparation. This real y makes me nervous. I pour each smal cup as it says in the book and how he has asked for and it seems to me that I am preparing something similar to a bomb.
Who can have such a bad day to drink coffee with whiskey? Someone like Mr. G. Someone who does not make him wait and you do not keep looking for long.
At the moment of giving him the coffee to go he stil does not take his eyes off me. My inner self forces me to look at him, so I do it.
“Your hands are cold” he says.
I do not say anything. By now he must have realised that I am the same girl he tripped with the other day. Or not.
Wel , he did not give me pneumonia, what he wil give me is a heart attack if I insult his mouth with the coffee I have prepared.
His hands have touched enough mine to realise that they are frozen, I do not know why but they are always like this, although I never realised it.
When I see that he takes the coffee to his lips and takes a sip, I open my mouth in protest because he can get burned. He does not seem to care and takes it anyway.
What is wrong with that man? Nothing he does seems normal.
“They are…” he hands me a hundred-dol ar bil reluctantly and that makes me a little angry. Since his coffee costs less than that.
“Keep the change.”
What he had ignited in my interior turns into fire, in one hotter than his coffee and I withdraw the bil towards his direction, returning it.
“In that case, invite the house.”
There is no expression in his face. Nor does he look amazed or upset. He seems to pretend or the guy is a damn robot with his emotions.
“This coffee does not do such a thing.” He denies.
“Neither clients that give that amount of tip”
she counterattack.
I see just the corner of his lip scarcely move, and it is not a smile. His lips, some beautiful lips are held in a straight line.
“Someone who works here should not have the luxury of inviting an expensive coffee to a stranger.”
He is such a moron!
I restrain myself from yel ing at at this moment and I just look at him in the eye. I chal enge him with my eyes and he seems to like it. Arrogant son of a bitch who thinks he can humiliate me. He does not even know me.
“I do not do it out of courtesy, I do it for dignity, sir. It was you who…”
“I am helping you to keep your job with a good tip, because preparing it is not going so wel .”
&nbs
p; Fuck. The coffee has been horrible, I knew it.
Wel , I am glad.
“I'm sorry…”
“That is what you have already said.”
I already told?
He takes the coffee that I did not even realise when he left it in front of me and leaves, leaving the tip too. I am absorbed, annoying, angry and more. I take the tip and put it in the jar that goes to charity.
“Go to hel ” I hissed softly but Merit listened to me.
“What is the reason for the bad mood? He has left a good tip.” She question surprised. I pretend a smile and tel her that nothing is happening.
“Something good you have done, not everyone is like that. I knew there was something special about that gentleman, good job Cinder.”
“It is good to help.”
…
I arrived home and found my grandfather asleep. I kissed him good night and went to bed without having dinner.
“You wil get sick, you are very thin.” my mother told me and I ignored her. I did not want anything. I had worked two days and al I wanted to do was sleep, so I did, but when I was in bed I could not do it.
Of al the years she had worked at Graysson and Le Dome, she had never seen Gideon Graysson, much less talked to him, and last but not least, wanted to kil him right there.
He had ordered me, he had worried and then humiliated me.
The pneumonia would have been to not infect someone, but pneumonia it is not transmitted that way.
I did not know what to think anymore. I was too tired to keep fighting with myself and less with my thoughts.
Mr. G. Gideon Graysson did not know me. He was far from knowing me, what I did know was that she would continue looking at him and never look down.
Not for al the tips of the world and if I found him again in the corridors I was willing to throw him the cleaning cart, even if he fire me I did not care.
That man showed danger not only in his look, but also in his voice.
5
“I saw you at the Le Dome” Paris says while I finish putting on my overal s. What is she doing here?
Down here?
“Excuse me?”
I take a step back when she takes one forward.
“Do not pretend to be the idiot, I saw you talking to Gideon. How dare you speak to him?”
“I work there, Paris. He was a client, of course I had to talk to him.” I rol my eyes. I am not afraid, she can hit me as many times as she want, I always get up again. One day I wil get tired and I have even thought about signing up for karate classes or something like that so I could dodge her punches.
Paris is analysing my explanation. And how do she know?
“Wel , it was str that he himself went down for his coffee, he always sends his driver.”
“Were you with him?” I do not know why to ask the question, but I can not retract.
She touches her hair like someone important might notice.
“Of course, I was waiting in his car, we had something important to do.”
It stirs my stomach to think that someone like Gideon could be with a woman like Paris, I do not say it because she was ugly. She is a horrible person inside and has no soul.
Now I see why they are together. Sure they are of the same ilk.
“Do you like him?”
“You are crazy if you think that I would notice someone like him, he comes from the same hel as you.”
When I feel the metal ic taste in my mouth after the blow Paris gives me with her cel phone, I realise that I said that out loud.
“I am sick of you hitting me when you feel like it, Paris.” I face her. “If you have left a bruise on my face, you wil regret it.”
When I think she is going to hit me one more time, she laughs .
“Good try, step back.” She pushes my away and I am about to fal to the ground when Mr. Clay appears out of nowhere and helps me keep my balance.
“Can I help you with something, Miss?” Clay refers to her. Paris sees him badly and ignores him, leaving the service dressing room.
I shake my head and continue, now combing my hair in a high ponytail.
“Are you okay, Cinder? Why did she attack you like that?”
“She is crazy, nothing happens.”
I keep my things in my locker and he seems uneasy. No one here should know that Paris and I have an almost familiar connection.
“Okay, but I did not like it at al .”
“Me either, but it wil not happen again, Mr.
Clay.”
I am sick of Paris.
Fed up of people like them, like Gideon, they think they can throw words and blows left and right.
They just can not.
“I wil go to that fucking party.” I am tel ing Mona when I meet her in the office. “I wil go and you better make your dress beautiful. Paris and Mr.
G will not be the protagonists of that night.”
“But what happened to you?” She looks at me like I am about to cry and hurries to close the door.
I do not know how I got in her office without being seen. Although I can pretend that I am cleaning something here. I have realised that I have always been invisible for everyone, except for people like Paris and until recently, men like Gideon.
“I am sick, Mona. Tired of being humiliated and being attacked by Paris.”
Her look is pure anger. Mona does not know anything but I know that some day I will tel her.
“You must calm down, whatever happened has made me happy. You deserve a free night.”
A free night, I just hope it is not like the last free night, or who knows. Maybe it is an unforgettable night.
After a long night and of long conversations about what to wear and what to do, I completely forgot that Paris and Gideon existed somewhere in the planet.
It wanted a free night. And as wel as Cinderella… wear a new dress. No fake princes and certainly zero crystal heels.
SOME YEARS AGO
It did not remember when it was the last time I visited his grave. He stil did not have a gravestone on it and I always wandered why.
I always went, without anyone seeing me. I had no right, his death had been a homicide and not an accident and the guilty was stil loose.
I was the guilty one.
If he had not noticed me, none of this would have happened. I blamed myself like never before and hated Paris and Pippa.
“Your honours wil not help him at al .” Paris found me outside of my mother’s house. She had parked her van, quite expensive. What gave me the feeling and certainty that it was going wel for her.
The devil was doing fine.
“What are you doing here, Paris?” I asked approaching her. I had not seen her in years, not even at my father's funeral. I dared to see her in the eye and, miraculously, she did not speak to me either.
“I came to give you this.” She handed me a crumpled paper. It seemed like a job application.
Why was she giving me that? On the top of the paper was written Graysson Publicity, the last company my father worked for. I was not a mil ionaire or that was what I thought, until I saw that he had left me nothing but a lot of questions and an void in my chest.
“It is your new job.” She told me. “Did you think you would be the next Versace? You wil not escape from me, Cinder.”
“You are crazy if you think that I wil work for you.”
At that moment I thought it would be some kind of assistant, rather servant, but I was quite wrong.
Paris had a plan for me from who knows how long.
It was just a matter of time.
“Look out the window.” She ordered me to see through the window of her car. “You wil change your opinion.”
Reluctantly I did what she asked. What I saw in the back seat left me petrified. She stil had Thomas's jacket, and not only his, but mine too.
The one that Pippa wore that night.
“How do you have that?” I asked with tears in the eyes. I had burned my jack
et myself.
“You burned the wrong one.”
The jackets were in a plastic bag. When I wanted to approach and take them, Paris got in my way and hit me in the face. I did not defend myself.
I was lost, dazed, she real y had me in her hands and could kil me at any moment.
“Now,” she returned to throw the paper on the floor where I was. “You start on Monday. I wil not take my eyes off you. In Graysson Publicity Pippa and I have an important position, our father did think of us after al .”
“He was not your father.” I snarled and she changed her face expression.
“It was enough. What was the use of carrying his blood? You are in the street, on the floor and you wil stay there. You wil clean floors in Graysson Publicity until I get bored of seeing your face. And if you do not do it, those proofs wil go to the police. They wil blame you for homicide and in these years the laws have changed a lot. You wil rot there and your family…
“Shut up!” It shout at her and faced her. Face to face she did not seem so brave. “You are a son of a bitch. You have won, but even though I am cleaning floors in that place, you will be worse than the floor itself. You wil always be rotten and I know that one day I wil have enough proofs to sink you.
You wil pay for what you did to Thomas, Paris.” I laughed in mockery. “You made a mistake coming here. I wil be close to you, do not forget the saying of keeping your enemies closer. You'd better be the one to take care of yourself and if you mess with my family…I wil kil you.”
She turned around and got into her car. The growl of the car made wake up from my nightmare and I came into a logical conclusion. Everything would end soon.
6
Brightness.
Music.
Class.
Elegance.
I see a lot of glitter, elegance and money is breathed throughout the important event hal of Graysson Publicity. One of the most exclusive and expensive if it is a celebration in the city of Seattle.
Mona has done a great job. And my advice about the dancers dancing on floating bubbles.
Waitresses dressed in elegant black lace, classical music and many cocktails. Red carpet inside, crystals and rubies al over the place.
As for me, I wanted a new dress but I never imagined that I would be me unrecognizable in it. A silk sky blue dress tight to the body. Ful of beautiful stones on the top, with a huge tail that crawls on the ground and my back covered with lace.
