The Beast (4 page)

              We clinked glasses and drank.

              "So, what do you do for a living?" I asked. I had almost blurted out "how can you afford all of this", but I caught myself.

              "I'm a day trader," he said.

              "I don't know what that means," I admitted, sipping my beer. It was tasty, but not exactly mind-blowing. I held my belief that the food must be amazing.

              Simon didn’t elaborate. "So what do you do?"

              "Data entry," I said.

              "Well,
that
could mean anything."

              I twisted the corner of my napkin around my finger while he fiddled with the pages of the happy hour menu.

              The appetizer platter arrived. It was either named for its size or its contents. It was bigger than my kitchen sink and contained everything but.

              "The rest of your order should be out shortly," the waiter said. "Can I get you anything else?"

              Simon looked down at the oak barrel table and said with a smile, "A bigger table?"

              The waiter looked around the crowded patio for an open, larger table. “Uh…”

              "Thank you," Simon said. "We're fine."

              I picked at some stuffed mushrooms, mozzarella sticks and nachos. We fell into awkward silence again while I pretended to be interested in the triangle of garlic bread in my hand. We sipped our beers and nibbled the food. We had, apparently, completely run out of conversation.

              When the burgers and pizza arrived the waiter tried to set them on the small table gracefully. Finding that impossible, he settled for crushing as little of the food on the appetizer plate as he could. I stared at the tunnel that the plate created when it leaned on the appetizer tray, still unable to say what I really wanted to.

              As Simon munched away, I was surprised at how much he could eat. He was still wearing gloves.

              "I'm really sorry I left you," I blurted suddenly, startling myself.

              He waved a french fry dismissively. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I heard some noises, I'm sure you just got spooked. I wasn't that far from a friend's house so I had him pick me up. Really, don't worry about it."

              "Did you pick up your car?" I asked.

              He nodded, chewing. "I was actually a little disappointed that you didn't steal it. I was looking forward to upgrading to your car."

              I finished the beer and leaned toward him. "So when you said you got into a little accident…"

              Something in his eyes betrayed the lie he wanted to tell. He opted for the truth. "It uh… It caught on fire."

              "How?"

              "I'm not a mechanic!" he snapped. Then, more calmly, "Sorry, it was my only car. I was a little attached to it. I don’t know what happened, it just started smoking and then I saw flames and I got out."

              Something told me that it wasn't attachment to the car that made him snap at me. I couldn’t begin to guess what it was, so I dropped it.

              My date etiquette was a little rusty. Three years between first dates can have that effect. That one was after a bad day, too. It didn’t end well.

              "What did you hear that night?" I asked.

              "So, tell me all about data entry," he said, an unmasked attempt to redirect the conversation.

              "What was out there?" I asked, suddenly afraid that I wasn't crazy and the things I had imagined actually existed.

              "Not here," he said. "Let's go somewhere quieter."

              I nodded, wide eyed and waited patiently for the check to be paid. Full from the kitchen sink platter, my burger was still untouched but everything else was gone. I got a box to go.

              I threw the box in my own car and once again got into Simon’s truck. Same stranger, different vehicle. Different destination too. More public. We went to a park and sat on opposite ends of a small bench.

              "So?" I prompted.

              "You're relentless, aren't you?"

              "You have no idea," I confirmed. "So what did you hear?"

              He shrugged. "Sounded like someone running, or maybe an animal running. It spooked me. That's why it took so long for me to get back. I was afraid."

              "So was I. I heard the same things. And I think I saw something. But I don't really know what I saw. It was dark." Another stupid comment that I wanted to take back. You don't just tell a first date that you saw a mythical beast. It had been a while, but that was still a no-brainer. Especially if you want a second date. And I did.

              I shivered.

              "Are you cold?" he asked.

              "A little," I lied. It was a bad lie. It was quite warm out.

              "Do you want to go back?"

              I looked into his sweet brown eyes and realized that I did not want to go back. I wanted him to put his arms around me and make me feel safe. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted…

              "No," I said, boldly moving closer to him. Out on the cliff it had been so easy; comfortable, close silences. Now, with people going about their business across the street and sounds from the restaurant, it was hard to get that free feeling back.

              "What happened to your hands?" I reached for one of his covered hands. He let me lift it. 

              "Burned them."

              "In the car fire?"

              He nodded. I didn't believe it. Some sense told me that it wasn't the truth. The sense was probably sight, since the rest of him appeared free of bandage or blemish. I double checked to make sure his eyebrows were real, and not replacements for the singed off originals. They were his.

              I looked up in the sky and up at the huge silver orb hanging in it. Down here on earth, with trees and houses to obscure it and lights masking the darkness, the sky didn’t seem as deep and endless. "Full moon," I said.

              "Not quite."

              I moved myself, inch by tiny inch, to his side. I could feel the heat from his body. I could smell the comfortable, already familiar smell that was him. He smelled like grass and sagebrush and dirt, everything earthy and green. He smelled like the hills at night. All the smells of him wrapped around me like a warm blanket.

              "Do you know any constellations?" I asked, leaning into him, making my way under his arm.

              He looked up. "Just Orion and the big dipper."

              I looked up too. "I can never find the big dipper," I admitted. 

              "It's that one right there. Do you see? That bright one is Sirius."

              "I don't see it," I said. He looked down as I looked up and after a smile tugged at his lips, he kissed me.

              He tasted like he smelled- warm and comforting- everything simple and good in the world. His stubble scratched at me and I held onto his strong forearms. It was over too quickly and I leaned back on the bench. I wanted more. I wanted all of him. It hit me like the sudden hunger that comes from smelling food after skipping a few meals. I didn't know that I needed it until it was in front of me, and I felt like I couldn’t live without it.

              I looked up and kissed him again.

              He tensed as if it was unwanted. It felt like he was about to pull away before his hands closed around my waist. He turned his body to face mine and our kiss grew more feverish. His hand grazed the back of my neck, stroked my back, gingerly feeling his way around. One hand gripped my thigh and the other locked around my waist. I felt intense heat like fire rising from his body, and we broke the kiss.

              I sighed, with a feeling like a cool cup of water after a long, hot day.

              "I'm sorry," he said.

              I looked up at him, feeling like my body was slowly floating away. "Why?"

              He opened his mouth to answer and I kissed him again.

              It was too hot and I wanted him too badly. I held his shirt tight in my hands and both of his were tense at my waist. Reckless, I climbed onto his lap. Any doubt that he wanted me was erased, but he didn't seem willing to give in like I was. Something was holding him back. Something made him resist the urge to hold me tight, grabbing, squeezing…

             
He doesn't want to hurt me. He knows. He lied.

              I leaned back and looked into his eyes for a split second before he looked away.

              "What did you hear that night?" I asked.

              He shook his head. "It was an animal or something."

              I grabbed both of his shoulders with a desperation that eclipsed my desire. "What did you see?"

              "I should take you back to your car."

              "No," I squeezed his shoulders and pressed down with all of my force. "Tell me what you saw."

              I saw the fight in his head in his downturned eyes. Tell her, don't tell her.

              "Tell me," I said quietly. He could prove or disprove what I saw with a word. I was desperate to know that I wasn’t crazy.

              He lifted me as easily as a clawing kitten. I struggled fiercely but he carried me easily back to the truck, set me in the passenger's seat and reached across to buckle the seatbelt.

              "What did you see?" I screeched.

              "Please," he begged quietly. "Let me take you back to your car. I shouldn't have-."

              "No."

              As soon as he shut the door I threw it open and jumped out. In case he thought to leave me behind, I ran to the driver's side and reached in as if I could pull him out. He reached down and pulled me up onto his lap by my arm. He kissed me, with full force, so I could tell he wasn't holding anything back. His hands gripped tightly at my bruised ribs, my sore scalp tingled when he loosened my ponytail enough to grab a fistful of hair. When I finally calmed and the raging passion redirected itself away from anger and panic, he set me down roughly on the passenger's seat and hit the gas before I could jump out again.

I glared out the window.

By the time we reached my car, all the fires in me were dead.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He opened my door.

"Good night, Jade Greene," he said.

"You'll call me, right?" I muttered, knowing that he wouldn't.

He didn't say anything, just gave me a broken smile before I got into my car and watched him drive away.

chapter 4

I woke up to tapping on my window. Midnight. With images of vampires and werewolves and bad dates- horrible, awful,
painfully
bad dates- in my head, I buried myself under the covers and squeezed my eyes shut. What felt like seconds later, the alarm beeped cruelly near my head.

              "I don't wanna go to work today," I moaned. I yanked the covers up over my head again and curled up into a painful little ball. When the alarm went off a second time, I pushed myself out of bed.

              My hair, still a hopeless wreck pointed to a bruise just forming across my cheekbone. I didn’t recall getting hit in the face, but it must have been hard to take so long to surface. It was a little extra reminder in case I was planning on healing and forgetting all about it. After a shower I tried to force my hair into submission with a flat iron. It didn't work. I tried a curling iron. It was no use. It desperately needed professional help.

              As I waited in line for the time clock and again for coffee, I felt everyone staring at me. They all wanted to ask, but none of them had the guts to do it. So they just stared. When I finally sat down, my cube mate Shannon looked over her shoulder at me.

              "Your weekend was either really bad or really good," she declared.

              I mumbled something that I couldn't even understand and sat at my desk. A tiny wrapped package jutted out of the barren landscape like a tiny obelisk.

              "What's this?" I asked Shannon. I heard heavy drums from her earbuds. If she knew its secrets, she wasn’t about to give them up.

              I placed the package on my palm. It had been expertly wrapped in shining red paper, pulled tight as a drum against the surface of the box and held in place by tape. A single strip of black lace hugged all sides and sat atop the box in a four-pointed bow. There was no tag, no markings, no indication of why it landed on my desk and who put it there. I squeezed the thin cardboard walls and accidentally ripped the taut red paper.

              I looked around again in case I was being watched and opened it carefully, as though I was saving the torn paper for another tiny gift. I folded the red paper carefully before I reached for the top to open it.

              "Jade!" A sharp whisper made me jump.

              "What's up, Bob?" I lowered the hand that jumped to my chest like I could slow my heartbeat from the outside.

              Bob waved a tin sign at me, printed to look like wood with the words "I'd rather be fishing" in black paint.

              I smiled and nodded.

              "I got another one if you guys want to decorate your cube," he said. "I got another one when I was out there too, but it's N.S.F.W."

              “Cool.”

              "Not Safe For Work," he explained slowly.

              “Yup.”

              He leaned even closer in a show of secrecy, so close that I could see deep into the pores on his nose and smell his deodorant. He wasn’t going to let me go until he described his poster for me. "It's a picture of-."

              "Okay, everyone," the supervisor, Shaun, called. "Meeting room in five. We’ve got good coffee and donuts."

              "Oh! I wonder what this is about." Bob turned to save his work, his train of thought successfully derailed.

              Shannon needed a nudge when it was time to go and she nodded, put her earbuds in her pocket, and followed Bob out. I swept the little gift box into my desk drawer and filed in with all of the other sheep to a conference room where I sat in a chair that was way past its prime.

              "I'll show you pictures of the trip later," Bob promised.

              “Great.”

              Shaun, backed up by "Boy Cameron", announced that there were going to be "some major changes." The cubicle walls were coming down, for a start. Bob's face dropped like Shaun told him his dog just died. "Girl Cameron", also known as Cammie, stared lustfully up at Boy Cameron. They dated for a short while before the inevitable breakup. They could pass for brother and sister, and shared the same first name. Dating was just an expression of their shared narcissism. Cammie was pining because Boy Cameron initiated the breakup. Knowing her, she wanted to lure him back in so she could break it off this time.

              "That's not the only physical change," Shaun continued. "We are going to do some redecorating this week and try a whole new layout. We are also going to be monitoring everyone's efficiency much more closely."

             
So you're going to
start
monitoring
, I thought, picking the peeled laminate off of the last table left over from the invasion of the Huns. Hopefully the conference room would be a beneficiary of the redecorating fund.

              He blabbed through to lunch about the other "major changes" that would affect us. Nothing sounded worthy of a long meeting. As if every person with a bladder really needed to know that we were changing toilet paper brands and soap suppliers.

              "What the hell was that meeting?" Shannon asked on her way into the break room. "I'm going to have to bring my own toilet paper from now on."

              Before I could figure out if she was joking or serious, she installed her earbuds in her ears and took a seat on one of the couches, phone in hand.

              I pulled my buffalo burger out of the fridge and ate it cold, tasting the shame of my behavior the night before all over again. It was delicious, even cold and spiced with shame, which somehow just shamed me further.

              After lunch, Shaun called me in for an individual meeting where he informed me that I was "behind" for the day and asked if I wasn't able to keep up with the pace of workflow. I bit back a scream of protest that the stupid meeting had lasted all stupid morning, and instead said blandly, "Next time I'll bring my computer into the meeting so I can keep up."

              After an accusation of not being a "team player" and being informed that everyone is replaceable in "this economy", I was sent back to work.

              On the way back to my desk I heard someone shouting defensively, "The meeting took all morning, of course I'm behind for the day!"

              "What the hell were those reviews?" Shannon asked, shaking her head. "This place sucks."

              It helped to hear it laid out so simply. She couldn't have been more than nineteen, wearing an obviously eighties hand-me-down suit, complete with monstrous shoulder pads. She probably wore rocker tees and skinny jeans when she wasn't entering data. She might have been wearing them under the suit she swam in and no one would be the wiser. She might have been wearing a headless mascot costume under there and no one would be the wiser.

              I reached into my desk to get the mandatory date stamp and my hand brushed the box. It was infinitely more interesting than whatever data needed to be entered.

              I opened it.

              Two delicate cookies held together with cream greeted me. The lavender colored cookie sandwich said "eat me" in sparkling sugar on both sides. Along with that, taped to one side of the box, presumably so it wouldn't crush the cookie, clung a little vial. It looked like a fancy perfume bottle, maybe three inches high, with a silver and rubber stopper. "Drink me," a tag demanded. 

              I've lost it. It's official.

              With the meetings over and only two hours left in the work day, the supervisors started patrolling. I carefully crammed everything, including the folded paper and lace ribbon into the box, grabbed a stack of folders and started typing.

              After work, I tried again to get a new phone. I was told again that my only option to get a new phone was to pay full price, which wasn’t an option according to my wallet and bank account, so I headed to the grocery store to pick up food for dinner. The only items in my pantry were dried beans, dry pasta, and a box of lemon cake mix. I bought marinara sauce and a loaf of hot garlic bread. Then I did something I never thought I would have to do. I went for a haircut.

              I had only gotten two professional haircuts in my life. The first was when I was twelve and my parents made good on their threat that "If you don't take care of it, we're cutting it all off." The other was a trim at a bachelorette party spa day when my oldest cousin got married.

              The salon boasted pictures of haircuts that were stylish in the early 90s and a man who looked like pre-"formerly known as" Prince tut-tutted at my ponytail.

              "Girl, I can see I have my work cut out for me."

              I sat in the chair and pulled the elastic band out of my hair. He gasped and recoiled.

              "That bad, huh?" I asked.

              "Ooh, what
happened
?" He leaned forward to look into my face in the mirror.

              "Machining accident," I said.

              "
Damn
, girl, it's gonna be more work than I thought. But don't worry, we'll get you a cute-ass cut to match that cute-ass face." He shook his hips when he talked and squeezed my shoulders reassuringly. "But we’ll stay away from the color until all that mess is healed."

              All around, stylists and manicurists cried out the injustice of cutting my long hair. Some even stopped to stroke it and say goodbye before I went under the knife. I chose not to watch.

              The stylist, Sergio according to his name badge, started with a razor. I wondered if Sergio was his real name or just part of the persona, but I would be the world's most horrible hypocrite if I allowed myself to ask if that was his real name.

              I forgot all about the troubles of the world while my long, dark brown locks hit the floor. I thought only about the hair falling rhythmically to the floor. Too late to turn back. I stared at the out-of-date styles on the posters on the walls. I wanted to take it back.

              "You must have been terrified," Sergio said. An exaggerated shiver of fear sent light flashing off of his gold shirt. "This looks
bad
.”

              "Yeah, it was pretty terrifying."

              “Girl, I had a
situation
last month. Ooh, I thought my life would
never
be the same. My favorite store, that little hipster boutique across the street, they stopped selling plum colored pants. Eggplant, yes. Royal purple, yes. Lime green, magenta, char-freaking-truce. No plum. I thought that my life was o-ver. I was just despondent for days. But then I found this new store that’s just up the street that has plum. And they have the most delicious selection of vintage scarves, too. So it all worked out in the end.”

I smiled, unsure if the story was supposed to calm me, inspire me, or just prevent me from having an anxiety attack. I couldn’t help sneaking a peek at his plum colored pants. He laughed.

              He disappeared for a minute and returned with a bowl of white goo and black disposable gloves.

              "Just because we aren't coloring doesn’t mean you can't get the
royal treatment
." His head bobbed side to side when he said "royal treatment".

              "What is it?"

              "Oh honey, it’s the stuff of gods! Put here on this earth to preserve the health and beauty of us mere mortals."

              I leaned to get a better look at it. "But what's it made of?"

              He smiled and tapped my shoulder playfully. "Don't you worry, honey, it's just coconut oil. The ultimate deep conditioner."

              He delicately slathered the goo all over my head and hair and I wondered how bad my scalp looked.

              He wrapped a hot towel around my head and hair, brushed my shoulders off and started to rub them.

              "After something like that, a girl needs some pampering," he said. "So you just close your eyes and let your sweetheart Serge take care of you. You're going to let go of all that tension and when you open your eyes, everything will be all okay again. Don't you worry, honey, forget all that man drama, and all that work drama. This is a drama free zone."

              He kept saying his ‘sweet nothings’ until I felt like my muscles melted under his grasp and I believed everything he said. A timer let out a barely audible beep and he tapped my shoulder gently.

              "Okay," he said. "Time to wash this all out and put on your finishing touches."

              I went to the sink bowl and felt the alarming lightness of my head. My hair. It was gone. I reached up to touch it, but my “sweetheart Serge” gave my hand a playful smack.

              Back at the chair, a blow dryer and a big round brush did the rest of the work. A few quick snips, and just as he was about to swing the chair around, he blurted out, "Oh my god,
please
let me do your eyebrows."