Bread Becomes Flesh

The chair ground sharply, whining, screeching against the red-tiled floor of the Cassandra Inn as Gregor pulled it away from the small bleakwood square of their table. He bowed gallantly and offered her the seat with a sweep of his long arms.

Judy gritted her teeth and shuddered as her date offered her the chair. Gregor knew it would bother her. He’d done it on purpose, the cad.

She smiled demurely and sat down, smoothing out her floral print blue dress with its blossoms of rose and mag and peach against her legs. She liked the way the cotton felt against her skin, cool on a hot summer day like today. Reassuring. The feel of the fabric almost made her forget about the wood-on-tile noise.

Gregor moved to his chair, and carefully lifted it up and away from the tile. No noise.

Motherfucker, she thought. The date was not off to a good start, but could she have expected anything different?

When he snapped his fingers at the waitress, a pretty, lithe thing with red hair and big tits, she rolled her eyes and sighed. The young girl’s head swiveled at the sound and Judy saw the look of concern come into her eyes.

She’d been a waitress once, long ago, during her college years, and she remembered how you always knew the bad ones right away. Gregor was one of the bad ones.

“Really?” she said before the waitress arrived, clearly flustered, her freckled, fair skin going beet red.

“Vhat?” he said to her, a dumb look on his dumb, bearded face,  eyes like an oxen, brown and dark, no twinkle, no light. He was a giant of a man, his shoulders hunched over the table. Then he turned to the waitress and that expression changed, he went mean, his eyes got steely hard like he always did when dealing with - his words, not hers - the lessers. 

Judy groaned and didn’t bother to hide it. She had half a mind to get up and leave.

Goddess why did I agree to this?

Judy was the exact opposite of her date, small and petite, with bobbed black hair, olive skin and violet eyes.

“Ok, listen up ‘cause I’m only going to tell you once,” he said to the waitress, and Judy found her fists balling up beneath the table. She kept them clutched, pressed against her thighs, against that cool fabric she liked so much.

“We vant a couple of Brakken Iced Teas with an extra shot of vermouth in each -”

“Excuse me,” Judy said, frowning and holding up a hand, her knuckles striped white-and-red from being in a fist.

Gregor held up a hand in return, silencing her, but only momentarily.

“We vant a basket of chips with extra salsa -”

“Yessir,” the waitress, whose nametag identified her as Elise, said, clearly exasperated already.

“Excuse me,” Judy said again, giving her date a fierce glare.

“I expect perfect service,” Gregor continued, shooting Judy an impatient, disdainful look. “Or no tip, got it?”

“Yessir.” Elise repeated, looking at Judy with a subtle look of desperation, a look that said I’ve already had a shit of a day, please help.

“I don’t want a goddamned iced tea,” Judy growled from behind gritted teeth. She smiled fakely. 

“Look, I’m paying for everything,” Gregor said, motioning with both hands dramatically over the empty table, as if there were a feast laid out before them.

“I didn’t ask you to do that either,” Judy said. She looked at Elise, who was in tears and clearly just wanted to get away from the table.

“It’s a date,” he said, and his own frustration was rising to the surface, even his balding dome went red with embarrassment.

“You’re a goddamned caveman, you know that?”

He smirked.

Judy leaned forward, aggressively looking him in the eye. 

“Gregor, my dear,” she said sweetly, but her voice was oozing poison. “You should count yourself lucky that I talk to you at all. At all.”

His cocky smile faded. Obviously he’d never considered that before. But before he could respond, he seemed to remember that the poor waitress was still waiting, shifting nervously on her feet.

He shot her a cruel look. 

“You may go,” he said, flicking his hand, and Elise went, clearly relieved to get away from the unhappy couple. Judy watched her walk away with her head hanging. It made her heart ache.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He said, and she saw that anger, the old anger, the anger that had made her leave before, rise like a king tide to the shore.

She took a deep breath. She needed to de-escalate the situation, and now.

“What I mean is this -” She held her hands before her defensively, a ten-fingered wall. “We don’t get along. Maybe it was better when we didn’t talk.”

“I’ve been very lonely,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“I’m lonely too but that doesn’t mean we make a good match. Sure, the sex is good -”

“Is Great,” he said. Again, the smirk.

“Great then (it was, it really was), but that’s not enough of a reason to remain connected.” She gave him a wise look. “We’re incredibly toxic together, and you know that. I know that.”

He shrugged.

“There’s worse outcomes,” he said, again, as if it explained everything.

“Not really,” she gave him a pointed look, but they never seemed to register with him.

Another prego pause. Two beats, a third, a deadly fourth.

“Why did you ask me here Greg?” She said, using the much-hated shortened version of his name.

“Don’t call me that,” he grumbled. She had done it, in part, because anytime someone spoke his name improperly, his accent, the Veruvian tick he still retained, even after thirty years in Big City, would immediately kick in.

She giggled.

“W’as so funny?” 

She covered her mouth. It was too much. Goddamn, this guy. 

“You are, fool,” she stood up, abruptly, time to go. 

“I don’t under-under-understand,” he said, and - holy shit! - he was in tears, actual bonafide tears! She sat back down, shocked, and intrigued at the least.

“I’m so confused,” she said, but the smile remained, grew wider even. Her eyes were alight with the curiosity this man had just served to her on a silver platter.

Tears, actual Gregor tears. The bear of Barundia, the lavender knight who took all the hearts, here, before her, his voice pinched, throat choked as if being throttled.

What could it be? What could have done this to him?

“I must admit, I’m so curious about what could have caused this,” she said. He wouldn’t look at her now, head cast down, longish hair hanging in front of his face, but she could see his furrowed brow working, bristling, the lines moving back and forth as he thought about what to say.

But he didn’t say. He just sat there, bowed and - seemingly - broken. He went silent, mute, dumb. Tears spilled carelessly from his eyes and splashed onto the bleakwood surface of the table, little wet spots appearing on the glossy surface.

Why won’t he speak?

“Why won’t you speak?” She said. He looked up, briefly, a glance, a darting shot from his fierce golden eyes, and there was so much pain, so much hurt, so much...vulnerability in that look. She’d never seen, nor had she ever thought it possible that Gregor Bear of Barundia could look like this. Hell, even if he had been acting, pretending, he couldn’t have done this.

“I’m in trouble,” he said, and his voice was low, husky, like he’d just chugged a slug of whiskey. 

“Trouble?” Well that wasn’t a surprise. “What kind of trouble?” In her mind she’d already decided he’d done something with the mob, he owed someone money, rough characters were going to break his considerable kneecaps.

“There’s this girl,” he said, and her mind then spun a completely different weave: He’d gotten some pretty young thing pregnant; he’d given her herpes; he’d killed her by accident.

“Of course there is,” she said, and she laughed, a little more loudly and carelessly than she’d intended. “Isn’t there always?” Her voice went all singsong, which she only did when she really felt cruel.

“You can be really awful sometimes, d’you know that?” He said and she choked out a laugh, all bitter and sour. I can be awful? Me? Well, he wasn’t wrong entirely.

She smirked and raised an arched, manicured eyebrow, daring him to challenge her.

“You ought to know,” she said. “But come on, what is it? What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

He stared straight at her and her heart almost - almost, but not quite - broke. He was so sad, really and truly. The woundedness in his eyes was utter. She had never seen him look like this and they’d known each other since primary school.

“Ok, ok,” she said. She knew she was being a bitch, a twat, hell, even cunt was an appropriate word for how she was acting, but this, all of this, was so ridiculous, so out of character to be ludicrous. “Oh-kay.”

“I need you to listen to me,” he said, and his hands were out too, but in near-supplication, pleading with her to take pity and listen to him.

Then it dawned on her. He didn’t want to get back together with her at all. He’d invited her here to talk, invited her here to listen to him, to help, to be a friend. She’d come in with this big fat ego, thinking this was going to be another round of what they’d been doing for years.

The cycle. Together, breaking up, back together, enemies, lovers, friends, frenemies again.

That cycle was gone, and she never even saw it go.

Now tears were coming to her eyes.

“Vat is it? Vat is this tears I see?” He said, and the look of concern and care in his eyes shamed her.

“I just thought,” she laughed, a little bitterly. "I thought we’d be -” she couldn’t finish the sentence.

“You thought ve ver going to get back together,” he finished the sentence for her and he looked sad again, but sad for her.

“Not exactly,” she said, and a touch of red came to her cheeks. “To be honest, I thought you’d beg and I’d deny you and feel triumphant about it.”

“Ahh.”.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can be awful sometimes.”

He reached out a quick hand, grabbed hers before she could stop him. His touch was rough, but warm.

“Ve ver awful together,” he said, acknowledging their mutual cruelty. “I probably would have done the same.”

“Apparently not,” she said, and the bitter amusement came out of her in a loud, unpolished laugh, jagged and angry. “You’re not being cruel now. You could be, but you’re choosing not to be.”

He shrugged, seemed to think about it, nodding to himself.

“This girl has - has - has,” he stumbled over the words, but they wouldn’t seem to come. He regrouped, taking a deep breath and looking inwardly for a moment.

“She has changed me,” he said. “And I think that is a very good thing.”

She looked at him, and for a moment, she saw him, really saw him as she never had before, and it shamed her. How had she missed this part of him?

“I see it,” she said, and it came out grimly, more sour than she intended. “She has changed you. Definitely for the better.”

He smiled, and the tears came again, and she saw how hard this was for him, the bear of Barundia.

And now her heart was breaking. The end had come for Judy, princess supreme of the Big City socialites and Gregor, Bear of Barundia, and she never saw it. It had come, and gone, never to return, slipping away before she’d had a chance to stop it, or even protest.

But would she have stopped it? Would she have protested? Would that have been in either of their best interests?

She shook her head with her thoughts, and now it was her tears sprinkling and  spraying like little jewels from her eyes, splattering unseen on the table.

She looked at her hands. Lined with three decades of work, stress, alcohol and a wild assortment of drugs and tobacco, they looked old. She felt old, of a sudden. She glanced up at her date, her … friend… sitting across from her, and she saw him in a way she’d never seen before.

His face was lined deeply, cut with the years, sagging with all the worry and loss and anger and conflict. His hair, once a deep, luxurious red, rufous the Romaoi would have called it, was now streaked with a generous tide of grey, making it lighter, making him look less intimidating, less frightening and altogether more human.

“Can we be friends?” he asked, blurting it out, startling her. She sat upright in surprise.

She shook her head.

“No?” he said, the hurt palpable in his voice and his eyes.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “Yes, of course we can.”

“You won’t be jealous?”

She burst out laughing.

“Of course I will be,” she said, but the laughter wasn’t bitter but amused. “I’m jealous already you fool. But damn.” Her hands squeezed together on the table, a pair of fists again, but it wasn’t anger that made it happen.

“I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Nor vas I.”

She raised an eyebrow and cocked her mouth. “Come on bro. You invited me here on this date to tell me about her.”

“Zat’s not what I meant,” he said. “I only meant I was not - not expecting someone like her to come to my life. Not now, not ever. The Bear of Barundia in love? Preposterous!” He slammed his massive hammy fist down on the table, rattling the bleakwood and making the entire restaurant swivel their heads to look at them.

The tears were gone, the heartache was gone, he was suddenly beaming, a huge smile, all teeth like a shark, and it seemed like even his skin was glowing.

He was radiant.

“Oy my dear Gregor, this poor girl, does she really know what she’s in for?”

He laughed loudly, that famous belly laugh of his, and he tipped back in his chair, coming dangerously close to spilling over backwards. Now that would've drawn some attention.

She couldn’t help but join him in laughter. It was infectious.

But then, mid-laugh, at the moment when her heart was lightest, and her concerns had evaporated in the brevity of the moment, she remembered: This was Gregor, Bear of Barundia. The Lavender Knight. The man was a killer.

Dear lord, that poor girl.

She shrugged internally.

Better her than me.

She smiled broadly at her friend and former lover and patted his hand.

“I’m happy for you,” she said, and sighed relief.