My Babe

They were, sadly, a lovely couple walking down the Ring, their elbows bound together by the embrace across their middle backs. She was tall for a girl, with voluminous brown hair, naturally streaked with red. Today, the sun followed her closely and her hair was a deep auburn. When she turned to look at the boy, the elegant slope of her nose slid nicely down to her full lips. The observer could trace it to her half-hidden t-zone where her ample brows first exploded and landed gently in the corner of her green almond eyes. Her cheekbones highlighted her striking Slavic beauty. Her forehead, clear and smooth, invited contemplation as to the brain that generated ideas, jokes and adventures. She was a beauty and dressed like she knew it, though her clothes was simple: a brown coat with a cinched waist and a green scarf wrapped loosely around her neck, exposing muscles made strong from consistent yoga exercise. Only her red boots, appealing with a subtle heel, hinted at a masked sensual side. People couldn’t help but look at her when she walked past, but she was oblivious to their stares, focusing on the boy next to her who walked out of step with his head bobbing on a gangly skeleton in a loose-fitting bomber jacket and baggy jeans.

Yes, they were lovely, but it was clear that he wasn’t the one.

It was a warm autumn day. They walked past the Opera and stood waiting for the traffic light to turn. They appeared to kiss simultaneously but his head turned towards her just a second before. The locals shifted uncomfortably. PDA was not illegal, of course, but that didn’t mean anyone practiced it freely. She would know that. The light turned and the crowd moved forward to traverse the street. The couple, pulling their mouths away from one another and laughing stupidly, followed the flow a moment later. With their bodies facing the world, but their heads facing one another constantly, they looked both like they would be able to take on anyone and anything, and like they were the easiest potential victims in the world.

They stopped to admire the facade of the most obvious, the most touristic café in the entire city. With candy-pink decor, it had recently been renovated and the whole marketing had gone into making it look more welcoming, more American, more uniform in the worst sense of the world. There was nothing authentic about it anymore, even the smell inside had changed to some kind of over the top, powdered sugar, sickly pink fondant spray that was probably bottled.

He pulled a chair out for her and she, beaming a little too foolishly and pushing her boobs forward, took a seat, accentuating the curve of her ass, probably intentionally as she would know that her jacket would ride up when she lowered herself to sit. The boy stood near her, blocking her from view. He appeared to be patting her head desperately. Suddenly her arms wrapped around his waist with her carefully manicured nails. Not too bright and no unnatural colors, with a gold bangle wrapped around her wrist that her boyfriend had gotten her. At this unsightly invitation, the boy doubled over, and leaned with his whole body over hers, probably mauling her with his mouth where two teeth disgustingly misaligned. His Lakers bomber jacket rode up a bit and his choice of underwear, Calvin Klein, unfortunately pedestrian, was showing.

What kind of man wears another man’s name on his underwear?

Taking leave of her as if she was nothing, the boy walked to the front of the least imaginative café to take a girl to Vienna with his arms swinging at his side as if he was some kind of primitive hominid trekking across the savannah. She, ray of sweet innocence, love-starved child of the moon and the sun, turned her head to keep watching him, a huge smile at first apparent but then slowly fading on her face after he walked through the glass door without so much as a kiss blown over her shoulder. She turned her head back to the table, cocked her head to the side, then turned her head naturally to look at the Opera.

I froze in place because I didn’t expect it, but I should have known it would be a possibility.

Her emerald eyes glid over the building that pitied in comparison to her beauty. Her lips parted slightly. Anyone would be foolish to give preference to the Opera to not only her appearance, but her internal sense of wonder, her appreciation of art, her reflection of the divine.

The door swung open and the oaf lumbered back. It was clear that though they would look good in a picture together, they were not a match. He was cut from an entirely separate cloth r. There was nothing refined about him. He had a face, upon closer inspection, that only a mother could love. She, on the other hand, was the daughter of Venus emerging from a seashell. She was Ophelia, Persepone, Julia, Cassandra, Victoria, Elizabeth, Cleopatra, Mathilde, Olga, Rebecca. She was all of the women who caused men to wonder, all the ones worthy of having statues erected in their names and walls built high around them to protect them from onslaught.

The boy splattered down in his seat, spread his legs and pulled out a tobacco pouch from the inner pocket of his bomber jacket. Disgusting habit, and feigning as a sportsman, too. Tellingly, the young woman leaned back in her seat, though she continued to laugh with him as he regaled her with an asinine story, probably about physical strength and nothing genuinely insightful. He was probably talking about sports. Baseball. Football. Or maybe Jesus. He looked like the type with very simple interests and not much electrical current running through his brain to generate meaningful new connections.

She, on the other hand… literate, erudite, considerate and curious, a bit naive in her approach of the world and men in particular, but with a protective figure next to her she could grow into someone very good at her passions and a very respectable member of the community. She could be a high-level star, with a loyal online following, and photos that the very same protective figure could take, tasteful ones only for the public, of course.

The waitress dressed in an obnoxious pink combination came outside carrying a silver tray with coffees. A black for the lady, naturally, and a cafe latté on an ornate stem for the boy! Incredibly, he even drank from a girly drink and no doubt left a milk moustache above the lip where a decent amount of facial hair failed to grow.

Dear baby, dear treasure,

I hope you don’t mind that I leave this card in your postbox.

I saw you drinking a coffee with a boy today. Is he a classmate? I think you kissed him, maybe I was wrong, I hope I was wrong, but that’s what it looked like. I think I can forgive you for that because what we had is much more than you drinking a coffee with him. Of course he wants to kiss you because you are so beautiful, you are sublime, but I just want to remind you that you don’t have to give all of yourself to everyone. You are a treasure. You are my treasure.

I stopped drinking. I know it was something we both needed to work on. The last few times we had some very mean words to say to each other. There was that fight and your pregnancy scare. To be honest, it didn’t scare me, because I am ready to be a father and to put a baby in your belly. And a ring on your beautiful finger, too.

I lived a long life before I met you and knew a lot of women. I know that you are the one for me because I never felt anything like this before for another. It’s like I never even had sex until I came inside of you. That was when I saw light and God.

You don’t need to keep running away from me. You don’t need to tell your friends that I am a bad guy. I worked on my negativity and am feeling a lot better now. I am good with myself.

I hope we can meet to discuss what happened. I want us to get back together. But I know it might take time for you to trust me again. I have to trust you, too. So let’s just meet calmly and discuss what happened last time. Then we can both decide if it’s something we want to continue with. Because even though you wrote “fuck off” before you blocked me, I somehow don’t think it’s something that you really mean.

I love you forever.

The couple lingered over their coffees, drinking them slowly, until the drinks eventually became cold. Their eyes were all over each other, their hands on one another’s, and their lips, though set a table apart, were connected by an invisible wire of sick lust. The boy pulled on her hands and she leaned across the table to meet him. His mouth moved quickly, sprouting out pubescent-level sophistication of desire, and tellingly, she pulled back, but did not remove her hands. Her face revealed shock. The boy laughed and clamped down tighter on her hands. The beauty looked like she needed rescuing. She even tossed her hair over her left shoulder, lifted her jewelled eyes across the street. It appeared like she was doing so to take in the Opera once more, but all of a sudden, her mouth dropped open and she began to scream.

I stood rooted in place, the card with a picture of the wind blowing through a field of wheat in my hand. At first I couldn’t understand why my baby was screaming. My heart sank when I realized she was screaming because of me. Not in the way she used to, in the bedroom, so much so that the neighbors complained they couldn’t sleep. The memory made me smile.

Suddenly beautiful woman stood up and pointed a finger across the street.

“Stalker!” she screamed. A passing cyclist looked over his shoulder and almost failed to stop at the red light ahead of him. He braked suddenly and his foot slipped off the pedal. He toppled over sideways. Pedestrians turned their heads at him with concern, but no one moved to help him up.

Everything was going off balance. The boy stood up, looked from the beautiful flower he had just been romancing to the raging menace of a full-grown woman taking up half of the sidewalk to spill her anger out on her true lover, and then stared across the street, trying to find the target of her attacks.

“You abused me! You hit me, you violated me! You control freak! You’re a bad man! And now you follow me to Vienna?! I have a restraining order out against you in Brussels!”

The boy appeared to have caught on. He was mouthing something to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. She shook him off. The bicyclist stood up and pushed off, glancing once over his shoulder before he pedalled away for good.

“Get the hell away from me! Stay out of my life, motherfucker!”

Ouch.

The boy put his arm around her and gently led her off the pavement to cross the other side of the street. It was good that he was there at that moment. It might calm her down. He looked both ways, then led her across. Even though the light was red, it was probably for the best that they broke the laws in this case.

Before disappearing at that moment, she turned her head and shouted back:

“I will never forgive you! I will go to the police! You are done!”

The boy patted the back of her shoulder, took one last glance at the observer and led the beauty away down the perpendicular street.

The observer crumpled the card in his hand.

To: floralaurel@gmail.com

Babe,

That’s not the way I wanted today to go. We were happy together for a year and a half and never had any problems. Okay, I was sometimes jealous but you were naive thinking about what guys wanted from you. I just wanted to protect you. I didn’t come to Vienna to stalk you! That’s not true. I just wanted to see you cause you blocked me everywhere. I can only put letters in your postbox. Will you ever open the door for me when I ring?

You know I drank too much before. I said things I didn’t mean. I never wanted to control you or do anything but to make you feel good. You are my sunshine, a beautiful girl, a valuable woman and a good partner. I also want to have a fun and easy relationship with kinky connection. But for that we have to meet.

I’m sober now. Let’s just meet. And if you say no, I will leave you alone.

Let me know.

To: floralaurel@gmail.com

I have the feeling that you blocked me by e-mail also so I made this other address. Can you answer me?

I’m not jealous about your friend because I know he has nothing on me. He is too young to know how to treat you. You are a young lady and you need protection. He can barely grow a moustache, what will happen if someone tries to harm you in the street?

I never wanted things to go badly between us. I mean it. I love you, you are my world. My whole family saw how happy I was doing. My mother cried when you weren’t at my uncle’s party. She feels when I am in a bad place and without you I am in a bad place.

I’m sorry for my tone. I never wanted to tell you to fuck off. I never wanted to fight with you and the stress you had when you thought you were pregnant was not my stress. Either way I am with you. If you like it or not you are always in my heart.

To: itsallk@gmail.com

Leave me alone! Stop writing to me! Stop sending me letters, do not go to the city I am visiting! Stop trying to hack into my Facebook! What is wrong with you??

You hit me! Not a word about that! You hit me. There is nothing to talk about. No closure! Fuck off means FUCK OFF! We are not together!

The observer pulled back from the computer. He was shocked that she had answered, and doubly shocked by this accusation. But he hadn’t hit her! He would never hit a woman, much less his baby. She started throwing his things out in the corridor. She was hysterical and shouting. He just tapped the side of her face. She had needed it to calm down.

His hand wrapped around the glass of porto he had next to him. He was drinking less these days. Something had to change, but he wished so hard it hadn’t been her leaving him. She should have never left. She could have never left.

He sat, nursing his drink, and then decided to go for a walk. He topped up the porto and stepped out of his flat into the cooler night with a full glass of strong yellow drink.

He walked along the tram lines until they brought him to the Franz Josef Bahnhof and stood in front of the hotel the boy had booked. Babe had forgotten to log out of her gmail on his computer, so the observer had a wealth of information related to her coming and goings. Love letters from her fans and poems she’d written. Some dick pics. He smirked when he saw them. Some he had deleted, to help her. They were only wasting her time. At the end, he knew, her path would bring him back to him.

He knew she would be in the hotel room. Third floor. He had stayed in the same hotel the night before she and the boy had arrived. He looked up at the window and brough the glass of porto to his lips just as the back of her head leaned against the window. A mix of emotions came over the observer. He felt a twinge between his legs. Then the boy’s head appeared, eyes closed, stupidly, because he was missing an incredible sight in front of him, his mouth parted like an imbecile; no, this boy was no threat, this boy was far too young. The observer watched them in the dark street and came to the conclusion that this boy couldn’t even fuck his babe properly. He needed to think of a new plan with this new information, which was both a relief and a burden to him.

She deserved it. She deserved the best of everything. He was going to make his way back to her, even if it took a long time. He wasn’t going to abandon his babe.