Chapter 2: Broken Dream

The city was cast in a wet, cold fog as I left The Met. I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt and picked up my pace. I headed through Central Park to Hell’s Kitchen where I’m staying at my friend, Mossie’s apartment.

I try and make dinner in my mind. It’s past eight and I haven’t eaten since noon. I take inventory of the ingredients I have in the fridge but that man’s face keeps coming to mind. I’m bothered by his long, noble nose, his dark eyes and long eyelashes curled at the creases, giving him a boyish, playful expression.

I’m annoyed to keep picturing his laidback stance and replaying what I could’ve said to get him to actually talk. What has this man done to deserve my precious headspace?

Hours spent in the museum and all I got from it was schoolgirl feels for some sort of player practicing his schmoozing looks. I should’ve tried and learned something rather than zoning out for hours in a room I’ve been to more than two-dozen times. I walk faster, passing under the foggy footpath lights of Central Park.

The faster I walk, the angrier I get. My moony reaction to the man’s appearance and quick little smile sickens me. I’m not some sort of tween reacting to getting attention for the first time. I am a full-grown woman of twenty-two.

I’ve been around the block. I’ve fought off perverts at sh*tty jobs, ignored the come-ons of hundreds of blow-hards, dated losers, winners, and everyone in between. But here I am, quivering at the knees when some guy comes to my spot and gives me one look.

By the time I arrive at Mossie’s apartment, the fog has done its work and I’m wet to the skin. I key into the arched doorway and fit my key into the lock only to find the door open.

When I step inside, the apartment is in total disarray. Paintings have been taken down from the walls, a shattered bowl lies on the slate floor of the entry, and smoke is coming from the kitchen. Mossie is definitely home. A disembodied voice calls down from the loft, which is storage overflow and where I sleep.

“Petra! Honey! Baby! Do me a favor and turn off the burner in the kitchen. I think my oatmeal is overflowing!”

***

I strip off my sweatshirt, shoes, socks, and t-shirt, embracing the mess and leaving them in a pile at the door. Gingerly stepping around the probably priceless shards of bowl, I head to the kitchen in my sports bra and cycling shorts to turn down the oven. After doing Mossie a favor and stirring a lump of butter into the boiling mixture, I take a lush kitchen towel out of a basket in the open-faced cupboard and towel down my hair.

“Welcome home, “ Mossie sings as she wheels into the kitchen with a box of antiques labeled Mid-Edwardian Colonist B*llshit under one arm.

“Oatmeal for dinner?” I ask. “Isn’t that peasant food?”

“Peasants have the best food. Plus, it’s just the thing on a foggy night like this one. I see it got the best of you, the fog, I mean.”

“Not the best of me. Honestly, it suited my mood. The best of me was already taken,” I groan, putting my head in my arms.

“Ooh, that’s not like you. Nothing cracks my little tough nut. Let Mossie serve you up some oatmeal and you can tell me all about it.” Mossie sets a giant container of brown sugar on the island near my head and bustles around getting various toppings and plopping the oatmeal into bowls.

I heap brown sugar on top of the lumpy mix, pour a little cream into the bowl, and stir. After taking a bite and setting my head down to savor and pout for a moment longer, I sigh.

“Honestly, it’s so f*cking stupid. I think I’m hung up on a boy. Okay, a man. He’s definitely a full-grown man. Just like I’m a full-grown f*cking woman. But it hasn’t even been more than two hours and I’ve got it like, bad. Oh, man, Mossie. I thought I was over this point in my life for good.”

I groan once more and heap another spoonful of sweet, hot sustenance into my mouth. “And just so you know, if you weren’t serving me peasant food, I wouldn’t be accepting dinner from you. You’ve done enough for me already”

“Ugh, Petra. Think of staying here as one of your little gigs. Sure, you’re not shoveling sh*t or getting sawed in half in a skanky magician’s assistant outfit but you’re doing me a fricking solid. I can’t stand coming home to a stale, empty apartment. Plus, you’ll be taking care of my snails. I can’t trust anyone else to keep them alive,” Mossie said this with so much conviction that I almost believed her.

She had the kind generosity of ancient money. Her family money is so old that it has become messy and eccentric. She drys her bath towels on Babylonian lion sculptures and only travels by boat, though she circles the globe continuously. A year ago, Mossie took me in like some duchess in a Dickens novel after seeing my art show at a coffee shop in Brooklyn.

I’m still glad she caught me as I was taking it down. The timing was perfect. It was my last week living in the college dorms after dropping out. I’d been planning on leaving the city for somewhere cheaper. But she insisted I come and check her place out to see if I could housesit since she was leaving for her family estate in Copenhagen. I reluctantly agreed, sure I was going to get sucked into some perverted rich person cult.

So far, so good. No cults have been witnessed. Instead, I’ve been living in luxury in the storage loft with a view of the city from a skylight above my bedside table, access to an in-suite washer and dryer, and a space to use as an art studio in the basement. Apparently, New York is where Mossie goes to “slum it” but if she were living any higher on the hog, I would’ve been gone months ago.

“To be clear, Mossie, I never actually shoveled sh*t. I only worked picking fruit. And the magician thing was only one time,” I was holding myself back from scrapping the bowl as I said this. Despite the smoke in the kitchen when I came in, Mossie knew a thing or two about making good oatmeal.

“Can you tell me more about this boy, er, man you fell in love with at first sight?” Mossie asked, leaving her bowl on the counter and pouring herself a dram from an unlabeled bottle of what I’ve always assumed to be whisky.

“I wish Mossie. But not really. It was weird, he was just kind of staring me down at the museum. A bold move. And it f*cking got to me. It worked. Look at me.”

“A mysterious playboy. I wouldn’t have thought that was your type.”

“It’s not. Believe me. But damn, he’s probably everyone’s type. Those eyes were something, I tell you. I don’t think I’ll ever forget them,” I sigh again then bang my hand on the table. “No more sighing, d*mn it! You look like you’re in the middle of something. Can I help in any way? I’m handy with a roll of tape, I can help fix that ancient Byzantine platter in the entry.”

Mossie looks shocked for a moment as she mouths, “Ancient Byzantine,” and then smiles. “Oh, that? That’s just from the Victorian era. A Roman replica. Really, you had me going for a second. What a tragedy that would be. Anyway, you know the deal, I’m leaving again.”

“Boat sails tomorrow in the early afternoon. But I’m bringing some of the booty back here if I get the goods I’m expecting to find. Thus, I’m making room. I’ve got a whole truck of stuff heading to Sotheby’s early tomorrow morning. That’s why I was invading your space up there,” Mossie smiled at me apologetically.

I waved her apology away, “Not my space,” I said. “Not a problem.” Mossie frowned slightly in response.

“Anyway, honey, take care when I’m gone. And if you see that boy again, go ahead and let him do those mysterious playboy things to you that they write about in dirty magazines.”

I laugh, “A dirty magazine? What? How old are you, anyway?” Mossie winds a towel and takes a whap at my thigh.

“How dare you ask, a lady never tells.”

***

I leave for work just as the chaos was starting the next day. I climb down my loft steps just in time to see a Sotheby’s representative come close to tears at the sight of the shattered Victorian bowl.

When I return home in the evening, the apartment is empty except for the snails, silently crawling in their glowing green aquarium. I tap on their glass and say hello before lowering a dish of organic zucchini and kale into their little world.

I turn in immediately after devouring Mossie’s takeout leftovers, an explicit part of my gig. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I’m taken to a place I’ve never been before.

***

A cave shimmers in light from four smokey, sweet-smelling oil lamps. The man from the museum is on his knees in the middle of the tall cavern. Wearing a tattered cloth around his waist, he’s lost all pretense of the cool confidence he had in the museum.

His hands comb through his thick dark curls again and again as he rocks to and fro. I go to him, kneeling to kiss his full lips. I hold his head in my hands and tell him it’s going to be all right. But he grabs my shoulders and as he looks into my face his eyes change from the deep brown I remember to a golden catlike hue.

“I’ve already done it,” he says. “I’ve already done it and I’ll do it to you too”

When I look at him again, his hands are covered in gore and his mouth is full of sharp teeth.

***

I wake up freezing under my thin quilt. The skylight above my bed is open and the late autumn air is seeping in. I turn to look at the clock on my bedside table and see a golden bracelet resting on the dusty wood as if dropped from the skylight. It sparkles in the cold moonlight.