Notes from my Grave:

A DEATHLY AFFAIR

 

I never intended to do this.

And then, she was gone, and I had all these letters, from me, and from her, and I felt I had to do something.

Something that would make her memorable.

Not to me.

Sadly, I will never be able to forget her, even though that would be my only wish in this life.

I wish I had never known her.

I wish I had turned a corner somewhere else, and had never sat at that particular table, at that particular café, at that particular moment in my life.

I would give anything to forget her.

And I will love her forever.

 

From the diaries of

Jefferson Milton Davis

Chapter One: Olya

 

I am not much to look at. 

I have never accomplished anything that anyone really would notice. 

I show up for work on time.

I do my job. 

And then I go home. 

On particularly wild days, I will actually stop at the market and buy a chicken.  Maybe even a potato.  Beyond that, I make no impact on the world around me.

Beyond being exceptionally dull, I am also invisible.  I can walk down any street, in any city, and people look right through me. 

Just for fun (or desperation) I will, on occasion, step into traffic to see if anyone will actually notice.  When backed into this kind of corner, your average driver will be forced to actually admit that I exist in their world, and slam on their brakes.

I find this disappointing, as I figure if I die and go and see Saint Peter and say:

“Hey!  Not my fault! I got hit by a car! You gotta let me into heaven - because God knows I already have been living in hell!”

I tell you this not because I want you to notice or care about me.  I tell you this because you need to understand how remarkable it was for me, a nothing, a nobody, to find a letter tucked under my coffee cup at my table, at my favorite outdoor café.

What also caught my attention was the fact that there was no one else there.

I had gotten my coffee, added extra sugar (because they never do it right), grabbed a few extra napkins (okay, I’m invisible AND sloppy, which actually works out well for me as I drool down my front), and carried myself, my coffee, my extra sugar, and my emergency napkins to the table outside in the corner under the canopy, where I would pretend to be important and consult today’s copy of the Financial Times. 

In fact, I have NO idea what any of this stuff means. It's a holdover from way back when.  From that time I was still trying to meet women, and discovered that I was a glass door.  People mostly just don’t see me until its too late.  But it did make me very aware of my surroundings as I tried to dodge impacts from very large (well, fat) men carrying donuts, and briefcases with very sharp edges, that always manage to catch me on my inside thigh. 

It’s at that point I figured that I cannot be THAT invisible, if men want to smack me with leather.

So, here it is.  A note. 

Under my coffee cup.

I would imagine that my friends are playing a trick on me, if I had any friends.  The people I work with would not go to that much trouble, especially if it meant they would actually have to walk down the street instead of jumping into a taxicab on the company credit card and going to buy lunch across the road.

So, a note.

Okay, why not?  Maybe it's a bill for the coffee. But I just paid, and left a tip.  I know I left a tip because I could hear the change hit the bottom of the tin cup.  It surprised the girl behind the counter because she was actually looking straight through me even as she was handing me the very hot and sticky cup.

So, again, why not? 

I gently tug the paper out from under my coffee, sit back, out of the sun (I hate the sun – I am much too close to my vampire and werewolf ancestors, I suppose) and open the note.

 

Olya

“Morning Jefferson,

So unexpectedly to get the letter from you, but very nice. I have never communicated with any person, who, how to tell, likes bisexual girls.

Do you want to share me with somebody else or how do you imagine it?

Warmly,

Olya”

 

And this is the point where I began to have a life.

Suddenly someone had noticed me.  And I felt alive.  I felt happy. And I had never been happy before.  It took me a few moments to realize all of this, as I stared at this amazing document.

It was that moment in time where I actually switched on.  I could feel my breath in my body.  I could feel my heart beating. I could feel the sweat on my arms as my eyes got wet, and tears began to run down my cheeks.

I was alive!  But now what?

I was suddenly not alone.  But if I am not alone, then where is she?

What do I do now?

As I tried not to tear this precious miracle into shreds between my fingers as I read it over and over again, trying to figure where it came from, who she was, where she was?

And I am not even wondering if this still is just a joke.  But it feels too real for that. Not that I have much experience with feelings or emotions, unless you count loneliness, emptiness, sadness, desperation, despair, and crying myself to sleep every night “feelings”. Then no. Haven’t got a clue.

But I was feeling something that I actually liked.  Something different, and for me anything different was good! I think normal people would call it “hope”. 

And maybe even “joy”.

Now I am afraid to leave.  What if she is here, waiting for my reaction?  Oh, god!  Do I look like a nut-job sitting here clutching a piece of paper to my chest like it's a diamond ring? What if she is watching?  I try to be calm, to get some control over myself.  I have managed all my life to be invisible, somehow, and even have managed to function on a day-to-day basis at work, to the point where people count on me for the big jobs.  They know I will stay and get the job done, no matter what.  No matter that it's a holiday.  No matter that I might have family to visit on my birthday.  I don’t, but no one ever bothered to ask, and I managed to pretend that it didn't bother me.

So, I can function as a walking disaster on a daily basis.  I should be able to handle a change so complete in my life that I have to remember to breathe!

Okay, so I am not screaming like a lunatic (plenty of time for that later once I get my hands on her), I am not shaking like a leaf (it will be her job to make me shake, but not now!), and I can feel some blood returning to my legs.  My face?  I don't dare look at that thing even on my good days.  Besides, I don’t even carry a mirror, as I might actually see myself clearly, and why would I want to do that?

Okay.  You’re calm now.  So, look around, casually.  See if there is anyone who looks like a crazy psycho bitch, and then jump her bones right there in the street, in cross-town traffic, at 11am in the morning. Maybe we’ll get arrested for lucid and lascivious behavior! 

Now THAT would be cool!

Me? Lucid AND lascivious!

Wow!

So I am trying so hard to be cool, to be casual, and not wet myself all at the same time.

I realized at that moment that being wound up like a string on a dead kite makes it slightly more difficult then I would imagine as I try to turn my head to the right, to look out past the front door of the café and down the street.  Sitting bolt upright in a hard metal chair, my right hand with a death grip on the arm, my shoulders locked in position like a linebacker, I can actually hear my neck creek as my head snaps around to stare mindlessly at the street.

My head swings around so fast and so far, I figure I will be levitating and spitting out pea soup next. 

Thankfully (I guess that is the right word) there is no one around to see me do my floating demon head trick.  So without thinking I snap my head around the other way, momentarily grateful that I looked forward first, as I did not want to snap my own spine in two just then.

But not thankfully, no one there either.

Maybe somebody inside the café?  No, just the one girl behind the counter who serves me coffee every morning, while pretending that I don’t exist.

Okay, time to get it over with. Just have a nice cry, let it all out, and once you are released from the mental ward, you can go back to being invisible and forgotten, and forget this ever happened.

So, with time passing ever faster, I had to go back to work.  I don't smoke so I cannot legally take a twenty-minute cigarette break every fifteen minutes (I am still unclear as to the company policy on that, or how that was even possible) but at that moment, I could appreciate having something to do with my hands, and with my mouth on a regular basis.

Okay, so think!  Don’t think of this as being personal. Think of this as being a business problem. If I am good at anything, it’s business.  It’s all I have.  It’s all I have ever known.

So, what is the first step?  Identify of the goal.  So, what is the goal?  Besides ripping off all her clothes and eating her alive? 

Meeting her!

So communication is the issue.  I mean, you have to actually meet the girl first, before tying her down to your bed and feeding her through a straw.  But how am I supposed to do this?

I wish I was clever, or smart, or had a clue as to WHAT the hell was going on!  But I know I have to do SOMETHING!

The note. 

The letter. 

She left one for me. 

I will leave one for her. 

Now this is good, I’m talking to myself about an invisible woman.  If she is invisible, and I’m invisible, maybe she’s right here and I can't see her! 

Okay, calm down, take a breath, pretend you have a brain, and think!

The only paper that I have is the Financial Times.  I mean, I could write on her note, and leave it behind, expect for the fact that you would have to kill me first before I would ever let this little piece of my new life out of my hands!

So, the Financial Times it is!

Trying so hard to write like a person, even as my wrists are shaking (which I didn’t even notice until the pen flew out of hand, twice) I try to think of something intelligent, something witty, something clever to say to my mystery women.  Then I remembered who I was, and immediately gave up on that idea.

And asking some God (whomever she is) to have mercy on me for the first time in my life, I prayed that whatever I wrote would mean as much to her, to my new Olya, as her few precious, perfect words had meant to me.

 

Jefferson

“Hi Olya,

It is very nice to hear from you.

My goal is to marry a breathtakingly beautiful woman (such as yourself) and share a life together with you where we would share everything.

So my goal with you is that we would become permanent partners in every aspect of our lives together, and become inseparable from one another.

Part of that goal would include finding other beautiful women and making them our friends and lovers, and forming long-term relationships with them. Again, sharing every aspect of our lives together, and never doing anything without each other. Becoming completely possessed by each other forever.

I am looking for a woman that I can trust completely with everything that I am.

If you would be interested in continuing our talks, we can communicate via this note exchange for now, and then perhaps later we could communicate directly with our private email addresses and telephone numbers.

I hope to hear from you again.

Jefferson”

 

As I read these words on the back of the Financial Times, (realizing that for the first time this damn thing had finally been of some real use to me), with such love, and with such hope, and with such overwhelming fear as I put my still full cup of coffee down on top of the neatly folded paper, I had only one stunning thought:

Oh, damn.  I am such a nerd.

It was going to be a REALLY long day.