Reality
Justine
Hath life ever been truly known,
when pondered upon so thoroughly?
This world our senses seem’th to show,
how close canst it be to reality?
___
My eyes jump from the horrifyingly beautiful copy of Edward Walton Wilcox’ Death and the Maiden that hangs above my king-size bed to the Venus De Milo replica standing beside my bedroom door. The distant sound of knocking accompanied by a familiar voice begins to go in dissonance with the music playing from my living room sound system. I tend to the front door of my apartment as I dry my hair with a towel, and the first thing I see is Anna Park in the company of a lanky woman.
“I think you should put on some pants,” Anna tells me, while the stranger looks away, her complexion burning red.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, surprised by her visit.
“I texted you yesterday! I said I was gonna drop by with my friend!”
I turn to the other lady, who smiles at me and softly says, “Hi.” I reply with a nod of the head and let them come inside, closing the African Blackwood door behind them.
The two take a seat on one edge of the semicircular white Italian sofa in front of the marble fireplace. I rejoin them with my phone after returning my used towel to the bathroom and putting on a pair of shorts and a V-neck sweater. “So what can I do for you two?”
“I explained everything in the text I sent you yesterday.”
I check my messages in my iPhone, but not a single message from Anna came in yesterday. “I don’t think I received it. But weren’t you mad at me yesterday?” I ask, taking a seat opposite to them.
Anna laughs with narrowed brows. “I didn’t even see you the whole day yesterday.”
“What? No. We were at that bar together, talking about your breakup with Randal, and then you walked out on me when I said that you should’ve seen it coming.”
“Um, Jaime, Randal and I never broke up. And I was too busy with work yesterday to even go out,” she explains. “Maybe you were dreaming.”
“Maybe.” Because it’s such a regular occurrence that I dream of such realistic situations, I forget about it and regard it as another one of those dreams.
“Well, if you really didn’t receive my message, basically what I said is that my friend is moving into your building and you’re going to help her.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” the stranger shyly interrupts. “I’d hate to be bothering you.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all. What floor are you on?”
“22.”
“See, just a floor below. No trouble at all,” I say with a smile. “Shall we go?”
“Wait!” Anna interrupts as she gets up off the couch and walks away. “Let me just pee. I love the bathroom here.”
I look at the girl sitting across me, and I see very clearly how awkward she’s feeling right now. She smiles at me, and when I smile back, she stares at the glass coffee table between us. “Um, thanks for doing this,” she says, still shy.
“Hey, it’s really no problem at all. What’s your name, by the way?”
Avoiding any form of eye contact, she answers, “Justine.”
“Well, Justine, I’m Jaime.”
“Yeah. Anna tells a lot about you.”
“Oh? Like what?”
Justine begins looking around, obviously thinking of which of Anna’s stories she can mention without offending me. “Well, she says that you’re the smartest guy she knows, and,”
“And she says that I’m very strange and rich, doesn’t she?” I interrupt, knowing exactly how Anna sees me.
Justine looks at me, pursing her lips, not knowing whether to admit it or not, but probably by seeing the smile on my face, she is able to nod. “But I don’t think you’re strange at all!” she follows up.
“Really now?”
“Yeah! You seem perfectly normal to me.”
Laughing, Anna returns to join us in the living room. “Trust me, Justine, he’s far from normal,” she says as she walks to the African Blackwood door and opens it. “Come on.”
I followed behind them, putting on my Alexander McQueen tassel loafers and grabbing my keys before locking my apartment. We take the elevator to the floor below, which is the first time I step foot on a residential story which isn’t mine. We enter her unit, 2213, which is surprisingly not as small as I expected. The apartment is though is very basic, with dull white walls, mediocre furniture, cheap electrical appliances, and not a single piece of art. It simply looks more like a hotel room.
“Justine actually doesn’t have any stuff yet. She just moved into New York,” Anna explains, sitting down on the small brown couch.
“Okay, so what exactly am I here to help with?” I ask, taking a seat on the high kitchen counter with my feet barely above the flooring.
“Well, we need your help moving stuff around, and painting the walls.”
“Only if it’s not too much trouble!”
I smile at Justine, who’s uncomfortably avoiding eye contact, staring at the brown carpet under her feet. “I actually have a better idea. I could pay some people to do all the manual labor for you.”
“I knew it!” Anna exclaimed, pointing her finger at me. “I knew you were going to say that!”
“No! No! No!” Justine argues, her eyes wide, waving her hands in disagreement. “You really don’t have to do that!”
“I know I don’t, but I choose to, and there’s nothing you could say that would change my mind.” I hop off the counter. “So, do you have the paint already?”
“It’s sitting in the other room,” Justine answers, staring down at her phone. “Hey guys, I’m really sorry for doing this, but I have to go. I have to go meet Randal,” she says excitedly as she stands up and hugs me and Justine before making her way out of the apartment. And just like that, Justine and I are once again left alone, but this time it’s not just for a short piss break.
“She sure moves fast when it’s for Randal, huh?” Justine starts conversation, not knowing what to do.
“It’s actually not just for Randal,” I say as I take out my phone and begin dialing in the number of the guys who are supposed to fix up this apartment. “It’s always the same story for all her boyfriends.”
“But she tells me that Randal is really different from her exes.”
“Yeah, a bigger wanker than the others maybe. But that’s alright, since Anna breaks up with everyone.”
“You think she’ll break up with Randal?”
“Eventually.”
Marcus Briggs picks up the phone and says hello in his deep raspy voice. You can sense his eagerness to hear from me, knowing that he’s about to get overpaid for another job. I tell him to come over to my apartment with two or three other men as soon as possible, and then I end the call.
“Jaime, you really don’t have to do this.”
I stand, putting my phone back into my pocket, and say, “I know, but I still will. Now come on, let’s go wait in me apartment.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to bother you. I can wait here.”
“Nonsense!” I walk over to Justine and bring her along with me, my arm wrapped around her shoulders as we make our way back to my penthouse. On arrival, I remove my loafers and leave my keys in the key bowl, while she sits down on the living room couch.
“Hey Jaime,” she calls out. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure thing,” I answer as I join her on the couch, handing her a can of soda, which she refuses, saying that she has not yet eaten lunch. “Well then, hold your question, and let me fetch us some food.”
“Wait! You don’t have to!” She holds me by the wrist as I try to stand. “I’m not really hungry.”
“Well, I suppose I now know why you’re so thin.” I laugh as I sit back down, opening the can of Coca-Cola in my hand.
“Hey, you’re just as thin as me!” she defends.
“Thin is the new sexy,” I joke with a smug face, and to which Justine giggles. “So, what is it that you want to ask me?”
“Well, it’s probably a stupid question, but are you British?”
“British-Italian actually, but there’s pretty much nothing Italian about me except for me blood and me face,” I laugh. “Everything else, English.”
“When’d you come to America?”
“When I was thirteen, I think. Moved to Boston after I told me family that I was planning on taking up Law.”
“So you went to Harvard, I assume?”
I nod. “Impressed yet?” I joke.
“I’ve been impressed since I first set foot in your apartment.” Surprisingly enough, Justine no longer seems as shy as before. She is able to now make eye contact, and her voice is not as soft as it was just a little while ago. It seems that she is getting comfortable with me.
“Why so?”
“Well first of all, your apartment’s huge! And not only that, but it’s also very beautifully furnished. Everything in here seems expensive, from the electrical appliances, down to the doors and flooring. To think you have all this when you’re just twenty-seven.”
“How’d you know I’m twenty-seven?”
“Anna told me.”
“Ah. Well, that’s what happens when,”
Before I could finish my sentence, a knock on the front door interrupts. Justine and I meet with the four men and they follow us to 2213, where she gives them instructions on how to paint up the place. As they begin to work, I give Marcus three hundred dollars, telling him to lock up when they finish and to leave the keys in the lobby before they leave. After some convincing, Justine agrees to go out with me to eat lunch, so I grab my car keys from upstairs before she and I make our way to the basement parking lot.
“Wow,” is all that leaves the lady’s mouth as she stands in awe in front of my 2013 Dodge SRT Viper. Her hand slides along the metallic black exterior as she makes her way to the passenger side of the car. She slowly closes the door after getting in, silently leaning back on the leather seat beside me.
“I’m taking you’ve never been in a sports car before?” I guess, amused by her admiration.
Justine shakes her head. “How do you afford all these things?”
“I’m good with money.”
The engine loudly roars to life. The bright headlights illuminate the dark basement, and as I begin driving, the stereo fills the inside of the car with beautiful music.
“Mozart?”
“Yeah,” I mutter, very surprised. “Symphony number thirty-five,” I add. “You listen to Mozart?”
“Not just Mozart. I love classical music!”
“Wow. That’s a first. Hey, why didn’t you tell me sooner? I was playing Beethoven in the apartment the whole day!”
Justine shrugged. “I didn’t know how to say it,” she laughed.
During the car ride, Justine and I continue to talk, getting to know each other more. The timidity she showed earlier today is not completely gone, and it’s now so easy to talk to her, especially because she turns out to be very interesting.
We arrive at Le Bernardin, which is my favorite place in the whole of New York to eat lunch in. At first, Justine hesitates, knowing how expensive it will be, but I tell her that our meal is going to be for free because of a relationship I have with the owner. It’s a lie, of course, because I know that there will be no way she can enjoy her food if she knows that I’ll be paying for everything she eats. We claim a reservation that I made a week before, and why I made this reservation, I can’t for the life of me remember.
I order oysters for the first course, short ribs for my main course, and Hazelnut-Marshmallow for dessert. Justine got scallop for her first course, salmon for a main course, and Black Forest for her dessert. As we wait, we are served a bottle of fine red wine, which is the only alcoholic beverage I ever drink.
“How long have you and been Anna been friends?”
“A couple years.”
“How come I’ve never heard of you?”
Justine shrugs, taking a sip of her wine. “This is really good.”
"The best."
After we eat, I pay for our meal in cash, and as I do so, Justine glares at me. I shine at her a grin, and she seems to understand exactly what I’ve done, but she doesn’t seem the least bit upset. She looks at with amusement and curiosity. “Why’d you lie to me?” she asks.
“So that you could enjoy your food,” I bluntly reply. “You did enjoy, didn’t you?”
Justine nods. “But it was more of your company that I enjoyed more.”
“Is that so?”
She nods again. “Thank you for the meal, by the way.”
“Don’t mention it. I had a reservation for two anyways, and it would’ve been a waste not to use it.”
“Why did you have this reservation in the first place?”
I shrug, accompanied by laughter. “Honestly, I can’t remember. But good thing I did, huh?”
After receiving my change, I leave a tip before Justine and I return to the car. I drive us back to our building, finding her door keys with the receptionist. We check her apartment to see the place beautifully painted up, although the reek of paint lingered in the room. I persuade her to spend the night at my place, and although she at first refuses, she eventually agrees.
Justine and I spend the rest of the day talking as we listen to the beautiful sounds of Beethoven playing from my sound system. We talk about music, and then I tell her about art. Our stories are endless and our conversations never run dry. Come dusk, she tries to teach me how to cook, finally giving purpose to my expensive kitchen appliances. After dinner, we drink a bottle of expensive French wine from 1992 in front of the marble fireplace in the living room. We converse until eventually, we fall sleep in my bed.
when pondered upon so thoroughly?
This world our senses seem’th to show,
how close canst it be to reality?
___
My eyes jump from the horrifyingly beautiful copy of Edward Walton Wilcox’ Death and the Maiden that hangs above my king-size bed to the Venus De Milo replica standing beside my bedroom door. The distant sound of knocking accompanied by a familiar voice begins to go in dissonance with the music playing from my living room sound system. I tend to the front door of my apartment as I dry my hair with a towel, and the first thing I see is Anna Park in the company of a lanky woman.
“I think you should put on some pants,” Anna tells me, while the stranger looks away, her complexion burning red.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, surprised by her visit.
“I texted you yesterday! I said I was gonna drop by with my friend!”
I turn to the other lady, who smiles at me and softly says, “Hi.” I reply with a nod of the head and let them come inside, closing the African Blackwood door behind them.
The two take a seat on one edge of the semicircular white Italian sofa in front of the marble fireplace. I rejoin them with my phone after returning my used towel to the bathroom and putting on a pair of shorts and a V-neck sweater. “So what can I do for you two?”
“I explained everything in the text I sent you yesterday.”
I check my messages in my iPhone, but not a single message from Anna came in yesterday. “I don’t think I received it. But weren’t you mad at me yesterday?” I ask, taking a seat opposite to them.
Anna laughs with narrowed brows. “I didn’t even see you the whole day yesterday.”
“What? No. We were at that bar together, talking about your breakup with Randal, and then you walked out on me when I said that you should’ve seen it coming.”
“Um, Jaime, Randal and I never broke up. And I was too busy with work yesterday to even go out,” she explains. “Maybe you were dreaming.”
“Maybe.” Because it’s such a regular occurrence that I dream of such realistic situations, I forget about it and regard it as another one of those dreams.
“Well, if you really didn’t receive my message, basically what I said is that my friend is moving into your building and you’re going to help her.”
“If it’s not too much trouble,” the stranger shyly interrupts. “I’d hate to be bothering you.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all. What floor are you on?”
“22.”
“See, just a floor below. No trouble at all,” I say with a smile. “Shall we go?”
“Wait!” Anna interrupts as she gets up off the couch and walks away. “Let me just pee. I love the bathroom here.”
I look at the girl sitting across me, and I see very clearly how awkward she’s feeling right now. She smiles at me, and when I smile back, she stares at the glass coffee table between us. “Um, thanks for doing this,” she says, still shy.
“Hey, it’s really no problem at all. What’s your name, by the way?”
Avoiding any form of eye contact, she answers, “Justine.”
“Well, Justine, I’m Jaime.”
“Yeah. Anna tells a lot about you.”
“Oh? Like what?”
Justine begins looking around, obviously thinking of which of Anna’s stories she can mention without offending me. “Well, she says that you’re the smartest guy she knows, and,”
“And she says that I’m very strange and rich, doesn’t she?” I interrupt, knowing exactly how Anna sees me.
Justine looks at me, pursing her lips, not knowing whether to admit it or not, but probably by seeing the smile on my face, she is able to nod. “But I don’t think you’re strange at all!” she follows up.
“Really now?”
“Yeah! You seem perfectly normal to me.”
Laughing, Anna returns to join us in the living room. “Trust me, Justine, he’s far from normal,” she says as she walks to the African Blackwood door and opens it. “Come on.”
I followed behind them, putting on my Alexander McQueen tassel loafers and grabbing my keys before locking my apartment. We take the elevator to the floor below, which is the first time I step foot on a residential story which isn’t mine. We enter her unit, 2213, which is surprisingly not as small as I expected. The apartment is though is very basic, with dull white walls, mediocre furniture, cheap electrical appliances, and not a single piece of art. It simply looks more like a hotel room.
“Justine actually doesn’t have any stuff yet. She just moved into New York,” Anna explains, sitting down on the small brown couch.
“Okay, so what exactly am I here to help with?” I ask, taking a seat on the high kitchen counter with my feet barely above the flooring.
“Well, we need your help moving stuff around, and painting the walls.”
“Only if it’s not too much trouble!”
I smile at Justine, who’s uncomfortably avoiding eye contact, staring at the brown carpet under her feet. “I actually have a better idea. I could pay some people to do all the manual labor for you.”
“I knew it!” Anna exclaimed, pointing her finger at me. “I knew you were going to say that!”
“No! No! No!” Justine argues, her eyes wide, waving her hands in disagreement. “You really don’t have to do that!”
“I know I don’t, but I choose to, and there’s nothing you could say that would change my mind.” I hop off the counter. “So, do you have the paint already?”
“It’s sitting in the other room,” Justine answers, staring down at her phone. “Hey guys, I’m really sorry for doing this, but I have to go. I have to go meet Randal,” she says excitedly as she stands up and hugs me and Justine before making her way out of the apartment. And just like that, Justine and I are once again left alone, but this time it’s not just for a short piss break.
“She sure moves fast when it’s for Randal, huh?” Justine starts conversation, not knowing what to do.
“It’s actually not just for Randal,” I say as I take out my phone and begin dialing in the number of the guys who are supposed to fix up this apartment. “It’s always the same story for all her boyfriends.”
“But she tells me that Randal is really different from her exes.”
“Yeah, a bigger wanker than the others maybe. But that’s alright, since Anna breaks up with everyone.”
“You think she’ll break up with Randal?”
“Eventually.”
Marcus Briggs picks up the phone and says hello in his deep raspy voice. You can sense his eagerness to hear from me, knowing that he’s about to get overpaid for another job. I tell him to come over to my apartment with two or three other men as soon as possible, and then I end the call.
“Jaime, you really don’t have to do this.”
I stand, putting my phone back into my pocket, and say, “I know, but I still will. Now come on, let’s go wait in me apartment.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to bother you. I can wait here.”
“Nonsense!” I walk over to Justine and bring her along with me, my arm wrapped around her shoulders as we make our way back to my penthouse. On arrival, I remove my loafers and leave my keys in the key bowl, while she sits down on the living room couch.
“Hey Jaime,” she calls out. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure thing,” I answer as I join her on the couch, handing her a can of soda, which she refuses, saying that she has not yet eaten lunch. “Well then, hold your question, and let me fetch us some food.”
“Wait! You don’t have to!” She holds me by the wrist as I try to stand. “I’m not really hungry.”
“Well, I suppose I now know why you’re so thin.” I laugh as I sit back down, opening the can of Coca-Cola in my hand.
“Hey, you’re just as thin as me!” she defends.
“Thin is the new sexy,” I joke with a smug face, and to which Justine giggles. “So, what is it that you want to ask me?”
“Well, it’s probably a stupid question, but are you British?”
“British-Italian actually, but there’s pretty much nothing Italian about me except for me blood and me face,” I laugh. “Everything else, English.”
“When’d you come to America?”
“When I was thirteen, I think. Moved to Boston after I told me family that I was planning on taking up Law.”
“So you went to Harvard, I assume?”
I nod. “Impressed yet?” I joke.
“I’ve been impressed since I first set foot in your apartment.” Surprisingly enough, Justine no longer seems as shy as before. She is able to now make eye contact, and her voice is not as soft as it was just a little while ago. It seems that she is getting comfortable with me.
“Why so?”
“Well first of all, your apartment’s huge! And not only that, but it’s also very beautifully furnished. Everything in here seems expensive, from the electrical appliances, down to the doors and flooring. To think you have all this when you’re just twenty-seven.”
“How’d you know I’m twenty-seven?”
“Anna told me.”
“Ah. Well, that’s what happens when,”
Before I could finish my sentence, a knock on the front door interrupts. Justine and I meet with the four men and they follow us to 2213, where she gives them instructions on how to paint up the place. As they begin to work, I give Marcus three hundred dollars, telling him to lock up when they finish and to leave the keys in the lobby before they leave. After some convincing, Justine agrees to go out with me to eat lunch, so I grab my car keys from upstairs before she and I make our way to the basement parking lot.
“Wow,” is all that leaves the lady’s mouth as she stands in awe in front of my 2013 Dodge SRT Viper. Her hand slides along the metallic black exterior as she makes her way to the passenger side of the car. She slowly closes the door after getting in, silently leaning back on the leather seat beside me.
“I’m taking you’ve never been in a sports car before?” I guess, amused by her admiration.
Justine shakes her head. “How do you afford all these things?”
“I’m good with money.”
The engine loudly roars to life. The bright headlights illuminate the dark basement, and as I begin driving, the stereo fills the inside of the car with beautiful music.
“Mozart?”
“Yeah,” I mutter, very surprised. “Symphony number thirty-five,” I add. “You listen to Mozart?”
“Not just Mozart. I love classical music!”
“Wow. That’s a first. Hey, why didn’t you tell me sooner? I was playing Beethoven in the apartment the whole day!”
Justine shrugged. “I didn’t know how to say it,” she laughed.
During the car ride, Justine and I continue to talk, getting to know each other more. The timidity she showed earlier today is not completely gone, and it’s now so easy to talk to her, especially because she turns out to be very interesting.
We arrive at Le Bernardin, which is my favorite place in the whole of New York to eat lunch in. At first, Justine hesitates, knowing how expensive it will be, but I tell her that our meal is going to be for free because of a relationship I have with the owner. It’s a lie, of course, because I know that there will be no way she can enjoy her food if she knows that I’ll be paying for everything she eats. We claim a reservation that I made a week before, and why I made this reservation, I can’t for the life of me remember.
I order oysters for the first course, short ribs for my main course, and Hazelnut-Marshmallow for dessert. Justine got scallop for her first course, salmon for a main course, and Black Forest for her dessert. As we wait, we are served a bottle of fine red wine, which is the only alcoholic beverage I ever drink.
“How long have you and been Anna been friends?”
“A couple years.”
“How come I’ve never heard of you?”
Justine shrugs, taking a sip of her wine. “This is really good.”
"The best."
After we eat, I pay for our meal in cash, and as I do so, Justine glares at me. I shine at her a grin, and she seems to understand exactly what I’ve done, but she doesn’t seem the least bit upset. She looks at with amusement and curiosity. “Why’d you lie to me?” she asks.
“So that you could enjoy your food,” I bluntly reply. “You did enjoy, didn’t you?”
Justine nods. “But it was more of your company that I enjoyed more.”
“Is that so?”
She nods again. “Thank you for the meal, by the way.”
“Don’t mention it. I had a reservation for two anyways, and it would’ve been a waste not to use it.”
“Why did you have this reservation in the first place?”
I shrug, accompanied by laughter. “Honestly, I can’t remember. But good thing I did, huh?”
After receiving my change, I leave a tip before Justine and I return to the car. I drive us back to our building, finding her door keys with the receptionist. We check her apartment to see the place beautifully painted up, although the reek of paint lingered in the room. I persuade her to spend the night at my place, and although she at first refuses, she eventually agrees.
Justine and I spend the rest of the day talking as we listen to the beautiful sounds of Beethoven playing from my sound system. We talk about music, and then I tell her about art. Our stories are endless and our conversations never run dry. Come dusk, she tries to teach me how to cook, finally giving purpose to my expensive kitchen appliances. After dinner, we drink a bottle of expensive French wine from 1992 in front of the marble fireplace in the living room. We converse until eventually, we fall sleep in my bed.