Are You Jealous (part one)

Are You Jealous

(part one)

Gabriel heard Eva’s voice…her put-on voice, he called it. She spoke this way to delivery people, sing-song, thanking them, ushering them out the door.

He heard the door close, whoosh into its frame followed by the thunk of the bolt. He heard silence, then rustling. Eva talking to herself about scissors. Next she was on the phone.

He guessed she was speaking to Presby. He heard her say, “I did get your email. You know I have no attention span. Ha. I didn’t know it had a calendar. Oh…”

Gabriel heard footsteps with something labored about them, Eva climbing the stairs. She approached, and her conversation approached, growing more distinct, Eva interspersed with microbursts of Presby. “Fad!”

Oh, Gabriel said to himself. Fad, now.

She laughed. “Well, it sounded funny. How would I know what you call those things? So…bushings…? I needed more of them?”

“Better ones,” Presby said.

She had broken Gabriel’s concentration, but he kept his back to her. McFadden Presby…could anyone have such a name? Eva placed the clock on Gabriel’s desk, near, almost touching, his right hand. She leant a second time to straighten his collar. She placed her phone in front of his keyboard.

That coming up behind. That leaning, darting, doing this and that…

But one this, and one that, at a time. They were her little habits. Eva was always tucking her phone under Gabriel’s eyes. At his desk, while he tried to work. She would tap, with her one painted nail, and a video or song would play. He would have to love it, for her sake.

For her sake, he loved all of Eva’s mannerisms. Each enumerable mannerism.

He found himself looking at a cipher that spun into a logo. The logo was olive on muted gunmetal. The logo faded, and McFadden Presby stood before a leather chair. The chair was a fixture, but in the auction house videos Presby never sat. He pivoted; he occasionally stepped, a pace to the left, a pace to the right. The chair acted as Presby’s magnetic center; he hovered as a gyroscope hovers. He had a pair of eyeglasses that he never wore, but held, and gestured with, inviting his audience to see his point.

Presby imparted esoterica of the antiques trade in a sonorous voice…

The accent sounded British. But after a while, you noticed something continental about the vowels. Gabriel imagined Presby taking his name from other people’s labels, a jacket he liked the cut of, a maker of bespoke fountain pens. Having decided this, Gabriel had come to think of Presby as Klaus. It was childish…it didn’t help.

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Are You Jealous

Are You Jealous (part two)

(Stephanie Foster, 2016)