Re-Vision at the Bistro

Andrew did a double-take. That couldn’t be Ellie! It was, though: Ellie Mason, slim, trim, sexy and bouncy, in a flimsy orange jumpsuit with nothing under it, tossing back her long dark hair while tossing back a comment to a friend she’d just left. She and the other girl had both been on the sidewalk just a few yards from the front of Karrie’s Koffee as Andrew was exiting after his morning sip-and-sulk. Watching his ex-girlfriend’s feet skip away in high-wedge espadrilles, he felt queasy inside. He’d broken up with HER, having been frustrated by her public persona (that is, her appearance, which is all Andrew understood of “persona”) not being up to his standards, not being hot enough to stimulate the envy of his male friends. Andrew needed that; he needed to be envied.

The young man understood that he was attractive; he worked out; he followed the scene. As a marketing consultant for a group of online clothing outlets, he knew fashion, and he knew that Ellie had suddenly blossomed in this contemporary city garden like a butterfly. Why had she not taken his suggestions when they were together? He watched Ellie’s friend, an ordinary bleached-blonde in cutoffs and a tank-top (a bit too fleshy for his taste) go through her purse for her phone, decide to text someone as passers-by scooted out of the way, then replace the phone, turn fat tail and slop off in her flip-flops in the opposite direction from Ellie. Andrew wondered if this gal was worth trying to rehabilitate. He was sure he could win her easily. But somehow, the energy wasn’t there. No, unfortunately, it was Ellie he wanted back, with all the yearning his pitiful, underfed soul could muster. Still, wouldn’t it be interesting if he could get Ellie’s attention by corralling this acquaintance of hers? He might be able to find out if Ellie were seeing anyone. Rolling around naked with anyone. Kissing anyone. Listening to some other guy the way she’d listened to him. He’d done most of the talking, he knew, during their five months together. He had been too impatient to wait for her answers or her questions. She wasn’t that quick; she thought too much. That wasn’t his mode. Should he have stifled his own energy, though? His own creative, volcanic thoughts? No! He wasn’t going to change for anyone, even if the idea occurred to him in rare dark moments. Women would have to take him as he was; and that was, he felt, awesome.

— Macoff