“So…clairvoyance huh?” I said, pulling off a carefree tone.
“Mm-hmm,” came the response with a sideways glance.
This was the explanation Ellie offered me twenty minutes earlier, while we queued to board the plane at Gate 52 of Heathrow’s Terminal 1.
She smiled the way a kind adult would at an infant who was proud of an awful painting, then plucked the in-flight magazine from the seat pocket in front of her. She wasn’t remotely interested in it. Three weeks in and I could already read her…beyond the depths that I could normally read any other person, that is.
A winter exhibition with her name on it was coming up at a private Moscow gallery. She wanted to be there to oversee the preparations, and had invited me to join her.
“I’d be happy to,” I’d said, back in my London hotel room, freeing my mouth from exploring her glowing, sticky, post-sex body for a second. “But I just need to cancel a previous engagement with one Elizabeth Windsor the Second.”
She giggled and rewarded me for making her do so with wholesome, juicy kisses, as if her laughter alone wasn’t enough of a reward. She apparently found it beyond sweet that I would even think to put her before the Queen of England.
“I’m not much into knighthoods anyway…” I added with a grin.
My intention in London had been to contact my good friend, Teemu Koivula, a Finn and ex-legionnaire, after collecting my ill-gotten loot. I’d worked with him in Dubai a few years back as part of a sheikh’s security detail. Before that we’d been through Cambodia together. He was also a part of the unofficial unit I led for about four hours, a unit that saw more action than any official Legion divisions in Cambodia that year.
Teemu’s address book was permanently full, so he always had something tucked up his sleeve work-wise. It was never anything dirty, like the Prague situation I’d gotten into…blackwork wasn’t his style. As good as it would’ve been to hook up with him for a couple pints of weissbier in Helsinki, he didn’t stand a chance against a Moscow city break with my new dark-haired lover. I decided I’d call him from Moscow though, I was sure he’d have something for me.
It was a morning flight. Fingers of sunlight punched through one side of the cabin. I didn’t need the aircraft; I was already at full buoyancy since meeting her. And the seatbelt? That was necessary, not to protect me in the event of a crash, but to stop me floating around the cabin like an astronaut with a silly grin on his face. She was leaving the shape of her body to my imagination today, hiding it in an outsized grey turtleneck, skin-tight jeans and cool brown leather boots. Her hair was down. I felt full of accomplishment and comfort.
The other passengers were mostly calm, perhaps because of the agreeable weather and the fact that we were boarding fifteen minutes early. The RussAir flight to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport would take about three and a half hours, so Ellie had plenty time to fill in the blanks of how she came to know what I looked like some twelve years in advance of meeting me.
Of course, during the three weeks since we’d first met I’d already raised the question, once, at the brasserie we visited after the gallery. She leaned across the small circular outdoor table, the one covered in a red chequered tablecloth, that supported our glasses and the bottle of Côte de Brouilly she’d chosen, to hold my hand and ask my permission to answer that question some other time. I guessed at the time that she was afraid she’d scare me off, as her explanation would obviously not be fit for casual consumption. After all, there was no point in finding me after all this time, then to send me plummeting into insanity by carelessly dishing out the news that she was a temporal freak of nature. And I could hardly kick up a fuss about her being hesitant…seeing as I was just as reluctant to reveal that I could feel how my nearness affected her―right down to those waves of liquid electricity in her lower, lower belly.
I didn’t want to embarrass her, and she didn’t want to scare me. So there we were, a tentative bubble of reciprocal sensitivity, fragile, floating through the air. One errant dust mote, one stray gust of wind, or one brick wall, and…pop…a splatter of embarrassment and trepidation.
At that first date I learned that she’d studied English and French at school in Moscow, but at eighteen she left for Paris to study Classical Art for four years at the Sorbonne. Her thesis was on eighteenth and nineteenth century French sculpture.
She kept Paris as her base after university, living on the chic Ile St. Louis, in a “…miniscule room, of a moderately attractive building, in the most charming part of the city.” Although I wasn’t fond of cities, Paris was one of my favourite Euro spots, for the arts, for the intimacy, and for the respect for food. Apparently if we ever stayed there, it would have to be in summer, so we could sleep on the roof…either that or we’d have to spend our nights in her tiny room sleeping in the Lotus position.
So with her French being better than her English, it became our default language. But even on a plane of mostly Russians, I still kept my voice low when I buried my lips in her rich black hair and said: “So tell me about your first vision of me.”
We’d previously agreed that on the flight we couldn’t get up to the things we normally would when spending more than ten minutes in each other’s company, so it would be a good time to talk about things on a deeper level, namely, clairvoyance.
“Well, it was only a demi-vision,” she said. “Between sleep and wake, so half dream, half vision.”
A stewardess came round checking seatbelts. She professionally laid into a guy in front of us for not pushing his carry-on under the seat in front of him. I held back my response to the demi-vision thing, in case the stewardess spoke French.
Glancing out of the window, I looked in the general vicinity of a baggage handler as he casually picked up a busted suitcase from the tarmac, but I wasn’t seeing him.
What I saw was the image of a woman, an amalgam of all the best bits of the women I once knew. I’d held that image in my mind for over a decade, chopping and changing physical, emotional and intellectual traits as they came and went. In my role as a pseudo Dr Frankenstein, I’d stitched the pieces together, then waited for the electrical sparks and smoke from the burnt-out, oversized capacitors to clear. What finally emerged looked and acted nothing like who I was sat next to on the RussAir plane. In comparison to Ellie, that mental amalgam―whose embodiment I would’ve happily settled for previous to the day at the gallery―was indeed a monster. Having to wait all those years for Ellie was probably my punishment for carrying out such a juvenile exercise.
The baggage handler launched the wrecked suitcase into the hold with the others, reminding me why I always travelled with nothing more than carry-on. Ellie left the majority of her luggage with the shippers, who would take her renditions of me back to her Paris workshop in a week.
Fifteen minutes before take off, and I didn’t see many vacant seats as I looked across the sea of heads, so I doubted the one next to Ellie would stay free. It didn't seem to bother her. She was too busy staring at me, as if she hadn’t seen enough of my face over the years. She brought hers so close to mine that I could see my darkness reflecting off her pale skin. For seconds there was nothing else in the universe. I only sensed how each of her trillions of cells were reaching out to me, like iron filings versus a magnet. I felt them prickling pleasantly against my skin, as they tried to squeeze through my pores and become a part of me.
She whispered: “I feel as if I’ve created you.”
“You fancy me as a bit of a Pygmalion?”
“I fancy you anyhow.”
“I guess we could say that you’ve created this entire situation, and for that I thank you so much.”
The ruffled stewardess finally glided off down the aisle.
Ellie continued examining me.
“You’re looking at me as if you think I might just pop open the emergency exit, jump out and scoot off across the tarmac,” I said.
“Well,” she pulled away and fiddled with her seatbelt. “It is a possibility, isn’t it?”
I turned and locked my gaze on her two verdant gems. “You think you have what it takes to scare me off?”
“We've only just met, who knows?” Her cheeks bulged up a touch.
“I'll tell you who knows...you do. You’re clairvoyant after all, aren't you? I'm sure you wouldn't have wasted all those years, and all that clay and bronze, if you didn't believe I was gonna stick around for a while.”
She checked me, then shook her head. “You're accepting it so easily. Most men would be at least a little freaked out.”
I guessed that if I didn’t have what I had I might have been. Also, I’d never regarded myself with the self-importance required to think I was the only quirk of nature on the planet; that would be like subscribing to the belief that the universe is only peopled with humans. I knew there had to be others like me, I just never expected to meet one of them. That was the only aspect of us that threw me a little, that she found me, even if she’d been looking for the last twelve years, that was a serious odds-defeating accomplishment.
“You don't think for one moment that I'm like most men. If you did, you wouldn't have me here. And besides, if I was going to be freaked out, it would've been when you told me that I’m going to be the last man in your life.”
She shrunk away a bit, almost retreating into her turtleneck sweater, like its namesake. “I shouldn't have told you that.”
Now, she turned opposite to how she was when she said it at the brasserie. I guessed that back then she was overwhelmed by her long-awaited success in finding me...and the two and a half bottles of Beaujolais we celebrated it with.
“Kind of a risky thing to say on the very first day you meet me, don’t you think?” I was trying to talk her out of embarrassment.
She just waited for me to figure it out.
“Ah, of course,” I slapped my thigh, “you already knew I wouldn’t run off.”
A lady came waddling down the aisle. She was the last person standing, and that position alone, standing, seemed to place an incredible stress on her heart. Without looking at her, I’d have guessed she’d fallen in love at first sight. Her poor overworked heart would’ve been broken though, as there was only a gay steward standing in front of her at present, dancing past her with difficulty even though he was rake thin. Bastard didn’t even stop to help put her bag away. He may not have known she had a serious right knee problem…but still.
On examining her, I guessed that her heart, my heart, was beating that rapidly because she had a cardiac problem of some sort. It could have been any of a range of illnesses. Hopefully when she sat down, everything would normalise, for both our sakes. If it didn’t, well, then she would die. There was no way that body could maintain that rhythm for too long.
Ellie unbuckled herself and helped the lady heft her bag into the overhead compartment. The old dear expressed gratitude via flapping hands, smiles, and a hand on her chest, all strung together by constant breathlessness, as she’d apparently out-waddled her voice. When Ellie slipped back into the middle seat the woman eased herself next to her.
I reminded…reassured myself that if someone around me died then the same wouldn’t happen to me. Then I realised that I had wrongly pulled that conclusion from my brief spate of military warfare, which wasn’t a wise thing to do, as adrenalin dissolved the symptoms of my radius, making me feel like a normal adrenalised individual. Here―unlike in warfare, or in the back of the crashed car with my parents dying in the front―there was no adrenalin involved. I’d never been in the vicinity of death under relatively calm circumstances. I hoped to God that wasn’t about to change, but something about the woman did worry me.
“I'm going to…” she panted like a seriously wounded ox, “my daughter's wedding. She's marrying an…oligarch.”
I wanted to ask her if she’d checked with her doctor before deciding to fly, but it would’ve seemed impolite.
“I’ve come straight…” Huff. Huff. “…from a New York flight. Left it late. Couldn’t get a direct flight.”
Again, something about that worried me.
“Really?” Ellie politely left her body language open for the woman to continue, which she did. Our talk of clairvoyance and demi-visions would have to wait.
The captain welcomed passengers from connecting flights, with a voice that sounded like he’d done in front of a Dictaphone what an aspiring model would do in front of a mirror. When he was finished the flight crew sleepwalked through the safety thing. I had more important stuff to think about, namely the encroaching effects of the twenty or so passengers sitting within close proximity of me.
I was wrong. The weather and early boarding made no difference at all, because some of them were already emitting symptoms. Every time I boarded a plane I had to endure a different meteor shower of ailments: panic attacks on take-off; panic attacks in the air; stiff necks; stiff backs; stiff legs; panics on landing; dehydration; stomach cramps. The list went on, and surprised me nearly every time I flew. This trip was full of surprises…the accelerated heartbeat two seats away being one of them. At street level it was fine, people were all going in different directions and nobody stayed in one place long enough for me to lock on to any specifics…but on a plane?
So I hated flying, normally. This time though, there was nowhere else I’d rather have been. The best of the sensations, the second surprise in the form of Ellie’s influence, drenched me with sweet, hot pleasure, like a woman’s orgasm.
There was one more surprise sensation that was nowhere near as pleasurable; tendrils of ice slipping over me, like a sinister shadow stretching up an alley wall in moonlight. So much colder than the ambient temperature; I didn’t understand how it was possible. I was only wearing a t-shirt, and my jacket was in the overhead compartment. Even though I was shivering, I folded my arms and bore it, rather than making the woman fight herself back to her feet so I could get to the jacket. Once Ellie turned her attention back to me I’d be swamped in her deluge of emotion, hopefully drowning out most of the others. The chill was damn powerful though, probably the most powerful third-party sensation I’d ever come across.
It wasn't until the plane levelled off above the clouds that the woman finally exhausted her reservoir of chatter and fell asleep. Our heartbeats settled at around what mine used to whenever Jennifer Garner appeared on screen. The sweaty palms, dry throat, and butterflies were absent this time round though; they were reserved for someone else.
I grabbed a Coke from the gay steward―“No. No ice thanks.”
Ellie took a tomato juice and placed it on her tray table. She tucked an arm under mine…then reeled back.
“You’re freezing,” she rubbed the goosebumps vigorously. “No wonder you don’t want any ice.” She did make me warmer, but the goosebumps weren’t going anywhere.
“So, have you ever done anything like this before?” she stopped rubbing and just nestled.
“Like what? Suddenly taking off on a holiday of unspecified length with a strange yet stunning woman? No. Surprisingly not.”
“Strange? Thanks.”
“Well if you were average I wouldn't be interested in you. Same as you with me.”
“Strange is not the opposite of average, Lukas. Credit me with some intelligence. The others might have let you get away with that, but I…”
“Hey, that wasn’t some tried and trusted line that I’ve used before!”
“Well that's good to know,” she reigned in her smile a little. “So, how do you feel?”
“To be doing this? Well, almost as blown away as a woman who's finally found the man she's been looking for after twelve years, I imagine.”
“You must be pretty blown away then,” she beamed.
Without taking her eyes off me, she twisted herself in that way that excludes the person in the aisle seat, leaning on our shared armrest. In spite of the company we were keeping, I wanted that grey turtleneck off her immediately. Christmas as a kid came to mind, especially when I knew what the present was. But my father always did the wrapping, so I could forget conquering his Swiss efficiency anywhere within five minutes. The way Ellie was rubbing my thigh I was sure she wanted my jeans off me too. Her action seemed to bring a deep twinge in my thigh to the surface. Strangely, it wasn’t pleasurable.
“Lukas…there's something I need you to know.”
“Sounds ominous.”
She played with the too-big cuffs of her sweater.
“I know that our expectations are not in line, and I don’t expect them to be at all. It would be unfair of me to ask you to be as certain as I am about where this relationship is going, when you don't have the benefit of my foresight.”
“Well I'm optimistic of course, just like in the first weeks of any relationship…”
But strangely, that one percent of doubt about a future, which had been there in the first week with all the others, just wasn't present with Ellie. In a sense it made me a touch clairvoyant too, because I could easily foresee a long future with her as well.
“…I just don't want you to feel any pressure, that's all. I don't want you to feel awkward if I slip up and come on too strong at times. It’s only because…well…I know.”
I hadn’t thought of it like that, from her point of view.
“Okay. I get you.”
She tilted her head to my face. That electricity from those first days with her still hummed at my mouth when I touched my lips to any part of her.
“Tell me…” I played with her slightly calloused fingers, “…have you ever been wrong?”
“Not once. And about this, about you being my last ever lover, I'm more certain than I've ever been about anything.” She paused, changed. “When I die, we’ll still be together.”
There was something stilted about her delivery of that last line. It could have been nothing, but then her body telegraphed a strong signal. It wasn't that she was lying, but close. I guessed―using her physical expression as punctuation to her physiological one―that it might be a fear of some sort.
Yes. Fear.
Why, I wondered, would finding the man she believes she will spend the rest of her life with, instil fear at such an early point in the relationship…instead of complete joy? There was only one answer: tragedy.
“So…you know how you’re going to die?”
Shit.
She just looked at me, forced a smile.
“Sorry.”
While we coped with the atmosphere that my speaking before thinking caused, a woman about three rows in front of us stood up from an aisle seat. She slipped out, allowing a grey-haired man from the window seat to go to the toilet. As he went off down the aisle the chills slipped off me.
“So,” I said, “we've got a little over three hours together.”
“I guess I can't put it off any longer can I?”
“Of course you can. If you feel you're not ready I'm sure I can force myself to wait.”
“You're putting pressure on me!” she said. “That's not fair!”
She slapped my thigh, which seemed to ramp up the growing pain in it a couple notches.
“I'm trying not to, honestly,” I massaged that thigh, “but you should try walking into a room full of sculptures of yourself sometime and tell me if you don't crave an explanation sooner than three weeks after the fact.”
She wound down. “You’re right, that’s even less fair.”
“I…” my voice dropped of its own volition, “…I could make it easier for you.”
“Really?” she leaned back so far she almost rested her head on her snoring neighbours shoulder. “How?”
“By me telling you that, well...” I leaned in and whispered in her ear, “…you're not alone.”
She dispatched another look.
Me telling her about it would only make her belief that she had found her last man even stronger, because, well, what were the odds?
“You can see the future too?” Her expression told me that she didn’t really believe that; she was just being a little facetious, but a lot curious.
“Less ‘see the future’,” I turned my mouth down and stuck out my bottom lip, “more like ‘feel the present’.”
My right thigh hurt like hell right then, as if excitedly pointing out that I was talking about it. I tried to shift it into a better position under the seat in front of me.
Ellie frowned. “What are you talking about?”
I guessed it was difficult for a clairvoyant to spot my non-visual ability through her particularly visual medium.
I whispered in her ear. “Uh-uh. I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
Quizzicality never looked so attractive.
That thigh might as well have been replaced with the main component of a meat-grinder that had just been set in motion. Changing position didn’t help. Then I realised.
I grabbed my in-flight magazine and turned to the page headed: Flying Safely with RussAir. Half of the paragraph about deep vein thrombosis described the woman sitting next to Ellie. The knee pain could well have been from recent surgery. She’d just come off a long haul flight, and was now in the middle of extending it by three and a half hours. She’d drank nothing in the past two hours, neither had she left her seat. I decided it was best to err on the side of caution.
I leaned across Ellie, unable to resist swiftly dropping a kiss on her lips as I passed by. I tapped the lady on her arm. She released a yelp that reminded me of a coiffured Chihuahua I once stepped on in Paris’ Marais area.
“I'm sorry to bother you...but I really think you should get up and walk around a little.”
Her eyes and mouth hung open in an exaggerated cartoon way, almost horrified, as if she had been dreaming the complete opposite of the situation she woke up to. She looked at me, at her leg, then back at me again, and said: “You know...I think you…might be right, son.”
She massaged her right thigh a little, then wrestled herself to her feet. She waddled off down the aisle, passing the grey-haired, no, silver-haired man on his way back to his seat. My leg and heart were instantly thankful, but the relief was quickly swamped by the dominance of the returned chill.
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I really like the way you handle abilities..you this make them come off so realistic. Thanks for the recap, I kind of had a hard time understanding where the story was actually going. You move very slow with your overall plot and drop hints..like the silver haired man on the train. Sorry to sound like an idiot, but you used a lot of big words that made me visit dictionary.com lol. There’s not much wrong with this story…the dialog is good…I just liking getting to the point and the way you write…you slow every thing down…but that’s not a bad thing.
Ok—so I see you got a hit on ellipse, etc. I do not feel you overuse these (unlike some people I know:). I refer this reviewer to bestselling fiction authors Vonnegut, LeCarre, Alice Walker (Color Purple), and especially Tom Robbins (itals, ellipse, averages at least one sequence or word of ital per paragraph) and Fawlett, all of which use punctuation as style devises. Vonnegut writes one sentence chapters, in itals and with ellipse… People think he’s a god for it, because the one sentence says more than some writers do in a whole book.
We are not writing English thesis here, we are trying to write bestselling novels with mass market appeal. In book world: Unique compelling voice = cult reader following. You must have a unique style, voice to achieve the greatness of a Vonnegut. Editors know and are looking for this.
The ellipse you are using are all appropriate to make your dialogue sound like real people, and not wooden stock characters.
MY POINT: DO NOT ALTER YOUR WRITING STYLE! You area cut above and your unique style and voice ability (and willingness) to use it with finesse is what sets your stuff apart. Editors will notice.
Sorry to wax on about this, but I think it needs to be said. Too many people on here worried about English paper rules. If editors don’t like it, they have whole stables of copy editors for the job.
Biggest thing: The plot, characters, refreshing, unique, compelling—as always!!! Editors want plot, fascinating characters and a writer’s voice that achieves a following for their next book. I’ve earned my living (solely) from writing for over 30 years. Trust me on this :)
I absolutely love this:
exploring her glowing, sticky, post-sex body…
wholesome, juicy kisses
**Hehe—I know what you’re thinking :), but having had to write so many s-e-x scenes lately, I can especially appreciate fresh, compelling and non-cliche’ descriptions like this.
I do feel his attraction and affection for her. I do feel the sort of emotional, spiritual bond between them. *floating around the cabin like an astronaut w/silly grin, etc. This whole paragraph shiny to me!
Hehe, this would be awkward in a relationship: I could feel how my nearness affected her… Once she knows this, will be interesting to see what she does with it…
You explain “demi-vision” in a way that doesn’t pause our involvement with story. Good job!
Very sexy, romantic and all in keeping with this character (from what I know so far about him). Sexual tension between the two characters is well-done throughout!
OMG--love the whole Pygmalion, feels she created him, etc. The paragraph above--her millions of cells, etc—amazingly good!
Fat lady with bag and him reading her. Very good to show his compassion for others. Well done sequence that does heavy-lifting (no pun intended) for plot, characterization, etc.
I sense a lot of foreshadowing in this scene as well :) Weird unpleasant sensations mixed with pleasant, “When I die, we’ll still be together.”
Makes me want to turn pages! I’m caught up, want to know now if this girl is good or bad for him, etc…
Nice: Quizzicality never looked so attractive.
Awesome where plane is taking off and he feels all the other passengers various physical responses—we get a feel for what its like to live with his “gift”.
I love it! I loved every word of it. I love the end where he suggests the woman walk around a little. I love this guy. He is completely likable and he’s interesting.
You know me. I’d give it a damned “10”. Its publishable to me (but must of course be written first). To me--the writing is flawless! (didn’t really read for typos--too caught up)
Getting too long now—message me for any more questions.
LOVE IT!
I enjoy your writing very much. Your characters are unconventional and interesting and your story is very well paced and written. I’ve given you very high marks on practically everything. But I won’t bore you by gushing all over about your talent, instead I’ll point out the tiny things I didn’t like. Trying to be “constructive” can be hard when you really enjoy what you are reading!
I think I commented on this on a previous chapter. I don’t understand your use of ellipses, you use them like commas or hyphens, not as a symbol of an omitted thought or hesitation.
Some medical/science info could use omission or revision (I’m a science geek, most of this probably won’t bother an average reader):
“place incredible stress on her heart…extremely fit athlete, or that she had just smoked a joint…was beating so slowly because her blood was struggling through arteries clogged with cholesterol” -this is confusing, the heart is having to work harder to push the blood around the body with hypertension, but that doesn’t slow down its beating (usually does the opposite) it raises blood pressure. A slow pulse is a sign of a weak heart not a clogged one. Also, the athlete and pot smoker wouldn’t have similar heart rates. Athletes have a steady regular beat, smoking pot makes your heart beat faster, and old ladies have slow pulses due to their exhausted heart muscles or fast ones due to hypertension.
“deep vein thrombosis” -dvt is caused by immobility, excessive clotting, and external trauma such as long periods of time with reduced or stopped blood flow, a 3 hour flight and hypertension wouldn’t make her a “poster child.” (which is an odd expression when applied to an old lady anyway.)
“adrenaline” -the very thought of potential pain causes an increase in adrenaline. So his thought “she might die therefore I might die” would cause fight-or-flight adrenaline dumping into his blood stream. It seems to me that his power would give him plenty of warning that someone was about to die, and that feeling would release the necessary chemicals. Same goes for the in-flight panic attacks, fear = adrenaline.
Caffiene does increase heartrate, but not in the same way as adrenaline. If any stimulant would do, his love for Ellie would cause an increased heartrate and he’d be fine anyway.
The only other issue I can think of is your use of metaphors and similies. In some places they get a little over-the-top (shadowed alley moonlight and ribcage lightning come to mind), but for the most part your command of these poetic devices is solid.
Overall, VERY good work.
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