Novel Treatments / Aleister's Window (Edit 1, Section 1)

There is not a Friday that passes when Gloria Agatha Gillis doesn’t ride her bicycle to the Bun of Your Business Bakery at the corner of North Park and Ninth in the Village of Column Square, and there isn’t a Friday when Aleister Motts doesn’t watch her——secretly, though quite visibly——from the vantage of a tall second story window opposite the narrow street. She leans her red bicycle tenderly against the stalk of a naked oak tree, making delicate adjustments to the handlebars as it starts to tip and turn; it hasn’t a kickstand.

Gloria was not a word that Aleister had ever been able to produce in his mind——as intensely he would have wished to; she was a stranger by no known degree of separation. He would simply assign names to the woman on the red bicycle by some loosely selective process——really, not a process at all. Rather, a criteria; her names could be only those he did not find particularly becoming of her. Last week she was Tara; the week before that, Fran. Today her name would be Tiffany. Aleister had allowed himself to be consumed to such an extent by the gravity-like lure of his fantasy that he began (in conscious jest) to make vain gambles at an equally unbecoming last name. ”Jones”, he utters under his breath, which fogs the cool window.

Tiffany Jones enters the bakery, her bicycle leaning, faithfully unsecured upon the great oak, which projects from a small dirt island amidst the sidewalk bricks in such a manner to suggest that the tree had been created for the sole purpose of building a city around. This is the intermission in Aleister’s weekly film——silent film——lucidly projected upon the four by six movie screen of his grand suicide window (as the sardonic landlord had jokingly referred to it). He does not look away. Hypnotized by something in the glare and the beauty of the brightened autumn village——and perhaps also his morning beverage——he gazes down at the cumbersome bicycle, red and ridiculous. It is as an accessory for her; she always wears at least two red accessories in addition to the bicycle, each of which generally suit her about as well as her names.

Intermission ends several minutes later as she appears from the bakery doorway and carefully encourages a brown paper sack to fit nicely in the wire basket mounted precariously upon her great chrome handlebars. Just as she finishes, the handlebars twist unexpectedly. As to keep the beastly bike from crashing to the sidewalk, she drops to her knees and seizes the frame in a valiant effort to its honor, but manages on the way down to entangle her (red) shoulder pack between the front fender and frame. Hence, pickling herself in a quite unfortunate conundrum of weight and balance. Had it been any other woman (or even a man, for that matter) Aleister might have perhaps gone so far as to rush down the two flights of stairs and across the busy street to help. Only now by this woman he was too captivated, as though her clumsy misfortune had only served to deepen his enchantment. But her spell was in the next instant broken——quite jarringly——by the appearance of an unexpected——really, quite uninvited extra. It was in this instant that a young man would dash in from the periphery to free her——quickly and surgically——from her entanglement and then help her——gracefully, along with the bicycle, unscathed——to her feet.

     Aleister watches carefully as the two exchange kind words——Tiffany blushing and bubbling with dramatic appreciation.  It occurred in this moment to Aleister that he had never witnessed her speaking or so much as interacting with any person beyond a mere gesture; several weeks ago she waved an affectionate hand gesture to an unyielding motorist who nearly clipped her as she pedaled into traffic, which is only understandable as the city offers very little in the way of designated bicycle lanes, Ninth Street being no exception.

     And so, Aleister stood like a statue at the window while his beloved squirmed giddily and girlishly under the (now) unstoppable charm of her hero, whom Aleister noticed——with a twinge of grave disappointment——was actually quite handsome, and at a guess, several years younger than he.  The sidewalk romance continued until it degraded (or if you prefer, advanced) quite predictably into what could only be perceived as an exchange of information: She takes a card from him and carefully files it——so as not to be misplaced——in a large wallet that lives in the side pouch of her red shoulder bag.  He in turn enters her information to a sleek mobile phone that appears as smoothly as it disappears into his snug-fitting pants pocket.

This is the end of his film, and not the end that Aleister had looked so fondly forward to. Not the familiar ending where she rides away just as prettily focused and aloof as she had appeared. Instead she now rides dreamily, enchanted in earnest by her new prospect: he who came to her so serendipitously in her time of such comical vulnerability, only that her defenses would be crushed by the bashful embarrassment leading to the red-faced laughter and of course then to the overwhelming happiness——the happiness that he now owns. Aleister follows the hero with his eyes until he disappears around the corner, swaggering cockily, or so Aleister can only imagine. He moves slowly from his statue post at the window and then to the couch where a bottle of vodka and a guitar await him invitingly. The vodka is of a brand that is just choice enough to drink straight from the bottle without grimacing——not to say that decent vodka isn’t worth an occasional grimace——particularly at the first sip. This first sip in Aleister’s case is not the first of the day, nor is it the first of this hour. Once his thirst is satiated and the bottle surrendered to the clutter of the coffee table, his hands find their way to the big, hollow guitar, which leans beside the couch. There is an awkward twisting of the torso, and some swearing before the guitar finally finds its way into his lap, at which point he begins to softly strum an unoriginal and melancholy folk tune. Improvising the lyrics as he goes, it matters little that three of the strings are offensively out of tune. Beyond his tapestry of loosely woven mumblings there is only the hopelessness of an ill mind and the obstinate impossibility of obsession, both of which he is content to forget for the moment. However, through each of the following moments his jam progressed and moved jaggedly through several distinct structures, each more intense and technical than its predecessor. All the while, his voice rose in pitch and volume from what had started as a low mumble had now grown to a shrill holler. It seemed that the music and the vodka had done little to the service of escapism. Rather, it suggested empirically that his drunken improvisation had actually been antithetical in any matter of escapism. It is only when he notices a flow of blood from the cuticle of his right index finger that he finally stops. He knows well what will happen if he permits the maturation of this blind rage. The tantrum is aborted. ”You’re a child.” He mutters and then tilts his head to face the ceiling.

After several minutes of staring blankly, bleeding obliviously on the couch, Aleister is gripped with a sensation of nude self-consciousness. The random lyrics, it seemed to him (their shrieking horror at the pinnacle) had been some crude and exhibitionistic act of masturbation for which he now felt deeply ashamed; not in the sense that the neighbors may have heard him, but rather under the supposition that the proprietors of the afterlife——Gods, if you will——might keep unabridged recordings of each persons’ life, archived in a massive public library to be borrowed freely and viewed——in all of their hideousness——to the certain ridicule of all the other dead people.

In the next moment he would find himself surrounded, suddenly, with a most magnificent awareness of all humiliation to which he had ever fallen, as though he were reliving its quantified mass in a single breath——and in the next moment, the shame of so many failures rose to circle him as vultures do——and at last, the all-too-human specter of hopelessness came and put its hand upon his shoulder. He felt at this moment to weep, but then turned to his masculine rationality——his toughness—and said softly: “You’re fine.”

Aleister sets the guitar back in its spot beside the couch, and takes another drink of vodka. The girl on the red bicycle——whatever her name is——she is a diversion, an affectation; a special treat for each week. Though today this treat had been spoiled by another man’s good intentions. What then would Aleister have preferred? To stand by and account the woman’s suffering so callously? Was it her sudden vulnerable humanness that had been so pleasurable for him? He ponders these questions for a moment and then supposes that it was simply the shattering of a woman’s aloofness that he found so pleasurable. Comparatively, he likened her smile to her suffering quite evenly. His only reservation was that it had not been himself, but the hero who was able to summon the blushing smile, and before he intervened Aleister had not even conceived that such a thing was possible. Not that the woman’s affect was somehow unattainable, but rather that it could be summoned so spontaneously. The hyperbole of her presence——pervasive and constant——in his life was laughable. Though it perplexed him in the deepest seriousness. Only in meeting her could he break this supernatural power she (unwittingly) possessed. But how would he ever meet her? Certainly not in a flamboyant act of heroism; and really, how heroic was this deed? After all, she was only really saved from having to concede in allowing her cumbersome——and entirely too heavy for a person her size——bicycle to fall edgeways on the sidewalk. Once able to untangle her baggage, she probably would have only suffered——along with a great degree of perturbation——some chipped paint, a bent crank, or at the very worst, a skinned knee. Perhaps this heroism had only been Aleister’s irrational imagination framing the event not as it was, but as he wished it to be. And perhaps this same imagination was at the heart of his diseased fixation, not just on her as a woman, but upon the great structure of fabricated symbolism in which he insisted upon framing her. Furthermore, what could make certain that their eventual meeting would even result in reciprocal feelings? For this matter, he had never even seen the woman up close, nor did he have an inkling of an indication as to what sort of company she kept, or even if she was remotely intelligent. It seemed then to Aleister that his infatuation had been all the while based on only the most aesthetic fineries: the pleasant irony of her gaudy red motifs, the silly bicycle, and her nanometric punctuality at the bakery each Friday. This routine, so reassuring as it seemed——in the past few months since his discovery of her——that she had become (sadly) the only person that he was able to consistently rely on (even if it was only for an oblivious engagement in his voyeuristic excitation).

Aleister sinks into the couch, bottle in hand, and carefully recounts——once again——her every movement. And in this moment he pauses to wonder: why——in the curiosity of all that he has witnessed——during the hapless ordeal, her sack of bakery items had not fallen from the basket?

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