The Keepers (3 page)

Lysei,
Dammi
t
I appeal to you, please just
hold me. I wonder what moves him…I’ve never seen him with a woman.
No Monica, surely a man such as he has tons of them waiting in
line. Such a strong jaw line. I want him so bad, I want him inside
of me. Things I would do to satisfy him…why yes, with all
that
’
s in the world, he needs a
woman to release tension, a beautiful, sexy woman like me. You’re
such a naughty girl. I need sex too. I want to be put down…I want
to bend over and be taken, I want it, I want him, all of him.
Dammit, now I’m wet. I feel, I’m too inhibited. Rachel gets it
every day. No, Monica, you are a woman, not some filthy slut like
that bitch Rachel. You don’t care about sex, you make love. You are
still somebody’s daughter and banging is for married people only.
But nobody’s married and they are banging. It’s so hard…No it’s
easy, so long as you are in the right. Now calm down…The picture is
simple, Lysei is going nowhere…He is yours…And I am his. Am I old
school? Is old school the right way? The whores at school used to
make fun of you. I don’t care, I know what moves me. And I will die
a martyr of my believes. What time is it? Eleven…Dammit
Monica,
an
hour this time, you
shouldn’t go so deep in thought. What’s taking so long?
She looked around at the walls, at the portraits
and the stillness of everything inside. She closed her eyes for a
while, taking in the peacefulness of the place. After a moment, the
peacefulness turned into the opposite, causing a certain distress
in her heart.

What Monica felt was
loneliness. She did not admit it, even though the distress was
there, for deep inside her she felt as if admitting it would make
her loneliness much worse.

Yeah deep
inside me alright
,
s
he
thought.

The book-store’s doorbell rang
as the door opened and Lysei entered carrying two full grocery bags
filled with plastic covers. Reflexively, Monica’s mood was elevated
and her depression disappeared as would the morning sun melt away
frost.

“
I had to go
to the hyper-market downtown,” Lysei told her, “Over here, they had
the explicitly ornamented sort and the
fallacious sort
too.”

“
If I didn’t
know any better, I’d think you’re trying to impress me with those
big words.”

Caught out, Lysei only smiled
and asked where they should be put.

“
Over here on
the desk,”
she
said
.

He stood still. Thought. Then,
as if injected with a combination of testosterone and adrenaline
made his decision.
Instead of going towards the
front of the desk, Lysei passed and went behind it, where Monica
was sitting. She stood, surprised at him and tried to make way for
him. He placed the plastic bags on the desk, shuffled for something
in his right pocket and withdrew the change which he also placed on
the desk. Running his left hand through his hair, he looked down at
his polished shoes confusedly but not showing.

This is as
great a chance as any Lysei
,
h
e
thought.
Forget about your
status…

He looked up and met her
confused stare. They looked at each other straight in the eye.

“
What if
someone comes in Lysei?” She had read his mind.

No one ever
comes in. Why should one decide at this moment, after all the time
one has had, to come in?
h
e
thought.

Taking the question as
permission he walked round the desk quickly to the door and locked
it. The two large windows gave view to the world outside, but they
were the sort that the world outside could not see inside. They
were built so that passers-by at night with criminal intentions
would not be able to see inside. He went back to her (she had moved
to the front of the desk) and they embraced tightly. It was as if
by a simple hug, their bodies were able to achieve the intimacy and
closeness that only sex gives. He pulled back his head from her
shoulder and kissed her passionately. The kiss grew more intense
and rougher. He grabbed her derrière and lifted her on to the desk.
She moaned. Continuing to kiss, his right hand ran through her
chest while his left hand tried to unzip her dress from the back.
She was feverishly trying to undo his belt when-

There was a knock on the door.
A loud and aggressive knock. A knock that an angry father would use
on her daughter’s door if she was suspected of being with a boy
inside. A heavy knock that went on relentlessly six times, stopped
and would continue again. The four weeks Lysei had worked there,
only a handful of old and bitter customers came to the book-store
who hardly had the strength to open the door, let alone knock so
loud. They tried to ignore the loud and aggressive knock but it
continued relentlessly and a certain reluctance built up in her.
Lysei sensed the reluctance, and not wanting to seem selfish took
his queue.

“
Lysei” she
whispered as their lips detached “I’m still somebody’s daughter.”
Her words were also meant to imply that even if there had not been
anyone to disturb them, they probably would not have had
intercourse.

The knock continued more
aggressively. “I knows der’s sum-one in der, I saw you wit them
bags, quit trippin man.”

While she straightened her hair
and dress and went behind the desk, Lysei fixed his shirt and
fastened his belt and made his way to and opened the door.

“
Hello
,”
h
e
said casually as if he had not been interrupted.

“
Where you
bin? I bin knockin for years.” replied the customer
agitatedly.

If I told him
to speak properly, they’d jail me up for racism
,
Lysei thought.

“
Please
enter.” He ignored the customers question “What can I assist you
with? Or are you just browsing or something else?”

While he
spoke, he cast a subtle glance at the man. The bright yellow shirt
did not at all match his bright purple skinny short pants.
His
dreadlocks
were braided and dyed green
casting such a contrast to his gold coloured spectacles which were
set on his head and tinted yellow. He black high tops were made
even longer by his black socks reaching up to the knees. But
somehow his bright clowny apparel contrasted his face. He seemed
distressed and agitated. Such distress and agitation that could not
have been caused by
their
delay to open the door but rather something much
more cryptic. The customer entered, waved and grumbled a ‘hello’
towards Monica who was sitting behind the desk and reading a book.
She did not reply.

“
I need a
bible,”
he said in a scratchy voice and
his tone revealed that he was in a great hurry.

“
Sure. We have
the Christian, musli-”

“
Just give me
a goddamn bible,”
interrupted the man
fervently.

Calm down. Don’t let him get to
you. He is just a product of the system.

Lysei looked towards Monica.
She did not look back but continued reading.

“
Please, if
you would tell me which bible,” Lysei’s tone was set to calm the
man down. It work effectively.

“
I don’t know
man, I don’t know. I’m tired.”

“
Come with
me.”

Lysei led the man to the last
shelve; the one furthest from the desk. He scanned among the
columns and found the religion section. He withdrew two large books
from it, and blew and wiped with his hands the dust away from
both.

“
Do you know
Jesus Christ? Or
Mohammad
?” Lysei asked
politely.

“
Gimme the one
wit Christ in it.”

“
I’ll give you
the Christian bible…they both have Christ in it.”

He gave the man the bible and
told him to go to the lady at the counter. He went and Lysei
remained and skimmed through the Quran.

Monica looked up and saw that
the man was coming towards the desk. She looked past his clothing
to his face. It had an unusual despairingly confused look about it.
It was as if his bright clothing had absorbed the brightness that
was in him, leaving him dark and gloomy. He reminded her of
Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. No, something more sinister was at play in
that man’s heart. He seemed confused, he clutched at the bible as
one would to a seat belt inside a falling aeroplane. Darkness
seemed to fall on his face with each step he took towards Monica
and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair trying to stand up and
go behind the chair so as to get as much distance from the man who
was nearer the desk now as was reasonable but thinking twice she
didn’t.

“
Are you
buying or borrowing?”
she asked and looked
further behind at Lysei. He didn’t look up but continued
reading.

“
You sellin
them bibles?” The man
said
cynically.

Ignoring his question Monica
told the man that if he was borrowing the book, she would need a
residential proof as well as a copy of his ID and that he would
have to return the book in a month’s time.

“
Don’t have da
time, tell me how much.”

Monica took the book and
scanned the barcode on the back cover. “One pound and tw-”

“
Keep the
change,” the man said as he handed Monica a five pound note. He
took the book and hastily made his way to the door, opened it and
left it to close by itself.

I’m still
somebody’s daughter. These are words of wise women
,
h
e thought, completely uninterested in the scene
that had just occurred.

Lysei
considered apologizing, but decided that if he did, he would be
admitting that what had happened had been wrong. Even if by many
reasons, what had happened was wrong, he felt he cared not all,
that what matters was what felt right to him, what moved him. He
placed the Quran back
in
its place in the
shelf and made his way to the desk.

“
That guy
looked dead in the eyes,” she said as Lysei approached and leaned
on the desk with his arms.
“He looked a bit like that
rapper. Rick or Rikki or R-something.”

“
I don’t
care…His sins are probably catching up to him,” he said, “what time
is it?” he changed the subject.

She looked
down to her
wristwatch
and answered that
it was nearly half-past two. The book-store closed at three o’clock
in the afternoon, there was no sense of staying open long with the
average of less than 10 customers a week.

“
About what
happened Lysei,”
her eyes still lingering
with passion. She cleared her throat. “About what happened, I’m
terribly sorry for leading you on. I don’t know.” She cleared her
throat again “You’re such a good person and I wouldn’t want to
confuse or hurt you Lysei.” Saying these misleading words instead
of saying ‘I love you’ struck such pain in her heart. Her eyes
watered subtly.

“
Don’t sweat
it,”
he said. “One thing to know is that
if I were angry, I wouldn’t be right.”

“
Okay
,”
s
he
said not understanding what he meant, perhaps because her heart did
not want him to agree with her, rather it wanted him to convince
her and her loins wanted him to take her and only him. It was very
odd, at her age of twenty to have had sex only once. Her need for
satisfaction was growing and would one day take over
her.

“
I think we
should close now.”

“
Okay.”
he
said
.

Because of the little work done
during the day, it took them just a few minutes to close the
book-store. Lysei went and stood by the door waiting for Monica
while she packed up her purse and wore her shoes and locked the
cash drawer. She finished and came towards the door looking down
with her lips closed tight causing her dimples to sink into her
cheeks. He opened the door for her and she thanked him, still
looking down. The situation was intense and made the worse by her
shyness. He held the door with his hand up high so that she passed
beneath it as she exited. He set the auto-lock latch and followed,
closing the door behind him.

“
Shyness is a
virtue,” she whispered inaudibly to herself.

“
Tomorrow
then, miss
,”
h
e
said.

“
Don’t be late
again,” she said and regretted the words as soon as they left her
mouth. “Sorry…I mean…you can if you need to be late…I just
said-“

“
You’re the
boss,”
he said laughing. “Good bye and
enjoy
your
evening.”

“
Goodbye,” she
said to him and
I love you
she said to him in her heart.

The crowd
cheered on incessantly. “
Rikki
!
Rikki
!
Rikki
!”. The most
adored person in that generation of humanity. The king, in fact, of
most of the population. Adored for his boldness, his explicitness,
his loudness – his evilness. Bear in mind that what is evil to
those on one side
is the
opposite to those
on the other side. To those on his side, this evil person was good,
and judging by his rating, was the epitome thereof. He was now
thirty two years old. His ambition in life: