The Keepers (or The Momentum).

  Chapter 1: Lysei.

  “Am telling you girl...if the sex ain't good 'nuf, I’m leaving the guy,” said the woman who was weaving the other woman’s hair.

  “I don’t know what you waistin your time for, ‘for I get down with a guy, I tell ‘em ‘I have to see da package first.’” said the woman who was being weaved.

  They both spoke in naturally slutty voices.

  When I was young sluttiness was only an act.

  The salon stand was just near the atm cashpoint, so that anyone who came to use it during the hairdresser's work time could hear the conversations. And anyone who cared to or by chance used this particular atm often during working hours could tell that the conversations, no matter who was talking, were focused on sex, money and drugs…always.

  I remember growing up...and it was different, Lysei thought as he lost focus of the women’s conversation. Perhaps all those with parents are destined to doom.

  The man in front of him using the atm was on the phone. He spoke loudly and his manner and his colourful shirt, his big hat barely hiding his thick dreadlocks, his funny looking skinny pants giving a horrible shape to his fat legs, told that he cared not about what anyone thought about him.

  But, thought Lysei, but, one must be conscious what others think of one, even if it is not to please anyone, but to be conscious of the influence that one gives. Surely if everyone did as they pleased, then the children-

  The clown in front of him withdrew his money and left. Lysei, as he walked toward the atm, the two women at the weave stand noticed him.

  “I spread em for that, anytime,” said the woman being weaved.

  “I’d swallow him full,” replied the weaver.

  Lysei heard. He heard what they were talking about, not that they were talking about him. The machine asked him to input the amount to be withdrawn, he typed 100 and hoped he had enough. He had never actually been poor.

  I’ve never been actually rich either, he thought. Someone must be watching over me.

  The sound of the auto teller machine counting the money relieved him and after a moment he took his bank card and his money and left for work. The book-store was three blocks up from the atm. It seemed out of place, not only in the neighbourhood, but the thought of it itself.

  It is out of place. Look at this place, look at these people. I want to die, I want to have sex too but not with them, it wouldn’t be the same. I don’t want to do what they do in porn. I want to do something, why am I the only one in prison. I’m horny right now. There is no God, God left the world sometime after my parents went too. But dammit there should be one anyway, he thought as he made his way up to the book-store.

  It was a sunny morning with a clear blue sky. There were no trees nor any plants in the street as he walked up towards the book-store, just weeds growing through dull sunburned pavements, just typical grey and white and blue.

  Nobody has time to plant. Everyone is just trying to laid, he thought.

  Small buildings, the greatest being three stories high, lined the street on either side. It was already busy with people making their ways to work, to the salons or saloons, to the brothels. Some came to town to idle on the streets and some to sell whatever it was they sold. Almost all businesses advertised using sexual innuendo or sexual facts and almost everyone wore in a sexually provocative fashion. High heels and short skirts, bum shorts, some of the more daring went to stores to buy breakfast in their lingerie, even children as young as sixteen. Men wore tight jeans with a clipping inside that exposed the shape of their manhood. Sex meant business, sex was the drug. No kids here, a virgin was an oddity. The high billboards on the corners and intersections were worse, exposing women nakedly, the limit being not showing the vaginas and penises directly. The entertainment and fashion industries were making a lot of money.

  He looked at his wristwatch and quickened his pace.

  “Dammit, Monica’s going to have a fit. Late three times in a week,” he said angrily to himself.

  The book-store was just one block away now. A car was parked on the pavement and was playing loud music with the typical obscenities. Women who walked by danced to the song being played, swaying their hips and shaking their butts. Lysei knew the lyrics to the song and rapped:

  “Turn around, put your head on the pillow

  Let me have at that pussy

  I ain't stopping till you faint, ain’t stopping then either

  Gonna give you this coke you see

  Then I’ll f**k you forever”

  He stopped and considered how easy it was to make money from music.

  The book store came into view and he saw Monica standing at the door. She was one of those boring girls who were about to become extinct in a few years. Those girls who believed that there was more to life than meets the eye, girls who did not find pleasure in arousing as many men as they could but only one special one, one of those ‘crazy girls’ who believe that sex should not be the motivation but something more important – a somewhat connection to their spiritual selves. She was an angel, innocent and wise with those perfect green and upturned eyes at the corners. Her make-up was not at all slutty but was meant to give her an appearance of youth and glory complimented by her white flowery sun-dress and the sparkling tiara she always wore.

  She won’t become extinct, I’ll give her children and raise them how I wanted to be raised. If only I could tell her how I want her, he thought.

  But he could not. He was ashamed. He had met her four weeks back on his nineteenth birthday in a not so pleasing way. An only child, he had lost his parents in a motor vehicle accident when he was five years old, the details of which he had never known and never wanted to know.

  Luckily, or unfortunately when the accident occurred he was at day-care. He remembers his teacher asking him out of the class to see the police officers outside waiting for him and his fellow classmates staring at him and whispering to each other. He remembers how he thought he had done something wrong, that maybe because he had told a lie the previous day, the police had found out in some unfathomable way: he thought he was in trouble – he was. Attempts were made to locate relatives and a distant grandfather who he had always thought non-existent was found. He was old and semi-senile and always talked about the war. He would wake up sometimes and shout at the ‘friggin reds’ and how the foreigners were taking their women. He died seven months later and his estranged wife took his money and left. No other suitable relative was found and Lysei was placed under the system. The orphan. He never missed his parents or his grandfather, they all died when he was young, before his life began.

  I’d rather not think about my childhood, he thought.

  Anyway, four weeks back, on his birthday, the warden at his orphanage decided to surprise him by finding a job for him, if not for anything but to get him to start earning something as quickly as possible. The warden was a gaunt, tall and lean man who believed wholeheartedly in discipline and order and even though corporal punishment was illegal, some of the orphans would testify that the threat rattled him not a bit but rather increased the depths of his lashes. He was never married but spoke of the importance of loving only one person, most often in tones of regret and despair. He was old and would probably die alone. He would go on and on about how trying to sleep with everyone was an infinite loop that would end only in stress; depression, suicide, hatred, jealousy, murder and so on. He would always tell the boys (he was in charge of them) that the value and integrity of love is in finding it in just one person, thereby, closing the loop. He did not go to church but he read the bible and taught the orphans their prayers and when people asked him to prove that there is a god, he would reply “To prove that there is something like a god, you first have to prove that you cannot live without one” and would go on to show that the prove of a god is, thus, a personal one.

  The warden had done him a favour. At nineteen, the state does not consider you an orphan anymore and if you want to stay, you have to pay with money or work.
Ever since, his embarrassment for the way he had met his boss had salted him bitterly more and incessantly.

  “Three times in one week, you don’t like working here do you?” Monica asked with a forced bossy voice which rather came out cute.

  “Sorry miss,” He apologised truthfully. “I uh…woke up late and I had to get the money,” he said sincerely and tipped his hat in as if to avoid the rays of the sun but really it was to hide his shame. The money was for some favour Monica had done for one the nurses at the orphanage.

  “When will you marry me and stop calling me miss?” she said jokingly, smiling and revealing her perfect straight teeth in the process, causing her dimples to sink into her peach coloured cheeks, making her small and high cheek bones protrude highly, making her eye-tips more curved and making her green eyes brighter…

  Stop it, not now, he said in his mind.

  The two of them and the book store stood out. In a society crazed about sex and all its implications they were rebels. Him in his black suit, polished shoes and perfectly straight and shiny combed black hair.

  The book-store in its vintage and classic look, built with brick walls giving a terra-cotta tone in its colour. The two large windows of the book-store centred a large mahogany door. What with the usual cacophony, the door was always closed, giving an already acquired exclusiveness to the book-store. Next door to the right was a small electronics store which attracted its customers by having the female workers work in their bathing suits, winter or summer, thanks to air conditioning. One was out by the electronics store’s door trying to lure in passers-by. To the left was a vacant store which used to be rented as a church on Sundays and some days during the week and used to fill the vicinity with spiritual and uplifting music but the previous year, because of dwindling members and high rental costs it had closed. The idea and the words worship, church etc. had degenerated to being presently, mostly, used in frolic terms in most of the world.

  Like that song, ‘church in the wild’. He thought.

  What he really wanted was to get down on one knee, magically retrieve a four carat diamond ring and propose to Monica. But instead;

  “I think I’ll stick with the miss, miss,” he said charmingly with a hidden smile.

  “For now, I hope,” she replied teasingly, hiding the hopefulness of her words.

  He sighed and walked up to and opened the large door. He held it open with his right hand, tilted down his head and motioned for Monica to enter as if she were a customer. She went in and he followed closing the door behind him. The door-bell rang twice as they entered.

  As he entered, a wash of fresh air scented with mint hit him in the face. The book-store was rectangular and plain with a forty by sixty metre floor area and around five metres in height. The walls were painted cream white and adorned with portraits and paintings of landscapes and writers the likes of Hemingway, C. Clarke, Shakespeare and some of the other more notables. On the far left stood the desk and chair of the cashier which was where Monica was stationed. Six rows of shelves ran parallel to the longest wall of the book-store. Each shelve had a row of six divisions with eight columns and since rarely anyone came and borrowed books, the shelves were virtually full. The number of books recorded in the store’s records numbered at over twenty five hundred.

  Monica took off her flat shoes and placed them on the carpet floor behind the counter. She enjoyed the feeling of her feet on the grassy carpet, and most often would not walk but rather drag her feet when she moved around the book-store. She always wore nail polish and this week’s was green, matching her eyes.

  “Anything important you want me to do?” Lysei said.

  “Same as yesterday, just look busy darling,” she replied joking, then “but, there is one thing…be a dear, I need you to go buy some plastic covering papers…Some of these books need covering.” As she spoke, she opened the petty-cash drawer and took out a roll of money tied with an elastic band. She counted thirty pounds.

  “First try the gift shop across the street…If you don’t get em there, look around. Buy enough for about 70, 80 books, okay.”

  “Alright.” He reached out to take the money, and purposefully, touched her hand longer than was required. They both blushed, him at his bravery, and her at not removing her hand. These subtle advances were gaining momentum and soon would be strong enough for bolder gestures.

  I love you, he said to her in his mind as he walked towards the door.

  I love you, she said to him in her mind, looking down at her hand and feeling the redness on her cheeks.

  He opened the door and left, leaving it to close by itself. Monica leaned over the desk and looked through the window at Lysei. To her he was the ideal man. She started thinking;

  Lysei, Dammit 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, she 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 where I’d want them,” she said mockingly.

  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, he 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?, he thought.

  Taking the question as permission he walked round the desk quickly to the door and locked it. The two large windows gave v
iew to the world outside, but they were the sort that the world outside could not see through. 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,” he said casually as if he had not been interrupted.

  “Where you been? I been knocking 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. His 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 works 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, 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 did not.

  “Are you buying or borrowing?” she asked and looked further behind at Lysei. He did not 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, he 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 at 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 ten 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,” she 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 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,” he 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.