Immortalia

Chapter 9 - Larger Than Life

Chapter 9 – Larger Than Life

Even from inside the thick airport walls, Aurora could hear the loud buzz of planes taking off and landing. In a way, she was disappointed; this was the first time she’d ever been inside a real-live airport, and yet she was forced to remain inside a tiny private room, with nothing but a small window in the corner to provide her with any idea of this new world. Unfortunately, the window looked out upon a small, unused runway, giving her no view of the flying vehicles she heard roaring from somewhere outside.

The rest of her team was gathered around Zachary, who gestured grandly with his hands while he told stories of his body art shop back home. Some were truthful, but others were slightly exaggerated. Although she had not been with him throughout his entire career, she been with him long enough to know that he’d never, under any circumstance, sacrifice his “precious” time to volunteer at a homeless shelter and do finger paintings with underprivileged children.

Yet the others bought every word of it. Aurora watched as he charmed Milada and Valeria with his amusing combination of truthful dealings and outright fabrications. It made Aurora feel sick. Right now, he told a—truthful—story that, while funny to him, made Aurora’s skin crawl. It was something she remembered well; and there was nothing particularly laugh-worthy about it.

Why is he bringing this up again?

Once, Zachary had been dealing with a very wealthy Chinese businessman who wanted the words “big wealth” scarified into his back. But first, he’d wanted to see a “picture of the finished work”, so to speak, which obviously meant it had been Aurora’s task to once again become his canvas.

“So what happened?” Milada asked.

Zachary blushed, which Aurora knew to be false. She had to admit; he was a hell of a speaker when he wanted to be.

“Well, the guy asks me, ‘Can you use the girl to show me what it’ll look like when it’s done? So I say, ‘Sure, why not? Actually, I’ll do you one better. I’ll show you on my Immortalia.’”

“Oh no,” Milada said, covering her mouth as if to conceal a laugh. “Why do I have the feeling something went wrong?”

Zachary’s mouth fell open in false shock. “Well, he asked me if I’d like to see a picture of the word written in Chinese, and I said no, because I’ve studied Mandarin quite a bit and I thought I had a working grasp on the language. So I go over to Aurora, right? And I get to work.”

Both Immortalias laughed. “And what happened? Did you get it wrong?”

Zachary shrugged. “Turns out, I wasn’t as good in Chinese as I thought I was. I spent almost two-hours on Aurora, okay? And when it was done, the guy looks at me. You can see on his face he’s all confused. He said, ‘What is this?’ I didn’t get what he meant, so then it made me all confused. So I look right back at him and say, ‘It’s what you wanted, right?’

‘No, why would I want that?’

And ya gotta understand, he’s looking real mad at this point. So I told him, ‘It’s the sign for wealth, isn’t it?’

‘Wealth?’ he shouts, practically screaming at me now. ‘That is the Chinese characters for small penis!’”

Both Milada Valeria broke into laughter, and Aurora looked away from them to hide her frown.

“So I had to start the entire thing over, then give a fifty percent discount to the guy for the accidental insult.”

What Zachary didn’t mention, Aurora recalled bitterly, was that he’d blamed her for the entire mix-up. As if it could be her fault that her boss didn’t understand a language.