The Living Statue

31.

The next morning I woke up with a headache so strong, I had this unbearable urge to slam my head against the wall. Several times.

The thing is, while being the hideous little monster that I was inside my mother's womb, I got my ear temporarily folded. I have extremely asymmetric ears - while one is completely normal, the other one looks like I've borrowed it from Legolas. Now if I had the right to choose, I would've borrowed his hair, but since I didn't have a say in the matter, I got one extremely ugly, elf-like ear. The point is, I'm pretty positive the ear isn't the only thing that got damaged inside my mother's womb. There's a high possibility something went wrong with my brain as well, because I keep drinking despite the fact that I know I'm not seventeen anymore. My alcohol tolerance is close to that of Uncle Berny at the moment, and Uncle Berny has a habit of pissing into my mother's plants after one glass of vodka.

Not that I'm complaining - about the plants, that is. My mother cherishes those lil bastards as if they are her precious babies and someone just needed to do something to break her illusion. It's not good for her health.

The headache didn't go away even after I took a shower and washed my face with freezing cold water several times, so I decided to stay in my room for a little longer, since Mr. Torres said he had some personal business to take care of and I had the whole day to myself. I was curious whether he had already left the appartment, but I was in no hurry to see his face - not after what had happened last night - so I leaned against the door and tried to hear for any signs of life in the living room, but to no avail. It was so quiet that for a moment I started imagining I could hear the curtain rustling in the wind. Of course no such thing was possible, because the curtain is too light and the doors are too thick to let in such a delicate noise, but I suddenly got this urge to come out in my pajamas, barefoot, and just drink coffee on the circular balcony all by myself.

Because my head felt like it'll burst into pieces every second, and because I was still sleepy, and because drinking morning coffee on the balcony with a Paris cityscape spreading beneath your feet felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity, that is exactly what I did - I tied an awful, messy bun on top of my head and without doing so much as giving a single glance to my appearance in the mirror, I stepped out of my room and into the living room, only to regret it the second I did so.

My fantasy of having the appartment to myself and pretending to be a modern age princess while drinking coffee on the balcony - with a pinky finger sticking out, mind you! - crashed into teeny-tiny pieces the moment I stepped into the living area, because the first thing my eyes fell upon was Mr. Torres and his annoyingly perfectly ironed suit. And might I add that he was drinking my coffee on my sofa in my apprtment? Well, technically he paid for all of this, but he said I could fully enjoy this day, and his face was not all that enjoyable at the moment. It should've been my coffee and I should've been the one sitting on the sofa without a care in the world, and I should've had the whole appartment to myself! But no! Someone decided to ruin the whole idea.

Wonderful. Splendid.

At this point, I didn't even care that I was barefoot or that my hair looked like I've been playing with exploding potion, or that I had flying piggies on my pajamas. I didn't bother running off to my room to make myself look "presentable" but advanced the coffee table instead. It was only when I plopped myself onto the sofa across from him that Mr. Stick Up His Ass looked up from his precious Ipod.

Now, I've seen my share of Mr. Torres' expressions in my time - not that there were many of them anyway - but I've never seen such obvious horror plastered all over his face. When I say horror, I mean a trace of a frown outlined on his forehead, which is, for my dear employer, as close to a face expression as one can get.