𝐍𝐎. 𝟏𝟒 ❛ 𝐡𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭 ❜ | VARIOUS LOCATIONS, OCTOBER 1991
❧ 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 / 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 / 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 / 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭.
Morningstar Cafe was, by day, a drab second-floor shop that offended passersby with its single item menu. You could have a sour corn beverage, potentially with sugar if the woman behind the counter felt like offering it. Most days, she didn’t. ‘Drink what we give you,’ a sign by the register threatened. That warning became a galvanizing motto after dark—once the place transformed into a lively, hip spot flooded with whichever socialites happened to be town that night. A gruff woman with a magazine under her nose manned the door. Her job was ensuring only those with reservations or a spot on the list made it inside. The first time he’d gone, Renzo earned a hard shove in the chest from this woman, who demanded he take off his cap and sunglasses before she consented to allowing him inside. He wasn’t going to get belligerent with her. He’d promised Karolina that he would be on his best behavior—no liquor or uppers before, smile for the cameras, no fighting. ‘What, you think I’m impersonating myself? Really?’ It was hard to imagine, but the door lady had shrugged, ‘You’d be surprised. Lot of desperate pretty boys in town.’
❧ back back back at it again (posting ass, leonor’s) this is one of my sleeper favorites !!!! it looks cool to me, and i have the best time writing renzo pov, i have discovered.
𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 & 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭 ↓
Morningstar Cafe was, by day, a drab second-floor shop that offended passersby with its single item menu. You could have a sour corn beverage, potentially with sugar if the woman behind the counter felt like offering it. Most days, she didn’t. ‘Drink what we give you,’ a sign by the register threatened. That warning became a galvanizing motto after dark—once the place transformed into a lively, hip spot flooded with whichever socialites happened to be Canaris that night. A gruff woman with a magazine under her nose manned the door. Her job was ensuring only those with reservations or a spot on the list made it inside. The first time he’d gone, Renzo earned a hard shove in the chest from this woman, who demanded he take off his cap and sunglasses before she consented to allowing him inside. He wasn’t going to get belligerent with her. He’d promised Karolina that he would be on his best behavior—no liquor or uppers before, smile for the cameras, no fighting. ‘What, you think I’m impersonating myself? Really?’ It was hard to imagine, but the door lady had shrugged, ‘You’d be surprised. Lot of desperate pretty boys in town.’
They were on friendlier terms now, and he didn’t need a familiar-faced escort to waltz inside. It was just an enjoyable dining spot beneath the veneer of fame that made it a known place. The grilled fish and delicate desserts weren’t worth a trip down south all by themselves, but they were a welcome consolation prize when work necessitated going to the seaside. Friends from Nakawe were there this week, vacationing or working themselves; meeting at the Morningstar was a no-brainer. They could have sat in the back until morning while the glasses piled up on the table, and they would have if not for an unexpected interruption. Renzo anticipated the waitress who wandered over unprompted would stop by someone else’s shoulder and was caught off-guard when she bent over at his instead. She murmured her message, direct and discreet, and then gestured toward the constantly swinging door the led into the bustling kitchen.
Without an explanation to anyone staring with expectant eyes, he went to take the call that had come through the manager’s telephone and requested him by name. It was a surprise to hear Leonor’s voice on the other end of the line but perhaps less surprising that she sounded close to tears as she hurried to explain herself. The words jumbled together. He listened hard to make out what she was saying. In the end, the details didn’t matter. She paused at length to take a deep, unsteady, therapeutic inhale, then blurted out: ‘Can I see you tonight? I need you. Please.’
She was also supposed to be away, which she’d informed him in a telephone call before she ran off to the airport. Instead of her trip, they talked for a few minutes about the gift he sent her. She promised to watch it when she got home. He suggested they watch it together. She made a joke about needing to stay home for a while anyway. He agreed with her. Had she seen the note? She had. And she forgave him for it? She did. Quiet, the kind that meant they were both smiling and making heart eyes at thin air. That was it. Yet, an obvious question had ballooned in front of him as soon as she mentioned she was invited to spend a couple days with her family—that her father had arranged it and insisted she join, no strings attached. It was distracting, that balloon, but he’d refused to pop it. They both knew “family time” would end poorly somehow, although he could admit after this phone call that he hadn’t anticipated such a spectacular disaster.
She was crying outright by the time she ended the call. It concluded hastily, mid-sob. Maybe she rushed off to gather her things, too relieved to say goodbye. She was taking the jet. The royals, almost to a person, flew private whenever they had to—and when they didn’t. Easy, she could summon a flight and be back in Nakawe in a couple hours’ time. He was going home by train, meanwhile, and it would take more time than that. She explained it to him once with the smuggest look on her face. ‘Our pilots are on call,’ she’d said. He remembered that she was eating some kind of fruit while she talked; she tossed them into her mouth like candy, which was fine because she figured they were mostly water and therefore mostly calorie-free. ‘They’re ready anytime I want. They come when I tell them to.’ To this, he had replied, ‘Oh, yeah? Me too.’
Most likely, she ended the call in a hurry because she was embarrassed to be resuming what she’d been doing before she got desperate enough to pick up the phone.
Leonor didn’t cry a lot, not really. That was a small blessing because Renzo never fully knew what to do when it happened. What he had gathered over the years was that women wanted to be consoled if they bothered to cry in front of you. It was gravely important to say nothing that mattered and wear a shirt that could handle wet mascara, running eyeliner, possibly snot that you absolutely could not comment on. If you weren’t wearing a shirt, they went for the neck. If you joked about the snot, the situation went nuclear. When men cried, it was the same deal, minus the requirement that you play daddy and give them hugs and kisses. The nuclear option was mutual destruction. ‘Crying’s for pussies.’ ‘Are you calling me—’ ‘Well, ain’t you?’ Blows ensue. Everyone feels better—superficially, at least, which was what mattered. For her part, Leonor cried when there were no words to say, for better or worse, or, crucially, when she wasn’t ready to have them coaxed out of her.
He hadn’t intended to be drafted into service as a makeshift counselor, but it just worked out that way, and he had never been one to reject what simply fell into place. By the time the waitress appeared in the office doorway to check on him—or whatever her purpose was, maybe just to eavesdrop—he had run the usual course of reactions. Slinging a grieving princess over his shoulder and carrying her out of her darkest hours wasn’t easy work. It required clarity and consideration that he didn’t often like to possess. It would have been much easier to respond with, ‘Hey, can you shut the fuck up, I’m try to live a bullshit-free life over here.’ That was the problem with caring.
Yet, his theory was that he had taken to acting so well because he had never actually stopped being a introspective, sensitive little boy who moved like grass in the wind with whatever weather he was caught in. He got used to storms early on. Clear skies were welcome, but they left him feeling restless and parched. The storm went inward. The wind was always blowing, harsh, howling, in there. Other people saw that and called it different things, somewhere between “troubled” and “passionate,” adjacent to “intense,” in the neighborhood of “desirable” and “steer clear.” Whatever it was, Leonor had met him and looked, without knowing, directly at it.
‘Bring her around,’ he had told Kore. It wasn’t his business, that she was friends with someone whose mother had just died and who was so unbearably sad about it that she might just fade away all together and who really just needed a pick-me-up, something to make her smile, but without all of the pressure, you know, that comes with being out and about when you’re someone like that, since you can’t just get drunk and go crazy for a night without scrutiny, or rumors, or—! No, that was not his business. However, the conversation had been unending, and everyone squeezed into the Den’s best corner seating wanted to gossip about her. Interjecting with an obvious solution ended it. Or, it prompted them to start reminiscing about their fun times, and it gave him an opening to get up and wander away. Having made it his business, he had to put more thought into it later. He didn’t read the news, certainly not the kind that would be most informative, but he didn’t have to look far to find smiling pictures of then-twenty year old Leonor with her long, straight hair and round cheeks. She always wore red. She looked like her mother, who was indeed very dead.
The concept of royalty was still perplexing and off-putting, like being somewhere people insisted ghosts and fairies were real, which was also true of Uspana. Still, whatever it meant, she looked like a princess. She looked even more that way up close, and she acted like it, too. He couldn’t resist indulging in a bit of mockery. Surprisingly, she was game enough to allow it—that and the observations he made, that she screamed misplaced and full of despair. It couldn’t have been flattering. ‘You know all about that, huh,’ he joked when she suggested the place sounded pretentious. It wasn’t a joke, but it sunk in that she wasn’t quite what he expected. Although unnameable in the moment, she had been honest in an earnest way. There was a conversation she wanted to have, one they hardly began that night; he recognized belatedly that she chose to have it with him. Only, it couldn’t have had much to do with him specifically. He asked her in time why she’d been so open. Her response struck him the same way: ‘I don’t know. I was drinking for the first time in a while? You wouldn’t let me break eye contact? Approval-seeking?’ She had looked at her hands, then added, ‘You know I’m a believer. So, because I was meant to be that way with you, then and there. That’s why.’
Renzo wasn’t a believer, not the way she was. Still, he couldn’t deny that there was truth in her observation. That’s what she’d been, attractive and intriguing and truthful, in that order. When Pat had fished an admission out of him on a rooftop in California just a couple months ago, that was more truth. Leonor was precious. He did like to be around her, to listen to her, to receive her affection. She was affectionate, which was a relief because that’s what his introspective, sensitive, small self needed. And, anyway, listening to her problems and dispensing advice wasn’t how they spent all of their time.
Leonor was curious in a ravenous way. She wanted to learn everything under the sun, and she was usually too arrogant to go about it without pure, uncut enthusiasm and confidence. Allowing herself to be taught was a favor, a sign of affection unto itself. That became apparent to him quickly. She looked down her nose at store clerks with tentative suggestions, but she peppered him with questions and savored the answers like fine, melt-in-your-mouth morsels. It was hard to not be flattered. When it was time to listen and dispense advice, he found opportunities to pluck bitter fruit of experience from his own life and make it into something sweet, even nourishing, for her. That was rare. Now it was plentiful. He spent a lot of time trying to live outside of himself, yet clarity and consideration weren’t such hard asks when she was doing the asking. Typical of people accustomed to taking, she seemed never afraid to ask for anything.
All of this was a problem that became worse by the day. The consequences were piling up. It wouldn’t be possible to outrun them eventually, and that moment would come without warning. Everything stacked comes crashing down. Life had very few certainties, but the hard hammer of reality falling was one of them. Renzo knew that. He also knew that he had other problems—namely, that he was, like any consummate addict, hard-pressed to stop good feelings no matter how obvious and unavoidable the terrible consequences would be. Setting aside questions of willingness, it was irresponsible and selfish to pull Leonor into this kind of morass. Of course, he counted those tendencies among his problems, too.
TRANSCRIPT:
[Muffled blaring music, Leonor humming]
Tonight? Aren’t you in Intizara?
My bad. I forgot about the jet. I get you. [Renzo sighs]
Hey, hey, hey. Come on. Calm down. I get you. Just … You have my address, right, so how’s that? You can go there, and I’ll see you when I get in. Late, right. What? No, it’s fine. I don’t mind. Someone’ll let you inside. Just go around the back. Sure. Alright. I’ll see you then.
Hey, Nora, it’s okay. Okay? Take a breath. See you soon.
JIM | How do we feel about nude?
LEONOR | You mean—? JIM | You, Leonor. I think it’d look nice, especially since Renzo’s wearing all black, and the backdrops we have are neutral, too. LEONOR | I’m not sure if I’d be comfortable with that …
JIM | Really? You seem—I mean, you know, you seem like you’d be. LEONOR | This is different. I’m … I don’t … RENZO | You can say no, Nora. If you don’t want to do it.
LEONOR | [sighs] No, I actually do, but I feel like I … RENZO | What? LEONOR | You know … [Camera clicks]
RENZO | Jim, please, will you elaborate? Tell her what you see. I have, plenty. No luck yet. Brainwashing’s a fucking nightmare. LEONOR | No, please, it’s— RENZO | Just listen, Nora.
JIM | Ah. It’s endemic. I see it all the time. A gorgeous woman gets in front of a camera, she’s standing in front of a mirror. Only, it’s worse, right, because you can’t actually see yourself. It’s what you imagine —gosh, and you know how mean cameras can be, right? Almost as mean as those damn tabloids. Almost. But, what do I know? I’m just a guy, but I am making art, okay? That’s what I’m seeing with this thing.
JIM | I have been told my camera is very slimming, for what it’s worth. [Leonor scoffs]
LEONOR | [laughs] Fine, okay. It’s just for fun. For us. What do you think, artistic nudity and all, convincing—?
LEONOR | We could do this ourselves, but—oh, when’s your birthday, Jim? Anytime soon? Let’s call it a gift.
[Movie plays quietly on television]
Hi. I hit play.
That’s okay. How is it? Funny. Odd. Exactly what I needed. “I myself am strange and unusual” … I’m gonna go change. Just take your jeans off.
I’m listening. I don’t want to dwell on it.
Alright, but you will, regardless—on the inside. I don’t want that for you. And I know why you came here. Let me help.
It feels silly to be so torn up about things. I don’t know what I’d do with a bunch of dusty old jackets and her least favorite paintings, but those were hers. They smell like her. Have her fingerprints. Meant something to her. They’re all I have left.
You can track them down. Put that princess pull to work. [laughs] Right, of course, serves me so well, all of my power …
What means something to you? Of hers. Yeah, you said you didn’t take anything from the house, but you will someday. I don’t know. I want all of it. Or, none of it. I want her, and I don’t … What does that even mean now? What will make it better, curling up with her bones? I don’t know.
It’s fucked up. You can’t predict what’ll become a signifier—a symbol of your love enduring or whatever. I keep that stupid cube over there because, uh, a buddy was trying to solve it … [sniffs] He was trying to solve it that day, the day he died. I remember that. I was so fucking annoyed. “Give it a rest. Grow the fuck up.” Shit. I can’t solve it either.
Can’t even try without crying like a baby. A damn shame. It’s sweet. Bittersweet, I guess.
There was a glass of water on her desk with a lipstick stain … It felt so important that day. [chuckles] He wouldn’t sell that. Yeah, well, plenty of freaks out there who’d pay good money for it. Better make sure it’s still there when you go back.
Do you want to come with me? See my childhood bedroom? Didn’t you just move out last year? Yeah, and I didn’t take any of my stuffed animals with me. Introduce me to them? Do they have names? Of course. Personalities, titles—Goddamn, even the toys! It is cute. It is.