Sergio De La Pava - Personae

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THE way at the extremely subatomic level the mere act of observing necessarily and incredibly interacts with the observed so it is true that a woman of great conventional physical attractiveness often does not get an accurate picture of the world and the human nature that populates it. So she’s likely to conclude that men are weirdly solicitous and women mostly mean instead of rightly concluding that to her men are weirdly solicitous etcetera.

2 So nothing in her twenty-two years had really prepared Nicole Grunderson for the experience of encountering a man who evinced no reaction whatsoever to her appearance. Not that he absorbed her appearance then chose to ignore it; that he literally appeared to detect no difference between her and any other human.

3 She knew enough to not enlist the help of anyone else at the coffee shop on the question of why their employer had had this unprecedented reaction or nonreaction for three months and counting. She also tried in vain to not be offended, finally settling on a strategy whereby he was, willingly or not, placed in a category of people who simply (now?) lack any interest in that area.

4 This was necessary because of the seemingly endless stream of indignities she had suffered since arriving in New York. That something happens so regularly it achieves cliché makes it no less painful for the person experiencing it. So it was with the pain of having your most salient quality weakened perhaps irreparably by a change in location. The sheer teeming multitude of people, a phenomenon that needed to be eyewitnessed to be truly believed. Unless his inattention did not constitute a further indignity because, as appeared to be the case, it was his consistent-without-fail reaction to any such stimuli.

5 All of which made the interaction she’d just witnessed so unsettling. Because wasn’t that their boss, an intimidating boulder of a man, gently thawing into liquid from the heat coming off what to her eyes seemed a rather plain-looking woman?

6 The sight was so odd and unexpected that almost as soon as it disappeared, because the plain woman slowly limped away, Nicole began to doubt her reading of it. And because a conclusion that she had misread had significant appeal due to the above, that likely would have been the anticlimactically tepid end of the affair if not for a look Nicole happened to spot as it moved across her boss’s face.

7 Because Nicole, who was studied in so few areas, was undeniably expert in at least one: the messy mechanics, ramifications, and symptoms of human, okay male, desire. So her expertise flashed diagnostic recognition at the curious combination of anxiety and excitement that comes from a sudden and strong attraction that, justified or not, goes beyond the merely physical. All from that one look.

8 Still, the look and its accurate interpretation were unlikely to result in any tangible conduct if not for a further development, this one occurring exclusively within Nicole.

9 At sight of the look Nicole experienced a sensation sufficiently uncommon to her that it startled her into a deeper realm of human understanding. The uncommon sensation was the skipping of a mental step. Until then her process varied little. When presented with novel data, whatever its form, Nicole processed the information by first straining it through a solipsistic filter. So, for example, someone informing Nicole that they had been diagnosed with a serious illness might mentally note with distaste how quickly the discussion moved into the question of whether she, Nicole , might not have the same illness. Yes, that bad.

10 Thus the immediately preceding ballet wherein every movement and gesture between a remarkable man she’d known three months and an undeniably intriguing woman initially interested her only insofar as it reflected on her to herself as interpreted by her.

11 The change, as I’ve said, came after the interaction when she saw the look on his face. It was only then that Nicole began to have the first inklings of an insight central to productive humanity. She looked at his face and saw the soul behind it you could say.

12 She saw a man beginning to suspect the emergence of a feeling he clearly did not want. Her imagination even collaborated to form the image of a long-dormant flower tentatively resuming a return to life. More importantly, the analytic vision wasn’t about her. It didn’t make her attracted to the man or envious of the woman, it didn’t implicate her in that way. She felt simultaneously greatly interested in yet still separate and apart from the interaction she’d witnessed. She understood, if only briefly, that the two people involved were as important as any people in the world, including herself, and that fact gave great import to their interplay.

13 That she could, in a sense, share an invisible insight with a man probably three times her age who’d experienced a vastly different form of life felt almost miraculous at the time. It was a freeing insight too. She felt liberated in a way. As if a global surveillance of her had suddenly ceased (more on this later).

14 The novel feeling seemed to imply concomitant action too. She felt able to discern the existence of need and wanted primarily that it should be filled, not because it was her need but mainly because it wasn’t. And while true that nothing remotely resembling this analysis occurred explicitly it is also true that Nicole Grunderson walked over to where her boss stood and displayed a level of interpersonal skill in no way predictable by her resume to that point.

“That a friend of yours?” she said.

“Sure, go ahead. Wait what?”

“Was she a friend?”

“Who?”

“The lovely woman that just walked out.”

“Oh, no. Just a customer.”

“Just?”

“Why?”

“Because you two had such easy chemistry I thought for sure you were good friends if not more.”

“More? No, listen what am I twice her age? Look, table five wants—”

“I don’t know her age but I know the look on her face.”

“No,” dismissively.

“Okay,” she started to walk away.

“What look?”

15 Taking care to appear as disinterested as possible Nicole indicated carefully, almost forcefully, that hypothetically if there were interest on his part he could be assured of its mutuality and this was done very well in a manner that preserved plausible deniability should it ever become necessary and this process extended over time but truth is he attended to at most half of it preoccupied as he was with the thought of what exactly the best sandwich his kitchen had ever produced was.

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IT is Nature, really, that assaults Man at every opportunity. Reason is it often feels as if portions of Colombia are almost a parody of natural calamity.

2 An incomplete list might start with torrential rains like the one descending on him now. It is precisely the wrong form for the physical world to take and at the worst possible moment.

3 The almost biblical volume of water may be coming from above but it is undeniably diabolic. It makes continued tracking of his prey nearly impossible. It makes him feel that the world extends no further than his outstretched hand with the resultingly inescapable feeling that he is in a coffin.

4 It is rewarding malfeasance this rain by washing away evidentiary knowledge and burying epochal sin into secretive inexistence. It was appalling how often this happened too, the physical world conspiring against human peace in a manner suggestive of a sick joke. He understood that rain had to fall but that it had to fall just then, there, and at that level was not understandable, he thought, without the presence of a malevolent volition. But such was the world.

5 Because what a place this rain fell on too. Already he’s moved through jungle leprosy to evade anacondas and scorpions and surely before long he’ll have to baptismally immerse himself in piranha-filled rivers. All that and more but he keeps moving.