Always one to pursue useless knowledge wherever he can find it in a seemingly never-ending quest to achieve the improbable and downright unlikely status of modern-day Renaissance man, Mark Bittmann has indulged his desire to never be lost in any conversation, by developing an arcane understanding of things of little consequence or import while maintaining his alleged status as a small fish in a small pond.
As long as his self-indulgent whim is catered to, he manages to sustain the facade of someone under the misperception that others care about what he thinks. With a ubiquity normally reserved for greenhouse gasses, he chases his random and inconsequential thoughts with all the tenacity of a banana peel. This is his life, his curse, and his twisted and maniacal way of impressing the ladies.
You wake up with that familiar feeling that things may be changing in the slice of the world you have carved out for yourself. "This too shall pass" has long since graduated from mere refrain to chorus in your usual ritualistic morning assessment of your lot in life. Today, however, is different. You recall that the previous evening you played a role in a night of entertainment others might compare to that once reserved for land barons, slave holders and occupational forces. It's still pitch dark in the room you have woken in and whilst groping around for a non-existent lamp on the nightstand you feel the dead soldier which once contained the French Cabernet that assisted in your night's sleep…as it were. You are fortunate enough to have benefited from one who was deep in debt and took it upon themselves to plunder a cask on behalf of your host's mercy. Like he knows the meaning of the word. He seems nice enough on the outside, but who knows what he's really like. Considering that people tend to don masks more often than not in dating circles as it is, getting to know the real him is going to be quite the conundrum.
You wonder what it was that he saw within you to make him want to share your company? Sure you clean up nice, but certainly he must meet more sophisticated and worldly women than yourself on a fairly consistent basis considering the extensive collection of stamps on his visa probably make the travel resume of someone intimate with the more trendy locales as depicted in Conde Nast look like that of an agoraphobic. It's not like he asked you to do anything out of the ordinary or acted as though he expected anything of you that any other woman could not or would not have provided at his bidding. Maybe he was just acting upon impulse and felt compelled to finally make good on the looks he has been casting your way since you came of age, looks akin to a man accustomed to enjoying the fruits of his position. He looked at you with the patience that only a personal alliance with inevitability can imbue, as though you would be his. It was as though it were merely a matter of time as dictated by his schedule and imposed upon yours.
Although you had heard rumors of the many and varied expectations placed upon ladies in your society and you truly felt you had fully resigned yourself to your fate, it was not as easy to face it with the passivity you felt the situation required. With popular consensus being that sometimes a girl has to kiss a lot of frogs before finding her prince charming, you felt it best to enter into this with as much pragmatism as you could muster…or was is fluster? You figured it would at least be good life experience, getting out and dating and seeing what it's like to spend unsupervised time with a man of letters and influence, a gentleman.
You've heard talk of his other liaisons with many of the other women in the village over the years, but since you've decided to look at this whole affair as not much more than a rite of passage, feelings of jealousy should never enter your mind, should they? So why is it that you find yourself so comfortable with the thought of seeing him again?
There is a knock at the bedchamber door and after stumbling around in the dark for a robe and the doorknob, you open it to find fresh coffee, juice, dairy and baked products, French Toast, bacon, eggs and a wealth of condiments piled upon a tray and meant for consumption by you and he. "Now this I could get used to" passes through your mind as it doubtlessly has through the minds of so many other girls bending over this threshold to gather up the breakfast to take back to bed. It is a pampering no less than what one would expect in the life of someone so important, and given the amount of pressures, demands and oftentimes ridicule he must face, it seems a pampering he has earned as well.
Suddenly you know what's best for him? It is as though in the time-span of a thought you are ready to play the role of one charged with nurturing the emotional well-being of a leader of men, of someone many look to for guidance. Not wishing to rouse him from his childlike slumber and wanting to see what you're eating, you opt to tiptoe the tray onto the veranda, so as to enjoy his view as you feast on the repast his servants were so diligent in preparing for the two of you. So much for getting to this one's heart through his stomach as your mother always advised. How can one possibly be expected to compete with the culinary skills of the world-class chef he detains?
Shouldn't a man such as this be accustomed to the finest of everything and if so what does that make you? Are you someone he sees as possibly capable of living up to the standard set by everything he is used to having at his disposal, as possibly being someone who embodies everything he may need in and from a wife, or are you a plaything? Can any one woman hope to live up to the standard of excellence he imposes upon everything he surveys? Or are you merely looked upon as the finest in adult entertainment? You find it unlikely that such is the case, and surmise that, given the respectful way in which you felt him gazing upon you in the dark, called you by your name and touched you with need that spoke of passion he sees you as being someone special, as though you remind him of someone. Your curiosity has certainly been piqued.
Will you be summoned to see him again, or will he move on to the next maiden that has captured his attention? If so, what meaning do you hold in his eyes? Are you merely his concubine of choice or someone he is serious about? What happened to treating this as merely a life experience and when did you decide to open yourself up to the possibility of some sort of union between the two of you? Do you have the feeling that by letting you see the years etched upon the face defined in the light that did manage to pierce the darkness, the face he forbade you to touch, he was revealing himself to you as he has to no other? Certainly it is a rarity in itself for an intensely private individual such as he to let his guard down and his mask fall away. What little of his face you saw seemed kind enough: dark, eastern European good looks, a sense of loss reflected in his moonlit brown eyes and betrayed by his silence, a small scar under his left eye. How many others have seen what you have?
You sense he is stirring and know that he will wake soon. Time to gather up the rest of the meal and bring it back indoors. You set the tray down on the nightstand, disrobe and return to the warmth of his side. He yawns and you feel him stretch next to you. He springs to his feet, driven to address his well-known and ambitious agenda immediately. He stomps over to the intercom to order his bath drawn and his outfit shined and pressed. You are invited to stay in guest quarters until he returns at nightfall or leave. But in offering so, he has signaled that he found you pleasing indeed. It's your call. What do you do? Before coming your decision one way or another, he has put on his robe in preparation for his shower and begun issuing orders to an android, making sure to have the finest guestroom prepared, as he is confident in your decision to stay. You wonder if a man on the move like he will ever have time for a real relationship like you are offering. For evidently the monarch of Latveria is a very busy man indeed.
