The Illusionist by Beth Labonte
He stands on the corner watching me as I exit the train, stumbling like a fool on the top step. Partially concealed by the fur adorned fat woman who has been struggling with her screaming nose-picker of a child since boarding seven stops ago, I am spared humiliation. I silently thank them both and take back the nicknames they earned over the course of the trip. Trying as always to maintain a facade of composure and elegance that I’ve noted in other women, I step carefully between the cobblestones, hoping at least not to break an ankle - at most to walk with a bit of style. He is watching me after all. If only I could have driven every instance of falling down out of my system beforehand so as to spare myself doing so at this particular moment, I would be completely battered, but brilliant. He challenges me with his unrelenting gaze, waiting for me to break. His immaturity matches my own, the bricks in the foundation of our relationship laid out in neat rows of juvenile jokes and witty observations. But this time I refuse to give in. I stifle a laugh as Picky wipes something on his mother’s fur, a sticky green parasite on the back of a grizzly. Dead puppies, dead puppies, dead puppies. I repeat the words to myself, anything to repress the girlish giggle threatening to escape my throat. For the next thirty seconds I will be the embodiment of class, if it is the last thing I do.
Against all odds I arrive in front of him with an air of sophistication that I despicably claim as my own. This colossal disaster, lacking the smallest morsel of self-confidence, is by some freak of nature channeling Audrey Hepburn. The illusion is fantastic. He is fooled into thinking that co-existing in the shoes of his girl-next-door is a self-assured woman. I laugh to myself at the sound of the word. But our little game has played out, and I’ve declared myself the winner. Someday he will find out the truth. Someday, when I trip over my own feet, he will give my hand an extra squeeze because it is for my quirks and faults that his feelings have progressed from mere infatuation to true love. But until then, he must not know that his best of both worlds was born without that magical ingredient some women effortlessly exude with the sway of a hip. It is much too early to shatter his idea of perfection.
Fog swirls around me like a magician making a grand entrance as I look up into his face. Quite fitting I suppose. I smile the smile that I have practiced a million times in my mirror, place my arm in his, and we walk.
Beth Labonte was born in Salem, Massachusetts and received a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2001. Currently working as an Administrative Assistant, she has taken to writing as her creative outlet in an otherwise mundane workaday world. She hopes to someday write full-time, because it is more fun.
Beth resides in Grafton, Massachusetts with her husband and two cats. http://dookiecigar.blogspot.com
