Glamorous Intoxication
Arabesque music slithered seductively from the vintage gramophone. The art and the photography on the café walls was illuminated by lights as yellow as New York taxi’s. A vermillion-red coffee cup in front of me held a cappuccino, it was ever so ornate in appearance. The ivory-white table reflected red, like droplets of cherry juice stained against the whitest Oriental sheets. The aroma, distinct, led my senses to dream of a Paris café, garnished with French fonts and art deco ornaments. The ambience flowed like silk chiffon. It was like a Monday morning in Manhattan, only there was no salmon lox with bagels and cream cheese. Cappuccinos, flat whites, mocha’s, long blacks and soy latte’s permeated the air. So sweet, yet so bitter too. My body countoured into the leather interior and from the furtherest corner of the café I regarded the denizens surrounding me.
One impeccable specimen of a lady lingered leisurely to my left, a pale gold silken headscarf coiled languidly about her divine cranium, and in a subtlely French accented English dialect, she spoke, whilst her overt sunglasses dipped purposefully below her eye-level and came to rest on the bridge of her pert little nose. Her teak-brown coiff was primped immaculately, it was like ruffled velvet towards the tips of her fringe. The contrast between the violent scarlet of her lips and the heavenly white glow of the pearls which adorned her throat was reminiscent of the contrast between sin and purity.
Her illustrious aura and enchanting personality encircled her countenance and thus when she spoke, her audience of friends listened, enraptured as moths before a flame. She would then lift her coffee cup to her lips, as a venomous spider might do before devouring the doomed fly… Diamonds adorned her graceful fingers, enhancing their sincere divinity, and transforming the tabletop into a prism of kaleidoscopic colour with each movement, if only for a second.
Spontaneously, she cast her gaze to focus beyond the café windows, her heart was brimming with disdain, the society that passed the streets meant as much to her as the Biscotti crums that fell on the floor below her feet. She started to click her fingers slowly in rhythmic tone to the music, a waitress responded to her devilish call. Another coffee madame said the waitress with long black hair and moorish features, the woman responded with a malevolent wink. The waitress didn’t reply with even the slightest response, she walked away subserviently.
She was contented in the infatuation of her own conceited existence, nothing could distract her self indulgence, nothing could remind her of another world other than her own. In a sudden move she turned gracefully towards the window behind her, the view was picturesque, rouge colored rooftops reflected beige bricks and teal windows. I was intrigued. What did she see that interested her? Was it the boutique across the street, the art gallery decorated with Persian lampshades and Egyptian rugs, or the pâtisserie specialising in hedonistic dulces, for the bliss of indulgence, or the sensitive palette? What was it that caught her untouchable attention?
She flicked the golden latch of her distinctive puce handbag, the body of which she swore was just leather, although to those whom it touched, there was something ever so slightly too familiar about the feel. From her handbag she pulled out her red lipstick and she stared closely at the window as she excessively applied the expensive varnish to her lips. She was staring at her own reflection.
Dakota 2008.
