Porcelain --- Chapter 4 -- Disturbing Behavior

Chapter 4: Disturbing Behavior

Carol woke up to smell the sweet aroma of pancakes early in the morning and the happy whistle of music coming from the kitchen. It took her brain a few seconds to realize that (a) Dee never got up in such a cheery mood and (b) Dee never cooked pancakes. She immediately thought of Ryo and jumped out of bed, running to the door and opening it with one swift move. She stormed to the kitchen and screamed when she saw the stranger with the red hair standing on the stove flipping pancakes, hurrying back to her room to take the bat she kept behind her door. The man turned obviously startled and immediately turned to face the stove so he never saw the moment Carol came back, bat at hand, ready to slugger his head off if he so dared to come close to her.

“Who are you and where is Dee?” Carol screamed.

The guy sighed nervously. “Breathe, Alex, breathe. Just turn around and say hi to the pretty girl,” he said to himself. He turned around and smiled nervously. “Hi, Pretty Girl!” he waved.

“I said where is Dee?” she demanded, marking every word she said with a huff and a puff.

“Dee’s out. I think he had to go in early. I woke up and he wasn’t here, but he did leave a very nice note saying that I should make myself at home and that he would swing by later to give me a ride home, and he did say that you were sleeping on the other room and not to try anything funny with you or else he would hunt me down like a rat and skin me alive. Since I do appreciate the skin I’m in, I decided to let you sleep while I made breakfast. Lucky for me you had some pancake mix; I do love me the pancakes!”

Carol seemed to relax at each word Alex said. There was something in his eyes and his body language that soothed her. She placed the bat against the wall. “So – you’re Dee’s new boy toy?” she asked as Alex turned off the stove and turned around with two plates with pancakes and placed them on the counter. He made a perfect double take blink and grinned.

“No – I don’t do the boy thing. I do like me the pretty girls… Pretty Girl.”

Carol blushed. “Oh… I’m sorry it’s just that I thought that…”

“Me and Dee are drinking buddies now,” he said as-a-matter-of-factly as he sat down on a stool and began to cut through the pancakes. Carol did the same. “I met him last night – and he offered to take me home, but then when we got out he realized that the bar was just two blocks away and he didn’t have his car. So we came here and, well, he was pretty hammered, so I asked him if I could just crash here for the night. He said okay but then I asked to use the bathroom, and when I came out… well, Dee was sleeping on the couch and well… I just went ahead and slept on the bed. A little hard for my taste, but I guess anything’s better than hospital beds.”

“Hum!” Carol mumbled as she took a bite. The pancakes were very good. “So what’s your name?”

“You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

“Carol.”

“Alexander, Alex for short.”

“A pleasure,” Carol stretched out her hand. He took it and kissed it. Carol pulled it away as she turned all shades of red. He giggled.

“The pleasure is all mine, Pretty Girl.”

Carol couldn’t bring herself to say anything after that. She concentrated on gobbling down on the pancakes and avoiding eye contact. Alex seemed to enjoy that taken by the sudden little school girl’s giggles she mustered every once and a while. This only seemed to get Carol even more nervous. “How are the pancakes?” Alex asked at long last.

“Good,” Carol replied.

“I’m glad, ‘cause you’re doing the dishes,” Alex picked up the plates and stocked them one on top of the other. Carol’s mouth was wide open.

“Hey! You cooked, you do the dishes!”

“Nope. I cook, I get to watch you do dishes and talk about nonsense while you’re at it. Besides, I’m a houseguest: you’ve already made me cook you breakfast, it would be pretty rude of you if you made me wash dishes on top of that.”

“I didn’t -- the nerve!” Carol got up and carried the dishes to the zinc. Alex leaned on his elbows as he watched Carol wash the dishes.

“You know… you have a dishwasher…”

“It doesn’t work,” Carol sounded upset.

“Are you mad because I made you wash dishes?”

“No. I’m mad because you have some nerve! You get drunk, crash in my place, and then act as if I made you cook for me! No one asked you to do anything! In fact, I don’t even know what the heck you’re doing here!”

“Technically, this ain’t your place… you share it with Dee.”

“Yeah, well, Dee ain’t here, is he?”

“He’ll be here later. Which reminds me, I got to go. I need to go feed Mr. Pancita. D’you wanna go with me?”

“With you?” Carol turned on her heels.

“Yeah. I mean, I crashed in your place, might as well take you to mine so you’ll know where to crash if you ever need crashing.”

“And what in God’s name makes you think that I’ll go over to some stranger’s place?”

“I’m no stranger, remember? I already told you my name is Alex.” He grinned after that. Carol found his smile to be undoubtedly charming.

“I still don’t know anything about you. You could be some psycho murderer who takes advantage of people just to get girls in to his place…” at that moment Carol remembered her encounter with the sort when she was younger. “It’s not a good experience,” she said painfully. She also remembered the way she threw herself from the window, Ryo catching her, Bikky comforting her after, and Dee beating the living shit out of the guy before Ryo could come in and make the arrest. Mostly, her heart ached by the memory of Bikky being there for her.

“If I was that sort of psycho, I would have done something already,” Alex sounded hurt. He stood and walked over to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. “Bad things happen, I agree, but you can’t let them control your life or else you might end-up living in a dark corner and miss out on the fun facts of life. So, what do you say? I’ll even let you carry the bat so if I try anything on you, you can just slam my head with it.”

Carol though about it for a moment. His eyes gazed upon hers as if they were reading right down to her very soul. She smiled. “Okay,” she said. “But no monkey business!”

“I hate monkeys,” Alex said placing his forehead against hers. After finishing the dishes, Carol got dressed while Alex waited for her on the living room. As soon as she was ready, they headed out to catch a taxi.

The ride was a very pleasant one. Alex couldn’t stop talking and Carol couldn’t stop herself from asking all sorts of questions. It was an undeniable gravitation force that drove her to know more about him. She learned about his absent family, about his childhood, about his teaching career, about his friend Mark and his ex-girlfriend, Marcia. She knew his favorite color, food, flower, and plushy animal. She sang along to their favorite song when it came on the radio and talked about T.V. shows and music. He was a fan of Beethoven and Hinder, yet knew every Garth Brooks song by heart. By the time she realized it, she noticed they were heading to Park Avenue.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“My place,” he replied naturally.

“You live in Park Avenue?” she sounded flabbergasted.

“Well… yeah,” he shrugged his shoulders. “Is there a problem?”

The apartment was the penthouse of a very fancy building. It had its own elevator door and golden card key. The doorman even greeted him with a “Good afternoon, Mr. Lawrence,” and vowed his head when they walked by. The place was huge and expensive. The place was covered with white carpet and nice furniture to match. Oak bookshelves, coffee tables, and nightstands. Beautiful paintings on the walls and a fake fireplace on the living room with crystal animal figurines on top of it. There were pictures on the black piano that rested next to the fireplace, most of them with people smiling at them. There were no pictures of him though and for a while, Carol thought that this wasn’t really his place.

“Do you actually live here?” she asked. At that moment, a cat made its appearance, purring and demanding attention from the owner. It was black with a white spot on its stomach.

“Carol, meet Mr. Pancita,” Alex said taking the cat into his hands and showing it to Carol. She took it playfully and kissed its nose. “The place is not mine,” Alex said. “It’s my father’s. Well, it used to be my father’s, just before he died. He left it to me – and you can say that I do live here, but I would rather have a nicer place downtown or something… I want to sell this place.”

“But it’s beautiful!” she gasped.

“Yeah. But the beauty will never compensate for the lonesomeness that carries. That’s why I have Mr. Pancita here: he keeps me company. Com’on, let’s feed the poor bastard.”

Carol followed him to the biggest kitchen she’d ever seen. The hanging casseroles and pans shone like polished silver, and everything seemed so clean and shinny. As soon as Mr. Pancita heard the food on its plate, it wanted to get rid of Carol’s grip. It jumped to the floor and ran over to its feeding corner, munching on the food as a starving beast. Alex sighed. “I really wish he would have better manners, though,” then he said to the cat, “Sheesh! Mr. Pancita! Carol will think I never feed you!”

She laughed at that. He turned to her, his face beaming with light. “And she laughs!” he said. “She does look prettier when she laughs!”

When Dee opened the door, he heard laughter coming from inside. There was Alex, leaning over the stove, cooking something that smelled rather good while Carol was sitting on one of the stools, chopping something green. Dee closed the door behind him. “What’s all the fuzz about?” he asked. Carol turned.

“You should get more drinking buddies as fun as this one,” she commented as Dee approached. Alex turned.

“Hi,” he waved. Dee nodded.

“You two got acquainted?”

“Very much so. He even took me to his place to meet his cat. He’s got a cat, Dee!” Carol said.

“You took her to your place?” Dee said tensely. “How nice of you!”

“It’s nothing like that,” Alex replied sensing Dee’s tension. “I took her but she took along her slugger. Nothing strange happened. She just met the cat, fed it, gave me a blow job, and we were out of there.”

Dee took the knife out of Carol’s hands and threaten to go stab Alex, if hadn’t been for Carol who stopped him right on his track, “That’s not true! We just went to his place to feed the cat, and then we just hung around the house. I didn’t give him a blow job, Dee, com’on! Put the knife down!”

“You better not try anything fancy like that with her or I swear I’ll kill you!” Dee pointed at Alex breathing harshly. Alex said nothing but nodded. Dee turned around and walked to his room, slamming the door behind him. Alex and Carol looked at each other and giggled.

A few moments later, the three of them were enjoying a rather delicious dinner and a rather pleasant conversation that led to T.V. time and gossiping about the celebrities that appeared on the box, and that led to Carol walking Alex to the front of the building to wait for the cab they had called. It was thirty minutes passed eleven already.

“I really enjoyed the day,” Carol said sitting next to him on the stairway.

“I gave you my phone number, right?” he asked. She nodded. “Good. I would like it if you called sometime.”

“I will. Thanks for dinner… and breakfast… and lunch…”

“You’re welcomed.” The taxi parked. “Well, that’s my ride. It was nice meeting you and Dee, Carol.”

“Same here. Say hi to Mr. Pancita for me.” She said. As soon as she finished talking, Alex leaned over to kiss her. It was a light, soft kiss that felt like a soft summer breeze on her lips. When he parted from her, he just sighed; his eyes sparkled in a way she had never seen anyone’s eyes sparkle before. “Wow,” he whispered out of breath. “All that from one small kiss. If I ever kiss you properly, I think I’ll die.”

After this, he got into the cab and drove off. Carol was still stunned. She wanted to move, to scream, to do something. But all she could do was blush and feel like something was burning deep inside her heart.

Impropriety got the best of me
Impropriety wrote my destiny
Disturbing behavior on the common front
Outrageous behavior convinces everyone
We want perfect behavior out of everyone