Invicta

I got out, headed to the school bar and meet Joe just as I'm about to leave. I spank his head and said "I told you joe. But you just had to ramble about him. didn't you?" Joe stood all confused, not understanding a single word, but not daring to utter a sound "I told you to stop him from meeting Gummy. Things will start to go downhill now."

"S-s-s sorry Arthur, but you know him, he just burst in the door and introduce himself to Adri." His voice still low "By then there's nothing more to do."

I shook my head, with displease. Cooling off I ordered him to follow me, so he did. Joe got me a bike and we rode off to upper-School. I fell back on the wooden chair, and listen to the wheels pound through the stoned road like the stamping of feet.

I reached the bar and got down, paid the bike, by placing a coin in the coin hole, and turned to look down at the Bar. The signs were still hanging up in the door, open always and with a wink at the end of it. I asked for a cigarrete as I prepared to enter the stair leading to the bar door, but Joe didn't have any. So I went into the bar anyway, where the live band had just stopped.

Micky, the bartender, or could be called the smuggler, cause all the booze he smuggled in to school, greeted me with embrace. He gave me a cigarette and a glass of wine and put his hand on my shoulder. I sat and ordered joe to Guard outside, after several minute of chit-chat and courtesy I said "I'm here to ask you something."

He answered heavily "Of course you are, you're a busy man since boss took you in." we had played as children from school to school and had grown up in friendship together.

"I've been busy." I replied

"So, what can I help you with?"

"this isn't boss related but…"

"Wow, you're out of the family?"

"No."

"So, why isn't this boss related?"

"I'm a hired guy for someone else. that's all, nothing more."

He nodded to that acknowledging his agreement, and said "No problem Arthie I'll tell you what you need." Thought his eye tense up.

"You of course know the wonder-boy, Adri right?" micky nodded as he took the wine bottle and place it on the shelve "And do you know Dede one of the School Council—"

"Yeah sure Dede used to hang here, he usually sit in that booth." Pointing his finger beyond me, I turned to look and said "Well did you ever see them together talking or I don know, drinking together?"

He shook his head "I personally never saw them together at all, except in the School Council meeting. But if you want to know that badly, I could phone Lolita my friend she usually substitute for me when I'm not available."

"If you mind." I agreed

"Sure, wait here." he took his squared black phone and called her, he mumbled on for what seemed an endless time and at last managed to wind up the conversation and get off the phone. "Well.." putting his phone back and leans forward against the table "She said yes, she saw them talking and drinking together, but the strange thing was that Gunter was there also and Adri seemed not to noticed it, at least that what she said."

"Shit.." I muttered under my breath. I glance at the clenching sound of wine bottle being placed, and for a second my inner-monologue spiral out of control.

What is a thought but a movie in empty space, a safe place to test ideas before we speak, it is a wedding room for the unseen bride, it is a an ocean for testing nukes minus the worry. It is freedom to roam without the fear of getting lost, for all it takes is the bark of a dog to bring us home. In my case, it was the clenching wine.

I quickly rose, thanking micky the bartender and left the Bar. I stood on the pavement, in front of the School Bar. So it's true he had meet Gunter himself, I said to myself So now I just need to find Dede as the vice president of the school council and make him take me to Gunter. To the president himself But who know the location of Dede, not to mention Gunter?

Ah Gummy, yes. He ought to know, but I won't gonna beg help from him. So it leave me with Samantha, Adri friend, as well as my old friend, as old as Micky and eveyone else.

"Joe get your ass here!" I yelled.

He sprang to his feet and nearly running towards me "What is it Arthur." Joe said

"Get me the bike, we'll be going to Samantha place."

"Ok." he said

Then I followed him out away from the pavement, into the street. Across the street a bike was waiting, we got in and joe said "Dormitory 1, the girls, Dormitory. Tell you more on the way." I fell back on the wooden chair and think of what micky asked earlier, about me being a hired guy, "Wow, you're out of the family?" I answered clearly and plainly to him. "No" I work for the boss and that I'm a hired man for Adri, but am I? the boss got everything going now, Joe running the gang earning hell lot of money, Gummy keeping everything in check. Its the dream to work for him but the thing is, that it's dull out there. Well it's good, meaning everything works smoothly but still, I need something, just anything.

The sudden jerk woke me off from day dreaming, "We're here." said the Biker rider. Joe got out, I down from the bike and stroll around the dormitory, the ledge was more like a rocky outcrop, rustic and rough. Underneath was all steel and concrete, grey and smooth.

Suddenly Joe said "look, here she comes, Samantha!"

I looked up and search for her, then I saw her locking the iron gates of the dormitory, I walked up to her and called her "Samantha."

"Yes." She said, and blinking gravely at me. Apparently she dislike my company, for she did not show any affection.

Samantha then led me to the girls park, the girls park was nothing like those of the Main park. There were only miniature formal gardens for studies. Benches, ornamental trees, and acres of concrete interspersed, with neat grass verges.

Entering the park, a slight breeze rustles the leaves. We sat on one of the benches facing the downward slope of the park. We stared, and just stared. At each other, the park, sometimes the trees. Her eyes rest, they twinkled with a sharp gleam, suspicion, yet the feel of it was soft and inviting instead of harsh. Perhaps, I thought, it's her lips that give away her intention, not quite smiling but tilting as if they mean to. But there was something left, scum on the hard sand. So I said, "I'm here for something."

"Of course you are." She remark, rolling her eyes aside "So what is it?"

"It's Dede, the School Council—"

"He's usually in the School Bar at five o'clock." She cuts in

"Well, I've been there and nothing."

"Then he's in the Up-School." She said, pointing up-north with her fingers "You'll see a Coffee stand, He'll be there."

I didn't follow her finger, I was to nostalgic seeing her, and watched slowly as the cold licked her face, creeping under her clothes, spreading across her skin. With her purple lips and icy breath, she wrapped her thin coat around her tighter and looked at me. "Thx." I gratitude, then rose and said "Look Samantha, what else could I do? you knew well, I choosed differently."

She whisper, soft and cold "Yes I knew, you choose it and I hold all the fines." she got up and took out her hand, I shook it "Working With the wonder-boy ?" she guested

"No, The boss." I waited her face for expression, but there were nothing, "I'm a hired guy for Adri, beside my name what makes Joe earn for the boss, so in a sense I was always working for him."

I smiled to her, and leave. As I was going out, I looked back at Samantha one last time. Standing there looking to the falling leaves, both of her arms stuck in her thin coat, the purple lips tinged with blue and gently chattering teeth, and her head leaning forward a little while she expelled icy breath over her lips.

There she stood, Samantha. She had come a long way from the abhorrent gender bias. She had come a long way because she fought to win and I mean not winning the short-term fight, the small useless fight, but to challenge the grand title and she'd know that to win she had to bite her time and lie her effort on the right cards and if the card doesn't show there'll be a fellow with a little broom that'll collect the effort and then it all be for nothing. She had fought for a long time, learning form men and taking everything they'd throw at her, picking up the little piece's and suddenly she was doing even better than those who'd teach her. There are those who liked her, and those who doesn't like her, listened when she talked.

But this time, her standing in the cold, I saw something else. When you saw a girl for some time, thinking her beautiful, eventually You'll get accustomed to her beauty and think's she is nothing. Then everything change, the eyes seemed to flip. I felt Cleansed and only now truly seeing. the face, humble, pure and trusting under the cold icy mask. She's asking me to lift it, for her to show her purest, for her to give me in. I think this must be the feeling of an old man, looking at his wife and for a glimpse, a fraction of a second, sees the face he had seen years before. I had relived the past, when for the first time truly saw her. Samantha was not quite pretty girl, thin and cold. But today, seemed different, her thin black coat wrapped around tight, and the breeze wind waff through her beanie. She was so radiant as to be almost beautiful.

She smiled and waved at me. "Well, I hoped we'd talked again soon." I waved back to her and walk away.