Salome

There she was again, sitting on her Eames chair. I have been watching her like a nutcase badly in need of a heavy dose of tranquilizer. A typical stalker you might say. She does not know I watch her, that I have been burning her back with an obsession almost similar to a teenager’s raging hormones. I watch and watch and watch, day in and day out. She is my daily doze of hysteria while eating my breakfast. I eat my buttered croissants with her on my mind. I know at 6:15 in the morning, my little sun-kissed tease was still sleeping. I have observed that she was never a morning person, in fact, she can be quite a grouch when forced to wake up at a time she considers ungodly which the rest of the world considers the common start of the day. I remember a certain man knocking on her door one time to sell something and I saw her chase him away with arms flailing everywhere. She is not crazy, she just prefers to keep her peace at this particular time of the day. What can I say, she likes to sleep late and wake up late.

I go to the trouble of coming home for lunch too so I can watch her sit on that damned chair with her aviator sunglasses on. Legs stationed on the patio pillars, bare lotus feet broadcasted to all onlookers in the street, wearing a white bustier and a pair of torn denim jeans, splattered with paint.

I even hurry home after work, panting along the way, so I can just catch a glimpse of her lounging again on her favorite chair while reading her favorite book for the week. Last week it was Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love In The Time of Cholera. I love it when she pauses from her reading, to frown and look up. I like to think that my stares have ruffled her and made her skin crawl because when she is interrupted like that, she stops and takes a peek at my unlit window. She will be squinting her eyes just to make sure if there really was no one up there; then her eyes will unknowingly meet mine for a minute and that is all I will need for the night. I can go to sleep peacefully like an undisturbed rock.

My eames girl goes by the name of Salome and no she is not a bum. She is an artist and works most of the time at the comfort of her home. A certain convenience that, I will assume, we are all envious about.