8
I woke up around noon.
Partly to recover from Tess’s tragicomic meltdown the night before, partly because—let’s face it—I was slowly but surely slipping into a life of vice.
The vice of doing absolutely nothing.
Once upon a time, I was all about discipline. I used to get up before dawn, just in time to greet the sunrise as it peeked over the buildings, coffee in hand and brimming with good intentions.
I liked to think that, among all the aspiring writers in the world, only a rare few were up at that hour to write.
And practically none of them were unemployed.
That kind of dedication made me feel ahead of the game. Like I was racking up an invisible advantage, day after day—starting my work while everyone else was heading to the office, hopping onto garbage trucks, walking into loud factories, or pedaling around for deliveries .
And by the time they dragged themselves home, I was still right there, in front of my Olivetti, dark circles under my eyes and my fingers practically welded to the keys.
There was no contest, I used to think.
The gap would only keep growing.
And yet.
After years of early mornings and shattered keyboards, the high priest of the publishing world tells me: “Your words don’t pulse with life.”
Translation: I’ve written mountains of perfectly useless crap.
So maybe he was right. Maybe the guy who works nine to five, then squeezes in half an hour of writing at night—while his dog barks, his baby cries, and his wife yells from the kitchen—maybe he’s the one whose pages pulse with life.
Maybe he’s the one who makes Mr. Bronson sit up straight with a literary punch to the face.
So what’s the point of all that technique?
Down the drain.
What really matters is life. Lived life.
And me? Holed up at home with my blank pages and cold coffee? Yeah, not much life lived over here.
Yeah, not much life lived over here.
But whatever. That’s all water under the bridge now.
I found Tess in the living room, perfectly balanced on an imaginary tightrope between the couch and the fridge.
On her head, a book. And no—not that book.
She’d never dare use the Countess’s sacred manual as a mere posture aid.
This was some random paperback, the kind you grab at a gas station, with a faded cover and a gold-scripted title.
“Look! Look how good I am!” she said, gliding across the floor like a queen in exile. “I have a natural gift, don’t you think?”
“The new phase: exercises to become someone you're not. Fascinating.”
The book slipped off her head, but Tess caught it midair with theatrical flair and placed it on the kitchen counter. “Pretending to be someone I’m not? What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying, if you’re starting with posture, clearly you’re trying to become someone else.”
“I’m still me, Bea. Your charming friend Tess, who loves horror movies, kind people, and underdog stories. I’m just doing an exercise to better express my dignity. My inner royalty. My goodness of soul, you know?”
She lifted her chin with the solemnity of someone delivering a speech to the Senate.
“From now on, you won’t see me looking down in shame ever again. No. My gaze will be locked straight onto yours. And it’ll say, ‘Yeah? This is who I am. Got a problem with that?’ ”
“Fascinating theory,” I said, while starting to make myself breakfast with all the excitement of a lifer facing a bowl of muesli.
“Ask any car salesman,” Tess went on undeterred, “they’ll tell you I’m right. Selling and seducing? They’re twin sisters. No—scratch that—they’re the exact same thing.”
“Is that a quote from the Countess?”
“Nope. That one’s mine. Original. Copyright Tess, 2025.”
She took a breath, leaned dramatically against the kitchen doorway, and launched into a monologue.
“When you’re trying to sell a car, what do you do?
You wash it, wax it, shine the tires, make it gleam.
You show it at its best. You don’t lie. You highlight the potential.
Now tell me—if someone turns a clunker into a dream machine, are you really gonna say, ‘Eh, but it’s not authentic’? ”
I watched her as I poured the milk. She was on a roll.
“See, I’m not selling cars. I’m selling myself. And if I want anyone to take me seriously, I need to radiate charisma. Grace. Respectability. Every gesture has to be a promise of perfection... or at least a teaser.”
“So why didn’t you do that from the start?” I asked, dunking my spoon into a bowl of cereal that had already gone soggy.
The question made her falter for a moment. She stiffened.
Then she raised her chin with a look of divine revelation.
“Because… I’d never thought about it before!” she declared, as if she’d just solved a quadratic equation. “That’s it! It never occurred to me. But now it has. Now it’s like l a Contessa herself grabbed me by the collar and whispered, ‘Wake up, darling. You are a Goddess. Act like it.’”
“So we’re all Goddesses, but we don’t show it?”
“Bingo, baby!” she shouted, pointing a triumphant finger at me. “It’s all about awareness and aesthetic expression. Forget what those dime-store psychologists and self-help gurus say—‘Love yourself as you are.’ Bullshit!”
“Fascinating,” I muttered, sipping my now lukewarm milk.
“Listen,” Tess went on, now pacing like a general prepping her troops for battle.
“If you’re a pitiful mess like I was until yesterday—walking all crooked, shoulders sagging under the weight of existence, eyes scraping the floor.
.. then no, nothing changes in the real world.
Nothing’s gonna fall into your lap. Not even a cookie. ”
“I’m guessing you’re building up to some kind of moral here.”
“Damn right I am! You can feel like Princess Leia in your head all you want, but if your body language screams ‘waitress apologizing for the smell of cleaning spray,’ no one’s going to see a queen. Got it?”
“Crystal clear,” I sighed. “So now, if I see you walking like you’re balancing an invisible crown, should I clap?”
“You don’t clap. You imitate.”
“So,” I asked, scooping up the last soggy bits from my bowl, “what exactly does this new body language of yours involve? Aside from keeping your chin up and walking in a straight line like a Louvre security guard.”
“Oh, a thousand things,” Tess said, sinking onto the couch with the studied grace of a noblewoman who knows she’s being watched.
She arched her back, crossed her legs with glacial precision, then picked up an empty wine glass from the coffee table and pretended to sip it with her eyes closed, like she was savoring centuries of French terroir and post-revolution melancholy.
Every move was calculated. Every gesture choreographed, like by a retired burlesque queen with a pension plan.
“See that?” she said without opening her eyes. “See it? Isn’t this the exact opposite of what your average American girl does?”
“Setting aside the fact that we’re not on a Netflix reality show—go on.”
“I’m not a dock worker, and I’m not a shy, dusty librarian. I move slowly. With purpose. Like I’ve got all the time in the world. And the most powerful thing?” She opened her eyes. “I’m present, Bea. I. Am. Here. Now.”
She opened her eyes and looked at me—intensely, like she was trying to find my soul behind the dark circles.
“I don’t radiate anxiety. I don’t give off ‘oh no, I left the oven on’ vibes. I radiate control. I’m telling the world: ‘This is my scene. And you are the paying audience.’ You know the difference between someone who seduces and someone who begs?”
“Their bank account?”
“Word choice, Bea. The musicality of language. I don’t ask. I imply.”
Tess had gotten up and was moving around the room like an actress in slow motion, one hand stretched out, the other over her heart.
“Don’t you hear my tone of voice? It’s dropped a full octave.”
She paused dramatically, then continued in a velvety voice, eyes half-lidded. “It’s still my voice. Just… lower. Warmer. Sexier. You think I’m turning into someone else, but no—I’m still me. Just… deluxe. Like perfume. Eau de Tess.”
I watched her as she tried to find the perfect corner of the room to highlight her profile.
“I move slower now. I speak slower. Because every word I say deserves to be embroidered on a throw pillow.”
“Perfect. I’ll order a cross-stitch set.”
“Fast talkers, Bea, are afraid. Afraid they won’t be heard. It’s a panic response. It says: ‘Please, let me say everything before you interrupt me or get bored or stop listening.’”
She took a deep breath, as if she were about to chant an ancient mantra.
“But speaking like this… slowly… is hypnotic. It’s a power move. It says: ‘You’ll wait for me to finish. Because what I’m saying matters.’”
“Mmhm.”
“It’s the voice of philosophers. Of prophets. Of whiskey commercial narrators. It’s the voice… of God in old historical epics.”
“Well, then God had terrible comic timing,” I muttered. “You’re making me sleepy. And I slept eleven hours last night.”
“You’ve made contradicting me into a hobby, but you know I’m right… Plus, my vocabulary is broader now. More refined. I use ambiguous, poetic phrases. Like: ‘I’m not running away. I’m just changing the meaning of my directions.’ Or: ‘I dress in silence so I don’t overlap with the universe.’ ”
I stared at her. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It doesn’t matter, Bea. It doesn’t matter…
” She pa used theatrically, gazing into the void as if contemplating some inner horizon.
“We’re on completely different planets right now.
And yet… there’s still one last thing to do.
The final act. The one that will complete my transformation and align my aesthetics perfectly with my soul. ”
“Let’s hear it,” I said, mouth full of cereal.
“I need a new look.”