10
In front of the full-length mirror, she studied herself with the intensity of someone about to negotiate peace in the Middle East—or launch a rocket into space. Hands on hips, one eyebrow slightly raised, and then, a solemn whisper to her reflection: “Yes yes yes yes yes… we’re ready…”
She gave herself a tiny approving nod, like she’d just passed a military strategy exam with honors. “Now it’s time to get serious.”
The plan was simple: warm-up men. Like the opening acts at a concert, before the real star arrives. Emotional-strategic foreplay. She knew the theory far too well. She’d even slept on it. Literally. Only, like every human discipline, theory was one thing. Practice was another .
You couldn’t go straight from couch potato to Everest summit in one afternoon, right?
First you try the hills. Maybe a walk in the woods.
A marked trail with a picnic area. Even though, honestly, the metaphor didn’t quite work.
Because someone who’s spent years scrolling Instagram profiles with one hand in a can of Pringles doesn’t just wake up one morning, zip up a windbreaker, and convince themselves they’re ready to climb vertical ice walls in Nepal.
But Tess wasn’t “someone.” She was Tess. And in her personal logic, one single night out with a standard human target—meaning some random guy from accounting or a part-time waiter—was enough to fire up the engines.
After that, no more rehearsals.
The next step? Knocking on Zane Ryder’s dressing-room door with the look of someone holding a record deal ready to sign… when what she really wanted to sign was something else entirely.
When I pointed out—with the calm rationality of someone still faintly connected to reality—the sheer absurdity of her entire plan, she looked at me as if I’d just told her Santa Claus was a postal worker.
“Exactly. A completely irrelevant comparison. I don’t need muscles or lung capacity. This isn’t about physical endurance.”
She paused theatrically, then lifted the fuchsia-covered manual and waved it at me like it was the Ten Commandments.
“I have this . A magic formula. A universal key that opens any emotional lock.”
In her mind, anything she touched would fall at her feet. Men, women, waiters, bartenders, entire bands. All it took was a glance, a well-placed whisper, and bam —Midas touch of the heart. Or better: Cupid with a driver’s license and stilettos.
“It’s not training ,” she corrected me, applying lipstick with surgical precision. “It’s practice . Just to get comfortable with Countess élo?se’s psychological spells. Think of it as stretching before a duel.”
And then, with the icy calm of someone who had already decided to ignore any outside opinion, she added: “If we need a metaphor, Bea—I’m a gun.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, hoping I’d misheard.
“A gun,” she repeated, with emphasis. “Whether you want to shoot a servant or a king, you don’t need endless preparation. If you’re planning to fire at close range, all you need is a quick stop at the shooting range, just to understand recoil. After that, you’re ready.”
But she wasn’t finished.
“And anyway,” she said, adjusting her choker with regal poise, “Zane Ryder is not Everest. Please.”
She gave a short, almost pitying laugh.
“If we’re talking climbs, he’s the one who’ll have to cross oceans, deserts, and storms to get my attention. Forget a peak to conquer—I’m the entire solar system.”
She drew her eyeliner with the precision of a cosmetic surgeon and added, “You know… I almost feel sorry for them…”
“Them who?” I asked, already knowing the answer would send the needle of her madness into the red zone.
“The ones I’ll meet tonight,” she sighed, with the tragic voice of a silent-movie actress.
“They’ll be normal guys, living normal lives…
some are probably getting dressed right now, picking out a shirt in the hope of making out with someone.
Others just clocked out of work and are looking for a glass of wine, a little peace from reality.
And then there will be the married ones…
who only want a beer and some laughs with friends. Unaware. Innocent.”
She paused dramatically, as if announcing the arrival of a meteorite.
“They don’t know it yet… but tonight they’ll suffer the emotional equivalent of an atomic bomb. Silent. Refined. Impeccably made up.”
She looked at herself in the mirror and made a satisfied little smirk.
“One look. That’s all it’ll take. A handful of lines.
For me, it’ll be just a style exercise, but for them…
it’ll be the end. Nothing will ever make sense again.
Th eir friends won’t save them. They’ll lose their jobs.
File for divorce. They’ll even give up PlayStation, Bea. The trauma will reset their brains.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “Maybe you should hand out fake phone numbers.”
“Numbers? Names?” she scoffed, as if I’d just suggested leaving fingerprints at a crime scene. “Don’t be absurd. No traces. In fact… maybe I should disguise myself. Huge sunglasses, hoodie, dark lipstick. I’ll be an ephemeral creature, like an elusive fragrance… yet deadly as a nuclear Armageddon.”
She stopped for a moment, gazing dreamily at her reflection.
“They’ll wander New York for years, trying to piece that night back together, convinced it was just a hallucination. They’ll start to think I never existed. That I was only ever… a projection.”
“Wow,” I muttered. “You really do plan on destroying them.”
“And without even pushing too hard,” she said with a half-smile. “I’ll try to go easy.”
We headed out around nine. I wore a faded hoodie, jeans that had seen better days, and my hair in a dysfunctional bun that screamed I’ve stopped trying.
Tess, meanwhile, looked like she’d just escaped a masquerade ball themed “glam witch meets Edgar Allan Poe after three Negronis.”
Plum corset. Black layered skirt that rustled like Victorian widow’s gift wrap. Gothic choker. Dramatic black-and-white-movie makeup. And above all: that look. That precise expression of “I know something you don’t, and the second I tell you, it’ll ruin your life.”
She descended the stairs with the grace of an actress in slow motion, while I tripped over the doormat.
Outside, we bumped into our neighbors from the second floor. Two people who saw us almost every day—yet didn’t even recognize her. They walked past with a vague nod, like “good evening, bat lady,” and kept going.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Tess grinned like a supervillain running a field test.
“Ninety percent of a person’s recognizability comes from body language,” she declared. “Change that, and no one recognizes you. It’s scientific.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that maybe—just maybe—the neighbors didn’t recognize her because she’d gone from jeans and a T-shirt to looking like Dracula’s resurrected wife with a Vogue subscription.
But even if I had, she would’ve waved me off like I was trying to sell her some boring concept. Like the importance of hydration. Or objective reality.
She dragged me to Spice, one of those trendy bars where even the air felt curated by a minimalist DJ from Berlin.
The walls were lined with brushed silver panels that reflected the soft lighting like some kind of galactic nightclub, and everywhere you looked there were shiny surfaces, mirrored details, and vaguely unsettling art installations.
The ceiling was dotted with pendant lamps that looked like drops of mercury, and in the center of the room, a glossy black bar reigned like it had been designed by an architect addicted to ’70s sci-fi films.
The moment we stepped inside, Tess stopped at the entrance like a Golden Age Hollywood star making her big comeback. She lifted her chin slightly, letting the lights caress her face as if they’d rehearsed for this exact moment.
She took one step, then another, with the choreographed elegance of someone convinced the world was her personal red carpet. The black skirt swayed with lethal grace, the plum corset carved her body into pure confidence.
She scanned the room with the calm, implacable gaze of a queen entering her throne hall: unhurried, unhesitating, absolutely certain that everything and everyone there existed for her.
A few heads turned. Drinks paused midair. Half-finished sentences hung in the air. A pair of eyes lingered.
“See that, Bea?” she whispered, without even glancing my way. “They all turned to look at me. They felt the energy I radiate.”
“Not all ,” I said, clinging to honesty. “It seemed more like… a handful of guys.”
She gave me a tenderly condescending look. “My dear, na?ve Bea,” she sighed. “Not all men announce themselves. Not everyone shouts at football games with a beer in hand. Some are more… discreet. Silent. They watch from the corner of their eye. Or, even better, they use reflective surfaces.”
“Reflective surfaces.”
“There’s the mirror behind the bar, the steel panel on the north wall, the golden statue at your eleven o’clock…”
“And you could tell they were looking at you through the reflective surfaces?”
“I don’t need to tell,” she said. “I just know.”
She was incorrigible.
She glided between tables like a decadent poet on tour, leaving behind her a trail of black tulle and self-celebration. Stopping by a gleaming steel column, she slid onto a stool.
“Better to stay slightly off to the side,” she said, arranging her skirt with a geisha’s precision. “Otherwise I’ll be mobbed, and I won’t be able to put the manual’s techniques into practice.”
“Isn’t that the point of tonight? To attract warm-up men? ”
“If all I wanted was free cocktails, I wouldn’t need a manual. I’d just show up in my old tired-librarian look: glasses, cardigan, and an aura of ‘I’m not ready but if you insist…’”
She paused, dramatically.
“But tonight isn’t about collecting random happy-hour pick-up lines. Tonight, I need to practice with a man of higher caliber. A target worthy of la Contessa ’s spells.”