Wild Fiction

‘Sit down,’ Genevieve eventually said to the babbling man. He sat down in a rocking chair, leant his head back, and closed his eyes. She disappeared into the kitchen. Rebecca and Gunther could hear her cursing and the sound of cupboard doors of opening, then slamming closed. Gunther opened his eyes and looked at Rebecca before looking down at his hands. He fiddled with them and then crossed and re-crossed his legs several times. He kept on glancing around the room and a couple of times it looked like he was going to get up to fix something. Rebecca could not decide if fixing something meant knocking it over or picking it up. She could not take her eyes off him and fixed him with the stare of a two-year-old child that has just seen her first disabled person.
Genevieve returned to the room with three mugs of steaming hibiscus herbal tea. ‘This is all I could find.’ She said with an apologetic smile, as if it was her fault that Gunther only had hibiscus herbal tea to drink. She sat herself next to Gunther and placed her hand on top of his. ‘What happened?’ she asked in her honeydew pre-packaged mellifluous voice.
Gunther looked up nervously at her. ‘I met him a couple of months ago. It was at a friend’s house. A little gathering, a sort of interior decorating wetting party. We were celebrating the redesign of his house to look like mine. The after-party look, the one I was telling you about.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘His name is Betelgeuse, Sir Betelgeuse Fullroy.’
‘Sir Betelgeuse Fullroy?’ Rebecca said her eyes widening.
‘Yes, he was in one of the back rooms of the house. The host took me there to meet him. He knew about my background in make up and makeovers and wanted me to do one on this friend of his. It was all very hush-hush and he asked that I didn’t tell anybody about it. When I entered the room, it was set up like the back stage of a movie set, with two men sitting in chairs. At first, I had to make the other man look like Sir Betelgeuse. Then I had to do Sir Betelgeuse to look like that man who you saw walking out of the back room today.
‘Betelgeuse was horrible to work with. Nothing was ever good enough for him. The plastic skin was too uncomfortable and he didn’t like the texture of the hair I used for his beard.’
Gunther took his hands away from hers and reached for his tea. Looking into the mug he sipped at it and cupped his hands around it, as if they were cold.
‘There’s more isn’t there?’ Genevieve asked.
‘I’m not supposed to talk to anybody about this.’
‘Gunther, how long have we known each other? How much of my personal life and my personal secrets have I shared with you? I think we’re at the point that we can trust each other.’