Chapter Seven

Zaid does the Pygmalion with Cullen

After stumbling through the garbage of architecture hallway, Zaid entered the fifth-year studio with all the aplomb of an arriving VIP.  She targeted the house of Cullen, and headed straight for the living room window.  She could barely reach the glass, because Cullen had dragged the crawl space with him, and placed the whole building on a concrete deck.  She knocked on the glass.

Half a minute or so later, she saw the blankly confused look of Cullen staring right back at her.  She asked in a voice that was a tad elevated, “Excuse me, but you could please let me in?  I don’t want to go through your fun-house entrance way!”

Cullen didn’t move for only a few seconds, but Zaid thought that eternity was passing.  Did sound travel slower in that house?

She heard the clicking of a door’s lock.  She walked confidently up the steps, and saw that the front door had been left open, as well as the door to Cullen’s living room.  None of the light show came on, so she walked right in.  She closed the living room door, leaving the entrance door open.  She didn’t want to take any chances that the floor may collapse given the closing of the front door from the inside.

Inside the living room, she felt the weirdness of having a fairly ordinary living room, with couches, chairs, coffee tables, lamps, and so on, in a school architecture studio.  The only things missing were electronics, magazines, and the various stuff that people accumulated in their living rooms.  The living room also lacked Cullen.

Zaid shouted, “Hey!”

A noise, which Zaid attributed to the general background clatter in studios, ceased.  There were two doors leading to rooms in the back of the house.  The door on the right opened up suddenly.  Cullen stood there, in the same brown coat, gloves, and boots he wore to the first day of work.

Zaid faltered for a moment.  She didn’t know what to say.  Finally, she decided to take the simplest route: “Hello.”

Cullen didn’t move.  His seemingly frozen eyelids began to unnerve Zaid, so she began her what-to-do-when-I’m-nervous script.  “So!  Whatcha up to?”

“Burning,” he responded.

Zaid tried look interested, combined with mild surprise, to conceal her increasing confusion.  “Burning?”

“Yes.  With a blow-torch.”

Zaid mentally tossed her script, and went into blunt mode.  “Why are you using a blow torch?  That’s really dangerous.”

“It produces the desired affect on sheet metal.”

“Oh, so it’s for school?”

“Yes.”

“OK.”

Cullen hadn’t stepped forward, asked her to sit down, have a drink, nor asked her how she was or why she dropped by.  Zaid felt like she had to do all that herself.  She walked up to him, hoping that maybe her approach would bring something, anything, out of him.  “May I have a seat?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t mind if I sit down!”  She turned around to walk to the couch, but stopped when he said, “I don’t.”

She thought, while grimacing, about what his problem was. She turned back to face him, marched right up to his face, and asked as politely as she could stand, “What…are you thinking?”

“My project.”

“Am I distracting you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Nothing.  He didn’t respond.  Normally, Zaid would take this in an ordinary fellow to mean “yes”, or something that wasn’t “no”, but in Cullen, who knew?  His facial expression just did not change enough for Zaid to read him.  She gazed into his eyes, searching for something that responded back to her. Nothing but two eyeballs, staring right back.  He betrayed all the emotion of a vivisection in a biological textbook.

Zaid decided to fall back on her strongest feature.  “Do you know how you make me feel?”

“No.”

“May I tell you?”

“Yes.”

She walked back the couch, and sat down.  She looked back at Cullen and communicated to him via extending her right index finger and curling it back several times.  Cullen didn’t get the message.  Zaid barked, “Come here!”

Cullen moved over the floor, with a most precise gait, with his coat flowing gently behind him.  Zaid wanted a breeze, to blow through him.  The emotion that breeze would hold, as it passed through his hair and clothing, causing them to ripple and wave, would fill her heart more than what Cullen has done in total since the day they met.  Cullen sat down, next to Zaid.  He didn’t look at her.

“Look at me.”

He obeyed.

“I want you,” pointing to him, “to start talking to me.”

“All right.”

“Now, tell me about your day.”

“I woke up, I went to a class, I came back here to work, went to another class, and came back here to work.  Then you showed up.”

“Did you eat?”

“Yes, but my day wasn’t about eating.”

“Cullen,” she sat up straighter, balancing her left leg on the couch, and proceeded to talk while gesturing with her hands.  “You need to realize that your day is filled with a whole bunch of little ceremonies.  These things have a way of being done, a right way, and a wrong way.  Oh, sure, there’s a whole grey area, a sliding scale of right and wrong, but there is perfection, and not.

“Do you realize that, in some really twisted, bizarre way that you are perfect?”

“W-”

“Shh, no, shut up!  Don’t interrupt me!  You are perfect at a lot of things.  I won’t go into them, because I don’t want you to start feeling egotistical, as your first feeling.”

“B-” 

“Shh, don’t say anything until I’m done talking!  Anyway!  You, Keel-hook Ace-eye, have the capacity to become one of the best people on the planet.  I respect that.  Really.  I do.

“The problem, as I see it, is that for some reason, certain…skills…were left out in your childhood.  I never met your parents, though I’m sure they would really…interesting…to observe.  Maybe I could learn something from them, but now all I have is you.  My Cullen.”

His eyes began to move, perfectly in sync, to her right, in a very controlled manner.  Then they suddenly darted back to Zaid’s gaze.  She noted this, but it merely looked like he had just watched something move.  She asked, “What did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“You saw something.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You’re lying.  I can tell.”  Actually, she had just lied.  Cullen told her the perfect truth, as far as she knew.

“No, I’m not.”

She dropped that, but kept going.  “How’s work?”

“All right.”

“I didn’t ask if you agreed with me.”

“What?”

“That’s your ‘all right’ means.  It means that you agree with me.”

“Why?”

“Because, that’s your pattern.  When someone tells you something, like ‘tonight was fun’, you say ‘really’ when you disagree, and ‘all right’ when you agree.”

Cullen blinked.  Zaid smiled.  Score one for the Tran team!  Cullen started, “I just wanted to let them know-”

“That you heard them?  Yes, well, they get that.  You don’t need to say stuff like that, ‘all right’, ‘really’, unless you’re in a bad mood, and want others to know this without telling them!”

“Why not just tell them?”

“Because people don’t like that!” Zaid screamed.  God help her, it was like she was talking to a three-year-old child in the body of a twenty-three year-old man.

“Don’t scream at me.”

“I’m sorry.  Look, there are things that people need to know, but don’t want told explicitly.  Like, you’re having a bad day.  You don’t go around saying, ‘I’m having a bad day.  Leave me alone’.  People hate that!  You come across as a jerk!”

“Do I?”

“What?”

“Come across as a jerk.”

Zaid blanked out.  She wasn’t used to being this blunt, this (in her mind) truthful, for long periods of time.  She needed a break, so decided to create a stopping point.  “You come across as a robot.”

“What?”

“You do!  Come on, let’s go for a walk!”

“But, I’m work-”

“Move!”

They got up and left the house.  When they stepped onto the stained, concrete floor, Zaid asked, “Did you ever show me around the studio?”

“No.”

“Do it.”

“Show you around?”

“Don’t be stupid; yes!”

He started walking, and he started to talk.  “This studio is for fifth-year students.  There are ten students-”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how many passed last semester.”

“How many were there last semester?”

“Eleven.”

“Small program.”

“Real—no.  There are…it’s actually a large program, but the lower level studios have a lot more students.”

“How many did you remember?”

“Um…two-hundred forty or so.  I don’t remember the specific amount.”

“Wait, so you go from over two-hundred down to ten!?”

“Yes.”

Zaid felt completely bewildered.  “Why?”

“They say that they only want the best.”

“Well, I guess you’re pretty good.”

Cullen kept walking.  Zaid said, “That was a compliment.  You’re supposed to say ‘Thanks’.”

“Thanks.”

“NO! Not like that!”

Someone shouted in one of the other work areas, “Hey, could you shut up!”

Zaid turned in the direction of the shouter, and walked towards it.  She walked amid twenty-foot high boards full of drawings, photos, and assorted garbage, to kind a man surrounded by three computers, a very expensive stereo system, and all the comforts of home.  Zaid thought that all it needed was a roof and a road to Wonderland.  “Excuse me?”

The man looked up from his screens.  “Yes?”

He realized that this person—this woman!—was not in architecture.  Her presence stuck out like a beer can at a monastery.  She…she…  “I am Zaid Tran, hello.”

“Hel…lo.”

“Hi there, look.  I have a problem, that I was wondering if you could help me with.”

He stood up and leaned over his screens.  “Are you lost?”

She laughed, “No!  I’m trying get my little friend here some incite on how people act.”

His face sunk.  “Oh, no…”

“Yes, you know who I’m thinking of.”

“I want no part in that crazy guy!”

“He’s not crazy, just…do you really think he’s crazy?”

The guy threw his hands in the air.  “No one can understand that guy!  He’s…I don’t know…I don’t like thinking about it.”

Zaid walked around this man’s fortress and tried to get as close as possible.  “He’s my friend, and I want to help him.  So, you are my third witness.”

“What!  No!  I-”

“YOU are coming with ME!

He followed, partly because she was nice-looking in that floral faux-abaya, and partly because she looked like she might have a gun underneath it.

She found an empty chair, and without looking at the man, pointed it, and said, “Sit.”

He did.  She shouted, “Cullen!”

She heard whispers coming from other work places.  Fine.  Cullen came.  He walked up to her, and stopped.  His stoic gaze looked at nothing.  She noticed that appeared very Native American, at that point.

Zaid smiled.  Her show began.  “Now, Cullen, I have here a witness to aide me in your education.”

“I-”

“Silence!  Speak only when spoken to!”

The other man muttered, “Oh my-”

Zaid glared at him.  “That goes for you, too!”

She took a deep breathe, and let it out slowly.  “Now, then.  Cullen?  I’m going to show you how to GREET someone.”

Cullen said nothing, and didn’t look at her.  She felt perturbed that the air in the room seemed more interesting than her.  “Cullen?  Walk to me, and say hello.”

He obeyed her words perfectly.  “Hello.”

“No, you did it wrong.”  She turned to the sitting man, and asked, “See?  Don’t you agree?”

The man’s jaw was hanging down.  Zaid looked disgusted at the gross display.  “What’s your problem?”

“You…he…he’s obeying you!”

“Yeah?  So?”

The man raised his finger to Cullen.  “He obeys no one!”

The force of his words shook Zaid.  Nobody?  So, why was Cullen obeying her?...  Tears came to her eyes, her lips curled into a smile, and she turned to Cullen.  “Oh…my…God…”

Cullen asked blankly, “What?”

She ran up to him and hugged him.  He stood there, not responding.  She began to say, “I, I never…knew!  That you, considered, me…to be worthy…of…”  She pulled away, grasped his shoulders, and locked her arms.  Her face beamed happiness.  “Of being your master!”

Cullen actually sounded condescending when he asked, “What?”

Zaid didn’t respond to him.  She let go, turned around, and ran out of the studio, screaming with joy.  The sitting man leaned over to Cullen.  “Do you think she’ll come back?”

“I don’t know.  What happened?”