Museum of Old Beliefs by I. Peter Lavan (classic books for 7th graders .TXT) 📕

when there, through all this drab undulating mass, he was drawn, drawn to a beckoning beacon, a very, very… nice wavy blond beckoning beacon. Clean short white plastic coat and knee-high boots delicately illuminated the dark surround. She looked up… a perfect face flashed a perfect smile… a wrecker’s smile… a smile of a mistress.

“May I?”

“Please.” Her voice was made for movies.

“Thank you.”

He listened to the rumble of the bus setting off, then he brought his awareness to the near mumble of the undulating and finally into thoughts of how to introduce himself. He could sense tension between them, a tension that tightened the body, a tension of sitting too close but yet, just… not… quite… close enough, long elapsed adrenaline and endorphins began to surge.

“Isn’t it funny, you want to say something, but you don’t know how to start?” Blood stopped for one and nine-seventeenths of a second from a double lurched heartbeat.

“Yes, yes I suppose it is m’dear,” he answered automatically, slightly shocked at the telepathy.

“I like travelling by bus, you never know who you are going to meet...?” She raised two thin lines of eyebrow, wrinkled her perfectly unlined forehead and opened a palm.

“Peter, everyone calls me…”

“Pete - Pete, Sabine.”

He raised himself slightly to shake her hand. As he returned to his seating position and as he started to pull his hand away, he was sure she deliberately scratched her fingernails lightly across his palm. For some reason and for only the second time in his adult life, he felt uncertainty in the presence of a woman.

“What do you do, Pete?”

“I’m, I’m retired. I worked in the town’s city Bank.”

“Too young to be retired.”

He peacocked deep inside, all thoughts of testing her flexibility gone. “No, No I’m retired.”

Her tonality dropped. “Were you a really good banker Pete?”

Instantaneously he checked her face, his meddling detector had flashed, he’d heard all the banker jokes before, but iridescent grey eyes showed no mirth and her smile was congruent.

“I had a good reputation.”

“Mmm.”

He sat in a stirringly uneasy attraction.

Sabine pointed quickly, but elegantly to a middle-aged man sitting across from them. “What do you think he does, Pete?” Tonality dropped with the question.

Leaning forward to get a better look for some reason fluster flourished on his lips. “I’m, I’m n-n-not sure m’dear.” He glimpsed her furrowed brow and tight lips. “Sabine,” he counted, her face changed back to that of a siren. “Could be a teacher - an office worker?”

Sabine tenderly placed her delicate hand on his forearm, His grip on the fox tightened.

“No Pete,” he could almost hear her purring in his ear. “I mean at night when he’s all alone, what do you think he does in undomesticated dreams, in the light of his darkest desires?” his heart stopped for a second time, the fox clattered to the floor, people turned to look at them. Their heads lightly touched as they both leant forward to pick up the cane. He could feel dauphiness hair brush his face; her breath smelt of the cherry and menthol sweets he coveted so much as a kid, he quickly recoiled.

“Yours I think.”

He felt an involuntary quiver, shiver down his arm and spine as he accepted the returned fox. He sat back to calm himself, this woman was effecting him beyond any of his experiences and for some reason, she was uncomfortably well outside the protection of his beliefs around how women act.

“Do you think he becomes a sex god?”

Sabine’s earlier telepathy stopped his thoughts.

“What do you do m’de – Sabine?”

She smiled and rolled her shoulders like a cat. “When Pete, what do you mean?”

An involuntary sigh released part of the trapped tension.

She smiled, a smile of mock innocence. “Only teasing m’dear, you do like being teased don’t you m’dear, you’re not a controlling type person are you… Pete?”

“No”

“No Pete? No to what Pete? Sure… Pete?” She was quick, that quick she didn’t give him time to answer. “I’m the curator at a museum in town.”

“Which one?”

“The one on Leopold Street.”

“I go past everyday, I haven’t seen a museum.”

“Have you been looking?”

Back in his comfort zone, he pushed to take control of the encounter, be more masculine, more manlike. “You don’t look like a curator.”

“What do I look like, Pete?”

He almost resisted a look down her cleavage and chased a healthy unhelpful thought from his mind. “A model, someone in the beauty trade,” he said with a slight shaking of his head, a shrug of scapulas emphasised he didn’t know.

She laughed, not an unkind laugh. “Give me a stereotypical curator.”

“Don’t know, long black skirt, white blouse, glasses, hair tied up, that sort of thing.”

“Funny how we put people in boxes just to stabilise our beliefs, Pete.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s my job.” She passed him a small business card. “I work in the museum of old beliefs.”

“Museum of old beliefs?” Muscle tensions in his face emphasised the question a lot more then the tonality of his voice.

“Man,” she stopped briefly to lower her voice, “and womankind have always held limiting beliefs that are not true. The earth is flat, the implementation of the 1865 Locomotion on highways act when cars had to have three drivers, not exceed 4mph on open roads, 2 mph in towns and had to be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag. Physiologists believed it dangerous to a man’s health if they ran quicker than a four-minute mile. All old untrue beliefs, 6th May 1954 Dr Roger Banister broke the four minute mile belief, within a month John Landy also broke the four-minute mile, within thirty-six months sixteen others had run lower then four-minute miles.”

He thought about yawning. “And you run a museum about these types of old beliefs?”

“Not only about the limiting beliefs of society, the museum gives you an opportunity to explore your own personal beliefs.”

He was intrigued, yet wary. “Like what?”

Sabine’s voice lost its business-like character and became gravel again. “Think about it, visualise a past belief you used to have,” she deepened the next bit, “like…did you ever believe you would never be found out…Pete?”

The question flashed him back in time, then flushed him, he didn’t answer.

“I have to get off here,” she said standing. As she made to brush past she stopped and put her hand on his shoulder. “It would be good to see you at the museum, Pete.”

“Yes, yes of course I’ll come m’dear.”

She smiled softly down to him. “Do you really believe that Pete?”

One thing he was absolutely sure about was he did know the answer and she was gone before he could corral his thoughts, leaving behind a dilemma and the small business card, a card with vermilion italic lettering that read ‘Sabine Trudeau – Curator - Museum of old beliefs.’

He exited the bus at the town’s terminus, a prism of refracted sun foot-lighted him as clouds parted, their occupation done for the day. As he ambled he couldn’t understand why Sabine was on his mind so much or even why his mind should be on Sabine, but she was and it was. Sabine had disturbed him so much so that he missed the life-size cut out in the travel agents shop window, of the girl with the rather rounded mound wearing the bikini, promising in his mind a rather Freudian paraprax message of ‘erotic not exotic experiences’.

The flirty banter usually started by Jessie’s question, ‘tea and a bit on the side?’ The bit on the side referred to a current bread cake sensuously lubricated with liberal amounts of butter, didn’t start. Today’s it was vanquished with a simple grunt of agreement. He knew Jessie fancied him, she’d told him, and he glimpsed the flounce of the French maid’s pinafore, and heard the humph of rejection, however he was well into a list of broken beliefs, to take any real notice. He was finding it easy to name the ones that had shaped society, the earth was flat, man can’t fly, but what he was wrestling with was the tug at his conscious around the hard edged reality of lost personal beliefs, some he sensed he’d deliberately misplaced in the murk of his mind’s life, especially the ones around the death of his parents so early in his life and what happened with Maureen. He pressed the opening door of his mind closed on the thoughts the best he could, as resolve hardened deep inside.

He didn’t even look up; as Jessie slammed down the side plate and the pot of tea in front of him, he was with Sabine. He’d made his mind up to see her; he felt he had something to prove, only this time on his terms!

He’d marched, (as much as his knees would let him) out of the café with the teacake in his pocket and made for his customary afternoon tryst in the park. Someone had stolen his favourite seat at the bench by the ducks. He sat down next to the thief and started loudly mumbling about Sabine, it had no visible effect. Craftily, he reached for the little manufactured bottle of man-made mucus he kept in his coat pocket for these occasions, and with a well-crafted capability, created a large snot slide, complete with drip down over his moustache. The now uneasy young mum turned slightly to protect her genderless attired infant sat in the pushchair beside her. Even if he’d been asleep it wouldn’t have distract him from noticing the girls short dress had become even shorter as she twisted away from him. And the girl had noticed of his gaze.

“Dirty old man!”

“Not sure about the old bit m’dear, mature yes, like an excellent wine, improves with age, well worth laying down, don’t you think? He waited for a few seconds before adding, “fancy a tipple?”
The girl just ‘huffed,’ then covered her nylon thong split blooming moon, swung a baby bag over the pushchair handles and set off. He had smiled as he slid over to where she’d been sat, why did women so selectively choose whether or not to ‘blow it’ when they ‘show it’? Must be something to do with the right people noticing, or not. Like, like, like what about the time when he was younger and a woman accused him of staring at her extremely low cut dress, Ok guilty as charged, you don’t find shopkeepers putting things in shop windows not to look at. Then the next week a girl he was dating complained about him not looking at her and how she was dressed, what…huh? Then, yes, then there were the open questions. ‘What’s this look like? How does this fit? Where have you been? When was that?’ No chance of getting the right answer with a man’s single grunt, he concluded men weren’t meant to think around women, simpler… hiding to nothing otherwise. But then again Jessie in the café didn’t mind, she thrived on knowing looks and innuendo-laden repartee. He’d smiled inside at the next consideration, ‘perhaps it was those who couldn’t even spell repartee that didn’t like it’. The internal manifestation of the café stimulated him to take out the teacake and started attracting the local birds, it wasn’t long before starling and tits came