Chapter 3: Lunch Date

After finishing his breakfast, Charles returned to the couch in the living room, Tez taking up her usual place in the mirror as she assisted. Just like in the kitchen, she seemed more mobile today, lounging around and sitting in odd positions on her side of the reflection. Perhaps she was bored, or maybe she was just showing off – he had no idea.

He was hunched over his laptop typing while she lay longways across the back of the couch, stretched out like a jaguar resting on a tree branch, her tail trailing down the cushions to rest beside him. His head was about level with her stomach, and while she still wasn’t corporeal, he got the odd sense that he could feel her presence. Her weight pressed down on the cushions behind him ever so slightly, and he could swear he felt the warmth of her body on the back of his head. It was probably just his imagination – his eyes insisting that she was present despite what his other senses told him. Another hallucination.

“This should definitely work out,” Charles declared, setting the laptop down on the coffee table. “We’ll have visitors start out in this hallway here, and as they move through the exhibit, they pass through the different eras of Mesoamerican history. We go through the Olmec, the Maya, and eventually we arrive at the Aztec. With your help, I can really make this temple mockup as authentic as possible. I’ll have to play off some of it as intuition and artistic license, but if I can sell it to the curator, we’ll be golden.”

“You have quite the collection of artifacts,” Tez said.

“Well, we’re just one museum,” he replied with a shrug. “But, yes, we do have a pretty large catalog. It’s a very old collection, and one of my responsibilities is making sure that everything is numbered and stored properly. Every one of these codes corresponds to an item in the archives. I can access it all remotely from the library’s servers.”

“Perhaps there are more ways that I can help, assuming I have enough energy,” she began.

“How do you mean?” he asked, glancing over his right shoulder to look back at her.

Ever cat-like, she slid her upper body down from the backrest, crossing her arms on the couch cushion to his right and resting her head in them. Her upside-down position made her hanging bosom squash against the leather beneath her, and he once again had to turn his eyes back to his display. Her hips were still on the backrest behind him, her tail curling around to his left, and he could have sworn he felt the touch of her furry thigh against his shoulder.

“I can manipulate their perceptions,” she explained. “I can make them feel fear, awe, wonder – anything I desire. Anything you desire,” she added. “I could make it an experience like no other.”

“That could be cool,” he replied hesitantly. It was hard to see her in her current position – the mirror wasn’t angled to catch the near side of the couch. All he could see was her body from the waist down. “I wouldn’t want to distract the visitors too much. They’re there to learn, after all.”

“Are you nearly done?” she sighed, rolling in place so that she was lying on her back. Her hips remained paradoxically in place, limber as she was. “I am bored. I want to do something.”

“Like what?’ he scoffed.

“I want to go out somewhere,” she said with an audible pout. “I am tired of this dark, dingy house.”

“You realize I’m letting you crash here for free, right? Fine,” he conceded. “You know what – I could do with getting some fresh air myself. It’s about lunch time,” he added as he checked his phone. “How about we go out to eat? Well, I’ll be eating. You’ll be tagging along and watching, I guess.”

She seemed to perk up at that, sliding the rest of the way off the couch and reappearing standing in the mirror. Knowing that she’d want him to bring his phone, he draped it around his neck on its lanyard, then picked up his keys and headed out.

It was a little past noon, and the sun was high in the sky, a cool wind blowing the leaves of the trees in his yard as he walked to his driveway. He got into his car and began to pull out into the street, not as shocked this time to see Tez sitting in the back seat through his rear-view mirror. She was in her animal form again, and he surmised that it was probably due to her humanoid form’s stature being too tall to fit. Perhaps she could shrink herself down, but that might look rather silly and detract from the air of power and intimidation that she liked to exude.

“What are you smiling about?” she demanded suspiciously.

“Nothing,” he replied, turning his eyes back to the road.

She peered out of the windows like a curious dog as he drove, watching snippets of this new, unfamiliar world flash by. It wasn’t a long drive from the suburbs to a more developed area, the buildings growing in size.

“These are not temples,” Tez wondered. It was a statement, not a question. For someone who had been thrown half a millennia forward in time, she was remarkably accepting of what she was seeing.

“These are apartment blocks and offices, for the most part,” Charles explained. “People live and work here. What you’re seeing isn’t even that large by modern standards. We use steel and concrete in construction now, and we dig deep foundations. We do still have some temples. I’ll have to show you a video of Notre Dame or something when we get home.”

There was an Italian restaurant with outdoor seating that he liked to frequent, and he searched around for a parking spot nearby, finding one that was a short walk away. It wasn’t too busy at this time of the day – most of the customers from the nearby office buildings wouldn’t be on their lunch breaks for another hour or two. He was soon seated beneath a covered awning in the outdoor area, watching the wind rustle the rows of trees on the sidewalk as he skimmed through the laminated menu.

“What are you doing?” Tez inquired. She wasn’t appearing in the windows of the building, but he could still hear her voice clearly.

“It’s a menu,” he explained, lowering it a little in the hope that she could view it from his phone. “It’s a list of dishes that I can order.”

“And a servant will cook for you?” she asked. “Or a machine?”

“They’re not servants,” Charles chided. “They’re employees. They work for the restaurant’s owner as chefs and waiters. I know that the Aztecs had food vendors who served dishes and prepared meals at markets. It’s a little like that.”

They were soon interrupted as a waiter in a prim uniform emerged to take the order, retreating back into the building with the menu tucked under his arm.

“This city is so dense,” Tez marveled. “There are so many people packed so closely together. Even Tenochtitlan at its most populated did not rival this. How many people live here?”

“Around six hundred thousand, I think,” he replied.

“Three times the count who lived in the seat of our empire...”

“The population of the country is about three hundred and fifty million. The global population has passed seven billion.”

“That is a number I can scarcely imagine.”

There came a puff of smoke on the unoccupied table adjacent to his own, as though a battery fire had suddenly broken out, quickly coalescing into a humanoid shape. Tez was sitting there, the table seemingly unbothered by what must be her considerable weight. She crossed her long legs, supporting herself with her hands as she leaned back a little, her long tail trailing off the edge.

“Tez!” Charles hissed, glancing around nervously. “Other people can’t see you, can they?”

“Of course not,” she replied, giving him a toothy grin. “I haven’t enough power for that, even if I wished to be seen. I am appearing only in your mind.”

“I didn’t think you even had enough energy to appear outside of reflections,” he pressed. “You had me carry that damned mirror all the way downstairs!”

She simply smirked at him, bobbing a clawed paw in the air nonchalantly.

“I would think that you might appreciate a little company,” she added with a haughty chuckle, reaching up to adjust her feather headdress. “Bachelor that you are.”

“This is where I’d insist on splitting the bill,” he grumbled.

“Pardon?” a voice asked, Charles lurching as he realized that the waiter had snuck up on him.

“Oh, nothing,” he added, trying to ignore Tez as she cackled at his flustered expression. “Sorry – bluetooth call,” he added with a gesture to his ear and a forced smile.

The waiter set a plate of spaghetti and some garlic bread on the table, along with a glass of red wine, then politely disappeared back inside the establishment.

“What is that?” Tez asked with a grimace, leaning closer to get a better look. “A bowl of worms?”

“Yes, we eat worms in the future,” he replied sarcastically. “Of course they’re not worms, Tez. This is pasta. It’s Italian. Are you even able to eat food, or do you just absorb the energy that you create by bothering people?”

“I can partake of food and drink when I have power enough to manifest,” she insisted. “Along with any other pleasures that mortals enjoy. I can be quite real, I assure you. I can taste, smell, hear, see, touch – everything you can do.”

“Well, I’m sorry that I can’t share this garlic bread with you,” he replied, picking up a roll and gently peeling it apart. The dough was soft and moist, tinted yellow by the olive oil and speckled with green herbs, Tez’s eyes following the wisp of steam that rose from it. “Of all our innovations over the last five hundred years, I would rank garlic bread among the most important.”

Her expression soured as he ate, his enjoyment apparent.

“Now you are just tormenting me,” she complained, crossing her arms.

“What, am I making you hungry?” he asked over a mouthful of bread. “You don’t even have a stomach right now. How does that work?”

“You should know better than most how much power the mind has over the body,” she replied, her tone turning sly. She lifted her legs back onto the table, then rose to her knees, gripping its edge with her hands as she leaned forward precariously. She couldn’t help but squash her breasts between her biceps in this position, pressing them together, her tail swaying behind her. “I exist only in your mind, yet my presence seems to embarrass you. Perhaps you are afraid to be seen talking to yourself like a madman.”

“We have this thing called wireless communication, so I can pretend I’m on a call,” he replied as he kept his eyes on his meal.

“It still looks as though you’re having a conversation with someone who isn’t there to me,” she chuckled.

“I’ll just have to not look at you, then.”

“You may find that difficult.”

He was distracted as a couple walked beneath the awning and sat down at a table close to the one where Tez was kneeling. The waiter quickly emerged to hand them menus, then retreated back inside, the smirking jaguar glancing between Charles and the newcomers.

“Whatever you’re planning, don’t,” he muttered under his breath.

Tez sat down and leaned back, kicking her feet innocently as she watched the two strangers interact. They were in their mid twenties, about the same age as Charles, their quiet conversation hard to overhear from where he was sitting. It was a cool autumn day, so they wore warm clothing, the woman sporting a puff jacket and a woolen beanie. They were clearly very much in love, smiling and laughing, so perhaps they were on a lunch date. Tez seemed intrigued, her feline ears tracking them, her eyes wandering between the two as they leaned across the table to share a brief kiss.

The waiter soon returned for their orders, and it wasn’t long before they were sharing an Italian-style pizza, the man opening a bottle of wine and filling their glasses as they chatted.

Tez turned her gaze back to Charles, her grin widening as she opened her jaws, his eyes following suit when he saw the head of a snake emerge at the back of her throat. Inches of it began to slide forth, what looked like a living animal coiling past her lips, its diamond-patterned scales shining in the sunlight. It was a decently sized boa constrictor or something of the sort – the kind of snake one might expect to find swimming through some muddy jungle river. Tez continued to smile as it slithered down her furry chest, winding between her breasts and jostling them softly. It fell into her lap with a tangible thud, its tail finally clearing her tongue, a good six feet of fat snake slowly slithering down off the table. It came his way as it wound across the floor, and though Charles knew that it wasn’t real, he couldn’t help but lurch away instinctively as its cool scales brushed his leg.

The couple paused their conversation to give him a confused glance, Tez cackling to herself as he returned a forced smile.

“Tez, I’d really prefer if you didn’t do that,” Charles whispered as he lifted his phone and pretended to answer a call. “I’m trying to eat my lunch here.”

“But I find it so enjoyable,” she snickered. “As you said – you have only to ignore me, no?”

Perched on the round table like a cat, she bent over backward, putting her flexibility on display like a gymnast trying to wow a panel of judges. Her long spine formed a perfect curve, her clawed hands gripping the edge of the table behind her, this new position putting her impressively toned abdominal muscles on display. In a single smooth, uninterrupted motion, she lifted a leg and pointed her clawed toes straight up into the air. The second leg followed suit, and she did a slow walkover, the gentle manner in which she lowered her paws to the floor behind the table hinting at how much control she had over her body. It was impossible to say if she weighed anything, if gravity truly had any hold over her, or whether her impeccable balance and poise were mere simulation. Her backflip was no less impressive.

Landing on her feet, she sauntered over to the table where the strangers were eating, her tail swaying in time with her wide hips. Pushing out her rear, her toned cheeks covered only by the flimsy loincloth, she lay her elbows on their table and put her head between the two lovers.

She glanced back over her shoulder with a smile as Charles was forced to look away, worried that the couple might think he was watching them.

“A beautiful specimen,” Tez cooed, reaching out to brush a strand of auburn hair out of the woman’s face as she drank from her wine glass. To her, it must have felt like nothing more than a slight breeze. “Young love is such a powerful thing. I can feel how attracted they are to one another. They exude desire, romance, affection – it emanates from them like a sweet incense...”