The Spell of Cece

Cece was often a lonely girl. She was holed up in a luxury apartment on the Upper West Side and wanted for nothing. But still, she was alone and lonely. Each and every day began with a cup of tea and the hope that somehow today might be different. Her life had been devoid of companionship for a while. Had it been a full year?

On occasion, she would catch the Amazon delivery person and invite him or her into her apartment for a coffee or tea, and if the delivery person were extremely good looking or proved to be incredibly interesting, Cece would invite him or her to stay for a cocktail or glass of wine.

If conversation flowed, Cece would invite the delivery person to stay for dinner. Cece was a very good cook, and it was a shame she had no one but herself for whom to cook--unless she had an unexpected visitor. On occasion, she could engage the plumber, electrician, apartment super, mail carrier, UPS driver, or any of the service professionals who entered her building and had the fortune (or misfortune, as the case may be) to make Cece's acquaintance.

Cece suffered from agoraphobia. Her parents sent her from one specialist to the next to see if there could possibly be a way to help her. There had been treatment after treatment, modality after modality, and the results came down to this: Cece's brain was irreversibly scrambled, and she was still agoraphobic.

Seemingly chained to her penthouse apartment, which overlooked the city, she had a wraparound terrace and unparalleled views of Central Park and the Hudson River, but she could only enjoy the views from inside. Her well-appointed terrace was never used. Cece was terribly afraid to step outside the confines of her apartment. On the days her phobia was most severe, she drew the blinds, literally closing out the world.

Cece was pale in complexion, with flaxen hair, plush petal pink lips, and blue eyes that matched a perfect unmarred sky on a spring day. She wore her hair down, loose waves trailing over her shoulders and ending near her waist. She had difficulty finding a hair stylist willing to do house calls, and when she lucked into finding someone, they became strangely unavailable after the first appointment. Cece was so starved for company that a one hour appointment tended to take five to six hours before the stylist could find an adequate excuse to take his or her leave and depart, promising himself or herself never to take another appointment from Cece, even though she paid extremely well. The payment wasn't enough to compensate for the feeling of being drained or consumed by Cece.

In order to acquaint herself with some part of the world, Cece decided to take an online class. Since everything was online, group projects didn't require students to meet in person anywhere. Students simply had to meet virtually. All the meetings were recorded and sent to the professor who rated the groups' dynamics and to see if a natural leader emerged. Cece proved to be a good student, but she didn't want to be a leader. She wanted to be led. In her group, Jason, a young man who also lived in New York City rose to the top of the group to be their unofficial leader.

Jason was a sturdy and rugged man with movie star good looks. He was fitness, wellness, and nutrition wrapped in the pretty wrapping paper of youth, topped with the big red satin bow, signaling success and wealth. His hair was jet black and cut neatly with enough length left on top for a woman to run her fingers through it or pull on it while in the throes of passion. Jason was an extremely well-liked optometrist with a very long waiting list for new patients, and funnily enough, 90% of the individuals on the waiting list were female. From time to time, he liked to take an online class to satisfy his thirst for knowledge. He wasn't pursuing another degree. He was satisfied with his life.

Jason truly lived in the world and life he inhabited. He belonged to a small group of like-minded adventurers who met with regular frequency to plan the group's next big adventures or outings. After all, every encounter couldn't involve high stakes, higher tension emotions, and danger: planning was a must.

On any given Monday (after the adventure group had met for planning or executing some activity) Jason regaled the fellow students of his cohort with his weekend adventures. Sometimes it was whitewater rafting, spelunking, hiking, rock climbing, or even skiing. After a few weeks of having to listen to Jason drone on about the excitement of his weekends, Cece would turn off the volume and just watch Jason's animation and zest for life. She was no longer listening, but she would nod her head to agree with or approve of whatever he was saying.

Jason couldn't stop rambling. He was shocked into the submission of word vomit when he first took in Cece and every time after. Her beauty was ethereal, and from what he could see on his computer monitor, she was a waif who may have been a fairy placed on earth. Jason knew he was ascribing Cece some kind of supernatural force or power, but he found her to have a spellbinding effect on him. When he stopped talking long enough to learn they were both in New York City, Jason began to design a scenario that would require the two of them to meet in person.

After being put off by Cece more than once, she sent him an email to say she never left home due to her pervasive agoraphobia and invited him to her apartment to study on a Saturday afternoon. Jason quickly accepted the invitation, and his plan to meet Cece was in motion.

He arrived at her apartment building and was impressed by the grandeur of the lobby. He gave his name to the concierge who checked a list, called Cece, and then directed him to an elevator with the instruction to press the PH button for the penthouse. When the elevator reached the penthouse, the doors opened directly into Cece's foyer. Cece met Jason, and he realized she was even more beautiful in person than on his computer monitor. She was indeed petite, but not a waif. The gold of her hair shimmered like the sun's rays reflecting off a still lake in summer. He was stunned. She was stunning.

"Come in," Cece said in welcome. "Please. Can I get you something to drink? I squeezed fresh limes for limeade this morning, and I've tested it. It's quite good."

Jason recovered his composure. "That sounds great." He took in the apartment beyond the foyer, and he noted the blinds were drawn on all the windows but one, and the view looked to be a million dollar view. "Wow. Your view is amazing."

"Sometimes I forget about it. I've lived here so long I've become complacent. The only times I really look outside are at night when the dark seems to confine the space. In the daylight, the expanse of the world overwhelms me, and my agoraphobia can become too much," Cece admitted. "Someone else could live here and love this view every minute of every day, and here I am. It's wasted on me."

"How long have you lived here?" Jason asked.

"Five years," Cece answered. "I've been here for five years, alone."

"Alone?" Jason asked.

"When I turned 18, my parents wanted me to strike out on my own, and they bought this apartment for me. They wanted me to go to college, start a business, take a job, find a partner. They wanted me to start my life. They saw how I never left home the older I got. I finished high school through an online program because I couldn't cope with leaving the house and attending my high school, my small private high school."

Cece continued telling the story of her life, her gaze trained on Jason; and Jason found he couldn't look away from her. He looked at his cell phone to see the time, and he could scarcely believe he had been with Cece for over five hours, and they had not yet begun to study. "Where has the time gone?" he asked.

Almost all of Cece's visitors found time to pass only too slowly in her presence, making them itchy to leave. Jason was different. He didn't appear to be in a rush to leave or even get the day's activities back on track. After a while, Jason smelled something cooking. "How does your place smell like something delicious is going on in the kitchen? Do you have a chef?"

Cece laughed. "If only," she said. "I had a chef for a while, but he quit. It was insulting for him to cook for just me. I'm not a big eater, and he became depressed by the food waste." Her eyes took on a far off gleam as she recalled Guillaume. He was her first lover, and it took him over a year before he realized she could not and would not change, and he could not and would not spend his life cooped up in her penthouse. "Anyway, my chef taught me to cook, and he taught me to set the timer on my oven." She smiled a self-deprecating smile. She looked at her watch. "Dinner should be ready in thirty minutes. We have time right now to work on our project."

They spent the next half hour studying and working through their group project, and when the oven timer went off, Jason leaned over their output while Cece excused herself to the kitchen, and returned shortly with two plates of salad, which she carefully placed on the dining room table. She disappeared again, quietly reentering her dining room with two plates of the thickest lasagna Jason had ever seen.

"Would you like a glass of wine?" she asked. "I have a beautiful chianti or pinot noir. They both go quite well with pasta," she explained, looking deep into Jason's eyes. She indicated two carafes on the table accompanied by a pair of cut crystal wine glasses.

"Maybe pinot with the salad, and chianti with the pasta," Jason said with an inflection of uncertainty at the end of his statement. His brows furrowed in thought, and Cece found delight in Jason's uncertainty. He seemed quite cocksure about most things, but wine was not one of them. She tamped down her amusement, not wanting him to feel inadequate. From the moment she took him in when she met him in her foyer, she knew she couldn't let him leave. Of course, he would need to leave after dinner, but he would come back. He was under her spell, like Guillaume, and then Paul, and then Alberto, and Chun, and the others who had come and gone over the past five years.

After dinner, Jason collected his computer, notebooks, and backpack. "Cece, I've had a wonderful time with you today. I don't want to be too forward because I know this is your space, but I'd like to see you again. Would it be all right with you if I came back tomorrow? I'll bring us some lunch."

Cece warmed. "I would like that," she said. She began planning dinner for Sunday night. She knew he wouldn't leave after lunch.

The next evening, Jason asked if he could kiss Cece, and she gave permission. They went on like that for the next week, their physical connection expanding with each encounter. The second week, Cece told Jason he should pack a bag and plan to stay the night. Jason stayed and stayed and stayed. Jason and Cece's online class ended, but Jason remained with Cece. Time passed, and Jason's apartment lease expired, and Cece invited him to move into the penthouse. Jason accepted.

Jason cut back his clinic hours to spend more time with Cece. She didn't need his income, and while he was with her, he realized he didn't need as much of his income either, and work was getting in the way of his ability to spend more time with Cece. His mornings began with coffee on the wraparound terrace. Cece never joined him there, and he cleared his head each morning while he enjoyed the view, his coffee, and the headlines on his tablet. He loved Cece, and he wanted her to be able to experience the world beyond the walls of her penthouse fortress. Every time he brought it up, though, it brought Cece to tears. He loved everything about her but hated her agoraphobia.

After a year had passed, she began to see the signs that Jason was becoming antsy. He wanted to get out of the penthouse. He wanted her to get out of the penthouse. He wanted to engage in the world more, and he wanted her with him. She knew her limitations, though, and she couldn't bend. She knew he was free to go, to leave her, at any time, and it had been his choice to stay with her. But she could foretell the hurt she would experience with Jason's departure. She began to plan to keep him, to weaken him, to make him dependent upon her—to force him to stay.

Jason closed his practice. According to his staff, he had an opportunity to practice in Colorado, which lined up more with his desire for adventure. No one questioned his decision, and his business quietly terminated. Jason withdrew from his adventure-seeking, and, though he was missed, no one in the group questioned his decision. After a time, Jason's parents and sister found they could no longer reach him. When they contacted Cece, she said he had moved out several months previously, and he had given her no new address, and that she thought he was blocking her calls. His family requested a police welfare check, and they found Jason had not moved out. They found him emaciated, lying in the king-sized bed in Cece's master bedroom; a man who loved life, Jason was clinging to what was left of his.

Cece was taken away. She was tried and found guilty. She was placed in a correctional center. Her new home was perfect, sixty square feet, a small window in the door and one near the ceiling of her cell, and she was given a roommate. It was more than she could have asked for, more than she could have hoped.