The Keepers Read Free

He died seven months later and his separated wife took
his money and left. No other suitable relative was found and Lysei
was placed under the system. The orphan. He never missed his
parents or his grandfather, they all died when he was young, before
his life began.
    I’d rather not
think about my childhood , h e
thought.
    Anyway, four weeks back, on his
birthday, the warden at his orphanage decided to surprise him by
finding a job for him, if not for anything but to get him to start
earning something as quickly as possible. He was a gaunt, tall and
lean man who believed wholeheartedly in discipline and order and
even though corporal punishment was illegal, some of the orphans
would testify that the threat rattled him not a bit but rather
increased the depths of his lashes. He was never married but spoke
of the importance of loving only one person, most often in tones of
regret and despair. He was old and would probably die alone. He
would go on and on about how trying to sleep with everyone was an
infinite loop that would end only in stress; depression, suicide,
hatred, jealousy, murder and so on. He would always tell the boys
(he was in charge of them) that the value and integrity of love is
in finding it in just one person, thereby, closing the loop. He did
not go to church but he read the bible and taught the orphans their
prayers and when people asked him to prove that there is a god, he
would reply “To prove that there is something like a god, you first
have to prove that you cannot live without one” and would go on to
show that the prove of a god is a personal one.
    The warden
had done him a favour. At nineteen, the state does not consider you
an orphan anymore and if you want to stay, you have to pay with
money or work. Ever since, his embarrassment for the way he had met
his boss had salted him bitterly more and incessantly.
This
    “ Three times
in one week, you don’t like working here do you?” Monica asked with
a forced bossy voice which rather came out cute.
    “ Sorry
miss ,” He apologised truthfully . “I uh…woke up late and I had to get
the money, ” h e
said sincerely and tipped his hat
in as if to avoid the rays of the sun but really it was to
hide his shame . The money was for some favour
Monica had done for one the nurses at the orphanage.
    “ When will you
marry me and stop calling me miss?” she said jokingly , smiling and
revealing her perfect straight teeth in the process, causing her
dimples to sink into her peach coloured cheeks, making her small
and high cheek bones protrude highly ,
making her eye-tips more curved and making her green eyes
brighter…
    Stop it, not
now , h e said in his
mind .
    The two of
them and the book store stood out. In a society crazed about sex
and all its implications they were rebels. Him in his black suit,
polished shoes and perfectly straight and shiny combed black hair.
The book-store in its vintage and classic look, built with brick
walls giving a terra- cotta tone in its
colour. The two large windows of the book-store centred a large
mahogany door. What with the usual cacophony, the door was always
closed, giving an already acquired exclusiveness to the book-store.
Next door to the right was a small electronics store which
attracted its customers by having the female workers work in their
bathing suits, winter or summer, thanks to air conditioning. One
was out by the electronics store’s door trying to lure in
passers-by. To the left was a vacant store which used to be rented
as a church on Sundays and some days during the week and used to
fill the vicinity with spiritual and uplifting music but the
previous year, because of dwindling members and high rental costs
it had closed. The idea and the words worship, church etc. had
degenerated to being presently, mostly, used in frolic terms in
most of the world.
    Like that
song, ‘church in the wild’. He
thought.
    What he really wanted was to
get down on one knee, magically retrieve a four carat diamond