Rachel's parents were beside themselves with worry about her new boyfriend. They just couldn't get a read on him, found it difficult to figure out what made him tick.
His name was Richard Rogers, but he asked that they call him Hans. He shopped at vintage clothes shops and wore suits from another era, but drove a new Prius with a big Nike swoosh detailed on the back. Hans' hair, parted on the side and waxed into place, made him look like he would be a pal of Gatsby's. But his best friend was a rastaman with dreadlocks that hung to his mid-back. Hans worked as a line manager in a slaughterhouse that specialized in bison products. He himself was, however, a rather mellow vegetarian. Before the accident at the plant when he still worked on the floor, the accident that ultimately cost him his right leg, he had studied dance on weekends with his ex-wife. After those mishaps, he picketed in front of a building in his town that was to open as a dance studio. Once, when he described himself as a "devout believer," Rachel's father had cordially asked about his religion but the young man refused to divulge more information. He had beautiful teeth (yet never smiled), but his most striking feature were his eyes: one the darkest brown, the other blue as the morning sky lit by the rising sun.
He wore an American flag pin on his lapel...yet the couple was there in Rachel's parents' living room to tell them that they were moving to Europe to live as expatriates, with no intention of visiting the U.S. ever. Rachel's parents were not the type to question their daughter about her choices in men, not even when she was living under their roof. But now they felt they were fighting against something more than simply the wrong guy or a passing phase.
"What exactly do you see in him that impresses you enough to move away with him, to leave us and your friends forever?" her mother cried.
"He is so real, Mom," Rachel explained. "With Hans, what you see is what you get."
She sighed and her gaze traveled to Hans standing at her grandmother's wall mirror.
"I am just totally sick of two-faced men."
Written for The Mag: Mag 161 that inspired with the above photo prompt
(image: Not to be Reproduced, 1937, by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte).
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