CHAPTER TEN

PAST

Bulgaria has a temperate-continental climate, very characteristic for Central Europe, with hot summers, long, cold winters and very distinct seasons. There can be abundant snowfalls throughout the country from December to mid-March, especially if you are in the mountainous areas of Bulgaria.

In the southern areas it can be warmer; in the northern and eastern mountainous districts of Balkan Mountains it can be cooler with moderate daytime temperatures and cool nights in the summer and temperatures far below zero in the winter.

It was 4.00 p.m. and right on schedule there was a cool breeze that blew in off the sea. This is not a meteorological phenomenon but a localized climatic event that happens daily in summer. It’s the reverse of a catabolic wind like the Mistral in France or the Bora in Spain. Those are caused by cold air from the mountains sliding down the mountain under their own weight creating a low-pressure area above them that sucks the lighter, hotter air off the Mediterranean in to replace it. This creates a cyclic effect and a strong wind heading out to sea. Bulgaria’s mountains are too far away to create this, instead the vast flat plains of the Yambol and Plovdiv regions warm up in the summer sun and by 3pm it is hot enough for the hot air to rise up, sucking cool air in off the Black Sea to replace it.

By 4.00 p.m. the wind heading directly inland is strong enough for the paraglider and windsurfers to go play. The wind is so constant and un-fluctuating that paraglider’s can literally sit in midair at and chat to tourists atop the old casino building in the Sea Gardens. Waiters behave as if nothing is unusual about handing a beer to a guy in a parachute levitating in front of them; the waiter supported by hundreds of ton of concrete and the customer supported by nothing but thin air.

Angel and I strolled down Bogaridy, the main boulevard through the center of town that connects the south end of the Sea Gardens with the grand municipal buildings in the center of the city. This was my first-time window shopping with her and I was enjoying meandering between boutique shops, a beautiful girl on my arm, a most pleasant way to enjoy the summer afternoon.

The vast majority of prices in the boutiques were for tourists. A $200 T shirt was better spent on a month’s rent to most of the residents of Burgas. We wandered around until we found ourselves in what was truly a “designer” brand establishment. It specialized in Philip Plenn and Givenchy. I was assuming that Angel was going to try to convince me to buy the black leather bikers jacket by Philip Plenn that on two previous occasions I had been reluctant to do, what with the $4,000 price tag. But she didn’t even glance at the jacket, she walked away from it and towards the circular chrome rack of T Shirts and started flicking them one by one, praising each T Shirt individually. I did a quick calculation - eight feet in diameter x Pi, 3.142 gave 25 feet, well 25.13. Each hanger being 1/2 inch meant 50 T Shirts each to be picked off the rack, held up praised and put back, say 20 seconds a T Shirt that meant I was in for 1000 seconds of boredom. Just short of 17 minutes plus an unspecified amount of trying on time.

But, much to my surprise, shopping was not going to be boring – rather it was going to be interesting and to be honest - borderline strange.

“Oh My God - It’s CHANEL.” Angels voice rang loudly throughout the store. The surprise was sufficient to not only drag me in Angel’s direction, but also enough to drag every OTHER customer and every SINGLE member of staff away from whatever they were doing and look in her direction.

“I simply HAVE to have it,” she exclaimed fully aware that all eyes were on her. In Angel’s hand was a T Shirt that represented one of Chanel’s more outlandish adventures into the world of bling. The T Shirt must have weighed two pounds under the load of the Swarovski Crystals it supported. More importantly, it was clearly WAY too big for Angel.

A shop assistant quickly approached Angel smelling a commission as clearly as my dog Truffle could smell an accidentally dropped sausage. She pounced and was smart enough to not ask if Angel wanted to try it on – No, this would give Angel the chance to see what was plainly obvious to everyone – the shirt was way too big for her petite frame.

“I will put it in a box for you,” the shop assistant said quickly, her eyes shifting as if knowing that if she could get it hidden in the box fast enough, she would land the sale. But suddenly she hesitated, maybe it was guilt.

“Well, actually this is much too big for you,” she finally said sadly as if she was delivering the worst news in the world. I sighed happily knowing that I would not have to be the bad guy and deliver the bad news myself. I wanted to hug the shop attendant for her honesty but my feelings of pride were interrupted and startled by Angel’s reaction.

“No, it’s NOT,” Angel said defiantly, gently pulling back the shirt that the shop keeper had taken out of her hands.

“But,” explained the woman, “it is supposed to be tight on your body, otherwise the crystals won’t lay flat. They will hang down like now and it will look,” she twisted her face as she searched for an English word to describe how it would look. She gave up and said “Uges,” in Bulgarian, the equivalent of ugly. I watched on silently thinking it’s going to look bloody uges tight or loose, I was not a fan of the shirt.

Angel disagreed and it dawned on me this was the first time she had ever actually held a genuine Chanel T Shirt. Now I understood the novelty of the moment, but what I didn’t understand was the desire to buy a T Shirt that was the absolute antithesis of your own style, in a size that was far too big for you, simply because it was manufactured by Chanel. I watched with interest while Angel argued over the size, the judgement of the assistant, her size. The more I watched the more I became aware that Angel didn't like the T Shirt either, so then why was she so insistent on buying it??

Within 15 minutes I watched Angel argue with not one shop assistant but all three, and I reached a revelation. Angel had made a public statement about the T Shirt without thinking it through and she was incapable of backing down from it and admitting she was wrong. There was a clear pattern to her argument.

She would agree with a point but insist another point out weighed it. When an assistant overcame that point Angel conceded that point and moved on to another. Then conceded that point and moved onto another. After around six points she would be back on the first point and she would begin the argument as if it had never before been mentioned, so that round and around the argument went with everyone getting dizzy. I watched, amazed, as this improbable scenario played out. In the end the deadlock was broken by a new assistant that entered the conversation and mentioned that they had just received new stock and there were two Chanel T Shirts inviting Angel to try them on.

We walked home, Angel carrying a large black paper bag with silk rope handles that must have cost as much as most normal people’s T Shirts. Along the side in bleached white letters was the word CHANEL. Inside the bag was a very nice T Shirt. It was fashioned from luxuriously soft thick cotton in a simply gorgeous coral pink, containing just enough elastane to ensure no part of the fabric ever left the skin of the wearer. The tube that formed the body of the garment manufactured in such a way that the area fabric around the breasts contained significantly more elastane than the rest of the garment allowing the wearer to forgo the inconvenience of a bra. It also supported the founders of cream pearls that made up the interlocking double C’s of the Chanel logo. If you looked closely each pearl was held in place by a thread of white cotton looped through a small cut crystal purple bead and back down through the pearl. Each of the probably 200 pearls had been sown in place by hand and a quick test on my front teeth confirmed that each pearl was a PEARL. A genuine grown in the slime of a mollusk pearl.

All this attention to detail, along with the 200 odd genuine pearls, no doubt accounted for the simply astronomical price tag. Heavily discounted it was $400. The original price had been an eye watering $1,200. I had to give it to Chanel, they sure knew how to make a T Shirt of simply unbelievable quality, and they sure knew how to charge for it.

As we walked I said to Angel that I thought she was suffering from the early stages of Amphetamine Psychosis brought on from the severe sleep deprivation we were both suffering from the Meth usage. I delicately explained that she had been highly irrational in the shop, careful to point out it was unusual for her to be so and that that is why I’d noticed. But also, did she know she had been arguing around and around in the same circle for nearly 30 minutes?

Her reaction was a shock – she completely and outright DENIED what I had clearly been an eye witness to. In her mind there was NO argument, no 30-minute discussion involving several people spinning in mindless circles and never reaching a conclusion. No - in HER mind nothing out of the ordinary had happened, other than the fact that she had just received her first Chanel T Shirt. In HER mind I was over exaggerating, I was simply complaining because I had spent the money on a shirt, I had SEEN it wrong, I had MISUNDERSTOOD the situation.

I was taken aback by the outright denial and false accusations. I looked over at her, walking contently with her bag in her hand a smile playing at the edges of her lips and realized that she truly believed the lies she was telling me. For a brief moment a shudder of fear ran through me, who was this person? But I pushed the thought out of my mind – sleep, all she needs is a good night’s sleep and she will be fine - I convinced myself.