The Farce of the Faux-Olympian Heir

His royal highness with cardboard and paltry goods from the common market.

Lucio stood there staring for a long time when she opened the door, perhaps wondering if she was only an employee.

He handed over his business card, seeking Beatrice for their scheduled appointment.

Almost right away, he worked on his charm, befriending her, calling frequently and inviting her to meals under the guise of work.

While lunch meetings were a standard part of her work, she knew instinctively that this would be far from an ordinary lunch.

The lunch meetings were a drag for Beatrice. He had little interest in the minutiae of trade; every conversation was a detour back to his own ego, where the agenda was consistently himself.

He spun a story of patrician burdens, gloating as if caught in an old-money Greek tragedy, while simultaneously boasting of a sumptuous fleet of cars - though he was careful to park them somewhere unseen by Beatrice.

He was the ultimate dissembling heir, posturing as a man of grit while flaunting a pedigree - albeit a counterfeit one.

He even resorted to the tired cliché of insisting she was the very doppelgänger of a lost love, reiterating it at every meeting since their first encounter with a monotonous fervor.

Just add water; wait three minutes for instant cup noodle and ex-flame doppelgänger for instant intimacy. The sheer absurdity of it all was lost on him. He had actually thought she would be flattered.

He had probably recycled the line so many times that nearly every woman he passed on the street would look like his ex by now.

She met his boasts with a stony countenance that no amount of posturing could pierce. She remained entirely unimpressed, denying him the fawning admiration he clearly expected.

On one occasion, while he was describing a specific car model and there wasn't even a hint of awe from Beatrice, Lucio stopped mid-narrative to ask if she understood anything about cars at all.

Seeing right through him, she opted for a touch of sarcastic innocence.

"Of course I know about cars. I can tell the difference between a car and a lorry." She replied with a toddler-level answer, mocking his haughty condescension with basic simplicity.

His performance had fallen completely flat; he was momentarily speechless, likely performing a frantic reconnaissance inside his head.

When he overstepped with constant personal calls just to check in - or more accurately, checking on her as if she were somehow accountable to him - she was blunt and rebuked him; yet, despite her clear pushback, Lucio remained persistent.

The red flags were everywhere when his subordinate arrived to finalize the deal.

The employee was professional but unsettlingly deferential - not out of standard courtesy, but because Lucio had spoken of her as if she were his prize.

It was later revealed that Lucio had some special instructions to the staff to take good care of her - marking her as his protected interest rather than a client.

It was definitely not the VIP client kind of service.

His colleagues had likely believed they were having an affair. So much for her reputation. Thank goodness she no longer had to deal with him once everything was done and sealed.

Sometime later, she came across one of his posts on social media - his moment of sheer narcissism. He had clearly posted it as a thirst trap, but his lens caught him in a lie.

Instead of luxury, it revealed the meager trappings of a common hearth: children's cots and paltry goods from the common market.

It was a pedestrian existence - the life of a mere mortal, much like her own. Beatrice could hardly contain her laughter, not out of mocking of his circumstances, but for the sheer comedy of his performance.

She had found the funniest joke of the season: a common mortal parading as an heir to an Olympian deity.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus!

He was no bachelor heir; he was a preening coxcomb, a fake mayor in a uniform stolen from Albrecht von Bauditz, parading a counterfeit life in hopes of bedding unsuspecting, impressionable women.

Wikimedia

When she referred him to a peer for his services, he saw it as another opportunity to play his games, desperately trying to bait a reaction out of Beatrice.

He went so far as to purport that the said female had sought to entice him, attempting to lure him into her chamber for coffee- that hackneyed device where the brew is a mere cipher for something far less innocent. Anything but caffeine, yet intended to keep one up nonetheless.

He hath been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps, reciting a very bad script in a low-budget soap opera.

He staged a performance of the virtuous man resisting a wanton harlot, imagining this theatrical display would score him points with Beatrice.

He was painfully oblivious, blissfully unaware of what she already knew - and the fact that both women were in communication. It was a strange mix of amusement and disgust, not to mention the secondhand embarrassment; yet Beatrice remained entirely indifferent to his drama.

As entertaining as he was, she was far too busy to indulge the delusions of such a narcissist.

In the end, he was nothing more than a pathetic farce - a man-mountain of a lie who was, quite simply, full of shit.

With such a pompous air, one could scent his effluvium from a mile away.

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©Britt H.

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