Nobody looked at Julio and saw who he truly was. Nobody looked at him at all. That was the tragedy.
“How very painful that must have been for you,” Carredura said, and she smiled gently as if to dispel the dark feelings besetting him. “But I must say, you’re very lucky.”
He was lucky? Strange thing to say to a man who’d just gotten fired. Julio glared at her reflexively, but there was a smile in her dark eyes.
“You met me here today, and that’s very fortunate indeed.” Carredura took his hand gently. “As a matter of fact, I have a sancta that would be perfect for you.”
“Perfect for me?”
“Yes, indeed. It will make everyone notice you and cast envious looks upon you. It’s a wonderful sancta.”
Perhaps he’d like to give it a try? She let go of his hand and gave him a questioning look.
Julio let his gaze fall to the table, wishing she hadn’t let go. A beautiful woman, holding his hand. His hand. His hand, flush with heat from the alcohol.
Into his palm she had pressed a cigarette case.
Back at home, Julio sat at his table with his head in his hands. “What in the world am I doing?” he asked himself. The first things he’d experienced once the alcohol wore off and he had his wits back were a vicious hangover and a flurry of regret.
He’d had way too much to drink at the bar. And then he’d gone and bought…whatever this was.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” He looked down at the cigarette case on the table and sighed. He’d bought the sancta without a second thought.
He remembered what the woman had said to him: “These are Look-Again Cigarettes. They amplify the presence of the person smoking them, making him linger in people’s minds. Oh, but don’t worry. They may be called cigarettes, but none of the ingredients are addictive.”
This sancta was used just like regular cigarettes: You breathed in, breathed out, and stared into the middle distance. That would be enough to get the people around you to notice every little thing you did and shower you with approbation.
“If you smoke the Look-Again Cigarettes, your smallest achievements will come to the notice of an entire crowd of people. You’ll be the envy of everyone you meet.”
Carredura had smiled, there amid the commotion of the bar. Behind her, he could still see the man about his age being lauded by his coworkers and those young women.
“Don’t you want people to see your work for what it’s really worth?” Carredura almost whispered. Even now, back in his room, Julio could hear the words echo in his ears.
He’d bought the sancta on the spot out of sheer excitement, but the truth was, he didn’t even know if they really worked. Yet he couldn’t simply ignore them—he couldn’t get Carredura’s words out of his head, even after he got home.
Neither would those of the manager.
“What do you want to do with your life?”
He had been chased out of his restaurant by someone who didn’t understand that his contribution was less overt than some, and now he asked himself what he wanted to do.
He wanted people to see what his work was worth.
It was too much. It broke his heart.
“I’ll make them pay,” he said, the words bubbling up from deep inside. “Everyone who never so much as looked at me… I’ll make them all pay!”
That was what Julio truly wanted to do at that moment.
He reached out and grabbed one of the cigarettes from the case, put it in his mouth, and lit it.
He must be crazy. It wasn’t like him to resort to something like this, instead of doing a job himself. There was no telling if a random sancta he’d bought at a bar would even have any effect at all.
Julio knew all that, and still he breathed in.
Then he exhaled again, like he was sighing. A cloud of white smoke came out of his mouth, and he had the distinct sense that it was erasing his anxieties, covering them over with mist.
The sancta’s effect, as it turned out, was real enough.
As he walked through town the next day, Julio almost couldn’t believe it. Everything around him seemed completely different. For example, when he picked up some trash lying by the roadside—something he made a habit of always doing—a nearby citizen spotted him and came over, saying, “Did you just pick up some trash? What a good person you must be!” Julio gave her a shy bow.
He heard some women say:
“Hey, you see that guy over there? Doesn’t he look kind of…cool?”
“Yeah, he looks amazing!”
Julio was just walking along, but apparently the women had noticed him. In fact, he felt like everyone seemed to be noticing him, far more people than usual.
Then there was the moment he went to what he hoped would be his new job, the restaurant across the street from the place where he used to work.
“I see. You want to work with us?” The owner listened Julio’s story, even though Julio had simply walked in off the street, and then he said, “We’ll start with a three-day probationary period. We’ll make a hiring decision after that, depending on how you perform.”
In other words, he had three days to impress them, and then he would have a job. So Julio set about supporting his colleagues’ work just as he’d done before. It wasn’t flashy or obvious, but it was Julio’s specialty. A specialty that had gone, it was fair to say, completely unappreciated at his previous place of employment.
Julio was just doing what he always did, but the owner said, “What fantastic work, Julio! Please come work for us immediately!”