YD6-118 Bootcamp with Cupid — From Crib to Contract

 

Witness the instant a newborn meets the world—not with confusion, but with a gaze that feels remembered. What if consciousness does not emerge, but arrives—already formed—entering the fragile architecture of the body like light through glass? Aetheria is not a place, but a passage: where matter receives awareness, where the mind is sculpted before it can think. In that fleeting lock of eyes, something vast presses through—then recedes, leaving only trace, instinct, name. Is this where we begin, or where we are briefly revealed? Step closer to the architecture you’ve always inhabited.

YD6-118 Bootcamp with Cupid — From Crib to Contract

The study, furnished for Loulou’s homecoming: a chainmail crib—factory sandblasted, enameled white—gleaming, sealed. My thoughts slipped in the Iron Age, but I dared not speak them. Our downstairs neighbor, in the bedding trade, seized the moment; a factory truck delivered a small tailor-made box mattress. I dropped the base into the crib frame, and Victoria dressed it to her fancy. 

She cradles, lumbering past the crib—still bearing the strain of childbirth—her little bundle, the soft dark-blond head against her. She bends in the light before the grand portal, a shield to the balcony over the backyard, and in the hush of her struggle lifts the carrycot from the floorboards, straightens, and turns away.

Loulou’s big eyes hold a debiting stare, entering beneath the advancing ceiling—passed the spotlight fixtures high on the wall—and now slips under the ceiling mural, its stained-glass dim from its brightest kaleidoscopic efflorescence, as the skylight above lies in an autumn tempest, drawn into a blanket of clouds.

Victoria crosses the grand interleading crystal portal toward the kitchen enclave; alongside the sink, within the horseshoe branch, in the light of the splashback, she sets the carrycot on the worktop. She rolls Loulou through her hands, saying, “Loukje! We gaan je melkje klaarmaken—[We’re going to prepare your milk.]” and lays her, scooped, into the carrycot, then turns away, leaving her perched over the floor a few paces off, facing the wall cabinet flanking the chimney of the white marble fireplace.

From the bottle sterilizer, Victoria grabs a bottle, holds it to sight, reading the embossed measures; she pours a spout of water and returns the kettle to the back corner. Her hand reaches up behind the translucent cabinet door, lowering a tin of formula—finger snaps, peeling the foil seal—which she sets amid the bottle, the warmer’s green pilot light now stilled, and the empty percolator jug just left aside. She picks up the measuring spoon, scoops a dose of powdered milk, tips it in the tiny bottle; the teat cap screwed on, she shakes it, then tilt to let a drop fall from the teat onto the dorsal skin of her hand.

Loulou’s eyes grow heavy; Victoria takes the carrycot by its arching grip and, from the thinnest edge of the telescopic oak, lumbers along the widening bar-top blades. She emerges from the kitchen wrap, crosses the grand crystal portal, and places her at the head of the dining table. 

I leap—embarrassing myself—remaining watchful, and give a few tentative rocks, Cupid scooped in her rumpled red sleeper, as if idling the haphazard away. I did not explain precautionary measures to Victoria—I reason— ‘Nothing will happen.’ Convinced, our Cupid does not have the strength to wildly rock herself off.

Victoria sets down the little bottle, then reaches into the carrycot and lifts Loulou through her rumpled sleeper, laying her cradled in her arms. She prolongs the backrests, huddling around the table, and diverges from the far head, before the grand crystal portal a few paces to her antique chest of drawers, saying. “We gaan muziek hebben—[we’re going to have music.]” 

A fingernail - tick - flicks the compact disc’s tray sliding out the charcoal hi-fi tower. Single-handed, she flips the compact disc box case lid, unclips the disc and places it in the tray - tick, tick, tick - the tray slots; Enya and her orchestra thrill through the air. She turns back past the brown marble fireplace, leans over the table, picks up the little bottle, tilts a drop of milk onto the back of her hand, then brings the teat to Loulou’s soft, silky lips. As the little cheeks suckle—after a brief glimpse, her silky eyelids fall shut—Victoria draws the chair, and sits.

A little milk remaining, Victoria sets the bottle on the edge of the table, saying, “Loulou-kee. Heb je genoeg gehad—[have you had enough?]” She rises, Loulou rolling through her hands, the little head coming to rest on her shoulder, leaving the black Duco armrests behind as she paces away, rubbing and patting the little back. She strolls around the dining table, anticipating a burb, then lays her back in her carrycot.

I break away from mother and our Cupid, walk through the grand crystal portal into the streetfront yellow room with its yellow padded antiques. Around the V-stance of the bifold doors, I pull the slatted chair to sit behind my TravelMate laptop, bringing to task the “Winy” speculative project, the mansion’s classic complexity losing itself in the blueprints as it strains to make financial sense. Then it dawns on me—the changing day—and I break from a prolonged, hollow hush, rise, and follow my gaze through the enfilade of crystal portals—’where is everyone?’ 

In the soft glow of the study—its ceiling mural, the portal onto the backyard, the Brutalist art—the crib along the flank wall—I crank the lever, pulling the door to the nighthall and following the starry speckled black granite slabs, searching for signs of life. I slip offside into the light, past the stained-glass panel door, into the pools of the spotlighted marble-veining white-tiled bathroom. 

My gaze soars up Victoria’s figure before the white chest of drawers in the cutoff corner, pilot spotlights waking in the recessed head of the niched panes—the stained-glass portrait, still fluorescent from the kitchen—spilling onto the changing tray, where she undresses her baby’s red bodysuit and diaper.

I pause along the wash-hand-basin, integrated starry white granite vanity cabinet slab—brilliant like a baby’s castle ought to be. Victoria lifts her quiet baby and turns toward the standing out blue plastic baby bath set on the wide ledge between the bath and the suspended toilet bowl, its plumbing concealed. She dips her baby into the water—she shrieks in her silence, wiggling, cringing—whether at the water or the recline in her mother’s hands. After a few trials, it gives Victoria pause.

After a few attempts, her baby’s fright unmistakable, Victoria cries out, “Daddy! Entre et emmène-la avec toi—[Get in there and take her with you!]”

My hands fly—I peel my shirt, step out of my pants, and briefs—the corner mirrors watching me above the quarter-round bathtub. I step over the brim onto the ledge and descend into the water, As I settle, Victoria hands me her baby. I roll her through my hands, my fingertips basket her head—her rubbery body hanging by the armpits in my purlicues, feet dipping—without a squinch, lowering takes the water. 

Cupping her little body in my hand, Victoria hands me the yellow flask. I press the plastic—a creamy streak pooling in my hand—to lather her little body, then rinse her clean. I hand her back to her mother, who wraps her in a towel and turns away to lay her on the changing tray, dressing her in a bodysuit, pressing the row of snaps down to the crotch of her legs, before lifting her again.

I step out, toweling myself, thread my feet into briefs, slip into my shirt, then my pants, tucking the tail, give a final pull of the belt, zip my fly, and pull on my socks. Finger-horning my shoes, I step into the night hall, veering toward the study. Behind the door, I catch up with Victoria, a trace of her and her brother Jephte's flea-market ramblings; she lifts her baby, tiptoeing before the crib on stilts, her arms just long enough to lay the newborn beneath the covers she had left drawn, leaving a tiny presence—the little head lost in the large crib.

When Victoria stormed through the door—“I’ve got a crib for…”—pointing at her bloated belly. She led me outside across the avenue to the tailgate of her blue Fiat Panda. The back window revealed, to my dismay, a rusted, bulky cage. Victoria, so excited, I couldn’t ask—‘What are you going to do with that scrap metal?’ She hovered, in her condition—hands half-commited—looking on as I worked the welded reinforcing bars of a construction-site frame: a cage on stilts, its sides wrapped in screen, reminding me of a medieval combatant’s gear. I found my grip beneath its side, wiggling it free from the hatchback, Victoria’s hands reaching for the far end—seduced by its historic beauty, my wits consumed. 

As I leave the park’s wooded hedge, Victoria tailing behind, the rusted cage between us, we cross the deserted avenue—I’m ready to abandon the beast on the sidewalk—but that isn’t an option for Victoria, her baby-bound enthusiasm I dare not break. We carry it over the doorstep, through the vestibule, up the stairs to the split-level landing and through the grand portal, avoid to knock the jambs as we angle it through, hooking around the side door into the Belle Époque apartment, where it stands—hideous, rusted—in the spotlights. 

Around the crystal mosaic screen to my laptop, I turned the V-bifold doors and sat. Rifling through the Yellow Pages, I found the firm and dared not question the phenomenal eight thousand Belgian francs, feeling the fool of my request. 

Victoria helped carry the rusted cage to the Audi’s trunk. I pulled the lid down, tied a rope through the trunk latch, threaded it beneath the bumper through the eye of the rescue hook and knotted it before the gaping trunk. I drove off to the industrial zone to drop the cage at the factory, making myself the laughingstock, and returned home. 

Days ran into weeks, like a lost cause. Then during the following month, the - ring… - broke the hush in the corner of the lounge. I answered the phone, my ego relieved. No longer an abandoned cause, I headed out to the sandblast workshop. A man loads the white enamel vintage crib; I asked for string, he returned, I tied the trunk lid, thanked him, and drove back home—another step in life. 

Philipe D’Horane and Zoe—herself pregnant, giving birth within a month after Victoria—return to me now, as if part of the same weave: the couple who had stunned me in Hell’s Angels black leather jackets when they came to see the basement apartment—never thinking they were serious buyers. Then he had a tailor-made miniature box-bed base and mattress delivered—from the factory. 

The next day after homecoming, Helios peeks with an ardent curiosity, yellowing a glow from the walls. Victoria backtracks from the antique sofa before the striated yellow and apple-green drapes tied back from the canary-yellow ceiling, while the French doors picture the park. In the mirage, she spreads a rug over the yellow pine floorboards, and lays Loulou on her tummy. Victoria watches, riveted—eyes sparkling with joy—as her baby’s head pushes up—quivering with the force her little mind exerts against neck muscles that relapse, then regain their lift. Then Loulou is whisked away for her nap.

In the afternoon, as the sun crosses its arc over the ridge of the roof, its rays stroke the skylight, fluorescing a kaleidoscopic ceiling mural. A little head awakes in her crib—in the shadow of her parents—Loulou struggling to lift her face from the bedsheet, yet casting inquisitive eyes behind, instinctively reaching out for attention, her effort perturbed by the pull of gravitation. Her head wobbles, holds. Victoria’s hands reach out, lifting her, cradling her away for an afternoon bottle, then laying her in the carrycot.  

Then, as the morning rises in the shadows of skies, the sun glows at the street-front French doors. In her cot she lies on her tummy, spread arms—as her brain’s hybrid perceptual interface—Aetheria: ‘Your volition made it this far. You can make it.’ Subsisting there, her squinting eyeballs roll loose, tracking her mother’s voice out there—like Helios’ distant voice not yet overhead—out of sight up behind her, saying. “Loulou-kee. Je heft je hoofd op. You’re raising your head.” 

Clouds roll after a few bi-weekly shifts in the micro-season. Off the head of the table, Victoria dives her hands into the carrycot, with a flourish lifting Loulou free; passing the Bergère chairs—like pets couchant on either side of the V-bifold doors to the yellow lounge—she turns her back to Jephte’s white box couch against the flank wainscot, before the white marble fireplace. In the middle of the room, she lowers her little girl to the blanket, laying her on her tummy, then steps back to sit on Jephte’s couch.

Zoe arrives—like mothers converging at the whoosh of a door. She brings her own boy alongside and lays him down. The mothers scissor their legs, settling cross-legged, watching—a Virgo girl and a Libra boy—their babies meeting in a quiet, unspoken accord. When they tire, the mothers sense it—the initiation over—they sweep their infants away. In a few words, they part; Zoe disappears behind - whoosh - the door shuts, fading from my mind down the flight of stairs to the downstairs apartment—for a feed and a nap, just like Loulou.

Then through the beveled small pane of the V-bifold beside me, fractured into mosaic, from the shadow of the distant nighthall door cracking open, I catch her eyes—like suns—already fixing mine, mischievous—an oment—bringing Victoria in the soft glow by the skylight, drawn through the interleading crystal portal into the twilight. She approaches in a coquette Irish stepdance, emerging from the kitchen wrap, passing the dressed table huddled by the black Duco backrests—like guests for lunch. 

She disappears into the blind spot behind me, slips up at my side with a glance that doesn’t distract, and places Loulou in her carrycot by my left foot at my laptop bureau—silky eyelids shut—’she’s not going to be a problem,’ slips through my mind. Then, in stealth, Victoria slips away behind me. I catch her flight across the crystal mosaic, her trailing words sinking: “I have to go!”

The hush of the blind corner breaks - clunk, whoosh... - the door opening. A beat passes. Then the resounding shut - whoosh... thwock, clung - my mind wailing the alarm. ‘I should be gone.’ 

The grand mansion at 208 Winston Churchill Avenue dawns on me with a thump of the heart. I remind myself—‘You have to be gone!’ I unshackle my wrist from the laptop as panic sets in—missing my last chance to rid myself of the monster after being shackled to it for two years. I swivel—my knees, my feet—and stumble on my Cupid, profoundly asleep in her carrycot. A surge of anger rises—’Sunshine… I can’t leave you behind?’

The avenue beneath the French doors murmurs with traffic as I search for my bearings, lagging behind Victoria’s evanescent steps. I drop a glance at my little Cupid, my eyes fixing on her. ‘Sunshine… what am I going to do with you?’

My heart melts, my eyes wet: ‘Where I go, you go!’ I grab the carrycot’s white arching grip, swiping her off the floor. My feet quicken, carrying me away. ‘Sunshine—they’ll have to accept us as we are!’

The doors out to the street follow their language; at the Audi’s passenger side, I pick the lock and pull it open. I set my Cupid’s carrycot back-to-front, threading the seatbelt through the integrated slots and buckling it. I step back - smack - through the passenger window, checking—again—keeping her in sight—hazards—her seat under my watch in the Audi’s peripheral glass. In one sweep, I slip into the driver’s seat and tweak the ignition key. The engine purrs; I catch a glimpse of those telling silky eyelids—her eyeballs without a nervous quiver—under Aetherial's watch. I spin the steering wheel and pull out, spooling past the parked cars uphill into the bending avenue, away through the shade of the park’s old branches.

Along the route, much travelled with the “Winy” project under study, I break a thought. ‘Sunshine… I don’t know how we will be received?’ I relay the secretary’s directions over the phone. On home ground, through the leafy barrel-vault along Winston Churchill, past the mansion. ‘Sunshine… a while ago Mommy carried you through that mansion, but you were indifferent—sleeping in your carrycot.’ The avenue ends; straight across Waterloo Road, we duck into the woods of Bois de la Cambre, alert, keeping a mental compass as I follow directions through the winding road. 

On the edge of desperation, I recall following up with the real estate agent I picked from the Yellow Pages, laying out the extent of the property. He fades in—then out again—the realtor who called the following midweek and passed me Sayed Chalouhi’s phone number, as a sight. ‘You handle the sale transaction.’ He wipes off his hands—an emotional spur, an omen—the Yellow Page without a circle, notes without scribble, his name effaced from memories.

With a surge of hope, grateful to the ghostly realtor, my fingers gripped the handset off the fax machine’s hook. I tapped the keypad, leaning over my laptop on the bureau’s top shelf. A young woman’s voice answered, diplomatic: “Sucotrade—may I help you?” I said, “Puis-je parler à Sayed Chalouhi—may I speak…” After a pause, a man’s voice broke through. I referred to the realtor contact, repeated the mansion’s credentials, and he set a mid-morning meeting. Chalouhi broke off. After a suspended line—too brief to trigger concern—his secretary returned, explaining the route to follow.

As I drive, losing my bearings through the woodland’s winding roads, I come onto a straight cobblestone stretch—a frontier—where looming villas awaken on the opposite side, stretching without reference. Recalling the secretary’s words, doubt sets in my trail—until, through the wooded side, a clearance opens onto vacant horse-racing stands; beyond them, a villagey outskirt intersection. 

Motionless in rearview mirrors, I double my glances left and right, hesitant to cross the wide street. I crawl forward, tires pattering over the median’s embedded silver tram tracks. Short of the crotch where the apartment block slithers to lawns and shrubs, a lopsided sign reads, Bois Fort, echoing the secretary’s words. I glimpse at my wristwatch. On the downslope, I hurry, scanning for the next clues amid cars lining the curbs and an elite row of contemporary individual architectures off the sidewalks. Across from my Cupid—her eyelids shut—a nook flashes ‘184’ at the sentinel of a door.

At a glance at my wristwatch, I crawl the corner, edging through chock-o-block cars in the close. With a stroke of luck, a crack opens—a gap. With gear shifts and a back-and-forth wheel, I stall the car. I jump out into the street, step around the trunk, grip the door, unbuckle my Cupid’s carrycot, and swipe the arching grip - smack - I stride at winning time. Along the perpendicular, a face of fresh red brickwork holds the corner; across, it stands like a police officer—the missing piece—by the planted nameplate ‘Forest,’ from home in Forest to land in the street.

Around the corner, a few strides, the wall opens onto one shrub and greenery; short of a paved path leading into a courtyard, I pause—Ill at ease—at a service door. A wall plaque reads “Sucotrade.” I pressed the call button.

A young woman’s voice inquires over the intercom. I say, “I’m here to meet Sayed Chalouhi.” The door unlatches, and as the leaf hinges back, a clinical barrel opens—void of an elevator—mounting a claustrophobic suffocation, a narrow crack of spiraling treads rising on the sly. I climb around a persistent blind corner, straightening out to ankles in black high heels on a gleaming surface—resolving into an elegant pair of legs in black stockings, to a young woman’s black skirt. She approaches, pausing, emerging from the right of a pair of office doors to welcome me. I step over the last few risers, introducing Cupid half in jest—“Sorry—I just couldn’t abandon her at home.”

Jovial, in a hushed, dance-like swirl, she extends her invitation—black locks waving over her shoulders—as she ushers me across the hall toward the left office. In staccato steps through the doorway, I pause; she prolongs the edge of an executive desk toward the rear wall, coming to a presenter’s stance beside a hefty fiftyish man seated in a tailored dark suit, where she freezes.

In the sillage of the Lebanese bank investor, the man rises and approaches by the contour of his desk, cutting off the cadet woman in the corner—she backsteps toward the room’s corner. As he advances along its edge, she slips from behind him in a light, jollying step. In that passing cadence, it snaps at my hand—her swipe met by my reflex tug, the carrycot between us—I barely register her gesture, reading her spearing eyes untangle it ‘I’ll look after the baby’—and I let go. My freed hand extends into a handshake. “Sayed Chalouhi.” My mind splits. Without a qualm, the young woman has vanished around the doorjamb; I reason her disappearance with my Cupid as a nurse with good intentions.

Sayed Chalouhi returns to his vacated executive chair, inviting me to join him in the visitor’s seat, the settling dawns into a poker table. I explained the characteristics of the property, answering only what he asked. I hold two trump cards—one clear: ‘The first man to talk is the loser!’

I play it fair. “Trente-huit millions—[Thirty-eight million francs.]” To my surprise, without a quibble—like a Lebanese mafiosi—Sayed Chalouhi accepts the asking price.

Driven by a legal obligation, after saying. “Il y a de la mérule dans les écuries—[There is dry rot in the stables.]” I hand across the desk a myco-survey report, and three firms’ quotations. “On peut déduire cette somme du prix—[The sum may be deducted from the price.]”

Together, Chalouhi and I rise from our seats. He steps to the side of his desk for a handshake, as I contain my flipping mind. I turn away, rushing my escape, pacing out of the office—’fait accompli.’ At the ajar, adjoining door, I find my Cupid—my heart sink—discarded in her carrycot among the legs of visitors' chairs, tucked by the desk’s skirt, blinder to the secretary’s view. 

I step into an ill-equipped nursery, gripping the carrycot with my sleeping Cupid. I glance at a teasing beauty, immersed in papers, leaving her with a thought—‘Didn’t my Sunshine warm your heart?’ So detached that, in silence, I head away, across the hall, descending the spiral stairs, through the barrel entrance hall, emerging into the street. I walk on, my Cupid’s silky eyelids shut, around the red brick house, hearing a voice echoing in my head: ‘We have money to whitewash—the price doesn’t matter.’ The Audi waits. I open the door, strap the carrycot into the passenger seat - smack - and head off, a weight drained, on a leisure drive home with my Sunshine.