living for the story.

Elisha had mystique.

Mystique is a concept that I try to describe but fail to do it well, but it's a very vague thing. But I find that most people know what I'm talking about because most people know someone with mystique. And knowing someone with mystique is enough to know exactly what I'm talking about.

Mystique is a strictly feminine thing, I think. I only think that because I've never met a man who had it, and though I know that a lack of evidence is not evidence in itself, I still feel deep down that it's somehow tied to that extra 'X' chromosome.

You know those girls? The girls that everyone loves, the girls that other girls wish they could be, the girls that boys wish they could be with. When you think about it, they're not exceedingly attractive, or smart, or funny, but there's just something about them that makes them all of these things.

I don't have it. I've said that to every guy that I've ever discussed mystique with, and none of them have ever had the courtesy to disagree, which means it must be true. I'm okay with not having it. Alright, so I'm not at all okay with not having it, but I'm working on it.

But anyway, Elisha. Elisha had the amazing blessing of being beautiful, smart, and funny, and so really, she didn't need the mystique at all. But she had it all the same.

Elisha was a hostess at work, and she stood at the front at the hostess stand and made up games we could all play as we walked by with our trays in our hands. We played word games, we played games where we made up songs about coworkers, we played games where we wrote plays about the restaurant. Someone always dropped a cake in these plays.

She had a particular style, a half-hippie, half-thrift store, half-crazy old lady down the street. And though three-halves would be too much for anyone else, it somehow worked for Elisha. She wore ponytails that always left those hair bumps on the top of her head, the bumps that girls spend ten minutes every morning trying to get rid of, but that always looked good on her.

Elisha was so open, so completely open with everyone about her personal life, which bewildered me. The day after she broke up with her boyfriend, she told the long sad, rather intimate story to everyone. I think I teased her about it. I think it hurt her feelings. I still feel bad about it.

Elisha wanted to be a writer, and she brought her journal to work and wrote pages and pages on the days that she worked down in the wine cellar. She had even had a story published in a Chicken Soup book, I think it was the one made especially for the sister's soul. She taught a creative writing course for senior citizens, and she told us these funny stories about these elderly people treating little old her with all this reverence because she was the teacher.

Elisha came across as a little ditzy, because she unabashedly admitted to things that everyone did, and everyone knew that everyone did, but no one ever talked about. And you laughed at her, because she was so honest about it, and you laughed at yourself because you knew you were guilty, too.

Elisha dated boys for the story. She was living in a novel, and she was trying to collect enough odd characters to make the best-seller list. She told me about all these guys she had dated, and though the relationships had never gone anywhere, they made great stories.

After Elisha left several months ago, the restaurant wasn't the same. There weren't weird word lists written on the paper that listed the tables and what server had them. There wasn't a host that wore outfits that didn't go and yet did. There wasn't someone telling a long, drawn out, funny and embarrassing story that was so completely honest, so completely unembarrassed.

We talked about her all the time, how much we missed her goofy smile. We talked about how beautiful she was, how funny she was, how glad we were whenever she came in for a shift. One of the guys there, a fellow dork actually, said that he missed the fact that a gorgeous girl like Elisha would actually talk to a guy like him about books.

And I miss her. Because you can't help but miss those girls with mystique, even if you're one of those girls who doesn't have it, who envies the ones who do have it, who stands by and listens to her guys friends pine for the girls that do have it. Because to know Elisha is to love her, and I am no different, nor would I want to be.