Rara avis in terris (noun phrase): Latin for “a rare bird in the land,” used metaphorically to describe an extraordinary or unusual person or thing, the kind of phenomenon that doesn’t just defy expectation but detonates it. Someone or something so unique that they’re effectively a cosmic statistical error, like seeing a double rainbow while getting hit by lightning and winning the lottery all at once.
As mentioned supra, this phrase comes straight from Latin, baby, because antiquity had a flair for the dramatic. The phrase hearkens back to Juvenal’s Satires (6.165, for you grad students who actually like footnotes), where it was used to lament the improbability of finding a woman simultaneously beautiful, rich, faithful, and talented. Essentially, “rara avis in terris” became shorthand for spotting a unicorn in rush-hour-traffic. Over time, it expanded to mean any anomaly that made you stop, gawk, and question your place in the universe for a hot second. Yes, it’s pretentious. Yes, it’s amazing.
On of the more white trash denizens of Fecal Creek was Paulie “Numbers” Karpinski, who was known for punching above his weight in all areas of his life. Legend had it that he had won $150K in the lottery a dozen years ago, and had, since the moment he won, considered himself a professional gambler, and also “well-to-do,” even though his lottery winnings had been completely burned through years ago. It was all he could do to scrape a couple bucks together to buy half-a-dozen scratchers every Friday night. And this Friday night, just like the 50 previous Friday nights, Paulie didn’t win shit.
Nevertheless, Paulie still considered himself a professional gambler, and professional gamblers have an appreciation for odds. Which is why, when he stumbled into Le Seraphin, a new French bistro incongruously tethered to the edge of a Wal-Mart parking lot, he figured his luck could only go up.
Le Seraphim was absurd on principle. It had chandeliers decked out like Liberace’s fever dream. Waiters in suits that probably cost more than Paulie’s car flitted from table to table like tuxedoed dragonflies. The menu was one of those single-sheet masterpieces where the fonts did more heavy lifting than the food descriptions, except for the prices written in what might as well have been micro-aggressive hieroglyphics.
Paulie, being Paulie, didn’t care. He dumped his ass into the nearest chair and ordered the first thing he saw, a $175 steak tartare described as having been “massaged” to perfection.
But the highlight of the evening wasn’t the raw meat appetizer masquerading as culinary enlightenment. It was the woman three tables over, who Paulie swore – even while drunk and prone to hotboxing his own imagination – was some kind of divine mistake. Her hair was the color of every bad decision he’d made at sunset, and her body was what Botticelli would’ve dreamed up if he weren’t so distracted by goddamn seashells. She laughed like she’d invented oxygen. Her dress looked like something sewn directly onto her skin by a team of sacrilegious angels. She was, without question, a rara avis in terris, the rarest of rare birds in the landfill of mediocrity that was Paulie’s life.
Unfortunately, Paulie being Paulie meant his idea of “charming” involved a lot of slurred metaphors and overly familiar hand gestures. He sauntered toward her table with the grace of a hedgehog juggling chainsaws.
“Hey there,” he said, leaning in as if conspiratorial proximity would make him seem suave rather than mildly rabid. “Are you Google? ‘Cause you’ve got everything I’m searching for.”
Her smile froze, the way someone’s smile does when they’re mentally flipping coins between fight or flight. Without missing a beat, she turned to the towering French waiter by her side and said, in clipped, elegant syllables, “Jean-Luc, I believe this gentleman is lost. Would you kindly…redirect him?”
Paulie didn’t hear the rest because Jean-Luc had grabbed his elbow with the precision of someone who hadn’t just earned a tip tonight but had earned all the tips, forever. Paulie found himself rehomed curbside faster than you could say hors d’oeuvres.
He watched her through the window as she tossed back a glass of wine so red it looked like arterial punctuation. Paulie muttered something half-hearted about “class warfare” and called an Uber, deciding then and there that rare birds weren’t for him.
“Back to the bar on 7th,” he told the driver. And as he leaned back into the ripped leather seat, he decided that steak tartare tasted like chalk dipped in regret anyway.
N.P.: “Head Spin – Signals Mix” – Collide
