A waitress watches an old woman in her cafe and wonders who she is.
One shot.
I own nothing - I just play here.
Madame Bijoux
They call her Madame Bijoux. The lady with the jewels. She always sits alone at the same table. No one knows her name, and no one has ever seen fit to ask her. We all just serve her and she'll smile gently, and say "Thank you," with a refined but implacable accent. She would have been beautiful once, not that she isn't now, but the years have faded her. The lines around her mouth and crow's feet around her eyes speak of something terrible. The reason she came to be sitting here in this café on a border moon such as this one.
Her hair, which we've guessed was once dark by looking at her eyes, is still elaborately styled but its grey now, and falls to her shoulders.
She wears beautiful silk gowns that swallow up her slim frame. Once they must have fitted and clung to every curve of her. Her jewellery is all expensive but old fashioned, from when she was a younger woman. She must have been stunning.
She only ever drinks tea out of real china teacups, or sugar pink cocktails from tiny glasses. And she drinks so elegantly. No matter what else has happened to this woman she has never lost her manners.
Of course there are rumours about her. They say she is from Sihnon. One of the Core Worlds. They say she was a Companion. She certainly has the bearing of one. The rumours go that she entertained the cream of Alliance society. Could have been a house priestess, should have been, instead of sitting here.
They say she's been waiting since the start of the Second War of Independence for a man who ran off to war, to the glory. That was some twenty years ago but the rustlings of war went on long before that. Way before I was even born.
They say she has seen reavers. That made us all shudder when one of the cooks told us when we locked up. The next day I stared at her, trying to figure out if it was true. How can this elegant woman have seen reavers, real live reavers up close and survived to sit in this café?
Someone once said she was on Miranda when that broadcast was made, the one that nearly brought down a government. That she ran with the crew of the man who is now one of the top generals in the Independents army. I can't see it somehow.
The reasons she came to be here are probably far more mundane than any of that.
She used to get letters, and she would open them at her table. Sometimes they made her cry. Never dramatically, just silent tears running down her face as she read and reread the words on the paper. They used to come about once a fortnight. To start with on stiff cream paper then later on they became rougher, dirtier. Like most things as the war rolled onwards. We wondered if they came from a soldier. her husband? Her lover? Her son?
Then they stopped coming. We didn't really notice when exactly, except that she stopped having them to read. But she still comes to sit in the café from mid afternoon until we close up everyday and stares out of the window lost in her thoughts.
So the day a man comes to the café and walks straight to her table stuns us all.
He is a big man. He shadows the entire room. In his youth he must have been deadly. His hair is cropped short and a grey speckled beard frames his mouth. He is physically maybe eight years older than her, but somehow he seems younger, stronger, more alive somehow. On his hip is a wicked looking black pistol, and I'd bet anything there are other guns about his person. He wears dark grey scruffy trousers with black boots that have seen much better days. His shirt is black beneath the beat up khaki jacket. I spy what looks like a security force patch peeling off one sleeve and on the back, on the bottom hem, an alliance patrol patch. I've only seen them on troops, and Special Forces at that. On the right breast is a metal military badge.
He marches up to her table his back straight and stares at her. She looks up.
"Jayne," she breathes, a look of astonishment on her face. "Jayne Cobb."
He smiles. "Hello Inara. May I?" he asks gesturing to the other, always unused chair.
She nods. "Please."
I set down her teacup. "Anything you'd like sir?"
He looks at me with a leering grin. "Your best whisky. Double, if you can manage it darlin'."
It's only five in the afternoon.
We waitresses gather behind the counter and whisper between customers. We all strain to hear the conversation. One girl is convinced that the man is her long lost lover, but the rest of us can't see it. He seems too rough, too harsh for her mannered ways. They lean towards each other deep in conversation. She grabs his hands across the table, but it isn't a romantic gesture. She bows her head and starts to cry. He looks awkward and pats the back of her wrist.
The barman puts the whisky on my tray. I walk over slowly not wanting to intrude. I set the glass on the table and nod silently to the man. He nods back, a grim smile on his face. As I walk away I hear snatches of the conversation.
"He stopped writing because he got himself dead Inara. He got stupid."
"Why Jayne?"
"Because Reynolds cost him his wife and sister! He cost me my girl, and he barely even noticed." the man snaps roughly. "He don't care about us! He cares about his cause. Tam got reckless an' went an' joined up! What did he know about fightin'? Shoulda stayed out of it. We all should! We should never have got involved Inara." The man downs the whisky in one gulp, and grimaces at the empty glass.
She delicately wipes away the tears from her face and stares at him, eyes unreadable.
The man stands up, shoving his chair back with a screech on the tiled floor. "He ain't coming Inara. He ain't coming for any of us. We're too old for Malcolm Reynolds – we ain't gonna be his cannon fodder."
She gapes at the bitterness in this old man's voice.
He continues. "He ain't coming for you anymore than he's lookin' for me." He takes her hand and kisses the back of it. Not elegantly, but it's a gesture to her world. "Goodbye Inara," he says with finality.
She stands suddenly and hugs him with her thin arms. "Goodbye Jayne Cobb."
They smile at each other with the awkwardness of neither wanting to be the one who walks away. They know that they are unlikely to see each other ever again; you can see that from their faces. Finally the man nods to her and steps back. They smile at each other once more, painfully, and then he turns and walks to the door. She stares at his back for a minute until he is long gone, looking suddenly every one of her years. She sits slowly down in the chair then gestures for more tea to be brought. I scurry over with the teapot and place it on the table. She smiles at me as though the man was never there.
"Thank you dear," she says in her cultured voice before I walk away.
So there she sits, drinking her tea and staring out of the window of a border world café waiting for a man who'll never come. Madame Bijoux in her gowns and her jewels.