So what if you catch me,
Where would we land?
In somebody's life
Forsaking his hands.
Sing to me hope as she's
Thrown on the sand.
--Remy Zero, "Fair"
When they arrive at the same time, he blames it on coincidence and she blames it on fate—differences that are hardly significant. They are both, oddly, on foot. She is happy because it saves her from searching the café or asking if the wait staff has seen a "bitter old cripple" and it saves him from leaving. He never asks for help.
He doesn't look at her, except for a tilt of his head in her direction. She follows him into the building and they sit down at a table at the side of the café. An unobtrusive waitress takes their order (there is really no order to be taken—coffee, they both request.)
The coffee arrives in the midst of their silence and it's only the pouring of milk and clinking of spoons in sugar that interrupts their quiet.
"So, tell me," he motions to her as he drinks his coffee extra slow, "about the end to this corny picture show."
She smiles benignly through creamer and milk with a reply that resembles oft thought of mortality and death and all the other morbid things.
"We die and fertilize. Oh, did you mean before that?"
The bitter end; he shakes his head. This is always how it ends.
"I don't know why I'm here," he resists ending it with dear. The coffee's bitter taste reflects the effervescent sparkle of her face. Black reflecting light—ironies are sure to abound.
"Yes you do. You can't have Stacy and my husband's dead so we settle for what we can get. I can get you and you can get me, so let's have sex…we both want to be happy."
She speaks the truth, that he does know, but how can he tell her that this frail defensiveness is a pent-up mess of emotions—and one day when they go away he'll be nothing. Nothing for her to fix or love…nothing for her to mend or to break. At this time, his eyes tell her all the secrets she wants to know, but she's staring into her bleak coffee cup.
The screeching of the phone interrupts this accidental farce. Someone answers, someone frowns, oh, how the world goes 'round. He imagines her with phone to ear…beauty and the beast (except this time he's not the beast…he's flesh and blood and human…just human…)
"You fear," she taps her fingers on the table and he awaits her psychological diagnosis with two grains of salt pinched between his fingers and two eyebrows quirked in knowing admiration.
"You fear humanity, mortality, and insanity," she taps again and takes a sip—a salute, a send-off, a snubbing movement.
"No wonder you're a terrible diagnostician. You spend too much time dabbling in psychology."
He's told this one-laugh joke twice too many times and he's come to this two-horse town bearing three horses too many. He underestimates her power and control and she overestimates his sarcasm and wit.
"We're two lost souls swimmin' in a fish bowl."
"Stop quoting long-gone rock bands. You don't believe in God but you believe in me. Care to explain?"
She sticks a long, practiced finger into her black coffee and brings it up to her mouth where she licks it off delicately. She looks hurt when he frowns, so she answers his question with a bit too much hesitation. It's somewhere between a pregnant pause and an uncomfortable uncertainty.
"You're real. God's not."
"Your husband died. He was real."
"And I worship him because he's a saint. I worship you because you make sense."
He drops the silver spoon on the floor and waits patiently for the waitress to implore about the thing's condition—his response: 'oh, it's very poor.'
"I make sense," he makes no move to the floor. Just her face shaking up and down—agreeing to a statement that he is about to explain is wrong.
"I don't make sense," he downs the coffee in one fell swoop—and it's not the only thing that's downed; her ship of hope has just run aground.
She sticks out her foot and he can feel it graze his leg (it's a whisper of dead cells on dying ones...only they can hear). She drags the spoon back to her hand, picks it up, and delicately sets it back down in front of him. She takes her own coffee and downs it just as quickly.
"So, this is your Kryptonite," she muses aloud and he for the first time during the conversation has no idea what she means because green rocks are irrelevant as far as he sees.
"What is my Kryptonite? Fallen spoons and sappy women? I don't love you; Wilson wasn't home."
"Your Kryptonite is the finite difference between wrong and right."
He doesn't understand her, but that's another matter for a more meaningful time. He takes his napkin; he takes his time. She smiles since she knows he feels cornered.
"Why do you think men enjoy torture?"
"I don't. I simply need bring my self down to your level so we'll know exactly where we each stand."
She lets her chin rest on her left hand while her right hand grasps her left arm's forearm. Her eyes dance and her mouth winks.
"And where exactly do you stand?"
His lips curl into a memorized sneer of top teeth and lower lip. She smiles placidly with an air of complacency.
"Somewhere between true love and desperate adoration."
He almost chokes on his salvia, but covers his momentary weakness with a derisive snort.
"True love is not found is New Age cafes replete with bitter old men and starry-eyed women. True love is a pile of festering shit that both of us have already experienced and want so desperately again. True love—pfft."
She flags the waitress and requests another coffee—half and half. She considers the statement with a fading smile and when the coffee arrives back again she removes from a hidden pocket an unmarked pill bottle. She removes the cap and out comes amber gold to fill the cup.
"When you said half and half I thought you met half regular and half decaf. Not half coffee and hard liquor."
She laughs fully and brilliantly. It's not grating like a phone's shrill brrring or sweet like a practiced debutante. It's pure, elegant, and real.
"This—this isn't liquor. Sorry I can't let you borrow any. It's honey," she smiles and puts the cup to her lips.
"You put honey in your coffee? I thought that was honey was exclusive to tea. Excuse me if my British customs seem to be dated. Where's Chase when you need him?"
She almost passes hot coffee through her nose, but is able to swallow the liquid before responding to his question.
"Yes, I do. And Chase is Australian. Not British. For all your supposed brilliance, I can't fathom how you fail to see the difference between British and Australian. I mean, haven't you ever heard him say 'the dingo ate it?'"
He smirks and watches as she lowers her mug back to the table to rest it on the napkin.
"No, I don't believe I have."
"Well, I haven't either. But that's beside the point. He's Australian."
She cleans her coffee-stained spoon off with her napkin and puts it into the sugar bowl. She removes it with a little tower of sugar on the spoon and moves it to her coffee. Right before she dumps it in, he speaks.
"Your first proper diagnosis in a long time. Good job, Dr. Cameron."
He startles her with the praise and an unintentionally large amount of sugar lands next to her coffee cup, rather than in it. He always makes her nervous when he praises her. And she always makes him nervous.
"Why do you still want her? What did she ever do for you?"
The question involves a nameless 'her' but it makes him flinch in surprise and consternation. He expects harsh question but not about this touchy subject.
"She's pretty, feisty, and intelligent. There is nothing more to ask for in a woman."
"Was she good in bed?"
It's his turn to choke on his coffee and she remembers conversations past with Chase about sex and sweaty human instinct.
"The best. But it's only fair to turn this question right back to you. Living with a lawyer, you learn many things. Cross-examinations are most prominent. What was he like in bed?"
They refer to their exes (dead and living) in pronouns and blurry terms. Hazy language makes them disappear.
"Fantastic."
"You married a dying man for the 'fantastic' sex. Even more superficial than I imagined."
Coffee-bean breath emits from her mouth, flying its way to meet his nose. Her grasp on her coffee cup grows and grows—the exertion might shatter it into pieces, like delicate bone.
"You're wrong."
"I'm right."
She glares and feels hatred swelling in her veins. But that's important. Hatred and love—passion and fire. Indifference is the worst feeling one can possess towards another human being. Feeling is essential.
"So you always have to be right? Damn you."
"Usually I get a thank-you considering my work requires me to hobble onto the right answer. Oh, hobbles not a good word. Makes you feel really bad for me. What's the word…?"
"Pity, I think you're grabbing for."
He scrapes his finger along the edge of the table and thinks of her nails dragging on his back leaving marks of irrefutable sin. Comfortable conversation beckons, but caution's never on his mind for more than a few inconsequential seconds.
"Ah, pity. The word itself is ugly and absurd. Wouldn't you concur?"
He figures she'll agree with anything that he places (dangles) in front of her face. But she leans in, hands folded, shrink's empty gaze remains plastered on her mug. Oh, what is to come?
"It's a pretty word that you detest. But you do hate pretty things. Do you find them too perfect? Shall I draw a jagged scar right through my cheek? Will imperfection suit you better then?"
Her voice is malice, pure and sweet. It drips like her honey into non-existent tea (but rather coffee, its odd American variation.)
So he grasps his cane and taps in time to the passing seconds and two-bit rhyme. Tap, tap, tap. He wants to drive her insane because she thinks he fears insanity when all he really fears is love. (How can a man who experiences death fear mortality? And humanity's just an excuse for this pathetic existence.)
"Remove yourself from your existential observations. Put yourself in my situation."
She leans back. This is a duel with shades of Burr and Hamilton. Will she shoot or will she fudge? Will he bluff or will he aim? Death and pity become one and the same.
"You walk with a limp. And you think your battered heart makes you a…wimp. So you hid behind every sarcastic quip and witty trip hoping to find solace in facades that provide no shade from scalding damnation."
He stops tapping; she leans in to him. He steeples his fingers. 'This is church. This is a steeple. Open the doors and see all the people.'
"Life's a play and we're all in disarray because curves are thrown and we realize something we've always known."
She smirks.
"What's would that be?"
"That this matters little and tomorrow it'll matter none."
"I beg to differ."
"As do I."
She can't look at his eyes because he can beguile her with a glance. Hold her heart with a simple breath. She lacks control and he watches her crumble into broken pieces of stone.
"This isn't life," she murmurs.
"Then what is this?"
"What we're living? This isn't life. What we're living is a poor attempt to hold up our end of the bargain."
"I thought you were an atheist."
"Aren't we all?"
"Deep musings on religion? It's too early to make these incisions."
She swirls the end of her fork in her coffee, mixing sugar and sour milk to make a brown mixture that will be no more affective in advancing the cause of the world than Bell's misguided, money-making scam.
"Shall we do politics instead? I've always had a passion for incredibly stupid men."
His hands fall to his stomach; something's growling, something's gnawing.
"You haven't always been an atheist. You're too much of a caring Christian/Baptist/Methodist. Was it standing by his grave? Did that make you lose the faith?"
Her head falls to her hands and his refuse to move. Is this the sacrifice we make for conversation and loving moments of information?
But her head pops back quickly. She regains her balance.
"When did you lose faith in the human race? When she used her proxy to insure you a decent life free from a leg brace?"
Her remark dribbles from her lips and lands into his empty coffee cup with a noticeable ping. But neither notice for both are wrapped up in the accusation of the other. It's a chess match of wit. She's no Stacy, but she certainly holds up her end of this twisted bargain.
"Rove can certainly tell a lie."
His hands remain seemingly placid on his chest while hers seek her cheek to fight an itch.
"Yes he can."
So, he knows they change the subject because death and betrayal are NOT GOOD BRUNCH conversations. Because as long as they live they'll still be jammed into the righteous mold formed from good upbringings in Christian homes.
"I've never asked and I never will again, but are you a bleeding heart liberal or a compassionate conservative?"
His hands come up to rest on the table as he assumes the position of the shrink.
"There's a difference?"
"So we're told."
"Everybody lies," she murmurs as her arms cross on her chest and she leans back in her chair to contemplate his face.
"My line."
"Who's on first?"
"I thought sports metaphors were above your head. And certainly Abbot and Costello are before your time."
"Yours too, you Neanderthalian man."
"Damn it. I thought you'd go back farther than that. I was hoping for something like…Adam."
She leans in now, so this is now an intimate conversation between two opposing forces. Positive and negative. Cat and dog. Wrong and right.
"Religion escapes me."
"We're not right."
"And we're not wrong."
"Too hot, too cold, just right. Where's the happy medium to all of this drabble, Cameron?"
"Somewhere that doesn't involve us drinking bad coffee."
"And dabbling in politics and religion."
"We don't have common ground."
"Except for medicine and eternal condemnation."
"I'd like to think there is no afterlife."
"And miss the wild after parties?"
She reaches out and touches his nose, and unusually tender gesture. He recoils sharply, as does she, for she realizes her mistake and cannot cover quickly enough. So he spares her the indignity and signals the waitress. The check appears and Cameron hands it to him.
"You're new name is Adam and I'll be Eve. We can play charades for the day. Tomorrow'll be here tomorrow and we'll resume the roles we left. But for now, let's change this play."
He reaches into his pocket to produce a twenty. He slaps it on the table on top of the paper check. His fingers dance Beethoven's ninth on Jackson's elegant face.
"I was thinking more Bonnie and Clyde. Rhett and Scarlett."
She shoots him a glance under flirting eyelashes.
"Adam and Eve sound good to me."
He shrugs and stands and she takes his empty, cane-less hand. It is during times like this that he wishes he had two crutches, but he doesn't let go because the last human contact was Stacy's lip to his stubbled-cheek. His normally fast-paced, walk-limp is being hampered by Cameron's…Eve's…cling. He drops her hand to go through the doorway…
They exit.