2. Conditioning
I want you to believe in life.
But I get this strangest feeling
that you've gone away.
"Jack." Her voice comes through as quiet, calm. It incites in him the very opposite – panic, worry.
He shoots up from his seat, walks to the door and pushes it shut.
"Kate? What's wrong? Are you okay?"
"Nothing. I'm fine." The tone doesn't change, neutral and composed. Breathing is even. Voice is casual.
She has done this enough for him to know, memorize the little things, the telltale signs when she was lying and when she was not. It doesn't make it any easier though, to know that she was.
"This the day, then, huh?" He takes his seat, physically bracing himself for what was to come.
"Yeah, it is," she says. He listens to her voice for anything that resembles doubt, a smidgen of hesitation maybe.
When he finds none, he slumps unto the chair in defeat but more so, in exhaustion.
He should say something now. He should, at least, try.
But what is there to say, when all manner of argument and bargaining has not and will not change her mind. He has tried before, poured his energy and emotion to every word, all to no avail. Quietly and painfully, he asks himself now if he would be willing to put himself through the same thing this time around. What pains him more is the fact that the thought even crossed his mind.
Maybe someday, it will get to the point where he can shrug it off, stow it away in that part of his mind, along with his ex-wife, father and alcohol. Maybe, after a couple of more months of clandestine meetings and partings, he would finally be as detached and nonchalant as she has been about it.
"Were the pancakes that bad?" See, he can be detached.
"Yeah, they were actually," she catches on to the reference, "but the sight of you getting all domestic on me was what really set it off."
She finishes with a sad sort of smile, knowing her tease was not without a hint of truth. She is a nomad, whose existence depended on mobility, impermanence. And she doesn't quite know what to do, now that he was beginning to feel like what she imagines others would call home.
"I take it I don't look cute in an apron, then."
His self-blame is prevalent and so all-consuming, that it is evident even when he jokes. It chips away a fragment of her heart, already made loose and worn out by guilt, to see him this way. But she can't cry here. No, no, she can't. Not out here, in a phone booth, where she'll be an all too easy target for nosy bystanders.
"Oh no, sweetie," she steels herself, but her voice cracks, nonetheless, sadness flooding the gaps, "you do, you do. That's why I have to go."
"I have to go, Jack."
"I have to go."
"You take care of yourself, okay?"
"You know I will."
"I love you." She doesn't mean it to be so, but it comes out as a plea, an appeal.
The words, side by side with circumstances, present to his rational mind a contradiction. It gives him pause, unable to reconcile it with what is happening and what he feels.
He has heard her say it before, on those few and rare occasions when the illusion of a future blotted out the reality of the past and present. The words have inspired a range of emotions in him and even introduced new ones. But never - never - have those words stir in him anger.
As if in reaction to an invisible slap in the face, his eyes begin to cloud and tear. His free hand runs through his hair in a manic manner, over and over. What was he thinking, letting this…arrangement go on for this long.
There has been a knife buried in his gut and it was his hand on the handle, twisting and jerking it all along. It has taken him all this time to find in himself the ability to take it out.
"You know that, right?"
Perhaps he will survive, with nothing more than a stitch to show for it.
"Jack?"
Perhaps he will bleed to death.
"It's hard to be sure of anything anymore, Kate."
Perhaps.
There might have been a pause longer than she'd expected, because in that second her panic swelled and her pulse jumped, thinking that those might be the last words she were to ever hear from him.
It may have been better if that were the case. For his next words, bare but carefully chosen, effectively crushed her as no alternative ever could.
"But I choose to believe you."
"I believe you."
She puts her hand over the receiver so he wouldn't hear. The sobs that instantaneously burst out of her, the wick lit in her heart and his words exploding in her chest.
"Kate? Are you still there?" he asks.
"Kate?"
"Kate?"
"Kate?"
"Huh? What?," she's nudged awake and she has to blink away the memory. Or was it a daydream.
"Kate? That is your name, isn't it?"
"Yeah, yeah, it is."
"I'm Andrea. Call me Andy."
The blonde woman extends her hand.
"I'm your new cellie."