I admit it, I’m bein’ a complete pig. There’s only a few slices left of the two pies and Shi only had three. I ate the rest. And I’m not gonna be a bit surprised if I’m up in the middle of the night finishing the leftovers. Cold.
“Go on, stuff it in,” Shi teases me, edging the plate with the leftovers on it nearer to me. “Waste not, want not.”
“No frickin’ way,” I tell her. She just laughs at me and gets up to wrap up the plate.
“I’ll bet there won’t be a crumb left in the morning,” she says, just as if she knew what was on my mind. That makes me feel funny, but in a good way.
“And you’d probably win.”
“Would you like a little coffee? Some espresso again?” she offers.
“That’d be great.”
She sets up the machine to make those tiny cups of that bitter stuff and I hear her humming under her breath. I listen for that hum now. It means that she’s really into what she’s doin’. I light a cigarette and wait for my espresso while Shi cleans up. For some reason, it looks wrong to me tonight, her scrubbin’ the pans and loadin’ the dishwasher. Doesn’t fit into the pictures in my head.
“You’re very quiet tonight,” Shi tells me. I was lost in my head. Again. Didn’t notice her sit down. Didn’t notice anything, while I was tryin’ so hard to notice everything. And I am quiet tonight, and I don’t know why.
“It’s cool,” I say. It is. I don’t feel bad; I don’t feel like I’m slippin’ out of control or anything. I feel full, I feel settled. It’s the settled part that must be makin’ me quiet. That’s the strange part.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“You sure?” She’s pressing me.
“Yeah,” I tell her. Then a word slips out. “Why?” ‘Cause I want to know why she’s not sure that I’m okay.
“Well, you’re usually not THIS quiet, and this trip you’re taking is very sudden. And you haven’t said a word about last night.”
And I’m blown away. Now I’m REALLY quiet, ‘cause I don’t believe she’s come right out and asked me about last night. Even Juliette, who was there, and was straight up curious today, didn’t come at me so direct. She hinted around until I caught on to what she was doin’, and cut it short.
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
I smile at her. She smiles at me. And the words begin to tumble outta my mouth.
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Everyone has uncapped a bottle of something carbonated and had it fizz up and over on them. I think I’ve just uncorked Alex. Streams of words are bubbling out of him and he’s talking quickly. Sometimes so quickly that I have to ask him to slow down so I can understand him, so I can understand where he’s going with what he’s telling me.
He’s telling me what amounts to everything.
Everything.
The only ‘more’ I could possibly be hearing would be if he had started his stream of consciousness ramble with ‘I was born on’ and taken it from his first breath.
I want to listen to him, too, because I think if I can just listen to him for a moment, then I can understand what the heck has been going on with him; maybe even why he’s where he’s at.
He works backwards. He tells me about his evening the night before, about seeing that Sarah and seeing her with not only some ex-boyfriend, but also ‘hangin’’ on somebody named Robert, or Robin. From what I can understand, it had a big impact on him, but not in what I would call a negative way. And from what I can understand, the entire episode was the impetus for him making these last minute plans to head out to Vegas for a while.
Then he talks about Juliette, and what had happened between them regarding Sarah. That says a lot to me, about how he sees ‘loyalty’ and friendships. He dovetails it with some talk about other people who either have worked or still work for him. Another bit of the picture emerges: he likes to make friends of his employees. Which explains why it was so easy to include him in the tiny bit of entertaining I’ve done, or why he was able to sit down and talk with Mickie right off the bat. It wasn’t just the familiarity of career he had with Mick; it’s his way of being a part of MY life, of forging the ‘friendship’ that he’s either expecting, or just wanting.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, or how that’s going to impact the job, or my life. And I don’t have time to analyze it; I have to accept it because he’s talking nonstop.
“Alex, take a breath,” I finally tell him, and he does. A rather large, dramatic one, followed by that cackling laugh of his that I know to be his regular laugh, his ‘all’s right with the world’ laugh. I get up and pour us some espresso. Not that I think either of us need the caffeine jolt, but it’s something to do while I try and quickly mull over what he’s telling me.
Heck, I can’t even figure out WHY he’s telling me all this, other than the fact that, since I’ve been here, there’s only been Juliette and Rene as constants in his life, and that he very well may not have anyone else to talk to.
Which strikes me as sad, particularly when I turn to put the coffee on the table and he’s sitting there, eyes wide with anticipation of more conversation and a puppy-like eagerness written all over him. He wants more unburdening, because his talk has that quality. The quality of confession and release. It makes me patient to see him like that, to see him openly in need of this spewing forth of information. Besides, where am I going, what is so pressing for me that I can’t take a part of my evening and listen to this young man?
I sit down and light myself another cigarette.
“So it seems that you’ve had a bit of an epiphany then,” I say, and realize right away that he doesn’t understand what I’m saying. I don’t wait for the ‘hunh?’. “Last night has really made you change your thinking about things.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, do you think that it’s a good thing or a bad thing?” I ask.
“I think it’s good,” he tells me in a very small voice. “I mean, you know, I don’t think that I can do anything to make this work between her and me anymore. Like, seein’ her last night, just watchin’ her…she seems pretty goddamn happy with things. I guess she’s movin’ on with whatever and I’m just sittin’ here waitin’ on what she’s doin’.” He takes a drag on his cigarette and looks away from me for a moment. “I’m definitely the bad guy here, and I guess I’m just getting’ what I deserve, but…”
“But?”
“But I don’t want to be waitin’ on Sarah forever.”
“Forever?” I’m a little amused by that, and I decide to press the issue of ‘forever’. “Hasn’t it only been about three months?”
“Only since she left. It was goin’ to hell before that.” He sighs. “Look, I don’t think anyone likes to ‘jump’ for anyone else, and that’s what we were all about back then. I was jumpin’. I was so afraid I’d lose her that I did anything she wanted to keep her. And I guess I really resented it, ‘cause when the opportunity came up to cheat, I did. I know I coulda handled it all different. I know that. But I didn’t. And I was way willing to keep doin’ what it takes to get her back, to try and make it right.”
“You’ve lost me here,” I tell him, because he has. “I don’t quite understand your logic about this.”
“My logic?”
“Yes.” Because he doesn’t make sense. I understand that he and Sarah have had problems. I understand that he cheated on her with someone at least once. I understand that Sarah left him over that. That also makes me understand her less than warm attitude and even that she may have some, if not a lot, of anger built up inside of her. What I don’t get is Alex’s reasoning. And now I’m curious.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“Neither do I,” I tell him, and I smile, because he looks almost distraught that I don’t understand his perspective. I go through the laundry list of events he’s shared with me, repeating out loud the things he’s told me about his relationship. “I’m not trying to be mean, but did you seriously think that she would come back so soon? So easily? Or that she wouldn’t move on with her life?”
Alex pauses and his dark eyebrows come together. I don’t know if his expression is annoyed, or if he’s just thinking hard. Then his face goes pink, across the bridge of his nose mostly.
“I thought that she would come back. I didn’t even think that she’d leave,” he tells me, and I can see that he’s having a struggle with saying what he’s saying. He takes a deep breath. “I had someone before, someone I really loved, and this, I, we, I did this to that person, too. And she always, we always worked it out. She wasn’t perfect either, and she kinda let me do things…” He shakes his head. “I just thought that if, if…”
“If someone loved you enough they’d let you get away with murder?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, in a very small voice.
“So you ‘test’ people like that, then? Women? Girlfriends?”
“No, it’s not like that,” he says, but his voice wavers.
“Are you sure?” I ask, because I feel sure that he does. I think that he likes to play out worst case scenarios and then crosses his fingers that it will all work out in the end. I figure that this is good to know, because I might very well end up in a similar situation with him testing me. At least if I know he’s doing that I can nip it in the bud.
“No, I’m not sure.”
“Can I ask you a very, very personal question? You don’t have to answer it.”
“Sure.” He doesn’t even hesitate. This IS confession.
“Do you love Sarah?” He looks at me with a very hard stare, and I figure that my question has crossed over the boundary and that I’m not going to get an answer at all.
“No.” Plain, simple, flat out. He’s not looking at me now. “I wanted her, and I needed her to be there, and I loved the idea of loving her, and maybe I loved her a little, but no, I didn’t love her the way I think you mean and I don’t love her that way now.” He looks up and his eyes are troubled. “I wanted to, and I tried, but there was too much other shit goin’ on. It was just that I needed her around.”
“Did she love you?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she did. I think she loved a lot of other things, too, but I’m pretty sure that she loved me. ‘Cause that’s why she left. Cheatin’ on her hurt too much.”
And he says those last few words as if he just understands them for the first time.
“That makes sense,” I say. “It’s the same reason why I left my ex. It’s humiliating and it hurts.” I shrug. “There were other things, too, there always are, but that was the final factor.” I smile at him, pat his hand, and he takes a hold of mine, covering it with his. “I guess a relationship can just bear so much. People, too. You can only crap on them to a point. Sarah must have had her breaking point.”
“Yeah, she did.”
“I’m sorry that things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to,” I tell him. Because what can you say at this late date? What’s done is done with him and Sarah. I don’t see any going back, and I don’t even know them that well. I just have my own experience to rely on, and figure that what happened with these two people isn’t that different from what happened to me. Only I was the ‘Sarah’.
I test my own waters, ask myself, very quickly, if any of this changes how I feel about the man sitting beside me at the table holding my hand. The answer is ‘not really’. I barely know him to begin with. He appears contrite and moved by his experiences. I could be completely wrong, too, but time will tell. I think that his last minute plans to get away are probably for the best. It wouldn’t do him any good to mope and brood around here. I get the impression that that’s exactly what he’s been doing anyway, that he’s been moping and brooding since I walked in the door.
I want to get up and go, but get the feeling that it would be a mistake to be abrupt at this point. Instead, I finish my coffee and cigarette with him in silence.
And he keeps holding my hand while I linger.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
