World Meets World

“Two large coffees,” I said. “Black.”

The guy at the counter regarded me for a while with bleary, tired eyes. I wondered if he was blaming me for his midnight shift.

“Two tall, black,” he said. “’mmkay. That for here or to go?”

“For here,” I said, as if it was obvious.

“’mmkay,” mumbled the guy at the counter, and punched it into the cash register.

Two tall steaming mugs were in my hands a short while later as I moved back to the table where the girl was waiting, fidgeting, a smile creeping across her pale freckled face at the sight of me.

“That didn’t take too long,” she said, reaching out with two hands, her arms covered in so many bracelets that for a moment they looked like armour.

“Black coffee never does,” I replied. “Nice and simple, see?”

We sat in silence, sipping our coffees. She didn’t stop staring at me until I put my mug down with a satisfactory exhale.

“Oh my god,” she said, not taking her eyes off me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“It’s just, I, like, never figured you for a black coffee kinda guy, y’know?”

“Really?” I asked. “What did you figure me for?”

“I dunno,” she said, glancing down at the murky darkness of her drink. “Like, cappuccino or somethin’.” She wrinkled her nose. “Or a mochachiato.”

“Oh god,” I said. “No, I can’t stand any of that ‘hot milkshake’ garbage. Nah, my motto is ‘if it ain’t black, you can take it back.’”

Actually it wasn’t, but I could tell she liked it when she snickered.

“That’s cool,” she said. She took a sudden, steamy slurp of the stuff. “I dunno, all my friends think it’s gross but I like the way it tastes. You know? It’s like, this is the pure shit – oh, ’scuse my lang—”

I waved it off. “Fuck etiquette,” I said simply. “It’s a little too late at night to be bothering with that.”

She replied with a teeth-revealing grin. Thirty-two cigarette-stained teeth were laid bare to me between a pair of purple-lipsticked lips. “I mean,” she continued, “it’s like, if you’re gonna drink coffee, drink the damn coffee, you know? Don’t dick around with cinnamon and shit.” She took another gulp, her bracelets jingling like so many bells. “So, Mr. Black-tie, what’s your story? What’s with the suit, you some kind of government agent or something?”

That got me laughing. “No, nothing like that. I was at a funeral today.”

She hesitated for a moment before saying, “Oh. Dude, that sucks. Sorry. Were you close to the... um…”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “No, we weren’t that close. He was my half-brother. I never really knew him. Apparently he made it pretty big as a porn star.”

She snorted and almost choked on her coffee. “A what?”

“A porn star. Yeah, I get that every time I tell people what he does—did. But somebody’s got to do it, I suppose.”

“I guess so,” she said, wide-eyed. “But you weren’t that close to him?”

I shook my head. “My dad and his mum separated when I was a toddler. I suppose he just drifted off into another world, as far as I was concerned. I only ever saw him once or twice in my lifetime. I hear he was pretty well-loved, too, at least in his industry.”

“A porn star,” she said, leaning back. “Interesting. So what do you do, besides Not Talk to your porn star half-brother?”

“Nothing as exciting,” I sighed. “My family’s what I call a Career Family. Everybody’s got Careers… doctors, accountants, engineers…”

“Porn stars,” she said, giggling.

“Porn stars, yes. Me, I’m one of your every-day pen-pushing desk-jockeying overworked solicitors.”

She sneered. “Like a lawyer who doesn’t do courtrooms?”

“Something like that. You know the weedy fellow you always see in the background when big-time corporate executives sign contracts? I’m that guy.”

She snickered again and said, “Dude, you’re not weedy.”

Her eyes seemed momentarily transfixed by the swirling contents of her mug. She had a pair of the most unusual eyes I had ever seen: one was light blue; the other was a pale green. I couldn’t help but stare.

“So, like, you gonna tell me why we’re here?”

Twenty years of existentialist books, essays, lectures and TV shows briefly flitted through my mind before I settled for, “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she said, “why we’re sittin’ in this coffee shop. Why’d you invite me here?”

“I told you,” I said. “I thought you were interesting.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, taking another gulp. For a moment I wondered if she was planning on searing her tongue-stud off. “Like, I got that part. I’m just a little fuzzy on why me, you know? I mean… you’re not, like, some psycho-killer-lawyer or something, are you?”

“No,” I replied, a little taken aback.

“Oh. Cool. Because, like, my friend Mace? She was at this club and, like, this guy tried to pick her up and stuff, and it turned out he had, like, a knife.”

“No, no,” I repeated. “No knives on me. You’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s just… I don’t know, I guess I don’t usually meet someone like you. Hey, if I tell you something, you promise you won’t freak out?”

“Promise,” she said.

“My life consists of looking at numbers and talking to corporate big-wigs. Every day I have to look forward to sitting in my office, looking at numbers, pushing pens, filing paper after paper after paper, talking to fat clients who want more on their plate, and look at even more numbers.” I tried gulping down my coffee and ended up burning my tongue. I winced.

“So long story short,” she said. “You’re bored.”

I regarded her for a moment before saying, “Yeah. I guess you could say that. It’s all… meaningless. I guess what I’m trying to say is…” I was shivering now, and suddenly I was hoping she wouldn’t see. “I’m tired.”

“It’s 3 am,” she said, tapping her watch.

“I’m tired of going through one meaningless Thing after another. And then I saw you on the subway, just reading that book of yours, and I thought... I thought maybe I wanted to be like you.”

It took a while for her to absorb this. Slowly, she said, “Listen, mister, you don’t even know my name—”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Thanatosia. But my parents named me ‘Agnes.’ I mean, like, you don’t even know me and you want to be me?”

I nodded quickly. “Yes. Thanatosia. That’s just it. I’m tired. I want to rip up every single fucking contract I see, burn everything with more meaningless numbers, spit in the faces of every single other fucking snivelling client…” I stopped myself, a little awkwardly, and tried to gulp down the coffee again. It seared my insides, but now I didn’t really care.

She sighed, and offered me a half-smile. She put her mug down, and gently grasped my unresisting hand. She studied my palm for a moment, her amazing mismatched eyes tracing the lines and contours.

“Well,” she said. “I’m, like, not too good at this, but you see this line here?” She pointed at the line nearest my thumb. “This here’s your life line. See how it’s like a little deep here and not so deep over here? That means you’re gonna go through a rough time and not care so much about stuff.” She grazed my palm with a long black fingernail, following along the line, until stopping at a place where it intersected. “Now this here, this’s interesting. Not too many people have these little forks around their life-lines. It doesn’t really take a rocket scientist to figure out that you’re gonna get to a point where you can go one route or the other. But,” and here she gave my hand back for my perusal, “lookit how one line is kinda shallow? And the other one doesn’t run at all. It just sorta stops and dissolves.”

I looked down. “I’d rather enjoy a shorter life than go through a long, boring one.”

“You sure about that? And like, what makes you think you’d enjoy it?” She rolled her eyes. “Look at me, man. I’m your stereotypical fuckin’ car-crash. High-school dropout, tryin’-a-make-ends-meet waste-a-space. Started smoking when I was twelve. Had an abortion when I was like fifteen. Had another when I was seventeen. You, you’re, what, like, late twenties? Early thirties? Steady job and a steady salary. I’d say you’ve got a helluva lot more going for you. If anybody’d wanta be anybody, it’d be me wanting to be you.”

“No, you, you don’t understand.” I wanted to make her understand. “My half-brother died the other day. He was the only one in my family who really went and did something interesting. Why couldn’t it have been me? Why do I get stuck with the mundane life? I can’t take it, Thanatosia. I’m tired. I’m tired,” I repeated, trying to accentuate it.

“Look, dude,” Thanatosia said gently. “I’m gonna say this because I like you. You’re a nice guy. You’re cute. You’ve got your money. Don’t go destroying it on account of, like, early mid-like crisis or some shit. You’re depressed now, sure, why not, but what if next year you meet like some chick who can make you wanna keep going, make it all worth doing? Don’t destroy it all.”

My lower lip trembled, and I managed a smile. “And I suppose you’re not that chick.”

“No,” she said, softly. “If you wanna go and wreck up your life, you’re gonna have to do it without my help.”

I closed my eyes, and felt her lean forward unexpectedly. I opened my eyes just as her lips met my cheek.

“Thanks for the coffee,” she said, getting up.

I watched her go, and she paused at the exit. Looking back at me, she called out, “And hey, maybe, like, I’ll see you around sometime!”

And with that, she left.