They—Cate and Neale and Joe—are at the symphony. It’s intermission. Neale has gotten tickets to the premiere of an avant-garde cello concerto featuring extraneous sounds piped in along with the music made by the orchestra. Maybe, Neale is hoping, these sounds will qualify as noise.
They are in the top balcony, but the front row of it. So, pretty good cheap seats. Joe sits between Neale and Cate. As soon as the intermission began, he pulled out his phone to watch an obscure French movie. Since what happened to his mother, he cloaks himself in silence; it’s a hoodie cloak, with earbuds. He’s not available for comment. His people will talk to your people. Later.
Something new has moved into the space between him and Cate, and she suspects it’s her attachment to his mother’s assault. It doesn’t matter that Cate’s part was stopping it. She was there. She saw it. It’s stuck to her. She’s dirty by association. She hopes this is a phase they will pass through, that there will come a time when her presence doesn’t carry the smell of the kitchen that day when he walked in, after everything was over, onto a stage littered with props from the previous scene. The spilled groceries, eggs drooling out of their shells, milk carton busted. A plastic bag of fun-size Snickers torn open with the candy bars scattered along with some empty wrappers. Meaning they ate candy while the whole thing was going on. They fucking ate candy.
“Going to the john,” he says as he climbs over their knees.
Cate puts a hand on Neale’s. “I’ve been going by the Aldi.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Not yet.”
“You should stop. If she was going to come back at me, she would’ve done it by now. It’s over. Don’t keep it alive. We need to move along. On our merry way.”