At two twenty on the Wednesday after our date, I walk into Bluebell’s. It’s taken me a few days to get ready. I’ve moved to a youth hostel, hoping to evade Lore until it’s time to skip town. Bought some rougher clothes at a thrift store. Secured a certain necessary vial. I’m good to go.
Geneva’s repulsive metal-faced pal Drew is working the register—seriously, what’s wrong with his beard? It looks like he has mange and he should really see a doctor—and he scowls when he sees me. What, just because Geneva said she’s not interested that means I can’t order a sandwich? I order a sandwich, ham and Swiss, and then I spot Geneva’s tussle of sunset hair. She’s crouched low with her back to me, pretending to organize take-out cups in a supplies cabinet. But I can tell from the way rigidity grips her back that she’s completely aware of my presence.
Cool, cool. “What name?” Mangy Drew asks between set teeth. I notice that he doesn’t offer to let me spin the roulette wheel.
“Angus,” I tell him, and Geneva’s tension ratchets again.
With that taken care of, it’s time to dial down the pressure. Geneva knows I’m here, and sooner or later my proximity will be too much for her. She’ll come to me on her own. So I turn and walk off into a back room where I’ve never been before, just as if my being here had nothing to do with her. It’s a lot emptier than the front room too. A more relaxing place to have a serious discussion.
Bluebell’s is such a cool café! Every imaginable surface back here, from walls to tabletops, is covered in a different vintage wallpaper, mostly garish florals. Even the backs of the chairs and the row of planters under the window. The effect is agitated and serene at the same time, like listening to loud, busy music that somehow settles your nerves. There are model ships on a shelf and needlepoint pillows portraying monkeys.
There’s so much to take in that it’s a while before I even notice the dusty upright piano, camouflaged as it is in more flowery patchwork.
I perch on the bench and think of my old piano, the rambunctious one with the hooves. Pet the chipped keys as if we were old friends.
The next thing I know, I’m playing it. Spectacularly well. I have no idea what the piece is, but I can tell it’s classical and supposedly difficult, and yet every note has been coiled up in my fingers waiting to pop out. The piano could use a tuning, but the music in me is so hopping and pressurized and eager that I don’t give a damn.
There were just a few people in odd corners of the room when I sat down, but now I can feel the air winding warmer and tighter the way it does when there’s a crowd. Too many lungs in close proximity, all tugging on the same oxygen. I don’t let myself look, but after a moment I pick up Geneva’s humming herness a few rows back. I can feel her watching my shoulders—watching them rather attentively, in fact. Hah.
Then she’s weaving through the gathered bodies. Coming closer.
“Angus,” she says. “What the hell.”
“Hi, Geneva.” I don’t stop playing. I find that I’m enjoying the audience, what with its built-in potential for making her feel awkward and embarrassed. “Is it okay if I talk to you for a minute when you’re on break or something? I want to apologize.”
“Pound out the Chopin nocturnes, apologize, what’s the difference? You didn’t say anything about—”
“Playing the piano? Honestly, I didn’t know.” Not in the sense that she knows things, anyway.
“The bullshit hangs heavy on your tongue. Years and years of training to even get close—”
“I didn’t know it was Chopin either. So can we talk when you’re free?” The crowd has started tittering behind us. I guess it’s a cute scene if you aren’t Geneva, who I’d put down as halfway between anxious and bemused, or Drew, standing ten feet to my right and palpably squeezing a bundle of rage behind his mange.
“Fine,” Geneva says, and pivots. A minute or so later, Drew elbows through the crowd and plonks my sandwich on top of the piano, hard enough to knock the tomato slices loose. So terribly, terribly sorry, buddy. Try not to infect my ham with your face.
Once I finish the sandwich, I go back for a lemonade and some chocolate cake. Geneva serves me this time, studiously blank. She drops the customary marble in my palm without looking at me.
I plop it on number nineteen, gold on a scarlet background. Spin hard. The little pointy clicker thing ticks around and around, slowing and then wavering before it stops.
Nineteen it is.
“See, Geneva? Luck is with me.”
“Luck is notorious for its shit taste,” Geneva snarks back, and I tip her five bucks, then head back and find a table.
I eat my cake and try to journal for another half hour or so. It’s as impossible as ever. The letters liquefy under my eyes, and I can’t guess what story I’m telling. But when I riffle through the pages it turns out I’ve filled a lot of them, nearly the whole book in fact. I had no idea I’d been so productive?
“Apologize for what?” Oh, that sweetly gruff voice, those violet undertones. I’m sitting with my back to the front room. Geneva approached silently, and I was so distracted I didn’t notice. She’s standing behind my shoulder, and I twist around to look up at her. Hands on her hips, even. One big hazel eye illuminated by a slice of lamplight that turns the inner ring of her iris emerald-bright, the other eye dimmed by shadow. “What exactly?”
Thank God for Margo’s guidance, is all I can say. “My behavior on Saturday night was presumptuous and entitled,” I say. “I’m sorry.” The words are good, but my tone doesn’t quite cut it. Too much like I’m reciting a lesson, and Geneva doesn’t soften much.
“You do know that was a first fucking date. Even if we’d been engaged, you would have been over the line.”
“I know,” I say. “I know. You owe me nothing. I was really out of control. When I thought about how I’d acted, I felt ashamed of myself. I’m sorry.” Better! A little stink of sincerity huffs out! “It made me finally realize that I need help, so I owe you for that. Seriously, thank you.”
Geneva goes silent. This, right here, is the crux of it. Can’t rush her.
Then she sits down across from me. Victory, bitch.
“What kind of help?” The room’s cleared out now, and she really doesn’t need to talk so softly.
I pull my prop out of my pocket. Some very serious shit prescribed yesterday by an impressionable shrink. She knows what it’s for, I guess, because her face goes still.
“Is it helping?”
“God, yes. I feel like I’ve come back to earth. Back to myself, after a long time away. I know who I am now, and it’s so liberating, I can’t even tell you.” Strategic pause. “Partly it was seeing how you reacted to what I thought were my memories—it shocked me back to reality. Enough for me to reevaluate, anyway.”
“You weren’t kidding about that stuff? The anthill?” Her T-shirt today is bright green with podgy pastel dinosaurs all over it, lifting succulent-plump snouts.
Gee, Geneva, what’s up with your voice? It’s so quiet you’d think termites were gnawing it. You sound downright undermined.
“I wasn’t kidding.” Strategic pause, part two. “I don’t know why you got through to me when no one else could. But you might have literally saved my life.”
She’s smarter than me, I know that much. But my lies ring a lot truer to her than my truth ever could. Funny how that works.
“And that other really off-the-chain thing you said? That you love me?” Geneva’s mouth tightens with the awkwardness of bringing up my declaration. “That’s cleared up too?”
I roll my eyes in mock-embarrassment. “Oh, Jesus. I can’t believe I said that. Can you imagine how frenzied and confused I must have been, to blurt something like that at someone I barely know?” Geneva’s too strong-minded to be disappointed, exactly, but I can see a quick dip in the shimmer of her gaze. Even she has her share of insecurities, it turns out. Don’t overplay your hand, Angus. “I was so out of my head that I couldn’t tell the difference between attraction and love.”
She hesitates, but then it comes out. “Even you being attracted to me felt way too random.”
“Oh, that part’s not random at all.” A refusal to accept the world’s terms, a certain brisk clarity. “I think you’re beautiful, and I like the way you don’t put up with my bullshit.”
Well, she didn’t until today. But she smiles at the compliment even now that she doesn’t quite deserve it.
“Angus? Can I be honest about something? It’s just like a physical thing, I think, but I’m really attracted to you too.” And there we have it. From the phone in my pocket comes a thunderous burst of applause; oh, so I guess my imaginary Margo and I have made up? “You just seemed too messed up for me to risk—doing anything with you.”
Oh, Geneva. If only Lore didn’t care for you, would I let you go?
I grin and reach out, my fingers barely stroking a flyaway tuft of her hair. “Oh, but now the risk has been reduced to an acceptable level?”
What better vengeance can I hope for than to claim this girl Lore loves? I’ll make my charming killer feel for all time how she failed when it mattered most. And Gus, well. Gus will be at least annoyed.
Geneva actually blushes. “That’s kind of what I’m thinking, yeah.”
Geneva shimmers with promise. She could become almost anything she decided to be. Her possible selves are legion, ranked up like an army of vivid, accomplished women.
When she dies, there won’t be enough ground on this planet to bury all the futures that might have been hers.