november.

[mnemosyne]

[Last week or so, maybe - ]

"You keep putting it off."

Morning or what passes for it on Corona Street, which means afternoon most places in the world, the sun well past its Zenith and a sleepy disciple sitting on the marble island in the center of the warm white kitchen, wearing sunglasses and boxers covered in Mr. Yuck symbols and a Raincoats t-shirt worn tissue-thin. Sipping from a mug of freshly brewed tea, breathing in, and breathing out, and - you know - kind of smiling at Dan where he leans back against the farmhouse sink, tattooed arms crossed, the heel of one hand flat against the bicep of the other one. TV On the Radio on the radio, hahahah, but the music is turned down. Not quite low enough that it could be background noise but it's the beat and the voice that comes through, not the electronica drone.

"I was hung over yesterday. And Dee had that thing and I wanted - "

"That's bullshit, Sera. You're always hung over. And you can stop being hung over whenever you want."

He can't see her eyes but he can see tension in her narrow shoulders, the supple thread of a reaction that is equal parts resistance and recognition and resistance of that recognition and then she - frowning - looks away. Down at the mug in her hand, the half-moon of light reflected in the surface of the tea, her shadow over the marble, aware, suddenly, of the chill in the room.

The sunglasses swallow half her face but his eyes are on her profile, the sharp frame of it against the foreground, these afternoon shadows behind her. Except for TV On the Radio (I'm a happy idiot -), the house is quiet. Dee and Rick are gone. They have normal lives. Or at least, they have fucking jobs.

"I think you should go." He tells her, quietly, solidly. "Or, you should not-go. One or the other, but if you're going you need to stop dragging it out. Say fuck it, pack a bag, and get on a plane. Now, do you want scrambled eggs or hashbrowns?"

"Which one?"

"Which one what?"

She gives him one of her little shrugs, so easily read as sullen. Which is in fact internal, so aware, on the absolute cusp of feeling, in a way that is hard for him to name.

"You know."

She does know. He reads that knowledge in her as she drops her sharp little chin to her chest and snags the collar of her tee between her teeth.

"Nutella croissant."

"Hmm?"

"That's what I want for breakfast. Then I'm gonna go pack."

[mnemosyne]

Some fucking airport, some fucking time ago.

There's this guy in a suit that is somehow unrumpled and certainly custom and almost deliberately jaunty and he is taking up half a fucking wall charging his goddamned devices. It is late in the day and it is a middle-of-the-week day and the airport is crowded with everyone, it is always crowded with everyone, it is one of the few places left in the world where people with wing tips mingle with strangers in Converse hightops and old ladies in extra wide shoes from K-Mart made to accommodate their orthotics and maybe you have an expense account against which to charge that overpriced beer and maybe you just justify it because you survived the security line again, or hell maybe you're spending the $10 voucher you scored when the airline bumped you from your third flight of the day because they're all overbooked.

There's also a girl in denim cut-offs and these tights that are black and opaque to the thighs where the Paris skyline is then pricked out in silhouette and her carry-on is a vintage hard-sided piece with a patchwork of old travel labels and she's carrying an Alexander McQueen clutch that is just large enough to hold a passport and an iPhone with these covered in silver-skull studs with this brass-knuckle clasp, crusted with jewel-eyed skulls that has <i>got</i> to be a knockoff and she's kind of longing for a smoke. Her cigarettes are in the carry-on, and so is her lighter, and they threw away her bottle of vodka which she mostly packed as a joke but she kinda wanted to bring.

Everything else is in the belly of the plane by now, even the hatbox. She didn't care about the per-bag fee. That's just where we are, not how we got here.

How we got here is always a longer and stranger story.

The guy though: he wears a sort of privilege that surpasses the easy upper middle class hipsterism you might associate with the cut of the suit and the girl she reads all of that in a half-lashed glimpse as she invades the block of injection-molded plastic seats he has claimed entirely for his own busy-ass mobile office and sits right down beside him. She puts down the suitcase and props her feet on the frame and he glances at her feet and gets up because he reads something other-than-privilege in the worn combat boots on her feet and the 70s era leather coat she picked up at Goodwill three years ago. The scent of marijuana clings to the shearling lining and lingers in her hair, musky-sweet, but this is Colorado and she's not carrying so who fucking cares?

Well that guy does, for one. Cocaine is one thing but pot is a lazy-person's drug, isn't it?

He gets up as she sits down and just crosses the aisle, all this is automatic pilot stuff, he's noticing her without noticing her, reacting to what may be immediately read as the opposite-of-privilege but is really in the end just a different iteration of it, and that's when he notices her, notices her, notices her, because how could you do anything but? her profile maybe or the curve of her private little mouth or the sprawl of her legs, her hip-slung slouch. Maybe just the haze of her resonance and now he can't do anything but notice her - people always do, and spends more time than is strictly necessary puzzling out the pattern around her shapely thighs.

And she notices him noticing her. It's evening. The flights overseas are all red-eyes and there was no advanced planning on her part, just: now, which is how she often is. So: she notices him noticing her, of course she does, she was made to notice, and how his notice is has changed, is changing and something about that makes her change the way she sprawls in her seat as she holds the old iPhone Dan gave her earlier that afternoon as she packed and leaves it dark and turns it over and over in her hand, rightside up and upside down. Something about that makes her smirk and makes her want to both flash him and flip him off and he kind of flashes his wedding ring and he thinks that this is more of a challenge than a warning and she quite obviously notices and the smirk sharpens. She rolls her eyes, and that expression is really hard to misinterpret but this guy wears his privilege like a lionskin and is pretty damn capable of misinterpreting everything in his favor and he thinks: spark, smoulder, something and she's just thinking: asshole.

Has already considered and discarded the idea of a quickie against a wall somewhere, the idea of which, the ideal of which does appeal in some vague, animal part of her brain. Something to take her out of the haze of anxiety she is carrying with her, something to make her heart beat, something to make her feel whole.

She taps the iPhone against her teeth instead. Leaves it dark. Dan gave it to her at the house and she has had it in hand ever since but hasn't been able to turn it on. Maybe later, maybe never. Who fucking knows.

And he does some weird thing with his eyes or his mouth while she's looking away, all pensive, and it is just enough in her peripheral vision that she does catch the shape of it, and this time she does flip him off, plants her feet on either side of her carry on and opens its metal latches just far enough to slip the phone inside. There's plenty of room. Security confiscated 3/4 of her cosmetics and her bottle of vodka, but that's okay. There are stores in London, and plenty of booze in first class.