hey saw each other nearly ever other day, no longer in deep thinspace, but at the Cafe Spiral, where warm human conversation filled the air. They chewed through Fahrenheit 451 with little pause, each sentence striating Isaac’s mind like rich fat through meat, his political neurons pulsing with the double syntax of paradigm betrayals.
They sat together at the dark salvaged church pews—polished light to smooth wood by a history of bodies—the table spread with books and papers. She rested her hand on one side of the book, he the other, leaning close in toward one another.
Sentences slipped through his fingers word by word.
Guy Montag was describing the girl that had relaxed the hard muscles of his fire-etched smile, “…Is that what it was in the girl next door? I’ve tried so hard to figure.”
“She’s dead. Lets talk about someone alive, for goodness’ sake,” said Mildred.
But, thought Isaac, it was Guy’s wife Mildred who was dead, her eyes and ears captured by the three-wall screen that jerked her, emotions puppeting. Just like the Mind. He looked over at Sol and started to open his mouth when he noticed a tear rolling down from her eye, a single Judas kiss.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She shook her head.
Surely it wasn’t Clarissa’s death? Or Mildred’s heartlessness? No, this was something else. Whatever it was, he was feeling it too, empathizing. Mirror neurons, he thought to himself, before shushing the cynical voice that questioned his emotions. He stepped into the feeling.
“Come on. You can tell me. What is it?” he asked again, gently, putting his arm around her shoulders like a real meatspace friend.
“It’s just,” she shook her head again, fighting tears. “My mom.”
“Your mom?”
“She left us to become an operator.”
“Oh man. That sucks.”
“She was kind of like Mildred at the end. Then she was just… gone.”
“Have you seen her since?”
“No! And fuck her. She should have visited. Isn’t family supposed to be deeper than that?” she drew away from his arm in anger.
“I mean, it’s hard because… you know. Maybe your mom didn’t have much choice.”
“Yeah, well. You’re here. And I’m not there. So some people are more than Mindslaves,” she dabbed at her eye with a sleeve.
“I don’t know, Sol. Sometimes it just gets its hooks in you. Sometimes you think it’s you. I’ve been practicing holding it off my whole life, but most people just take it into themselves and live their lives. Who knows. Maybe it got to your mom in a moment of weakness and then she couldn’t hold it off.”
“I’d like to think that. But still, she could have resisted just a little bit longer. Asked us for help. Done something.”
“Yeah,” Isaac hugged her.
Perhaps this was the moment that she began to see him differently, or perhaps this moment was written in a thousand micromoments that had already passed, a prophecy fulfilled.
The power of her emotional control was such that she could make herself unaware of something for a time. But certain things, big things, cannot be willed away. They cling and catch your feet until you dig up the submerged roots.
She practiced her breath, slowly inhaling and exhaling, sitting straight up. “Okay. Let’s keep going. I got this,” she said.
As Isaac read, he was gradually absorbed by the plot and poetry of the words, but she remained unmoved by the moment, breathing and doing mental exercises, stuck in a non-transitive metaverse.
He mouthed the words as he read, “Outside the front door, in the rain, a faint scratching.” Isaac felt the autonomic prickling of skin, as of a distant approaching storm.
Sol excused herself for the restroom as the Mechanical Hound began to sniff at Montag’s door, “Under the door-sill, a slow probing sniff, an exhalation of electric steam.”
The door bell pealed through the coffee scented haze of Cafe Spiral.
“Silence. The cold rain falling. And the small of blue electricity blowing under the locked door,” he read.
“And what manner of filling inhabits those pastries there? I much prefer a dense pudding to that diaphanous whipped material,” came a loud familiar voice.
Isaac whirled in his chair.
As he watched in horror, Roman’s gaze left the pastries and lit casually on him.
“Oh, haaaaiiii Isaac. Fancy seeing you here. It has been rather longish, hasn’t it?” His eye shifted, “Oh, look at all those thick books. Are you reading those? I suppose you must be. My noob! A reader!” he laid his hands across his chest, eyes skyward.
“Hello Roman,” said Isaac, gaze fidgeting toward the restroom, fearful of saying anything more.
Roman’s eye followed his, an eyebrow lifted. Isaac quickly refocused on Roman, his heart a quick-marching bass drum.
Roman tsked, “Isn’t your choosing coming up here? Do join me again. I pine for you.”
Isaac shook his head, thinking of Sol in light of what happened to Bob. He opened his mouth.
But Roman had turned away, “That one with the nice pudding please. No not that one. The other. There. Yes. Thank you,” he said.
Roman turned, interrupting him before he could speak, “Well! Until then, I remain, as ever, your faithful eye.” And he strode from the restaurant.