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“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create…
For I have known them all already, known them all: —
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?”
-T.S. Eliot, “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”
The want of coffee would one day be her undoing, she was sure.
These days, it just got harder and harder to get out of bed and make words with her mouth without it. It felt like she was some sort of throwback from another time period, another stage of human evolution, uncertain how to work her throat, and unaware of how badly her hairbrush had failed her until she had the devil’s brew in her veins.
Still, she hated the coffee shop. Coffee House, she corrected herself. It wasn’t a commercial venture or anything like that. It was a home, a cozy home, where people could relax and be themselves. Or at least, be the people it was currently expected for them to want to be. The room wasn’t very large, and the walls had been splattered and scrawled on with dark paints and bold, wobbly lines. It made the space seem smaller, which she supposed was the goal, but it more closely resembled a madman’s cell than an artist’s loft. The low light and densely packed furniture, instead of forging a sense of togetherness, only made if difficult to figure out where to stand.
She would wait, though, for the coffee. More importantly, she would wait for the sense of satisfaction that the coffee gave her. It was the right size (venti, which high school Latin had assured her had nothing to do with coffee), contained the right amount of adjectives in front of the word mocha, and, most importantly, would have the right logo printed on the piece of cardboard that would fail to keep the paper cup from burning her. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle America, she thought. Pathetic enough to want to fit in, but not too stupid to realize it was sad. She was so desperate not to miss anything interesting, anything trendy, anything important, that she followed the masses to wait in the lines. She waited, and she watched. More importantly, she listened.
The world is full to the brim with communications, without any real sense of communicating, she decided. The world, meaning for her, middle-aged, middle-class, middle-managed America, was little more than a teeming mass of people who didn’t want to know each other that were desperate to know each other.
The girl standing next to her was fiddling with her cell phone, pushing button after button, while looking at the door. She wondered what the point was in typing to someone on a machine that was designed to enable verbal exchanges. If she wanted to type, why didn’t she just get a computer? If the person she was talking to was somewhere where they shouldn’t be answering the phone, then why where they interacting at all? What was so important that it couldn’t wait? She imagined a friend, hunched over in a classroom desk somewhere, face pinched and blinking rapidly to keep from crying. Maybe the condom had broken, or maybe she’d lost her scholarship. Maybe this girl, with her bored facial expression and her lazy yawn was her companion’s only source of solace, and the only thing keeping her from wanting to end it all. Maybe it really did matter.
That was the world, she decided. People who needed to talk did it subversively, while the people who didn’t were loud and proud. Take this guy, for example. Clearly, he wanted the world to know that he was conversing. Important people conversed. Important conversations could not wait. That was why everyone who owned a cell phone was important – or at least, they thought they were. Her own cell phone had been disconnected and taken away by the police. She hadn’t bothered to get another one.
She wondered who the man was talking to. He sounded both angry and bored, speaking loudly, as though he were describing the functions of a computer or a dishwasher to a deaf person.
“No, it should NOT make THAT KIND OF NOISE. YOU must have it turned wrong. Do you WANT me TO help you or not?! Can you HEAR me?! No, I’M STILL IN LINE. Did you TRY READING the instructions? Then try SOMETHING else. Well, if it’s that damn IMPORTANT, tell me. Christ, Mary. How the hell am I supposed to see you nodding?!”
She stepped closer to him, wondering what the woman on the phone’s voice sounded like. She covered this interest by examining the crockery on the shelf beside him. “Maybe she should try cold-booting it.” She said quietly, setting down the cup after seeing the price tag.
“Excuse me?!” He snapped, half-turning to look at her.
“I said,” She spoke up, “Maybe she should try cold-booting it. Turning it off and waiting a few minutes before starting over. It’s always worked for me.” She thought about Jeremy, and how that had definitely been true – for a little while. Temporary solutions for temporary problems.
“I don’t think I was talking to you,” He turned away. “Yeah, let me call YOU back. Some CRAZY BITCH keeps harassing me.”
She snorted and fiddled with the zipper of her purse. It wouldn’t close, and she didn’t know why. It had been on sale, but the label was good and visible. It was black, so it matched all of her shoes. Finally, the person at the counter called out her order. She crossed the room and took the cup.
It was hot underneath the cardboard and paper, but she couldn’t resist. The first sip burned her tongue.
~*~
The waiting room was quiet, at least.
She settled back into the chair and stared at the place where the long, cloth blinds were not quite shut. They ran the length of floor to ceiling, and parted a little in some places, letting thin slats of bright afternoon sun in to cause her pupils to contract. In one place, a strip had folded over, stuck to another one with a bright pink piece of bubble gum, gone black in a few spots from some cleaning person’s attempt to scrub it off. The sun had baked it into the fibers, though, and it held fast. The magazine she’d placed on the chair’s arm began its slow descent towards the faded, floral carpet. The gum made her remember her own, and she tried to blow a bubble, like she had when she was a child, but it just snapped back and made her burnt tongue sting a little from the sugar.
Those blinds were a lost cause anyway, the pale green contrasting sharply with the dark wood paneling on the walls. The wood was cheap and scored with fake knotholes and weird half-circles vaguely reminiscent of the lines found in bisected trees.
She hated this room, hated it a little more each time she came here. In the corner, under a horrible painting of children on a playground, there was a fish tank with a broken filter. She suddenly became aware of the strange rasping noise it was making. Like a clock’s ticking, it seemed suddenly loud. She shook her head and tried to ignore it, but it was too late – she was aware of it now, and it dominated the small space.
The glass of the tank was faintly greenish in the lights from the recessed ceiling lighting. One of the magazines on the scarred table promised that recessed lighting was calming, but it just made her want to open those damned blinds. What was the use in pretending that good, old-fashioned daylight didn’t exist?
She also wondered where all the fish had gone – the dim water was empty, except for a few trembling pieces of plastic vegetation and a pink castle that glowed in the half-light. The plants reminded her of the figures on the walls of the coffee house – shaky with the illusion of life but too poorly defined to fool anyone. Maybe fish didn’t mind.
Across the room, the receptionist was imprisoned in a cubicle of frosted glass. Her face was a misty blur, but her hands could be seen, moving quickly, thorough the bread-loaf sized opening on the counter. The nail file she held scrape – scrape – scraped over flawless nails painted the same colour as the roses on the thin carpet. Robot, she decided automatically, and then felt guilty because of it. Maybe the doctor had ordered her to have perfect nails, since that was all of her that was clearly visible.
The crack of the magazine’s spine hitting the carpet was unnaturally loud in the near silence, and she forgot all about the sound of the fish tank. The magazine landed open, some of the thin pages stuck up awkwardly like a flower. She lifted her foot and stepped on it. The flower wilted.
Standing up, she crossed the room to open the blinds, letting the sunlight into the room. She blinked a little as her pupils contracted, and then she smiled. Glancing at the receptionist, she coughed her gum out into her hand and bent over to stick it into the blinds, before squeezing the two sections of fabric together. All of the moisture came out of the gum with a squelching noise, and she remembered the fish tank filter. The horrible noise came flooding back.
The triumph over the blinds was crushed by the sudden assault of the fish tank. She returned to her seat and slumped back into it. The fish were all dead, she decided.
She turned to look when the door behind her opened, and a young man came out. He was probably in his early twenties, dressed in skinny pants with cartoons drawn on the legs past the knees. His jacket went to a suit that would have been much too large for him, and it was covered in buttons. His hair was long on the left side of his face, but nearly buzzed on the right. He smiled at her, a sharp facial expression, almost like a rabbit. He had braces. She smiled back, and tightened her grip on her purse strap.
“Mrs. Greenly?” The receptionist called. “The doctor will see you.”
“Ms.” She said, standing.
“Beg pardon?” The robot asked. The smile was audible, and her hands were tense against her side of the counter.
“It’s Ms. Greenly.”
“Of course it is. You go on in, now.”
Robot.
~*~
The books in his cabinets are all dark brown and covered in gold lettering. Titles like The Particular Degree of Human Consciousness and Awareness Necessary to Prosecute under the Law. She snorted. Who would need anything like that? Dr. Palmer cleared his throat and fiddled with the wireless earpiece that went with his cell phone.
His sleeves were rolled back, and his suit jacket hung off of the back of his chair. The thin tie was the same colour as the leather chair he shifted in. Hideous, she decided. The comb-over was fooling no one.
This office had real wooden paneling, but it had been badly stained a darker colour, and the desk was chipped in several places. He touched the phone again and cleared his throat again. “How are you feeling, Grace?”
She gave him a half-hearted smile. “Fine, thanks. And you?”
“I understand you’re going to go back to work next week. How do you feel about that? Would you like to talk about it?”
She pretended to consider, and then smiled as she shook her head. “No.”
“How do you think your co-workers will treat you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything wrong, you know. The police told them all I’m a victim.”
“Of course, of course.” He held up both hands, which were free, she noted, because his phone was always attached to his head. She stared at the communications device, the bright blue contrasting with his pasty, red-blotched skin and white shirt. He could be talking to anyone, and she could not know it, unless he let her in on the joke. “Are you nervous about going back?”
She was looking at her purse, trying to figure out why the zipper would not close. “The filter on your fish tank is broken.”
“My fish tank?”
“In the waiting room.”
“Oh. I’ll have someone take a look at it, I suppose.”
“All of the fish might be dead.”
“Would that upset you, if the fish were dead?”
She shrugged. The teeth had come loose on one end, and were not fastened inside the little metal tag anymore. Damn. “They’re just fish.”
He sighed, running a hand through his thin hair. Bits of it stuck up, caught by some sort of static cling. She wanted to laugh, but it wouldn’t come. Her mouth was still sore, and she licked her lips, tasting the remnants of chewing gum there. Blowing bubbles weren’t as easy as she had remembered.
“I feel like we aren’t making much progress here, Grace.” He said, his palms flat on the chipped wooden top. The snow globe on his desk said 'Welcome to Nevada!' That was irresponsible, and dishonest, she decided. It didn’t snow in Nevada, did it?
“Did your family give you that?”
“This? No. A former patient.” His eyes narrowed. “Grace, we really aren’t constructing the sort of relationship that I feel is necessary to help you… overcome this.”
“Are you trying to make me feel bad?” She pulled hard on the metal tag, trying to get the edge of the zipper’s teeth back into it. Instead, it came off in her hand. “This purse is nothing but junk.”
“Grace, would you like to talk about Jeremy?” He asked gently.
She looked past him, at the crooked diploma and the small window, afternoon light sealed off by heavy wooden Venetian blinds. “I miss him. I’m sorry about… what happened to him.”
“Do you feel safe going back to work? Are you afraid it will all start again?”
She shrugged. “I guess. I’m just tired of sitting at home. It’s boring.”
“Are you afraid to go out?”
“I just don’t like to. I never have.”
“…Grace.” Dr. Palmer said softly. “Grace, do you want to talk about the letters?”
She looked him in the eye then, and smiled. “No.”
The phone on the desk between them rang, causing him to jump. He answered it, and she worried her burnt tongue between her front teeth. “You can answer it,” She said, leaning in closer to the desk, “I’ll just listen.”
~*~