Part 3

They’ve been back every few days for a while now. Sometimes they talk, sometimes they don’t. Naam always gets the same thing, but El changes it up. I try not to pry. I eventually got used to it–that’s a funny thing, isn’t it? We humans can seem to get used to anything. I became a piece of background art for them, like we were in Hopper’s Nighthawks only instead of the city it was the End Times out in the ass-end of nowhere.

It was last night that something changed. Such a small thing, that made all the difference.

They were finishing up, swirling dregs around in their cups. As always, El laid her hands out on the table. Naam was staring at the hole in the world that was her BlackBerry screen, and as if in a dream, she began placing a hand into El’s. And as their fingertips began to touch, a rumble started to clatter all the plates in the place–plastic, ceramic, and tectonic.

Naam snatched her hand back. The smile on El’s face dimmed, and as it did, so did the light from her eyes. She stood. “Hey, so I should go.”

“Yeah,” said Naam, her voice hollow.

“But you know you’re welcome back anytime, right?” El was probably trying not to cry.

“I know,” said Naam. “I’m just…I’m not ready.”

“Ok,” said El. “Same time next week?”

“Same time next week,” replied Naam.

“I’ll see you then,” said El. “Take care of yourself, ok? Don’t let him push you around so much.”

Naam only nodded, head pointed down at the table.

El sighed and looked up at me. I shrugged, and it felt like everyone shrugged with me. What could we do?

“Hey,” she said to me as she turned to go. “You take care of yourself too, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said, and for the first time in a decade, I meant it.

“Later,” she said.

“Sure,” I replied as she headed for the door. Her racerback showed off her unearthly shoulder blades as she raised her arm in a wave.

Naam took a full half-hour before she got up to leave. Her tears had made her mascara run down in trails of smoke. “She was right, you know,” she said to me. “You should take care of yourself.”

“I will,” I said.

“See you soon.” She clopped her way out into the night, the clock hands following her to read 6:66a–she'd be late, and there'd be Hell to pay.

It was in that moment that I knew I had to change, maybe in a way they couldn’t. They weren’t here for me, but maybe there was a lesson in it anyway. If we’re halfway between Big Sky and Jackson Hole, mixed up between here and nowhere, bridged across the supernal and the infernal, then maybe in the sheer chaos there’s something we can do about it.

So I pulled out my phone, unused for all this time, and picked a name I hadn’t thought ever to find again.

“Hey, ‘Trix?” I said, my voice not shaking at all. "It’s Dante. Virgil gave me your number. I guess I figured I should finally give you a call back. I hope all’s well. I was wondering if you’d want to catch coffee sometime.”

Thanks for reading!