She silently ate while he stared at his phone, giving the waitress
only a wan smile when she came to refill their coffees. The wind and
rain surged and washed against the big window beside them. There was
music playing, old music she didn’t really know, part of the
diner’s retro concept. Their food cooled to room temperature before
she finally said, “I didn’t want you to go in the first place.”
He glanced up at her,
still distracted. After a moment, he shrugged and said, “I had to
know.”
“And?” She tried to
sound casual, conversational, and failed. “What did you get? What’s
the verdict?”
“I thought you didn’t
want to know.”
“I
don’t, but you went anyway, and so now I have to
know.”
He
took a sip of his coffee, winced, fumbled for sugar and cream and a
tiny spoon to mix them, took another sip. “I’ll tell you mine
after you get yours.”
“I’m
not getting mine. I don’t want to know. I don’t think I could
handle knowing.” She leaned in, over her half-eaten plate of
Belgian waffles. “And I don’t think you’re handling it either.”
“I’m
handling it fine.”
“Really?
How long do you have then? What’s the end date on this thing?”
She gestured with the end of her fork, her chest and then his. “Us?”
He
sipped the coffee again, added more cream, delaying. “We have some
time.”
“What’s
‘some time’? What does that mean? A month? A year? They’re
supposed to give you a date and time, like an appointment, all set in
stone and unavoidable, right? So what does it say your—?”
“Jesus,
Angela…” He looked around the diner, making sure the few other
patrons were at least pretending to ignore them. Quieter, he
continued: “Eight months. Eight months and change. It doesn’t say
how.”
Her
eyes went wide. Eventually she breathed. “But—”
“That’s
around the time I usually go skiing with Victor and those guys. Maybe
if I don’t go? But that’s not supposed to… you’re not…”
He paused; there was a tremble in his hand that rattled the coffee
cup against the saucer, and he put the whole thing down. “It’ll
just happen some other way. That’s what the pamphlet said, anyway:
you can’t get out of it.”
“Maybe
it’s wrong, and—”
“Sure.”
He pushed piles of scrambled eggs around his plate with his fork. “I
made an appointment for you.”
“I
told you, I’m not going.”
“I
need you to.” It was his turn to lean in. “I need you to.
I need to know if we go together. It’ll change… it changes
things.”
“I
wish they’d never invented the stupid thing. It’s not right.
We’re not supposed to know things like this. We’re just not
supposed to. If...” She trailed off, shook her head, went
back to eating, wouldn’t meet his eyes again, not for the longest
while.
Outside,
the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Cars would pass occasionally,
almost silent except for the sound of tires on wet pavement. The
waitress came and laid the check tablet; he waved his phone over it
and it beeped as ‘paid’.
She
slid her phone across the table to him, but he waved it off. “I
already got it.”
“No.”
“Angela—”
“No,
look at it.” She gestured to the phone. She wouldn’t look at him.
“I went months ago. With my sister. When they were first open,
before we were serious.”
“You
lied? I thought you ‘couldn’t handle knowing’.” He hesitated,
afraid to look, to know. But he heard his voice ask, “Eight
months?”
“No.
Joon, it’s… just look at it.”
He
had to make a conscious decision to pick her phone up from the table,
an act of will. He tapped the screen, read the information that
appeared there. Eventually he put it down.
“You’ll
be what, then, ninety—”
“A
hundred and one. Em makes it to one-oh-three. I guess I’m not
surprised: Gammy lived to her late nineties, and she lived most of
her life in pre-reform private healthcare. I think mom told me she
had good insurance though.”
“You’ve
known this the whole time?”
“We’d
gone on three dates. We hadn’t even slept together yet. It wasn’t
your business then, and then later when it was, it was too late to
tell you. I didn’t know how to… I just couldn’t.” She finally
looked him in the eyes. “How mad are you?”
“Does
it matter?”
“Of
course it does!”
“Eight
months from now—“
“And
change.”
“—Eight
months and change and it won’t matter.” He finished the coffee,
slipped his phone back into his pocket. “Do you want me to move
out?”
“Why
on Earth would I want you to move out?”
“So
you can get on with it. So I can. I’ve got a lot to cram
into eight months. There’s work to finish or hand off before I
quit. Going to see my parents, and Eun-Ae, and maybe Freddie. There’s
bucket list stuff. And I still want to go skiing at some point. So if
you don’t want me around the place while I do all that I would
under—”
“You’re
an idiot.”
“What?”
She
shook her head, dumbfounded. “You’re not moving out, Joon. First
off, it could still be wrong—”
“Have
you seen even one feed item about them being wrong?”
“They
could be paying people off, you don’t—”
“Angela.”
“They
could be. They could be wrong. Nothing is ever a hundred
percent, nothing ever. So you’re staying, and if you want to
take time off from work, and do your damn bucket list or whatever,
that’s fine. But you’re staying.”
“And
if they’re right?”
“Then
you’re staying because... I’d miss the cat too much.”
“I
was going to leave you the cat, Angela, he—”
“You’d
better fucking leave me the cat. I’m the one that
feeds that cat.”
“Ok,
ok—”
“He’s
basically my cat at this point anyway.”
“Ok.”