| Between here and there
Will we find ourselves? |
"Thanks. This is all too big to really understand," I said, putting my face in my hands. I didn't normally have to deal with things involving kidnapping and brainwashing and corporate espionage. I didn’t even know where to begin figuring out the scattered trail of clues filling up the space all around me, or whose information was legitimate, or where I could find my heart. The most in depth decision that I’d made in weeks had centered on which digital merchant I wanted to shop my hobby music out to, what royalty rates they’d provide to me, and how long it would take to propagate into their shopping area. All of that was already world away from here. "All the things that really matter are," Janine said, reaching for my cigarettes. "You shouldn’t smoke," I said, avoiding letting the conversation continue on in the direction that it was heading. Bad habit of mine, I suppose, but I tended to do that whenever I felt uncomfortable getting too deeply involved in things that showed weakness or vulnerability on my part. Inside, I felt on the verge of breaking down and crying like a baby, right there, in the middle of some diner outside of the city, I felt like screaming and tearing out hair, doing the whole weeping and gnashing of teeth bit that is indicative of the tormented. Inside, I felt like an explosion was occurring, and I was applying all the force I could muster within me to hold it, to contain it, to keep it from breaking out and making me lose it completely. It was much easier just to stay on the lighter side conversationally, as long as Janine would let me remain there, things would be fine. There was only person I’d ever known that I felt completely at ease with opening up to, and that connection happened almost instantly. "Technically, I shouldn’t be doing a lot of the things that I do, you know," she said, lighting a cigarette, then passing it to me. She reached into the pack and pulled out another one. "But I'm not like anyone else you know, am I? Smoking is hardly breaking the rules compared to the other ways that we’re defying what's 'supposed' to be 'right'," she accented the words with her hands, making sign language quotation marks before lighting the second cigarette. "You’re avoiding talking about it already, I know, and I want you to know that I noticed." "I guess I'm still in some kind of shock or something," I offered. |