This Close to Okay(6)

“Are you completely detached from your family? You don’t feel like you can talk to them?”

“I don’t want to talk to them right now.”

“Okay. Mind me asking how old you are?”

“Mind me asking how old you are?” he asked. Raised his eyebrow.

“Okay. You don’t want to tell me. So tell me this: Do you want more coffee? I can get you a refill. I’ll get one, too,” she said, taking his still-half-full cup.

“Sure. Thanks.”

At the counter, when she was turned away from him, she touched her pocket, checking to make sure the papers she pulled from his jacket were safe. She got their refills, performed her whole coffee ritual at the condiment counter, gave him his cup. Black. Her initial nervousness had sailed away, and she wanted to cup her hands and say Come back to that little nervous ship, because that’s what made sense. She should’ve been nervous. Was she this lonely? She had a respectable career, a nice house, her cats, her parents and brother and sister-in-law and a host of relatives and friends in her contact list. She had Aisha and a stocked pantry—which made her feel safer and better about the world. Losing her nervousness made her feel reckless, and feeling reckless fed her recklessness, leading her to feel the scariest, most thrilling thing of all: free.

“I’m forty,” she said after she’d sat across from him again.

“I’m thirty-one,” he said. Another layer peeled away.

Tallie fingered the folded papers in her pocket underneath the table, felt guilty for swiping them. She should put them back; they weren’t her business.

“Wow, you’re young!” she said. Jovial. Maybe it would rub off on him. She bubbled with desire to get to know him better, to unravel whatever it was he had tightly wound around his heart. She cared for Bridge. No matter what, he had something to live for. Estranged or not, he had a family in Clementine. He seemed interesting and intelligent. She tried her best to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.

“I feel old,” he said.

“I feel old sometimes, too.”

“Why did you stop me?” he asked. His eyes, hauntingly sad. It was almost as if a shadow fell across them. Supplicating. Like an oil painting of Christ wearing His crown of thorns.

“I care about you. I don’t want you to die. I’m…so glad you didn’t jump.”

He took the lid off his coffee cup, blew across it. Drank and put it down before looking at her.

“Well, you were making so much fucking noise I couldn’t hear myself think,” he said.

He’d caught Tallie so off guard she was blushing as she laughed, covering her face. Voilà! She knew making suicide harder for people who were considering it was sometimes the difference between life and death. She’d read about the suicide rate plummeting in Great Britain after something as simple as swapping the coal gas stoves for natural gas, because too often, suicide came down to a matter of convenience. She was pleased that making so much fucking noise had made a difference. She thought back to her well-intentioned but slapdash therapy session and sloppy rescue techniques, almost choking on her coffee.

“Careful. You’re going to spill everything,” he said. She felt the table steadied and peeked out from between her fingers at him, drinking his coffee again like he hadn’t said a word.

“I’m not apologizing for stopping you,” Tallie said, once she finished laughing.

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Good.”

“What are you going to do now?” he asked after a moment. He leaned over like a sigh, let his weight press against the wall beside them. Suicide casual. He was a stranger, a strange man. Everything about him was oddly both new and familiar when held up to the other men in her life. Bridge had small ears like her dad and her college beau, Nico. Bridge, Nico, and Joel all had nice hands. Bridge looked the most like a storybook lumberjack from a deep forest who’d taken a wrong turn, ended up in the big city. And the rich, golden timbre of his voice reminded her of her brother’s.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. The little boat of nervousness was gone, gone, gone. Bon voyage. She couldn’t see it if she squinted.



They were en route to her place. He’d been quiet so far in the car, only replying to the questions she asked.

“So you have a house or an apartment?”

“I used to. Not anymore, really,” he said.

“You don’t have anywhere to stay?”

“I didn’t say that. I just don’t have a house or an apartment.”

“You have a car?”

“I don’t have a car here. Not in town,” he said.

“How do you get around?”

“I get around all right,” he said. He looked over at her with the backpack in his lap. He kept his hand on top of it. Tallie’s fear scuttled back when she glanced at that backpack. That’s where his torture devices could be—the ropes, the gun, the knives. “Knives Out.” Creepy song to be floating across the coffee shop. Tallie kept hearing the chorus in her head.

It was full dark and still raining, although not as much as before. Halloween was on Saturday. What was she doing? Locked in her car, this stranger in her passenger seat, driving him to her house? This was a perfect horror film she had created, and when they got to her place he’d take whatever it was out of that backpack, murder her, and put her somewhere no one would ever find her. Her parents and brother would be on TV begging for her return. Years from now her brother would write a book about it. It’d be a best seller, get optioned for a movie. One of those kids from one of those teen vampire shows would play Bridge. He’d win an Oscar. Her brother would become a highly sought-after screenwriter and leave his family, start dating one of the young girls from the same teen vampire show.