IdanCarre

How real can our thoughts become? How far into our own minds can we recede? If I’m sitting at a café typing this and I look up and see a delightful young man grinning down at me confidently, does it actually happen?

“What are you writing?” He smiles wider, leaning forward over the computer. I’m startled. I shake my head like I’m trying to wake up from a dream and to push away the hot air from my face from the embarrassment. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“Do you? Who do I look like?” He looks at me expectantly.

I’m trying to remember. Something about the way I write causes me to think of Ayn Rand characters. All of them are these perfect blonde white people, all glittering and gruesomely ‘rational’. “You look like what I picture John Galt would look like.” I’m not particularly proud of that, and he knows it.

“Ah well, I guess I’ll be ol’ John-boy today.” He invites himself to sit across from me and the nameless nondescript waitress drops two cups of coffee in front of us. I have a cappuccino, he has an espresso in one of those tiny shot glass mugs. He sips it and a look of spiritual rejuvenation washes over him. He seems to forget I’m even there in that moment, he looks so self-satisfied. I’m glad to be out of the spotlight of this bizarre interaction for a few seconds. As he reopens his eyes from his religious reunion with coffee, he looks at me eagerly.

“So how’ve you been?”

“Why does it matter to you?” I’m probably more salty than I should be.

“Someone cares about you,” He looks at the espresso as if it were a divining tool, “they would want to know how you were.”

“If they did, they wouldn’t send you.” He’s taken aback, upset with my severe observations.

“Wait wait,” he rolls his eyes, “Do you know who we’re even talking about? And how do you know what they’d do to check in on you? I daresay you don’t know everything, darling.”

My eyes narrow and I pull one corner of my mouth to the side in a distasteful look.

"So? Who sent you?”

He raises his eyebrows as he puts back the rest of the espresso, the hot elixir burning the back of his throat in that semi-satisfyingly painful manner. He gulps inaudibly. “The one.”

I can’t help but scoff. “The one. Like we’re in the matrix or something? He better not look like Keanu Reeves.” John’s expression has held in place, eyebrows still on end; he cannot believe I’m not taking him seriously. “Kay,” the lines in his face went taught, “This is real.”

I sigh, putting my feet up on the table. “Whatever. Tell him I’m fine, and I look forward to meeting him.”

John nods. He sits quietly. He shoots a look at the waitress in the back, then at me. The chair squeaks as he pushes it back and stands. “That’s all you’ve got?” He was starting to look sincerely disappointment with me now. “Well seriously, John, what am I supposed to say to a made up character who’s some kind of magical mediator to my future partner?” John shook his head. “Gee I don’t know, that was supposed to be your one part in this.” My one part? I wrote the whole thing! “You wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for me! You have to do more than that! Work with me here! Explain yourself! What exactly are you going to do with whatever I’m going to tell you?”

John shrugged. “Relay the information, I suppose. He just wanted to know how you were doing. He didn’t say much besides that, he seemed busy.” Busy, yes, I hope he was too busy developing Time Travel Beta® 1.2.1 so he didn’t have to work through a cryptic, politically charged character like John Galt. That seems like a pretty basic design flaw to have made it past the protoype stages, Mr. Right.

“Well it’s not like you’re all that either, darling.” John quipped.

“So he sent you here to ‘prep me’?” Air quotes fingers for effect. John seemed to bring out the 15 year old irritable girl in me. It does disturb me that that would be my reaction to the situation, though.

I mean, what would you do? You’re just minding your own business and this odd figure with lots of personal significance but lots of conflicting meaning trapeses in and tries to tell you in so many words that he is a way of communicating with your future life partner, but he has yet to tell you what this life partner even wants from you aside from “knowing how you’re doing.” I’m doing fine I guess! I’m really confused though, and I’d like some answers, but I can’t get any!

“He just wants to know if he’s talking to the right person. He’s not actually certain you’re the one, but he’s got it narrowed down to a few people and he’s trying to feel out if he’s right about you.” John sits back down and the waitress, who appeared to be apprehensive, now hands him a menu with relief. He nods approvingly at her. This time she’s much easier for me to see; she has curly hair and a well-fitting apron. We both appreciate her simple beauty as she moves languidly through the revolving doors to the back of the café.

My attention returns to the new information. “So really he’s trying to date me through some interdimensional means.” John bobs his head side to side, debating the correctness of my interpretation at he reads the menu items. “You give him a bit too much credit, I actually did this before I met him. I own him a favor, but once he figures out the one, then the terms of our contract are met. I go back to my usual work after that.” His usual work? “Sending clues to people in the past. I work pretty indirectly. I put little reminders in people’s days in the form of symbols. Doves flying overhead, a rainbow on someone’s worst day, ideas in someone’s head in astral projection. Oh, and bathroom stall messages. I write the letters people send eachother on bathroom stalls. That’s my little signature, my tag, you might say. Sometimes Jeremy leaves them too, but usually they’re mine...” He looks nostalgic when he talks about bathroom stalls.

I pull my jaw to one side and grit my teeth with impatience. “Do you want to explain more to me or leave me hanging like this? Or do you want me to just tell all and let you get back to your life? I don’t know how deep into this I can really get.” The sun is setting in the street through the café window, and I feel an ominous sense that the window is closing to talk to John before the signal is lost. He remains unruffled. “I’m not in any particular rush, you tell him as much or as little as you want right now.” I’m feeling uncertain and a bit uncomfortable at the thought of dictating a message to my future husband to John-

“Husband? No no no… I’m not sure you guys even stay together that long if you even do end up together if I remember right.”

“What?!” I jump forward in my seat.

John flapped his hand in my face dismissively. “It’s so complicated I can’t really get into all of it right now, darling. Your man has been sorting through a bunch of stuff in the stars and found a way to uncode parts of the past and future. He’s uncoded a lot of things, but not all of it, so we don't know exactly how you two turn out. He found me in the uncoding and helped me out when I was in a pickle,” his face gave away a distant grin, “and I always return the help for a pal like that. So let’s have it out. How’ve you been?”

What do I have to lose? I tell all. Everything about how I’ve felt lately, dissolving into various narratives about my life, my hopes and dreams, anything else I could think of that seemed relevant. We have some laughs, John seems to enjoy my company. He also seems to be intently committing everything I say to memory, probably to report back to Mr. Right (rolls eyes again). Is John a robot, or a person, in a projection of sorts? The last rays from the sun are slicing across the sky, setting the sky on fire. I let out a yawn. “That’s probably enough, right? Does that give him enough of a sense of me?”

John nods with satisfaction. “It gives me enough of a sense alright. Well darling, I’ll see you again soon enough.” He stood up and looked at me approvingly. “I’m so glad we met.”

More cryptic words. I was so frustrated and exhausted by this point I just wanted him to go back from wherever he came from. “Goodbye, John. Send Mr. Right my regards.”

John smiled as he took a final look at me. “Consider it already done.” He walked out of the café and disappeared around the corner just as the clouds changed from pinks and orange to subdued blues of a darkening dusk. I looked out the window to see the first star of the night emerge through a break in the clouds.

I looked down at my computer, which I realized now I had never closed during my discussion with John. The words on the page were now all the evidence I had that the interaction had ever taken place. Would anyone believe me that it actually happened? There was nothing substantial on the page to prove anything, but that was just how John worked, and probably what Mr. Right would have wanted, whoever he was.