WHO: Vince and Chessie WHAT: Reunions of the supremely awkward sort WHERE: Coffee shop somewhere~ WHEN: Sometime~ (recently) WARNINGS: Nada!
Time. Chessie’s relationship with it was complex, tangled, complicated. Time was a silvery-flitting thing, hard to fasten hands around and hold. When she was elbows-deep in grime and dust, it fled until dusk painted things dim and dark and velvety and when she was sifting through paperwork, signing sheets and sheets that promised role-model-ing and teaching and filling young heads with formative material, it ambled almost to standstill. Time could not be catalogued, she was either before or she was behind and it rarely, if ever lined up the way it should. In the field, it was nothing at all. Time began when Chessie did, all hands dusted off against her hips and smile over brewed coffee, bitter and black and thick -- but college did not.
Sleep had been a black, heavy thing, clinging like damp blankets, oiled silk long after she’d tried to unwind herself from it. Her mouth was thickly gritty, sand and silt of the tequila that had been silk the night before (sombreros, it was always wrong with sombreros). The shower didn’t cure it, dipping in and out as the water flicked from hot to cold to hot with short, sharp squeals of dislike -- there was one thing about being in a glass box suspended in the sky, the showers were supposed to be better. Damp and dripping, winding herself in over-large and crumpled cotton shirt dug from the very bottom of the suitcase that served as wardrobe, Chessie surveyed empty kitchen, clear worksurfaces and the severe lack of anything resembling coffee.
She was late. The queue was sluggish, a trickle of tired people toward jobs and work, shaking off the slack of a weekend that hung itself around their necks and clung. She bounced a little on her toes, experimentally - if they would let her behind the counter, she could just make it herself, no fluffy milk and sticky syrups-- but they wouldn’t. Not for all the pleading looks, the sorrowful sigh. She leant against the counter with the languidity of the hungover, eyes half-closed against the hiss and shriek of steaming milk. Pray to all the gods, ancient and new, for coffee.
Time. Unlike some others, Vince had it in spades. One might have thought this was more blessing than curse until the realized what Vince was lacking: energy. A long night at the lab was only fruitful for a while. Test could be run but results had to be waited upon. There were things to review and document but nothing could be done until results came and that only meant waiting. It was after he noticed that he was dozing off in the early morning hours that he realized he needed something to help with this excess of time on his hands.
He bid his coworker in the lab a quick farewell, promising to bring back some drinks in exchange for an alert should his tests yield something before he returned. The coffee shop wasn’t far and the line wasn’t long, but still it was a slow going process. Unsurprising since it was mostly populated with the barely awake. The woman behind him seemed a little more energetic than the rest, even if standing on her tiptoes wasn’t exactly the model of wakefulness. He couldn’t be sure though. The back of someone’s head wasn’t a proper indicator of alertness.
“Don’t think that’s going to help us any,” he offered unhelpfully, the sheer effort it would take to laugh the only thing preventing from doing so. “The line’s not taking that long, is it?” He’d only been there for a few moments but it didn’t seem much different than the usual morning crowd.
People struck up conversation in coffee lines in America. Had it been France, the roar of the coffee machine would have risen above, undisturbed, the clatter of silver-shiny milk jugs and hiss of espresso unchecked by talking. Were it Egypt, the hubbub would have drowned out the production, the thick-sweet smell of smoke clinging to her hair long after she left, tiny cup abandoned rather than paper packaging clutched in her hands. It took a moment, discordance of adjustment and Chessie turned and she smiled, all eyes and mouth and wild hair, the apology of a reaction half a beat too slow for normality.
“It’s always too long,” she said and it was laughter run through words until they were strung together; even half-awake, with a voice husky and soft like cigarette smoke and too little sleep, Chessie sounded as though someone had told her a joke just a minute before. Her weight was balanced over her toes, she stood on the balls of her feet as if it were comfortable, as if it were perfectly ordinary, one hand resting on the edge of the counter. Unpolished nails, clean for once. He looked familiar in a blurred way, warm, comfortable. She did not frown, not exactly but her smile went vague, mirrored over with trying to remember. The problem with coming back anywhere was remembering where people were from - if she knew them at all, that was. It was, Chessie thought, somewhat helplessly and pretending to turn attention to a display of plastic-looking muffins, one of the very few problems with going in the first place.
She looked familiar -- was familiar, for the recognition wasn’t hazy for him at all. He hadn’t forgotten that smile, and now looking upon her face the hair was completely recognizable. It had been a while but it was hard to forget your wife, at least he thought so, especially when he had clung to his memories of her in the wake of her leaving, trying not to forget the small details as he searched for clues as to where she had been. Even when he had abandoned the search, the memories hadn’t left him, though not for want of trying.
“...Francesca.” He had always liked her full name and often preferred saying it over the nickname. Well, as often as he could have during their brief marriage stint. “What are you doing here?” The words came without venom, at least for now. Simple but shocked curiosity was all he had, the surprise of seeing her jolting him awake far better than a cup of coffee otherwise would have.
A smile more brilliant than the one a minute before. “Yes?” Not a hint of recognition tied down to tequila, to sun-soaked days and white sheets, or nights wound through with laughter. He was familiar enough and he looked at her as though she were someone else, someone important. Chessie liked being looked at, no matter who it was or how they did it -- appreciative smile or the once-over women gave one another in bathrooms in America -- but she liked the way he looked at her, his gaze gone silver-sharp. He looked at her with eyes green as sea-rubbed stone and Chessie pushed a hand through the wild hair and smiled in place of an apology.
“I moved here.” Francesca - most people went for the easy name, ‘Chessie’ sounded better in English, Francesca rolled more easily in Italian. Was he Italian? Had she met him in Italy?
“Scuzi,” she tried, all molten sounds like liquid on her tongue, “I have not yet had my coffee. And you are?”
“No one. Just your husband,” he deadpanned, the lack of coffee and the jolt to his memory bank killing much of tact. Or at least his sense of propriety. He pulled back slightly with a soft click of his tongue, the presence of someone stepping in behind him preventing him from carving out more room to breathe. Bad habit made him cover his mouth with his hand, rubbing wakefulness into his face, feeling his two day old stubble against his palm. He came to get coffee and looking for lab results. Looking for his wife stopped a while ago, though a part of him wondered if he ever really did stop looking, but he hadn’t been expecting to ever find her, least of all right then.
“Of all the places in the world,” he muttered, shaking his head as his hand dropped, arms folding over his chest defensively. She didn’t remember him. That stung a lot more than he cared to admit. Things like that were better on the phone or in email. Reunions were only better in person when they were pleasant. “Met you in Mexico. Remember? Guess this isn’t too far from it.”
‘Your husband’ was not a name. It was not syllables to sift themselves surface-way beneath the sand of so many others -- Mexico. Chessie had been to Mexico at least five times, there were half a dozen people she’d crammed herself into bars with, laughed at her own bad Spanish with or told long and complicated stories to that they listened to without the slightest comprehension. ‘Your husband’ and Chessie frowned and then she smiled, and she stepped forward without a minute of notice for Vince’s so-obvious gestures of dismay. There were rules in this part of the world, unspoken ones about how close you stood, how near you were and how often you touched. Chessie ignored all of them; she put both arms in her thick coat around him and she stepped in tight to kiss both cheeks.
Up close she was a woman who carried with her smell of her own apartment and the things she surrounded herself with and as her hair waved around his face and her own skin pressed up against his, she was the scent of old paper and sand, soft incense and honey and her lips skimmed his cheek, once on each side, quick and light as a butterfly. She ignored the heads turning in the line, and she smiled at him as warmly as if it were a meeting scheduled in diaries and looked forward to.
“Mexico! I love Mexico. But we’re not married,” she patted his hand, the wrist bared by his sleeve with the confiding look of someone who knows a great deal and is willing to share. “It was just fun. Silly! Fun! Vince!” Her eyes widened; she was standing close enough for him to see. “It was - it is Vince. What are you doing in Las Vegas, Vince?”
He didn’t shy away from her greeting, the sort of kissing combo that happened on both cheeks and only with Europeans because no one would look at him with his crossed arms and unamused furrow of a brow and dare to say hello that closely. Well anyone besides her. And he refused to do much more than take it, certainly not lean back though the urge was there, because that would mean something was wrong – something that he could or should do something about. While there was something amiss here, he wasn’t going to fix it. It wasn’t his job. It wasn’t his fault. At least that’s what he kept tell his heels when he dug them to the ground.
“I’m working, Francesca,” he said, firm tones melting to a sigh without his permission. It was hard to resist her enthusiasm and warmth. It was, after all, what drew him to her in the first place. But she was forgetting key elements and he wasn’t about to let them slide. Not after so long or where they were. But first things first. “Line’s moving,” he said with a point of his chin over her shoulder, the masses before them swaying back and forth and forward as if they were actually making huge leaps and bounds instead of moving a few inches. “And we were married. Are. That’s what the paper says. Remember?” Of course she didn’t. She couldn’t remember his name two seconds ago. A piece of paper wouldn’t have meant anything more.
There was a gap in the snaking line, a gap caused by their own catch up. Americans didn’t like gaps in lines. The Europeans coughed over them. Chessie unwound herself, all glancing pat to his cheek and attention paid in small part to catching up. She walked backwards, and didn’t seem to notice the attention being tugged firmly their way both by her behavior and their own conversation. A woman in a pink leather jacket was staring. Chessie waved, cheerfully.
“What do you mean?” A paper, what was a paper for? Had Vince liked paper then? Her memory was flimsy, sodden in alcohol and overlaid with what had been important at the time; the cracks in the ceiling, an orange flower that had been put on the breakfast tray. The sound of rain in a city that never had rain at all in summer. Chessie smiled and it was fond and warm and private, held to herself in a coffee shop line. She remembered laughing, she remembered a game or a joke, it had to have been, ‘let’s get married’. They hadn’t -- it was just a game. Perhaps Vince was confused?
“What paper?” Chessie blinked. She managed to maintain a look of absolute innocence even as she managed to skip someone in line who’d dodged out for food.
People stared and Vince ignored them. What else could he do? She was ignoring social cues. Or didn’t know them. The former seemed most likely and he held tight to it, as he did to his elbows even as he stepped forward to move along the line. “The marriage certificate. That paper.” The woman in pink’s eyebrows shot up, so quickly and pronounced that he could see it even when he was barely paying attention to her. He closed his arms tighter over her chest.
“Look, it’s nothing. We were drunk. We shouldn’t have gotten married. You took off before I could...” What? Even he wasn’t so sure. The easy answer was that he could have gotten her divorce papers but that couldn’t have been it. He could have just as easily tried to annul the entire thing but hadn’t bothered to look into it. He wasn’t someone who often made such world class blunders with his life. People made mistakes all the time, and he happened to be people. Maybe getting married to a stranger was a mistake but he could own up to it. He could bear it. Annulling it without talking to her, or hell, even finding her, was just going to erase it. Like it never happened. And that somehow didn’t sit right with him.
But neither did trying to reconnect with a kind of ex wife in the middle of a coffee shop while she didn’t even remember getting married in the first place. “Can I call you later? Get an address?” Send over papers seemed to be the implication but he had trouble forcing the words out.
He seemed very certain. Chessie turned her head away from the burnt-earth smell of the coffee brewing and she looked at him, long and slow and her hands held twisted together. She had dirt beneath her nails - she always had dirt beneath her nails - but when her hands weren’t moving, flying, and she went very still she looked unsure, apprehensive. She shook her head and her silver earrings chimed, and her fingers fluttered just a little as if she intended to reach out but had stopped herself. “I don’t have a phone.”
His words were blunted, shortened off. Was he angry? He was angry. Chessie’s fingers grazed his hand, flinched at the tension of stiffened arm. “I had to go.” She remembered leaving Mexico. There had been an expedition, it had been the best, a dream! “You’re angry.”
“I’m not angry.” The words came out in a low rumbling roll, easily and without too much thought, and his face scrunched slightly as he realized his bad habit. “Or if I am, not at you.” Which was only really half a lie. He was annoyed at himself, for waiting and wondering, but it was simply because she clearly hadn’t, so the lines drawn for the blame game were getting blurry.
He wasn’t in the least bit surprised that she had no phone. She didn’t seem the type then - gadgets were more his thing - and he hadn’t changed much since the last time they saw each other. “Email? Somewhere I can write?” His eyes drifted down to her hands found the tell tale traces of dirt at her nails. “Where are you working now?”
She had a notebook. It wasn’t hers, it was her’s, blue and battered and half-full of someone else’s handwriting. But Chessie didn’t think that was what Vince meant. Her face was a mirror, easily written across - now pleased surprise etched itself there. “I have an email.” The university issued them, handed them out like candy on Halloween. Email was tiresome, an electronic tether that demanded attention even when you had other things to do.
She recited it, dutifully. A clutter of letters and numbers neatly finished off with dot edu, official and heavy. She frowned and it was an expression that used all of her face, even the way she held her hands. “I don’t like email. You are always being asked for something, beep, beep, beep,” a too-wild gesticulation and she nearly hit the person behind the counter. Chessie gave her a dazzling smile, and was, it appeared, forgiven.
“It’s temporary,” Chessie said, and it was an assurance, to herself rather than Vince. Temporary, despite official email addresses. “What are you doing? I want to hear what you’ve been up to.” All warmth; she reached out a hand for her coffee without looking, they’d made it to the head of the queue.
“Coffee,” he replied. That’s what he was up to. And coffee was what they were there for, he gently reminded her with a point of his chin. Once more the line was shuffling forward and he lead her in that direction, careful of her backwards walking. “And work, mostly. I’m with the Metro PD now.” He had been adrift the last time they were together, wavering between jobs and obligations as he struggled to find some rock to cling to while his life was in upheaval after his mother’s passing.
“But I’ll email you,” he said, snatching the snippets of information she gave him and typing them rapidly into his phone. “We’ll catch up. When we’re not poised to piss off everyone in this cafe.” That was offered with a wry little grin, the first he had truly given her since he entered. “They’ll riot if we slow their coffee intake some more.”
He gave a little, a fractured small thing of a smile. He looked different, when he smiled, soft eyes and the creases of his mouth pulled themselves into smiling so easily, she knew it was usual. Vince smiled. He was someone who laughed. It was a small thing, a tiny thing but he was -- for the moment, as she’d not believed at all -- someone important, even if it was only to a piece of paper. Knowing things about him was important, too.
She wrapped both hands around her coffee and she smiled, bright as Vegas sunshine. “I’m glad you have a place.” A home, there’d been moments in amongst the heat and the sweat and the whisper-soft dark when they’d spoken briefly about such things. Not a lot. But a little.
“Enjoy your coffee, Vince,” and her lips skimmed his cheek, brief and soft and delicate and Chessie swung forward, coffee clutched like a prize and nary a backward look.
“You too,” he murmured, her bright smile tugging his small one a little wider, reminding him of that night they had met in that bar. He was still hurt that he was so forgettable and that time hadn’t been kind to them. But he had an address now. Well, a general vicinity and an email address. It was a start he hadn’t had a while ago. The polite smile stayed firmly in place as she walked away and Vince kept watch on her until she was out the front doors. When he turned back around to the counter he spied the woman in the pink jacket staring at him, not bothering to hide that she was eavesdropping, and raised both eyebrows. Just like that, with her absence, the smile melted and the uncomfortable frown resettled back into its place.