an easier-to-read version of my last Peripheral Surveys story.

(it appears in the magazine, but this might be better for some people)

The Duchess’ Tears

Brittany Kemp

            Are we really responsible for those we’ve selected to let into our hearts? Or is it just fate, just kismet, just us falling victim to some greater scheme of the way life is supposed to be?

One can argue that science and logic dictate that love is something we create in our minds. One can disturb any notions that we are at the will of something devious, if shown in the improper light. And if in the positive light, then love (or whatever it is) will be led to flourish and grow as it should. Blossom into something healthy and not left to fester like a day-old wound.

            But for Natasha, her last brush with love had not ended this way. Some hands slap rather than caress. She had been at the receiving end of such.

            Now she sat in a café, holding an overpriced and overfoamed latte, contemplating a girl from too long ago.

            How mundane. She dismissed her fears. She had no rational reason to be as nervous as she was. What had transpired was long over. Life was different then and so forth. She liked to make believe it was happier, but she knew it probably wasn’t. It just seemed it. If we take into consideration the argument from earlier, then Natasha was most definitely a victim. She didn’t carry herself like one and she felt no self-pity, just pangs of various regrets. They echoed through her body like she was made of water and they were simply the latent ripples.

She reckoned she was happy now, fine as it was. She had a man that loved her very well and in a way she was not familiar with. His hair was dark and he came from money and smelled like exotic perfumes. He was Italian or Spanish, Natasha didn’t know his whole backstory. And she didn’t really want to know. Natasha was content with her ignorance in this regard. She didn’t press. She washed her hands before every meal and after every visit to the bathroom. She took a lot of showers and kept the water on longer than she should have; the bills that came afterwards attested to this.

She tried not to reflect on her past and where it was she specifically came from. Natasha knew something was missing, but whatever this piece was, she tried to not expose it against the rest of her life. She knew the way things were could not be changed at this point, and she was not sure she would want them to be changed.

As for Andie, she read of her sometimes in the periodicals she picked up at the store but never bought. They were small articles, speaking of some good fortune and so on. She couldn’t ask anything more for her. As always, she knew there was more brewing behind the scenes, but that was left up to the imaginings of her mind.

It had been her incentive to get the two back together for this meeting. Natasha had the vague inkling it was out of place or out of time, but she had wanted it.

“I’ll be there.” Andie hadn’t hesitated on the phone. Her voice was somewhat gruff and indistinctive. The emotion that was hidden in there was hard to pick up- if there was any. She wondered what her personal life was like now. If she had one. Andie had been so obsessed with work; she could imagine any fledgling relationships had been put eternally on the backburner.

Natasha had arrived half an hour early. This was to give her time to wind down, zen herself out. She could hear her heart beating in her ears, thumping along, as if she had just taken off in a marathon.

I’m so mundane. She despaired, questioning her body’s logic. There was no good reason to be so worked up. There was no good reason for the clamminess in her hands and the anxiety churning through her body.

The caffeine wasn’t helping matters, either.

She took a quick glimpse at the time on her cell phone. Now, it was about right. She tried to appear nonchalant, leaning back in her seat. Instead, she leaned back so far she almost fell.

Idiot. Natasha’s pale cheeks reddened and she straightened herself into an upright mode.

“Is your other party coming?” The waitress, an unassuming young girl, appeared before her. The smile on her face was taut and somewhat overdone. Natasha looked away.

“In a few minutes, yes.” The waitress headed off, leaving Natasha with the empty chair set before her.

It’s mocking me. The presence of that overbearing wooden chair mocks me. 

And, as if scripted, Andie was there. She stood in the doorway, her eyes big and blank, searching the catacombs of the streetside café. Natasha waved her hand and mouthed a sad “hello.” Andie, herself, nodded a response and made her meek way into the café, her eyes downwards the whole time.

“Did you get here early?” Andie’s first question was, her voice soft and somewhat easily misunderstood for its lack of volume. It matched her persona; she was a girl often lost in a crowd. She was soft-spoken, quiet and diminutive. Now Natasha wasn’t an outgoing ball of unstoppable energy, but her great beauty was enough to get her noticed by passersby (most of the time). People often told her she should have been a model, but she personally did not concur. Even Andie had said so, time in and time out.

“Yes I did. You know me.”

“I do.” The waitress came back. “A black coffee, please.” Andie nodded at the girl before she could begin to speak. There was something impatient in the air surrounding her.

Well, one thing hasn’t changed. Always with the black coffee. Natasha smirked, in spite of herself. She didn’t think it’d kill Andie to get a cappuccino for once, or, yes, a latte.

The coffee would appear in an off-white ceramic mug, not really black but some shade of dark brown. Natasha never understood why they called untainted coffee ‘black.’ It never appeared some inky darkness to her. It always seemed to be just some very deep hue of brown. She supposed it depended on the variety of coffee, itself.

“Same old?” Natasha asked, after the quiet went on too long. Andie managed a smile from the oversized mug.

“Same old.”

“You were okay with meeting me here today, right?” Andie’s shoulders raised and lowered, a very small gesture.

“I showed up, didn’t I?”

“I know it’s been a while.”

“Three years?” Andie squinted, as if the sun was pouring into her eyes. It wasn’t.

“I think that’s about right.”

“Feels less.”

“Doesn’t it always?” Natasha examined the girl before her, now occupying the chair she had come to loathe (stupidly). She seemed somehow very much older than she remembered, although Natasha had half a year on her in age. The circles under her doelike eyes were more prominent and there were lines decorating her skin, creases about the mouth that hadn’t been there before. So she recalled.

“What are you doing these days?” Natasha realized once the words were out of her how stupid they were. Of course she knew. She always knew. Aye, there’s the rub.

“I think you know.” Andie shrugged. She barely touched her coffee. “Work here, work there. I have a few exhibits under way, you know.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I keep busy.”

“Do you still smoke?” Natasha’s question was spurred on by that nagging impulse under her skin. Something was not right with Andie, no. There was something to her she’d never not find attractive, some intangible thing lacking a name. It was in the color of her eyes and the life of her smile. But watching her now, the girl who looked ill at ease and mussed up in her draping clothes, she saw the color and life drained.

It’s like she’s wasting away. Natasha finished the latte uneasily. I thought she was the most self destructive person I ever met. I guess I was right, in that respect.

“What are you trying to do here? What point are you trying to prove?” Natasha could not bring herself to ask those questions, though. She knew being forceful with Andie- the Andie she remembered, who’d meet her at aquariums and take her to dinners and hold her hand awkwardly under the table- would snap under such pressure.

“What’s that have to do with anything?” Andie came off irritated, which was unlike her. She was possessed by crazy adrenaline energy most of the time, but she subdued her moments of rage with quiet teeth gritting. This was her, exasperated. Natasha flinched.

“I was just curious.” Her voice was small, timid. Andie softened.

“I try and I try and I try.”

“Try harder. It will kill you, you know.”

“But what, may I ask, won’t kill me?” Without any intent to do this, Natasha glanced at her wrists. They were fine. Small, pale and untouched. She almost wanted to put a hand across the table and tap them, but that was an act that belonged to yesteryear and not the present. The present- she thought of her man, she thought of the little she now knew of Andie when she once knew every minute detail- was a strange beast.

“Taking care of yourself.”

“Have you been doing that?”

“Of course, but you just look.” She furrowed her brow. How to phrase it? “...roughed up.”

“I haven’t really fallen on hard times, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I know you haven’t. But I worry about you.” To this, Andie said nothing. Her eyes

fixated on some unseen point in the distance.

“I know you’re seeing someone,” Andie finally broke the silence between them. It had been ruined itself by the talk of other customers and the sound of the traffic roaring on outside. “That’s good, right?”

“Yes. It’s going fairly well.” Natasha was not anxious to speak about it with her. As far as she was concerned, it was another arena of her life the girl was not privy to. And, she was sure, Andie harbored similar sentiments. How could she not?

To some degree- and naturally why she had this meeting take place- Natasha would have loved to have her as some kind of presence in her life. Really. Even if it would have been toxic. Even if would have been disastrous, and she was nearly positive it would be, to some extent. Their relationship had some hazy drug-like quality to it, intoxicating and maddening. Neither party could think clear for long. Andie, though, jerked away.

“That’s great.”

“How about yourself?” And, as easy and as natural as any reflex, Natasha flinched. She did not want to know. Because on some level, she wanted to say “you still mean the world to me, and I don’t know if I mean anything to you.” How was it so easy to fall out of favor with people anymore?

 “On and off, but it’s not a priority right now.” She spoke fast. “So it doesn’t mean much.”

Natasha could only bring herself to nod.

“Maybe someday, huh?”

Andie gazed off at that unknowable something in the distance. Natasha was tempted to turn and look at it, but she knew there was likely nothing to be found.

“Yup.”

For the remaining hour, they made hopeless small talk. Talk of the popular topics of the moment, making a deft dance to avoid any subjects of true priority.

“Did you see that Newsweek cover?”

“What Newsweek cover? I haven’t been reading it.”

“The one with Diana on the cover- like, if she hadn’t died, you know, in that crash back in

’97.” 

Andie didn’t finish her coffee. More than half of the now cold liquid remained, dormant,  reflecting her darkened self back at them. Natasha was leaning back in her chair, trying to appear comfortable. She was not comfortable. She was in a state. Goddammit.

“The things that could be, I guess,” she said softly. Another pause languished between the two women. Natasha was reminded of other pauses at more intimate meetings, more private encounters. When a silence was something to be cherished, and not held in suspicion. “I’ve got the check.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

When they departed the café, they spent a moment outside of it, together in the white daylight. It felt like some weird fragment in history that shouldn’t be there; something that did not belong to any linear sense. So anachronistic. Natasha thought to herself (just herself) with a sad smirk.

“This place is called the Duchess?” Andie stood there, her hands tucked into her pant pockets. Natasha nodded.

“I’ve always read about it. It was supposed to be a cute place.”

“Well, it wasn’t not cute. Just seems like a weird name for a coffee shop. Should be a bar or a strip club, with a name like that.” And then she flashed her only sincere grin of the afternoon.

“You have a twisted mind.” And once upon a time, this is when you would have said “that’s why you love me.”

“I have something for you.” Andie reached deeper into her side pocket. Natasha suddenly felt cold, as if there was a chill in the summer air when there was only humidity.

“Oh?”

She had a piece of paper, folded carefully. She handed it to Natasha, who wasn’t sure whether or not to take it at first. She hesitated, but then grabbed it, as if it would have contained anthrax or exploded upon contact.

“Look at it later,” Andie offered. And then, she went in for a fast hug, which also caught Natasha by total shock. She wrapped her arms around her, unsure, but then gripping tighter. And feeling nothing but taut flesh and hard bones.

Andie pulled away, didn’t meet her in the eye and walked off into the new life that she had forged. For how long it would be “good” was up to speculation, but for now. Natasha watched with longing. She realized her eyes were burning with tears.

Good God. I’m a wreck. The piece of paper was still in her hand, surprisingly soft. Under the sign that read “Duchess” and nothing more, Natasha saw that there was nothing, once unraveled, written on it.

For a few more minutes, to herself now, she laundered. When she disappeared back into the throbbing pulse of the city, she could not help but wonder how many others were simply coming and going, always to be replaced and running out of time.