None of the characters in this story is real, other than the pianist.
“I can’t believe you,” Cat said, reaching across the table in the cafe booth, pointing to something on her phone.
“What?” said Mike, face fallen.
“Don’t play dumb.”
She turned her phone to him. It was a page from his web site, titled The Ending. He scrolled through it with his finger.
“What?”
“You turned me into a character in one of your stupid short stories.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Of course you did. It is one of our arguments turned into some sort of melancholy self-referential short story.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Mike emphatically, flipping the screen to scan the text. “Okay, it covers some of the same ground as we have. But that doesn’t mean it is our conversation. It is just words on a page.”
“It’s not just the subject of the conversation, Mike. It’s the way this ‘Caroline’ character is described. It’s me, or some version of me,” she said, pointing as she fell back in her seat blowing some hair from her face. “She even does that.”
“Well, yes, she does do that. But, that does not mean it’s you. It’s just one of my characters drawn through gesture and mannerisms rather than description, to help move the story forwards.”
Cat’s face dropped at that, and she sank back into her seat, closing her eyes to contain her anger. Mike mistook it for a retreat and continued pressing his point.
“‘Write what you know,’ they say. And that’s what I’ve done. And I know you and I know me. That does not mean anyone in the story is anyone. Even the character who is like me is not me.” He leaned forward to make sure his point would now be taken. “I mean, he is a complete idiot.”
Cat resisted the temptation to score a point. It would be too easy. But she did not meet him in the middle. She remained coiled in her seat, arms folded, head down, keeping him guessing, before suddenly looking up, fixing him with ferocious energy.
“I may have misread the situation,” Mike thought, caught in her glare.
“So that is what you think of me is it? ‘A thinly-drawn character who helps move your story forwards’? Is that how how you think of me?”
“This is not going as well as I thought,” Mike thought. At first stunned, the extent of his communication failure began sinking in. One last try.
“But it is not you!”
“If it’s not me, then who the fuck is it?” said Cat.
“There is nobody else, Cat.”
Several heads turned towards them in the cafe and they lowered their voices.
“There better bloody well not be.”
“I…,” Mike began, but he had run out of dialogue.
At moments like this Mike’s stock main character would start brooding fatalistically, to elicit sympathy from the audience before ultimately giving up, thought Cat, reaching forward and turning her coffee cup on the saucer.
“That’s it. It is clearly over between us,” Mike thought, staring into the middle distance, picturing himself crushed under the heel of a slow-turning coffee cup. She was right, he thought. They were trapped in one of his melancholy short stories which was rapidly approaching its end. There was no escape.
They were both silent, both resigned to their fate.
It was 3.58. The pianist, a bald, heavyset man in his 60s with a halo of white hair, flipped open the lid of the upright piano like it was made of balaswood and ran a few powerful scales to warm up.
Mike leant forwards during a particularly muscular glissando. Cat drew her cup to her, nursing it in both hands, bracing herself.
“Here it comes. The ending,” she thought.
“Cat, I’ve been thinking,” began Mike, Cat opening her eyes, horrified at her foresight.
“You’re not serious? This is not one of your miserable stories. This is real life, you can’t just wrap it up when you run out of steam.”
“Listen to me, Cat, I think it’s time we…”
Cat looked at him defiantly.
“Don’t, Mike. Just don’t. It’s too sudden and too sad.”
The clock turned four. The pianist’s left hand began jumping, pounding out a powerful bossa nova rhythm, his feet dancing on the pedals.
The Girl from Ipenema. Tall and tan and young and lovely, The girl from Ipanema goes walking…
Nobody can have a dramatic break up to this soundtrack. That would be absurd. So Mike abruptly changed tack, altering his sentence.
“I think, Cat … that this time you’re right. I don’t like the way the story ends either, it’s so abrupt and senseless and, yes, so sad. I’ll change it to do something we can both live with.”
“Good,” said Cat.
She blew some strands of hair from her face, picking up her cup, sinking into her cappuccino.
“That’s a much better ending,” she thought, leaning back, her foot swinging along to the piano. “When she walks, she’s like a samba,” she sang in a whisper. ■