"centrifuge..."
"it's all in the way you say it..."





"You realize that this is never, ever going to end well, right?"
"Yeah."
"I mean, we're both going to end up going back where we came from, you know?"
"Not without a fight."
"I thought you never fought?"
"No, I never argue. Are you going to make some coffee? I really want some coffee. I've been thinking about drinking coffee all the way over here. Do you want me to make some coffee?"
"No, I'll make it. Just give me a minute to get undressed..."
"You really don't like clothes, do you?"
"I really like clothes, I just don't like wearing them. You don't seem to mind."
"No, I don't."

She backed out of the kitchen into the hallway, undoing her hair from it's loose ponytail, letting if fall like the cold mist that was curtaining down from the clouds that couldn't make up their minds if they were clouds or fog or a cat or the town drunk, or what. I still wasn't used to this California winter, if that's what you could call it. One day it was warm and sunny and the next it was gray and damp and chilly. Sometimes it was both on the same day. It never really rained, the sky just sort of leaked this damned gray, chilly mist that clung to everything like a bad reputation or a grade school lie. It was tolerable at night, especially around here, it made the sky and the ocean all one, and the lights of the town reflected on the clinging drops, like one of those cheap, glittery cardboard houses that my parents used to put under the Christmas tree every year, but in the day time it was just plain depressing. It made you feel less than wet, but more than damp. I weighed you down, both physically and mentally and was probably the prime cause of savage, bloody murders and other more horrible mayhem.
"Honest, your honor, I don't know what happened... one minute I was standing there in his doorway, all soaked with that damned mist and the next thing I knew I was rolling up his body in an oriental carpet... I plead insanity by reason of this god damned Southern California winter..."
Luckily, all it made me want to do was drink more coffee than usual. With her.

I had turned the kitchen chair I was sitting in to the window, and I was watching the drops roll down the glass, when she returned from bedroom and I watched her naked reflection grow larger in the mirror pane as she came up behind me, wrapped her arms around my shoulders and rested her chin on my shoulder. We stayed like that for a long, long time, watching that parade of drips and drops down the outside of the glass, occasionally looking at each other's reflection, not speaking, not with words, anyway. I reached up with crossed arms and held her arms, pulling her closer and she tightened her hug, then she pulled back a bit, bent her head down and rested her forehead on my shoulder for a few seconds, then turned and whispered in my ear,
"Just, please, don't ever tell me that you love me, ok? Whatever this is and how ever long it lasts, it's going to be something wonderful, and I will never, ever hurt you, but please... just don't ever tell me that, ok?"
Millenniums passed before I stopped looking at my reflection in the window, and it was only the pain of me biting the inside of my bottom lip that brought me back to this so called reality and I nodded my head and she moved away from me and while I sat there watching her in that wet mirror world, she filled the beat up old coffee pot with water and ground coffee, lit the burner with a wooden match, blew it out and dropped it in the sink. I sat, silent and still, in her silent and still kitchen, listening to the hiss of the gas flame and the sound of the coffee pot beginning to perk. The faint aroma of new born brew wafted through the room. I stood up and turned around to see her leaning against the sink, her arms crossed over her chest and that tangled black hair falling all over the place. She narrowed her eyes, cocked her head and asked,
"Cat got your tongue?"
"Yeah."
"You want to leave?"
"No, not really. I want to have a cigarette. And then I want to sit with you and drink some coffee and stare into your eyes. And then I want to go to bed with you and hold you till you fall asleep and then tell you stories to help you dream. And then I'll leave. For tonight."
"I'll make you breakfast if you stay."
"Next time... if you want a next time."
"Don't take what I said the wrong way."
"No, I never would. Is that coffee done yet? It smells done. I really want some coffee."
"You are a coffee junkie... "

Round and round we go, round and round and round, we go...

---