A Conversation by Wyatt Tremblay

As usual, Sally was late. This aggravated Tate. It meant he had to sit alone, waiting for her in a restaurant packed with couples that, for the most part, arrived together, chatting and delighting in their own private conversations. Tate felt stupid every time the waitress came over to refill his coffee cup. And, the restaurant’s wooden chairs were hard and uncomfortable. He had begun to wonder if her tardiness was deliberate, though he had never voiced this accusation. Not that it mattered anymore; today he was breaking up with her.

Tate had met Sally for breakfast almost every day for the last year. The only exception was Sundays. He slept in those days, while Sally took city transit to a little church up on Maple Street. He chose not to go with her. Churches made Tate uncomfortable. Their morning get-togethers, like clockwork, seemed a trifle formal now, considering their first encounter had been quite casual and light hearted. They had met in this very restaurant, and Tate had been immediately taken with her dark eyes and silky smooth voice. He sighed deeply, feeling a terrible sense of loss sweep over him. The friendship didn’t have to end; still, he felt the rapport between them had developed into something requiring further commitment—from her at least. There should have been a greater respect, he felt, for the effort he had invested into the relationship.

Sally entered the restaurant and casually approached the table, slipping gracefully into one of its four plastic chairs. It was the same one she always sat in. Tate had convinced himself that this was one of her inexplicable and eccentric obsessions, to choose that particular table and that specific chair over any other. If that table were in use, when she arrived, she would wait, and make him wait until it became available. Certainly, the logic of this eluded him and she had never been able to fully explain it either. And, further more, it bugged him because it meant he had to sit facing the door, where the sea of customers—who frequented the place—was constantly distracting him.

“Hello,” he said, smiling and struggling to appear sincere despite her late arrival. He wasn’t sure how she would react to his wish to break up. He needed to be as charming as possible.

She said nothing in reply, dropping her heavy black purse to the floor beside her and snagging one of the menus that sat propped between a bottle of ketchup and hot sauce. He sighed, bit his lower lip and flipped open a menu as well.

 Ham and eggs with a side order of hash browns; pepper, no salt. Eggs, sunny side up. Earl Grey tea with a little milk, but no sugar, and orange juice, but no pulp. That’s what she would order. She always did, except for that one time when she had that foul, lingering head cold and had ordered a bowl of Red River cereal and coffee, black.

He observed her intently, over the top of the menu. She was attired in her black pinstripe executive suit with that silk, frilled shirt that was as white as snow. The neckline was low enough to reveal a tantalizing slip of black lace bra. He liked that bra. It was chic and suggested an almost Eurocentric sophistication. He would miss that quality of who she was, he realized. Her long, slender legs, wrapped in silky black stockings, disappeared into narrow glossy, black Versace pumps. She also owned a green and a red pair of the fashionably expensive shoes. Her shoulder length hair, as always, appeared as if she had just left Monique’s, over on Fifth. She walked there every second Friday, during her lunch break, from where she worked in an uptown real estate office. Like everything else about Sally, her makeup was flawless. Every morning she laboured at great length to prepare that delicate, heart-shaped face to meet the day. He loved watching her pluck eyebrows, shape eyelashes, and cleanse her soft, creamy skin. She would paint her full lips a deep red, the colour of blood, and line her eyes so they were dark, radiant, and inviting. It was akin to watching a master artisan at work, he felt, and he would miss all this, too.

 Oh, how he adored her, loved the smell of her hair and the lovely sound of her voice. Tate could think of nothing he didn’t find irresistible about her. Even her name—Sally Georgina Kramstead—was like a lively cantata to him that played over and over in his head, enthralling his heart, enlivening his long, dreary days. He dreamed of her every moment and his heart ached for the love they shared to become unbridled in its passion. But, it was too late. He knew. As much as he smoldered with love for her, he wasn’t convinced she felt the same way toward him.

The waitress approached the table and he nodded to Sally. Ladies first. Tate always insisted she order before him, no matter how long the waitress stood there waiting for him if she wasn’t quite ready.

Briskly, as always, she rattled off her breakfast order. It was rote for her. The waitress clears her throat and arcs her eyebrows toward him, and today Tate does something he’s never done before, he orders a three-cheese breakfast burrito and a tall glass of chocolate milk.

 This was a new day in Tate’s life. He was going to close the book on this miserable love story, and his resolution required a decisive change, something radical. The first of many changes, he vowed.

“Did you sleep well?” he curtly asks her as the waitress walks away with the orders.

She looks up, smiles tightly and turns her face away. Why does she do that, he asks himself. I asked her a question. Am I not worthy of an answer? This was the real reason he was breaking up with her. He had to do all the talking, all the work at maintaining the relationship. It was he who always bared his soul to her and expressed his eternal love and affection. She, on the other hand, had never once told him exactly how she felt. Oh, she had nodded, smiled beautifully (as she always did), shrugged, and mumbled things, but that was all she ever seemed to care to contribute. How could a person, so obviously lovely, so demonstrably the image of perfection, seem so ugly inside? It was painful, excruciatingly so, and the relationship lacked any real reward, and Tate had had enough.

“We need to have a conversation, Sally.”

Her eyes met his; expressionless, and then she reached down, pulling a magazine from her purse. Esquire. She loved Esquire. He hated that magazine.

“Listen,” he said, his fingers drumming in annoyance on the scarred surface of the table. “We need to talk.”

Sally placed the magazine in the centre of the table and began flipping through the pages, from back to front. He hated that, too. It was unbearably annoying, like finger nails clawing at a chalkboard to him. He had once asked her why she did that, read the magazine backwards. As usual, she hadn’t bothered with a reply; she just smiled pleasantly — like what he thought didn’t hold an ounce of weight in her life — and kept turning the pages, from back to front.

“Fine,” he spat, hoping his anger would shock her. It didn’t seem to matter, though. She continued to graze through the glossy pages of the magazine.

“Whatever,” he muttered.

The waitress interrupted his brooding, arriving with Sally’s food. She thanked the waitress. It was the first thing she had said since arriving. Tate bit his lip hard. Without a doubt it was over now.

“Go ahead, eat. I’ll talk then.”

She lifted a forkful of eggs to her lips, lifted a strand of hair out of her eyes, and turned a page.

Tate talked. His courage was armed, his thoughts clear and ordered, and his words as precise as he could muster. He told her how he felt, how he despised being ignored and treated as if his needs and wants were irrelevant to her. It infuriated him, made him feel useless, impotent, and it caused him to wonder if the bond between them was worth the effort he had poured into it.

 “Twelve months,” he bristled. “Twelve months and this is all we have?”

 Breakfast, sometimes lunch, or the occasional movie night where they didn’t even sit together. What kind of date was that? Was she embarrassed, ashamed to be seen in public with him? Did she think he was not her social or intellectual equal? Was she seeing someone else? There was someone else, wasn’t there? Where did that red rose, he had found last Monday in that delicate pink vase on the kitchen table, come from? He hadn’t given it to her. The dozen roses he had sent her, one for each month of their relationship, had ended up in the trash bin. Why? And, whose black socks were in the laundry last week? They belonged to another man, didn’t they? And, what about that letter in the mailbox? It was a card, a sappy, sweet Hallmark card. It smelled of cologne and was signed, “George.” George who?

Once in a while Sally nodded, but not like she was really listening to Tate. Her expression remained placid and indifferent. She looked out the window, forked hash browns into her pretty, perfect mouth, sipped her tea, and flipped pages of her magazine. She took a moment to slice her thick piece of ham into six pieces (like she always did); but not once did she offer him the respect of her attention or comment on his raw and heartfelt rant. In fact, she had the nerve to look up once and smile at Tate as he poured his frustrations out like spilled coffee on the table. That only served to antagonize him further and his voice escalated and his fingers began to pound the table like a jackhammer, and when the waitress finally brought his burrito and chocolate milk she placed it before him and quickly retreated.

Tate wanted to reach out and strangle Sally, to slap some sense into her. He was a good man, a faithful friend and lover. Hadn’t he met with her every morning for the last year and put up with her supercilious, egotistical behaviour? Didn’t he deserve better? Could she find anyone more devoted than he?

Tate didn’t see the police officer standing next to the table, until the man tapped him on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir,” the officer said, one hand resting confidently on his holstered weapon, the other holding an threatening-looking black baton, “I’m going to have to ask you to quiet down and finish your meal.”

Tate glared incredulously at the officer—at the intrusion. It had taken long, agonizing weeks to gather enough courage to finally articulate these intimate and revealing thoughts to Sally, and nothing was going to interfere, especially not now.

 “Hey. Can’t you see I am having a conversation here?” He blurted, his voice crackling with an emotion he struggled to contain.

The police officer’s eyes travelled around the table. “A conversation, sir? With whom?”

Tate sputtered, groaned in the deepest most profound sense of exasperation he had ever felt, and shoved the chair back harshly as he rose to his feet. “Are you daft? With my girlfriend, of course.”

The officer smiled – but it wasn’t a pleasant expression – as he surveyed the empty wooden chairs around the table. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the restaurant with me.”

Something inside Tate snapped. He was having the most important conversation of his life – he was breaking up with Sally – and this uninvited person, this callous, thoughtless, gun-toting Neanderthal was robbing him, stripping him of this delicious, euphoric moment. He was breaking up with Sally. As he drove his tightly balled fist into the officer’s face, Tate wondered if the man’s name might be George.

Sally looked up from her Esquire magazine and happened to glance out the restaurant window. A metallic reflection caught her attention. Across the narrow street, in a diner she had only eaten in once before, about a year ago, a man was laying face down on a table. She could just see his head and shoulders through the window and, for a moment, their eyes met. A large police officer was struggling to handcuff the man.

 When the officer pulled him upright, Sally caught her breath. It was the creepy guy who sat there, day after day, watching her while she ate. He talked to himself. Sally suddenly felt chilled. She had never really liked the way he had stared at her.

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