Over The World

Over The World – French Kicks (listen in new tab)

It has been fours days since Jenny collapsed. The rumours at the library cut all ways. K has no idea what the truth is. That question appears to be running roughshod across his life. At least this evening he was driving to pick up an answer, finally.

Claire and K are in his Cavalier, bundled against the crisp early evening. In an act of futile optimism no one uses the phrase unseasonably cold, though it’s what everyone in the city is thinking. They are making good time. The traffic out to the airport alternates between easy and infuriating. It is hardly insurmountable. Halloween is tomorrow. They drive past decorated homes and stores, sometimes mocking their quality or applauding homespun ingenuity when they find it.

There are long pauses. It’s nervousness. Neither knows what to expect. Claire is more confused than he is. K is holding a lot close to his chest. Shannon has kept her out, too. Maybe more.

Claire, for the hundredth time: “I’m happy she’s gonna be here. I really missed her, but, you know, why now?”

K, for the hundredth time: “She was just too homesick.” It’s a lame excuse. He knows it was more than that. But, he does not know in the sense that he was told. He wasn’t. He tries to lays that aside by turning up the stereo. “I like this one.”

Claire: “It’s good.” She says it absently. K wonders where her mind is, what she knew.

K didn’t call Maura back when she called the day after Jenny collapsed. He didn’t when she called yesterday. He sat and watched his cell ring. Shannon was coming back. He wanted to focus on that and put the other thing behind him. He wants to help her and be there for her. Shannon sounded so desperate on the phone. Those calls had shoveled doubt like dirt on his memory of her, like dousing a fire. He despises himself for the lameness of the metaphor, and doesn’t tell anyone about it. He fronts buoyancy instead. It’s a hedge against his wish that the feeling was imperceptible. It is inscrutably large.

K: “Well, I don’t know. If this is what she needs, then I think we’ll round out ok.” Can something ring sincere and hollow at the same time?

Claire watches him. K feels how hard she is trying to read his mind. He knows how well she can do it. Under that pressure he tries to change the subject in advance. “I think G.T. has a date tonight.”

Claire: “Wow, where’d he find the money to pay for one.”

A car accident makes them late. When they arrive, she’s waiting at the baggage carousel, her head turning slightly back and forth, as she watches the suitcases past. It’s a succession of silent no’s. Shannon is wearing a new coat, one not quite warm enough for the weather. But, it’s flattering. K’s relieved, remembering that he’d recognize her wearing anything. They’d been together for four years. She was a map he knew all the inches of.

He shouts her name and runs up to her. She turns to him, standing hazily in jet-lagged disarray. Her eyes grow huge when she sees who was calling her among all the people waiting for their baggage.

And then they kiss. Their mouths collapse into each other's. She is warm, soft and moist. It is a kiss with familiar pressure and yet heavy with urgency. Their mouths open. She reaches in with an unfamiliar flick of her tongue. For a moment K’s mind is on fire. And the memory of a thousand long kisses pushes in. They envelope each other, squeezing their bodies back into the folds of their lives. He wants to be naked with her. He imagines his doubts falling away in layers, shed like translucent skins that pile at his feet.

Claire watches them. Her arms crossed. She doesn’t want to disturb them, but her mouth is about to run over. Shannon’s eyes seem too red. She hugs too firmly. She shouldn’t be here. It seems to her that it’s an alternate Shannon, from an alternate universe where every molecule is a nanometer farther apart. It’s as if she needs to be pushed back into shape, just a little. Or else, she is expanding slowly.

They ride back in silence, listening to one of K’s mix CDs. K puts his hand on Shannon’s thigh while she watches the city pass. They’d ridden in the car like that for a hundred drives. Claire sits in the back. Her eye is a sieve for detail. She is genuinely happy Shannon is back and starts to get used to the idea.

K and Shannon leave Claire outside the house she has lived in for years. She watches them drive away, in and out of the nighttime city’s light. There aren’t a lot of dark places, but still enough where the light doesn’t reach all the way. Walking up the steps of her porch, she smiles because the jack-o-lantern she carved survived another day. She holds the door for her cat. Sbeckett, fat and grey, enters lazily.

She imagines Shannon at K’s apartment, which was once the pair’s apartment, and is again. Shannon pulls him into bed. He falls on her and they sink deeply into one anther. In her mind, she always wants people to be happy. She also knows, her heart had been broken once or twice, that time always tells.