Un Dernier Verre (Pour La Route) [or Cherbourg]

Un Dernier Verre (Pour La Route)[or Cherbourg] – Beirut (listen in new tab)

K felt like his life was a choppily spliced together strip of film. It moved past him, an abridged freefall of pictures. He could see where the frames were haphazardly overlaid. The flicker and vanish of the scenes removed.

Shannon went to her parents’. She came back once, but only to move out.

K drove her to the clinic for all her appointments. He was angry at her. Hurt. Confused. But, he didn’t mind driving her. Finally, they could be in the same place and know each other. It made him want to fall into himself that it was only now that it was like this. They didn’t speak much. They didn’t have to.

The last time, he didn’t go in with her. He didn’t want to wait inside the clinic. Being watched by the nurses seemed too brutally exposing. He decided to wait in the car. They said it would take an hour or so. It was bitterly cold and blindingly sunny.

Despite the cold, two old men in worn old coats and fur caps carried pickets. K recognized one from the library. Shannon, hooded and resolute, had run past them. Their breath was thick and white as it escaped their mouths. They held their signs and sipped coffee from the travel cups in their free hands.

Eventually, the cold drove K into a Tim Horton’s across the street. He let his coffee cool, and then left it there when he saw her come out. He doesn’t remember her expression. Her face was scrubbed clean though it was rosy and pale from the cold.

He dropped her off. As she opened the door, she put her hand on the inside of his elbow. “Thank you. Sorry.” She walked slowly down the shoveled path. K knew she was crying.

Her parents and she came eventually to move her things out of the apartment. He was never sure what she told her parents, but they weren’t idiots. It was agreed to come while he was at work, but they were still there when he got home. Shannon sat on the couch with her hands folded in her lap. She stared at the floor. Occasionally she offered her mom some instruction about what to pack.

Her dad tried to be cordial, asked weakly about K’s parents. “They’re fine.” “Good. Good.”

K watched the whole process blankly from a corner of the living room. Shannon sat still and her parents moved steadily, like sped up weather, eroding away the surface of the apartment. When they were done the rooms felt gaping. He saw that they’d left Shannon’s table. Her mother, never K’s fan, had put in the middle of the tabletop a young spider plant. It sat in a makeshift pot made of an old cup. K left it there. Something needed to be allowed to grow.

November and December are the busiest months of the year for Café Ulysses. It was for some reason that no one understood. There were no holiday decorations, except for the creepy Santa that Claire brought every year. He stared down at K from the top of the espresso machine.

There was lots of work, and between the café and the library he would slump onto his couch exhausted almost every night. He was happy to be able to feel tired, to know that the distance between then and tomorrow would be quickly closed.

Some days, G.T. tried to include K in life. Dragged him V.I.’s or the 5-Oh. K would get drunk, watch sullenly. The throb and press of people celebrating the holidays was a blank map. He scoured it. He thought a thousand times he saw Maura. But he didn’t. He stayed until close when he could. She never came to the café, either. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he saw her again.

Christmas at his parents was a debacle. His dad spoke clumsily around Shannon’s absence.

New Year’s Eve was predictable and gin soaked. Not necessarily unfun.

Days pass. He waters his plant. The routines sustain him.