The Main Character

Feeling almost unreasonably refreshed the next morning despite having only gotten a few hours of sleep, MC decided she needed to get out. She went for a walk into her sector’s center on the prowl for an open table where she could treat herself to breakfast. The streets were wet from the early-morning rain and it made it feel how she felt. It was not long until she came upon Café de la Grange aux Belles. It was familiar and friendly. There were ash trays and small succulents on each table and all the wait staff had soft purple aprons with moleskin journals in them for orders. They changed the color of their journals every month or so and each had little personalized charm bracelets that jingled as they walked. She liked little things like that. Once she had placed her order, she stared out the window to people watch. It was not until after her espresso had come that she realized who exactly she had been watching. It was clear that he had recognized her at about that same time and he approached.

“Ah’ll be damned. Fancy seeing you here.” Alastair smiled as he invited himself to the chair across from her.

MC was not much in the mood for company, especially company that forced itself on her. She had come for solitude not to have small talk.

“Uh, yeah.” She covered her mouth with her espresso cup in attempt to hide her annoyance. She knew she was grimacing. Secretly, she hoped he noticed and would leave shortly. He didn’t.

“What are the odds, right? Ah’m here. You’re here. It’s crazy.”

“We live in the same sector…”

“Fair enough, fair enough. Are you here today ‘cause you used to come here with Rémy? Ah’ve been doing a lot of stuff like thit lately. Ah still can no’ really believe it.” He made his accent more pronounced to sound more charming.

MC sighed inwardly, resigning herself to the conversation. If she was being completely honest with herself, it would at least be interesting to hear his take on the suicide, and she could probably stand to vent a little herself.

“So, you probably knew him better than anyone,” Alastair said, “Dae you have inny idea this was comin’?”

“If I did, don’t you think I would have done something about it?” she responded, somewhat coldly. MC was not generally a fan of people pointing out her oversights, especially when it came to something as serious as this.

“Ah dunny know you. No’ really. A dunny know that anyone really knows anyone else. For all ah know, you could be a sociopath, and no’ give a damn about anyone around you.” At this point his accent was the only reason she was still listening.

“Then why invite yourself to sit with a sociopath?” MC blurted out with more aggression than she realized.

“Hey, Ah’m jus bein’ frindly”

At that MC could not help but scoff. Her expression said it all, which was good since she resolved not to say another word to him. She was fed up.

“Ah think you’re being a bit sensitive is all. Ah came here cos he en ah used a come here ’n ah wanted to know if thit’s whit you were doing too. And maybe we could have a nice meal ‘n tell stories about him. About how he really was, no’ just the good stuff. Ah mean the way everyone’s talking about him now that he’s dead, you’d think he was a fucking saint. But if you say that’s how a person was when they weren’t, Ah think that’s jus polluting their memory. We could tell stories about how right of an ass he was…could be fun.”

MC just stared in angry disbelief. It is a general rule of the universe that in a collection of people, ranging from two to one thousand, it is always the person who is least welcome that will stay the longest at any given event. Even if the event the person refuses to leave was not really an event to begin with and was in fact, one person’s attempt to find solitude and eat breakfast. MC was well aware of this and for this reason no longer hosted dinner parties though she rarely served breakfast at dinner parties. After a few more moments than MC was comfortable with passed in complete silence, she softened slightly and resolved to at least give him a chance to redeem himself. But if he was an ass she would tell him to leave. She composed herself before responding.

“Go for it then. But fair warning, I’m not staying any longer than it takes me to finish my food.”

Alastair looked at her with suspicious concern. The waiter had not yet brought MC’s food and he had not seen her order. He thought she had gone mad. Before he could voice his concern, the waiter appeared from what seemed like nowhere with a breakfast sandwich and a fruit cup. When he placed it down in front of MC, jingling his bracelet as he did, Alastair felt very dumb. He was very dumb, but he knew that MC’s promise did not give him enough time to accomplish what he had set out to do. For this reason, although he agreed, he ordered himself a pitcher of mimosas. His plan was that the conversation coupled with the visible temptation of the pitcher would drive MC to drink and delay her departure. Before the pitcher came, Alastair started into the meats and guts of what he wanted to talk about.

“Ah think dae’re wrong about ’em,” Alastair started. He attempted a pause for dramatic effect, expecting MC to ask him what he meant, but her apathy and distaste both for him and the line of conversation was far greater than his desire to be theatrical. “Ah mean, Ah dunny think it was suicide.” He continued, again awaiting a response from MC. Again, none came. “As in, ah dunny think he meant a kill himself. Ah think t’was a freak accident.”

“Yeah, I got that.” MC took her time to respond and made a point to show her obvious disapproval by looking at him from under her aggressively furrowed eyebrows. “I think you’re wrong.” She paused for a good long while as she fussed with her sandwich. She rearranged the avocado and tomato inside to fit better without slipping out but somehow stabbed the egg so the whole thing got soggy. “I saw it. You don’t accidentally stab yourself in the eye with a violin bow.” She growled, wiping her hand on her napkin.

“Well…okay. So, what do you think happened?”

“He purposefully stabbed himself in the eye with a violin bow.”

“Okay, but why?”

“Look,” MC brushed her finger tips against each other and exhaled through her nose in preparation for her next remark. “This isn’t a mystery. He was depressed. He killed himself. He’s dead. Nothing is going to change that. What are you expecting to do about it?” She picked up her fork and stabbed the pineapple slice in her fruit cup more vigorously than she meant. “What are you expecting me to do about it?” She wouldn’t make eye contact with him. Instead, she reached for the pitcher of mimosas and poured herself one.

“Hey, Ah’m just sick of everyone killin’ themselves and A know for a fact that you are too. All your old crew are gone.” He paused. “Sick of people, in general, killing themselves, not that ah think you killed yourself. Ah know you’re no like a ghost er whatever.” He was losing his nerve and his lack of confidence was showing.

“I never had a ‘crew’”, MC said impatiently. “And I’m more fed up of you than I am anything else right now. I think it would be best if you got going.”

“You said ah could have until you finished your breakfast.”

“I lost my appetite.” She started grabbing for her coat on the back on her chair. It was drizzling by now and she would want it. “And I’m not paying for your mimosas,” she said as she put left an IOU on the table. She did not have time to waste waiting for the server to come around and scan her wrist for her meal. They knew her there and would probably let her get away with it. She walked out of the café without turning back but she could feel him staring a hole through the back of her head. MC made it about halfway back to her apartment before Alastair caught up to her. At first, she wasn’t even mad, just confused.

“You drank an entire pitcher of mimosas?” She knew he would not have left it if he had to pay for it. He was too poor and too close to having an alcohol problem to do that.

Alastair smiled, “Ugh yeah,” he laughed. “Ah needed a talk to you.” He tried to disguise his burp as a cough. He smiled a more pleading grin.

“Fine”, she lit up a cigarette.

“Great. Tanks. Cool lighter. Um...” She started walking away again. “Okay, so ah have this theory thit depends on all this stuff tha happened a little while ago, when ah was younger.” They walked together.

“Oh, so you need my help because I’m old?”

“No! No, ah just. You’ve just lived…a lot of…life is all.” His face puckered a bit as he heard what he said. He realized at this point that no amount of accent would make this conversation easier and proceeded speaking normally. For him that meant only a slight twang rather than a full accent. “Okay, yes. You’re just…you’ve been like a cognizant participant of society in Sector 7 for longer than most, and you knew more people than most thit have um, stopped…existing.” He was almost red, but quickly decided not to be. He took a breath through his nose and decided to stop trying to ask nicely. “Look, Ah want to ask you about all these suicides.”

She squinted at him from behind the smoke cloud she exhaled. “I’m sure that you can imagine that I don’t particularly want to talk about them.”

“Ah’m no’ going to stop asking you about them.” They walked in silence for a few steps. His whole body was angled to look at her as they moved. A kind of annoyance built up in MC as one often finds built up in themselves when asked to look after an especially persistent and unreasonable child. A child who had just had a pitcher of mimosas. They stopped at the edge of the river that separated Sector 7 from the rest of the metropolis. She was right outside of her apartment but agreed to talk.