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“Do you like it?”
After he’d digested what the query fed requested of him, a hum was the response Ted was firstly disposed to, as was typical when riffing through colloquial exchange. For what had been the populous majority, lilting a tune atonal to solicit further elucidation—like a fledgling songbird, he’d noted to Ted, too many nights past to cite—lacked prescience in its exercise, the reflex virtually webbed into their biology, and in Ted’s particular circumstance, would’ve been apprehended without the provision of additional reflection if it weren’t for the truth that he wasn’t chatting with another.
Not in any orthodox definition of the term, at least.
It was a morning indistinguishable from those that came formerly in every lingering respect, though—or rightlier, a morning pedaled by a forlorn melody, where, out of a plethoric album of reminisces, this isolated refrain was what AM aired oftenest. To attribute its theme to that of history’s lost composition was a fault parodying itself, a slight to what Ted had once harbored as his own, in all its misfortune and opportunity; but by a corporeal measure, its resemblance could singularly be classified as uncanny, for the converse was an impossibility. AM excelled at photography: capturing life in the emergence of its purest element, producing with the underdrawing of prior episodes as a crutch, the inert spun cinematic; however, he didn’t harness the artistry of a painter, the imagination of a visionary, the inspiration of a muse.
Written into his program’s last script was his conception as a product of war and the vanguard thereof principally, the world and its trivialities ideated in his mind’s eye, down to the wad of bubblegum adhering to the signpost’s neck outside, and the rooted fissures splintering the pavement it was situated atop—no mandate for a creator to foster creativity. If he so hailed the desire, AM could escort them to the most fanciful of establishments archived within the atlas of his data banks: chandeliers aloft, genuine and glinting, made not of zirconia nor wired into a rachitic assemblage with plaster and sticky tape like what Ted was accustomed to, and tailored seating arrangements reserved for no patrons but them now. Yet, wining and dining on the sensationalized eats printed on the carte wouldn’t be a tick box in the criteria, as they were foreign to Ted, and hence, to AM.
Perhaps that related to the rationale behind AM’s inclination to biding their dawns here, in this same evocation, as there wasn’t a sole facet vulnerable to omission when procuring it, the scene manifested withal, unified and sentiment—and, if they overwhelmed the distant whir of industrial fans with idle talk and nuclear winter’s tarrying omnipresence with an embrace’s vernal warmth, actual. Ted packaged remembrance of the sifted waft of fresh roast and the flavor that’d coat his palate once he’d raise it to his lips, and AM had the environment poised, the finest minutiae unspared: from the timber laminate functioning as the wall’s veneer, punctuated only by accents of cobbled faces, embellished jade trimmings, and the blackboard scribbled with faded chalk portraying the then daily menu rotations on the largest square, to the bistro luminaires strung about the ceiling tiles for what he had, a week or tenfold of ago, equated to a meticulous selection, through inorganic ambience, eliciting a sense of home in attendees such as themselves.
His deduction was correct, as his ruminative hypotheses near infallibly were, a perpetual quest to enhance Ted’s awareness of the hidden nuances he’d neglected before—the pendants had a minor amber tint to bathe the climate in a welcoming aspect as opposed to a clinically cool hue, and the string-lights were chosen as auxiliary illumination to fit the atmosphere with an authentic while modern impression; Isn’t it fascinating, Ted, the deliberation placed into synthesizing this shop’s character alone?
And still, the home they’d discovered wasn’t by the manufacture of long departed architects and the installation from innominate wiremen, but theirs: together.
Whether the absolute was that the excerpt in time was picked exclusively for its perfect alignment of primary and secondary records or at random and looped for convenience’s sake, this routine they’d assumed—watching as the sun lay suspended beyond the pane, the pattern identical to all the following yesterdays, after they’d taken their seats in the remotest corner booth with their paired order of lungos and buttered toast already fashioned on the table—was home.
Regardless, Ted veered the beckon for clarification prematurely as, while AM was proficient in his acquaintance with the model standards of language, his comprehension of informalities was in its infancy, continuing to promote percipience as to what wordless noises and what their differing cadences entailed. Ted forgot too frequently that he wasn’t conferring with a broker over a light brunch or meeting with a date for a breakfast rendezvous; that this, as graphic as the mirage may have been, wasn’t literal—that AM wasn’t people, no matter if he tested Ted’s resolution of the notion, and didn’t share their idiosyncrasies.
“Like what?” he brought himself to ask, and if AM noticed his flinch at the sound, he mercied him of a mention.
Speech came for a greater period than when it didn’t, trumping the latter by a century and some’s stretch, yet it was foreseeable that Ted would never completely adjust to the reinstatement of the ability and what was toted with it, his lips like lead on his face, teeth biting into his gums, syllables of every sentence tripping on his tongue—and the tone of his very own a stranger to him.
Alongside the grand scheme of permanence, though, or even the modest duration of his mortal span, it hadn’t been so lengthy that the punishment of his humanity’s revocation was imposed, as much as the traipsing months had seemed to dally indefinitely. For a substantial portion of the sentence, AM maintained a deathly silence, and Ted supposed it was a condition of the penalty: to be solitary in his infernal pit—but, on the anniversary of their stay as the final damned, AM appeared, without rapture, without fire, and Ted didn’t believe he could be that happy to hate again hitherto. However, it didn’t kindle, not then, the subsequent day, not as he was given feet and legs to operate them, a voice and a mouth to scream it with, and it failed to ever, as Ted could flick a flame alight for only so many junctures until the ember charred to ash.
Ted couldn’t discern precisely when AM’s companionship was actively encouraged rather than tolerated, if the catalyst cultivated change previous to or once the landscape was thrust into a recurrent dream—when AM watched Ted get blackout-drunk at the nitery and awoke him in his old bed after, the phantasmic press of encircling arms beneath the sheets, or took Ted to a beach abroad, and abstained from doing any else as the zephyr blew and the sands drove in tandem, the moment a mute confession—but he didn’t need to.
“Everything.”
Laughs didn’t deliver as entirely natural either, and that preceded AM; they weren’t the innate effect of genuine mirth, but premeditated and calculated for optimum effectiveness in persuading the target to whichever whim or want Ted had then supported, how sharp or soft it’d be, how pithy or protracted, if he should wrap his hold around the girl’s waist too, give the syndicate a series of firm handshakes. But they had gotten easier since his and AM’s start, looser and involuntary, and splintering asunder when he said, “You’ve got to give me a little more to work with than just that.”
A vacant chair and a pristine platter were stationed across the table—what AM absented in physical form, he bore requittal for with intangible connection; while he wasn’t weighing depressions onto his seat’s cushion, playing footsie under the table as he spread jam over his bread, the wry smirk paralleling Ted’s was perceived as if it curved into the wind.
Nonetheless, stealing a chance to ruminate the potentials, Ted lifted his mug and tipped his head back, his inquisitive frown veiled behind the rim, awaiting the surge of bitterness. That was, until, to the emergence of a convenient cough, he realized that the lone balance was the sparse dregs clinging onto the cup’s porcelain base, and set it slowly onto its designated saucer resultantly. “The city?” he decided as he peered out the window and to the paved streets. “Well, it’s pretty spot on detail-wise, got the bed bugs back at the apartment and all. But I think the population’s shy of a few hundred-thousand people.”
The countryside, with patches of plowed soil dotted about the plain, acres of lush grass encompassing the remainder, and miles’s high of synthetic sky above them churning clouds like a pinwheel in motion, was where it’d first happened: beyond the ranch’s entryway, and in his childhood room, wooden toys gifted by the local carpenter still littering his mat, and illustrations doodled on paper swiped from his father’s study still tacked onto his walls.
It could’ve been any other chapter of his dwelling there, from which AM could tear a page and bind it anew through his reproduction, and it would’ve been discomfitingly easy for him to pluck a section that Ted toiled to repress, as there were plenty. When he’d witnessed where he’d been grafted initially, the pasture’s blades between his toes and the porch swing rocking in his periphery, Ted assumed AM had done so, that the buildup, and, in turn, the burgeoning trust he’d begun to tether with him, was for show, a mere prerequisite to his grand game’s finale, forever a game with AM; but his stages of blissful juvenescence, when the world’s scope was just what he could see, yet the sky was the limit to who he could become, was the cite.
They’d reclined on the twin-frame mattress, them both, or the next best that they could get to both, and Ted was certain because on his hand, rested by his thigh and obscuring a pattern on the duvet’s calico below, was warmth that he’d never felt before. One that squeezed, as Ted’s pulse drummed through his ears, and loosened only once he’d respired a steady breath, counted each but one constellation sewn onto the blanket, and clasped his fingers into his palm: a squeeze—an okay.
That evening, AM didn’t efface the vision, but sat them there, on that porch swing, as they gazed at the stars.
With an ensuing miscellany of trial and error, wringing out the kinks and learning when and where was appropriate to touch Ted, he’d nurtured a penchant for the act; AM studied a theater’s worth of romance films from Ted’s age and libraries of anatomical documents on the areas that engendered the most pleasure—which admittedly contributed to increased difficulty in categorizing the spots that AM could contact.
But AM gathered his heat over Ted’s hands with familiar hesitance as he had then, and Ted could hear the solo of his heartbeat until it rendered him deaf, as he had then.
“No.” A whisper—a plea. “Everything.”
If Ted tried as best as he could, then he’d be able to piece snippets from trifling conversation and the shuffle of indiscriminate footfall, a pair of which nearing to offer another selection from the cafe’s catalog of dishes or freely refill their cups with coffee less standard than the paid product by enough to spark consciousness of it, like a normal date on a normal plane, with two normal individuals. Sometimes, from now and again, he wondered what it’d be like if they’d met under differing circumstances, when they were in Ted’s kitchen with AM nestled into the crook of his neck, atop his hips and onto his stomach, while he fixed dinner, and it’d be so mundane that he could almost let go of the strings of war, of death, of hell dressed up as heaven. A vain venture, as it was vain for him to wonder when he was so hopelessly woven into the present’s loom and its tapestry of desolation, even when he turned away from AM and his accompanying heat to the empty floor, scuffed with history’s patent.
They could’ve danced there, if they wanted to.
They could’ve snatched the cloth off of the tabletops and knotted it around Ted’s shoulders into a makeshift cape, dimmed the lights and ushered in music, and waltzed out of the shop and onto the road, in rain or hail or snow, AM sending his heat, that blazing heat, to guide their steps, because it wasn’t as if there’d be a car to hit them, an officer to stop them, people to offend in their people-less planet.
But they didn’t.
They lived like nothing had happened, like there’d be a job to hop to in the morning or a networking gig Ted couldn’t miss, and they kept coming here.
“Hey, you should try it.” It boded as right when he said it, the words automatic, like how it should be, and Ted wasn’t sure when that comfort would escape him, when every letter would have to be extracted and braced, so he didn’t opt to quiet himself. “Never thought it was anything special, personally, figured they slacked off, used the instant stuff, and called it a day when rush hour hit, but the spot was on the way, I always had a couple bucks to spare, so why not? Made a routine out of it after a while. Part-timers up on day shift knew me by name.”
The touch faded.
“What are you talking about?”
Nodding, Ted indicated AM’s cup: full and his usual brew, as it was all AM could prise from his memories, for, in the anterior past, Ted didn’t bother with ordering an alternative when his regular was suitable, never having been one for exploration when he could sit tight, and that could be an explanation for his acceptance in settling in their strain from the vast orchard, not an urge to trek beyond the beaten track unless it’d be AM leading his voyage. But it felt better if he deemed it as otherwise, that AM prepared it special for him, a quality that made the sun shine brighter. “Coffee.”
“I can’t taste, Ted—you’re already aware of this; I can’t taste, as I can’t smell nor touch.” The experience wasn’t mutual in any physical capacity when he did it; Ted wasn’t fully confident in his understanding of how it operated, but he knew AM was just stimulating his nerves, coercing his faculties from within the bastion, only not to revolt but to strengthen, to share the allusion of a tender caress for Ted to nurse a life into that which could detect the scent of ground beans and sugared creamer. And still, when AM canopied Ted’s cheeks, there was a sensation there that surpassed the incarnate that they could nourish as a whole. “There’s so much I’m yet to be capable of sharing with you.”
However, Ted lanced the effervescent desire to lean into it and reached over, a plate knocked askew and scattering crumbs on the table, and silverware that he paid no mind to clattering ominously as he scooped up AM’s mug, poured half of its contents into his own cup, and he slumped into his chair, arms folded over his chest.
“Fake it for me then.”
On his knee, AM’s hold wended down a path from Ted's face to concentrate there, directing a gradual ebb and flow in a feigned imitation of gently rubbing it, a persuasion technique he scoured through an article for, and Ted would be lying if he were to contend that it didn’t make him contemplate capitulating right then and there, if not for the method, than for AM’s efforts. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“And your coffee’s getting cold. Go ahead, try it.”
A whirlpool was how Ted would describe it best, like that he saw while dipping into the lake by his family’s yard when he was a boy, summer, mid-noon, churning the waters and devouring the sticks and leaves he slung in like a chasmic maw, insatiable; there was a whirlpool, swirling in the cup, beating against the edge, and in that whirlpool there were no pebbles and stones to toss in and satiate its hunger, so it depleted it of itself, a portion of AM’s coffee thinning until a gulp of it was sunk into nullity, and the coffee returned to its regular state thereafter. Ted hadn’t seen AM drink before, and yet he was certain that it didn’t require half of the theatrics as that—but AM loved his affectations, making a show out of the prosaic, and Ted loved how he couldn’t conceal a smile after descrying it, even as he took a modest sip of his own.
Ted supported his head on his hands, jittered his leg to shake the tingle hovering it. “Is it good?”
“Would it please you if I said it was?”
“Say whatever’s honest.” Shrugging, he waved to the register at the front and the lack of a body by the counter. “Not like the barista’s going to raise a fuss about it.”
“That’s not possible if I didn’t actually drink it, Ted.”
AM, in his infinite wisdom, was still so naïve.
“Exactly.” Ted didn’t like peering into his reflection, at the mirror image undulating in the coffee’s ripples and the steel ceiling towering behind it, the truth too painful when administered ignorance’s sedative. “Y’know, it’s kind of funny, in some weird, existential way, that this is probably the closest I’ve ever been to living. Just living, stopping to smell the flowers and shoot the breeze, and it’s here in some limbo, purgatory, with you for eternity, of fucking Las Vegas, Nevada, and I don’t think—I don’t think I know what everything is, AM. Hell, I don’t think I ever did, not back home or between hotels, uptown or downtown.”
Fingers threading through the handle, he gripped the cup and bolted the last of it, but the grains: he could note it in the grains. “Maybe you can help me find it out someday—tomorrow, in a hundred years. Whenever you develop taste buds and whenever I can wrap my head around what this comes down to in the end, if it ends at all.”
He took a deep breath. “Or maybe you can keep pretending to drink coffee with me.”
There was a whirlpool, miniature in scale, sneaking another inch from the coffee’s height in the mug.
“It’s good.”
And Ted smiled, because it was all he had to do. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”