Apocalypse of Jude

Caul, hunched forward on his elbows at a restaurant table, watches Mae approach from under his eyebrows.

“You’re late for your interview.”

Mae pulls back a chair from the window-side table, hooking her bag on its back knob.

“Okay, we can drop this interview façade now.”

Caul leans back with a smirk and his arms crossed. “So what brings Mrs Porter to Sweeney in the spring?”

“Whatever.” Mae sits down, immediately irritated by the supercilious nature of whatever arcane reference is being made.

A waitress draws near. Caul turns to her. “Just a coffee for me.”

“Same for me. And an ashtray.”

Mae waits for the girl to filter away before looking directly at Caul.

“Okay, I’ll get to the point. I called you for two reasons. Because I want to break out of this cage I’m stuck in, and to say I’m ready to come find you.”

She looks at Caul defiantly for half a second longer, then drags her bag onto her lap and rummages for her cigarettes.

“You sound so angry about your decision.”

“Of course I’m angry Caul. If you think I’m just going to let you off the hook for what you said to me back then, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“What are you trying to do? Make me apologise? Say that I was wrong when I was obviously right. It’s you that owes me an apology.”

“You know…” She throws her neck back and clenches her raised fists.

“There you go with your self righteousness. I can’t believe you. Three years down the road and you’re still doing the same thing. Just brazenly going ahead and initiating the whole damn ritual.”

He looks blankly at her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mae sits angrily back into her chair, arms crossed, glaring at him, shaking her head incomprehensibly.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about. Let me tell you what I mean Caul. I was in love with you, you nitwit. And I didn’t want to abort the path. I wanted to grow in it with you. But you were so locked up in this self-righteous attitude about who you were, you were too blind to see how scared I was. It was dark, dark, dark and I was scared and you didn’t see that. So when Gary came along, suddenly instead of feeling scared and alone in your world of constant darkness, Gary was my chance to let my spirit find light another way, for better or for worse.”

Caul doesn’t say anything, too stung to deny his hand in initiating any ritual. She looks fierily at him.

“So if I’m going to get myself involved with you again, you need to come clean about your self-righteous attitude with me and yourself. Because I’m still scared Caul. I look at the spirit I’ve got growing inside of me, and I’m scared. But I’ve got no choice now. So you had better come clean with me!”

The waitress draws up and sets their coffee on the table. Caul leans forward onto his forearms to lump a spoon of brown sugar into black coffee, then stirs, staring out the window with intense personal gravity. Mae lights up a cigarette, which she smokes staring the other way into the empty restaurant. He says nothing and she leaves her coffee untouched. Then with her cigarette drawing to its end, she stabs out the butt and exhales her lungs.

“I’m going to go now.”

Her hand is fiddling in her bag, once again pulled onto her lap. She withdraws a note of cash and lays it on the table next to her cup.

“Coffee on me.”

She stands up from the table.

“Give me a call when you’re ready to talk, okay.”

He nods at her, and she looks at him for a brief second, then turns swiftly to leave the coffee shop.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 62