The mid-morning bustle. A small, untempered cafe, murmurring loudly with dishes, conversation and footsteps of all flavors. Their big, four-seater, apple red booth hugged the table between its two loving arms, gentle enough to let both Sandy and Cassandra sit opposite one another with an almost flamboyant amount of ease. Sandy sat rather quietly as Cassandra wrapped Sandy's ears in the type of gossip which opens up one's skin with goosepimples; but Sandy remained unamused. Actually, it wasn't really that she was unamused (even though that's what Cassandra might have thought if she could stop for five seconds to wonder if Sandy was even listening), it was that she was too distracted to feel amused; that is to say, Sandy had other things on her mind, overweighing the scale of her attention to a thought sitting just outside of converstion.
"So Jason, that guy I had been with at Eros Bar the other night (you know, the one I had been sure to have John see me with), he was getting a little whiny at the end of the night - - he caught me right before I was going into the bathroom and he starts bitching, 'Cass, I thought you were really into me, but if you're just going to have me act as some puppet show for John then I think you're just a manipulative bitch.' [narr. note: here, jason (via cassandra) is unintentionally bringing up the great sight of the common world; that sense of seeing, of seeing that you're being seen, and being seen as being someone who is seen as trying not to be seen. A question for the reader: can jason see this interplay, this age old vision bouncing between two people, or is he blind to it?] I had to tell Jason to get lost at that point. Besides, he served his purpose. But the thing that really got to me . . . " Sandy nodded periodically, feigning a hypnotic absorption to keep Cassandra from questioning her sponge-like capacity to uptake the overload of triviality Cassandra was laying on with such thick strokes of her tongue.
Meanwhile, Sandy was busy with another level of activity, balanced directly beneath the topic of discussion. Their breakfast clanged down on the table, the white porcelain plates of eggs and varieties of ham did nothing to reflect the beauty of Sandy's porcelain complexion, the soft waves of blonde hair and the elegance of her figure (which somehow made a space between 'too thin' and 'slightly chubby'). but she would eat it anyway. Her body would put it to use, to recreate and perpetuate Sandy's flawless silhoette. And this was what Sandy was thinking about: how was she to perpetuate her living figure? Last month her doctor had told her that she was sterile, that she, the only child of two only children, would have to satisfy an entire family line within her own lifetime; that the happiness of her descendants was her, the last of at least two lineages. Sandy was a genealogical dead-end and knowing the future was the worst thing that could press itself on her mind.
Coffee and orange juice swung around counters, servers did their best not to show the anxious speed with which they partook (with those cooks, those lovers of beauty) behind the walls of the kitchen. Fredrich, the immigrant German seating host, butchered common american names like Greg, George, Jamie and Josh intermittently, cutting through the air with his voice, his rough foreign tongue. Sandy and Cassandra had only thought of him briefly as he sat them, as his eyes sank into Cassandra's tight jeaned ass, most specifically the nexus of visual pleasure where the butt and thigh meat. They had ignored him and hid their behinds on the vintage cushions of the pastiche diner. He swept his attention elsewhere as Cassandra's voice stumbled into its usual commotion.
Sandy's attention was still on the week before, on the night with Lilly. Her mind combining two threads of thought: her sterility and her first sexual encounter with a woman. She met Lilly through Cassandra's friend Jennifer (which was the one who had introduced Cassandra to both John and his friend Handen. Unfortunate name as it is, he's responsible for introducing Cassandra to Jason). After a party at Jennifer's ex-boyfriend Rick's, Lilly had swept Sandy away to Lilly's apartment/loft downtown. at the party and slightly taken with alcohol, Sandy had let it slip to Lilly that she had just learned about her sterility the few days before and that, among a multitude of other thoughts, Sandy was questioning her sexuality, her biological make-up, her reason d'entre, her vague notion of who she was. Sandy had no intention of becoming a Lesbian, or even some shadowy stereotype of one, but she had sex with Lilly just the same. After a rash developed that weekend, Sandy went to the doctor again to find out she had contracted some kind of worm which was leaving brown, crescent shape spots around her bikini line. The doctor wasn't sure how Sandy could have contracted it, or how exactly to treat it, so he referred her to a specialist. Sandy wasn't sure she had the money for the specialist and still felt too embarassed to borrow money from her parents or Cassandra. The doctor's news seem to pile on shame after shame.
"So, anyway, I ended up going home with Jason anyway. Now I just hope --cause I mean, we didn't have sex-- that he'll just stop calling and lose interest or something. Fuck! my homestyle potatos are cold! I knew we should have gone down the street; this vintage diner crap just doesn't cut it."
Sandy felt something new about the cafe - - actually, not so much of the cafe per se, but rather a new, almost ubiquitous atmosphere that she could sense around her. whether it was her sensation or the thing itself that was new was one of the questions she had in mind, yet what occupied her more seriously than those trivial banalities of the mind's focused rumblings was the thing itself. but her feeling couldn't stay long, for whatever reason, and Sandy began to lose her focus. She felt at a loss for a moment before suddenly picking up the thought again, this time with greater intensity and determination.
"Cassandra," Sandy began, imitating the meaningful tone she had always known from movies, from television, from the archives of personality. Cassandra heard the tone and responded with an inquisitive and caring glance evoking the sweetheart, are you alright? routine which seemed to correspond to Sandy's call to emotion. Sandy brought her eyes back down to her food, and began poking at the congealing bacon. The soft, white, fatty ends flanking either side of the various brown swirls. When it first arrived at the table, the steam, so light and rising, promised to lift every subtle flavor off the scratched surface of the porcelin plate and into the air; Sandy had been entranced by the wavering scent, reminding her distinctly of the first time she went on vacation with her dad. her mother, an energetic and demanding Jewish woman, made Sandy follow kosher law. Her father, a jew as well, could have cared less, and with her mother visiting friends on the other side of the country, Sandy and dad were free to chew on a live pig if they wished. But now, the smell from the table gone, all Sandy had was a mirror of the brown cresenct moons on her thigh and a stench closer to wet fur then a carefree vacation. Sandy wanted to throw up.
"Cassandra, I'm pregnant," Sandy said with wide, convincing eyes. the activity of the restaurant began to pick up and the bustle condensed into the mood of the moment. Cassandra looked confused while she asked with hesitating rhythm, "Sandy . . . ? Honey, I thought the doctor just told you that you couldn't have babies. Have you even been with a guy lately?"
"No . . . just - - nevermind."
"What? Nevermind? How am I supposed to 'nevermind' that?" Cassandra was obviously flustered, as if Sandy had just perpatrated a grand abuse on language, on truth itself. You can't say nevermind after declaring yourself pregnant. That's just not something people do. But Sandy's eyes were back on her food again, her stare dense yet unfocused. Cassandra's indignation subsided and something like empathy crawled out of the confusion and into a clear space. Cassandra was worried.
"Sandy," she began slowly, "What's wrong? What happened?" A stack of plates in the kitchen finally fell, sending some of the shards into view of the dining area. An almost theatrical sigh came from the kitchen, loud and convincing. Sandy could feel her confusion mounting into determination.
She drew Cassandra from her seat by her wrist and led her to the bathroom. They left the seats of the booth warm, the indentation of their bodies retreating to the most common shape of the bench. Their food, mostly uneaten, sat waiting for the women. They came to the back of the restaurant just as a young man exited the one room lavatory. The girls quickly slid inside and drew the door shut. "Ok," said cassandra with a hint of suspicion and exasperation, "What is going on with you?"
"Look!" and Sandy pulled her white summer skirt and underwear down to her knees. Her crotch was covered in what looked like the profiles of small insects, carved out like hundreds of miniature relief sculptures. The way Sandy was shivering with emotion made it look like the little insects were dancing. Cassandra began to get sick at the sight of them just as Sandy started to cry. Cassandra got herself under control before pulling Sandy to her, Sandy's face pressing into Cassandra's purple blouse. Cassandra began to rock Sandy, cradling her in front of the sink. Cassandra looked into the mirror only briefly before Sandy lifted up her head and whispered, "these are all i can have." Cassandra, obviously confused, opened her mouth to formulate a question, or even something that would seem like a question, just as a pounding began at the bathroom door.
"C'mon, already. Get your damn make-up on," came a feminine voice from the outside. Cassandra looked down at Sandy to make sure she looked presentable. Sandy, so naturally beautiful that she usually neglected make-up, had only a lingering redness in her eyes; no mascara had streaked, no blush needed re-application.
When they sat back down at the table, amidst no notice from other customers, the seats remembered their roll and yielded their comfort to the women. Cassandra began eating her food again, and Fredrich hollared, "Peter for two" with a needless sting in his accent. Sandy looked down at her plate, the eggs now shared the same vinyl texture as the cushioned seat she rested on. The lights in the diner flickered slightly and Sandy threw up over the table. Needless to say, Cassandras blouse was so messy that she wouldn't even embarass herself by taking it to the dry cleaners.
