Chapter 18: 18. Intermission: A Movie with Gina

Gina's hospital room is dark except for a myriad of warm colors dancing out of the television hanging from the wall.

On the screen, people gather in a living room about to share a drink of Johnnie Walker something or other from green disposable cups. All middle or old aged except for a single woman in her twenties.

Waylon sips on a hospital cafeteria coffee and nibbles on a fig bar.

The coffee is putrid, sour notes flow over Waylon's tongue and creep up his nose; it's like someone took a cup of mud and threw parsley in it. His mouth recoils, but caffeine yanks his drooping eyelids open. Last night was too much. He takes another sip and tips the cup toward the television. "You know, the guy who produced this actually wrote a play afterwards."

Gina readjusts her blanket — Waylon's coat — so that both her arms are under it. "Oh goodness, I'd love to go to the theater again."

Pain grasps Waylon's heart; he forces the corners of his lips to climb into a smile. "You will."

She lets her weight fall further into the pillows supporting her back. "No I won't. Just let an old woman dream without working yourself up. A movie with you is good enough for me."

That pain festers inside his gut, twisting and turning like a writhing worm eating through earth. It's not good enough. It's all he has.

They watch in silence for a while.

A man wearing a beige hat and a jean jacket takes the center of the frame, throwing a yo-yo down and reeling it up. Chatting some nonsense about time that strikes too close to home.

Waylon's mind follows the theme of time: spiraling through his own head trying to close his eyes to it and rip himself away. Still, his thoughts come. This won't last: the movie with Gina. It's a slice of memory that will fade to a specter of itself before she's even gone.

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It'll revisit some time long off in the future and give him momentary comfort and pain. Just like Phil has. Even then. Even then it will twist in his mind upon each recollection, erasing and mutating the tiny parts that fill him with joy: his coat keeping her warm, the small compliments, even what movie they're watching. Until his mind stops being. Hopefully the taste of this garbage coffee lingering in his mouth goes first.

He takes another sip. "What do you want to do after?"

"After what?"

"Dying. What do you want the afterlife to be like?"

She rustles her hands around under the coat and talks through a snort. "Hopefully nothing. I'm about sick and tired of being conscious."

"Why would you say that? It's not like you can come back."

"Don't expect something wise out of me. Accept it or don't: I'm done, I'm tired, I'm fine with it. That's all my answer is and there's no great mystery I'm worried about. You'd say the same if some lass named Jolene kicked your ass every morning just so you'd live a few extra days or whatever. Or was it Jessica?"

Waylon hangs his head to the floor and wraps both hands around the coffee cup. "Fair, I guess."

Gina picks up an empty paper cup from her lunch and chucks it at Waylon, but it spins in chaotic circles in the air until it bounces across the floor. "You're not getting off the hook, what do you want it to be like?"

Waylon stares at the cup shifting across the floor in lazy rolls along its brim. "Anything that isn't nothing. There isn't enough time to live in a moment in this existence."

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