The Lost Coin

Let’s face it: if she hasn’t sent you a message by now, she won’t send you one at all. I mean, look at her track record. That’s right, she hasn’t sent you a message yet. That doesn’t exactly bode well for the future, does it now. Also, you know what you did. That one thing, where your mouth twitched a little when she asked you whether you found the soup tasty, and you said you did but with a sort of hoarse tone in your voice that betrayed you were actually fighting to chug all that soup down your throat against the feelings of inadequacy that were welling up from the inside. Which she interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm. So that’s why she won’t send you a message at all.

Of course, it could all have gone differently. For example, if you would have taken your shower five minutes earlier, that time you were meeting outside that theatre with the line of flower-pots with badly tended flowers in front of it. If you would have taken that shower earlier, instead of fiddling around with your shoelaces which weren’t, as you had observed, crossed correctly through the holes, you wouldn’t have given her those five minutes of idle time during which she had the opportunity to consider the multiple readings of your message in which you wished her good luck with the administrative process of renewing her driver’s license. One of those readings may have suggested you were actually pleased about her grandmother getting hit by a bus not two months ago. Of course, she was too sensitive to show you she had actually discovered this reading when you arrived at the theatre. She just kissed you and told you she was happy to see you, as a smokescreen to give her more time to strengthen her resolve to dump you.

I mean, look at the time. It’s four minutes after the last time you checked, just five hours before you had agreed on to meet up in front of a location she still has to disclose through text message. Five hours during which she has ample time to watch that one French movie in which a woman suddenly discovers how her relationship is in fact a cage, after seeing a painting at a museum of a fishing boat broken in half which brings her to tears, and induces her to step out of the museum into the street, gaze steadily fixed on the endless horizon, walk towards the nearest train station and buy a ticket for the south of Spain where she takes a boat for Morocco. The first thing she does when she arrives there is immerse her feet in the hot desert sand, blissfully ignoring the ever increasing number of phone calls from her boyfriend. You remembered seeing this movie lying on the bookshelf last time at her place, but abandoned the plan of stuffing it all the way behind the other movies. Now, you’re being punished for your indecisiveness.

Speaking of her room, did you ever find that Romanian 50 bani coin you dropped out of your pocket and which rolled under her bed but which you couldn’t reach for because she came in with two cups of tea? No you didn’t, did you. That 50 bani coin which your ex-girlfriend emphatically told you to hold on to, because you got it in that restaurant which she thought was great because they had red and white chequered tablecloths and the waiter was hilarious because he kept calling her ‘mademoiselle’ with a clownesque inflection in his voice. The coin is now under the bed of this person you’re dating. Unless she has already discovered it after a thorough clean and is deducing its meaning, coming scarily close to the adulterous truth. And you never even got the time to tell her how much you disliked your previous girlfriend.

There were of course other factors. She asked you to be less morose. You went on to remark, not five minutes later, that the weather looked grim. Your spine tingled. How could you be so stupid? You started trying to make up for that comment by throwing off frantic words of praise for the cheese you were eating, how it had a distinct deep-Italian taste, there’s no such thing as deep-Italian, how the curtains went so well with the wallpaper, how it was going to be fun to go to the sports game you and her were planning to go to, how you had particularly liked the references she had made to Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural reproduction to subtly admonish the privileged audience during her speech at that gallery last night. She just nodded and looked down at her plate. Game over.

So now that it’s all been lost, what exactly is there left to do? First of all, you are now clear on the fact that she was never that important at all to you. You will kick her out of your heart. She is not your problem, your deep, personal and incurable sorrow. You are your own man, have always been and will always be. You light a cigarette and kick the reading table by your foot. Next, you must think of a suitable destination to go and process your loss. Perhaps somewhere on Madagascar, doing volunteer work for a tiny village’s water supply. With a nearby gorge full of tall trees and shadowy expanses which go well with your scorched heart. You will sit by its banks and stare at its expanses with vacant eyes. And when one of the local kids comes sit next to you and asks you what’s wrong, mister, you will smile wanly and pat his head. You will bear your loss and your pain alone, for the rest of your life. It’s yours, after all. This will be your sad fate, but then you always knew everything would be shit anywa…

Her message arrives, an hour before meetup time.

What in God’s name and how fabulous and beautiful! Of course she sent you a message, she is so attentive and loving and you fit so well together with her. How could she not. It will be great, also, the meetup, for reasons hitherto unclear. But great. You’ll have a good time and there will be jokes like last time. Maybe you will hold her chin on your fingertips and look her in the eyes and she will smile.

But oh my God, what are you waiting for? Meetup time is nearly there, and she will be standing there in the bar waiting and thinking about whether you really understood the essence of her Bourdieu remarks or were just faking it, and whether you are maybe not too morose after all. Better get straight on your bike. Never mind that shower.