Frank began to eat. He had a damaged, pensive look on his face. He ate rice.
“I don’t think you are,” Maura said. “Your posture.” She gazed at Colin. “Reporters wouldn’t dare have your posture. Reporters have horse eyes. You have dog … bird eyes. You don’t move your head to look at something, you move your eyes.”
“I’m going to carpet bomb the Super Bowl with my al Qaeda friend, who lives on Second Avenue and …” Donnie said. He stared at Colin, who was looking down, at all the vegetables that he had moved onto his plate. There was a withered piece of carrot, a mushroom, a pile of baby corn, and an enormous green thing.
“Reporters aren’t as hungry as you,” Maura said.
Frank stood up. “I’m going to the bathroom to vomit,” he said, and went there.
“I like you, Colin,” Donnie said. He looked around. “I mean it. I usually hate all people. You should come to my birthday party next week. I don’t have friends. Just these people here, and they don’t even like me. Frank. Ha. I don’t ever talk this much. I’m probably on anti-anxiety drugs right now. I’m always like, ‘I hate you, what’s the point of talking.’ Or I’m walking around and I’m all like, ‘I’m normal. I’m a normal person. Fuck all these weirdoes.’ Really, I’m probably exactly like you. Exactly. You should see me at school. I stare at the wall. There’s this wall. Anyway.” His voice was wavering a bit. He took out a 3 × 5 note card and set it in front of Colin:
Donnie’s birthday extravaganza
No clowns, no presents, no singing, fuck no, no cake, no nothing
Sure to be a depressing time for everyone involved
You shouldn’t even come, please
The waiter came back with his bike and three other people — his twin, a tall and bearded man, and a tiny, wrinkled, peanut-colored woman. They pulled up another table and sat down. The waiter went and got more soup and bowls.
“These are gargantuan,” the short homeless man said. He held his bowl up to the light and everyone looked. It was a normal-sized bowl.
The tall man smelled a little sour. He was sitting by Colin, and now stood up. “Thank you, sir,” he said to Colin, and sat down.
Colin said something shocking yet compassionate, but he wasn’t sure what exactly — or if, even, as he didn’t hear his own voice and also had been thinking about something completely else.
“Thank you, Colin,” the short man said.
“Thank you, Colin, sir,” the tall man said.
The tiny, wrinkled woman was smiling very pleasantly. She had a little teacup in front of her. The waiter’s twin had on a “NASA” hoodie and was talking to Donnie. “We lived in Seattle then moved here. We’ve written four film scripts each, eight in total. We have a shared identity but we also have distinct individual identities. Well, what do you think?”
Frank came back. His face and hair were wet, his eyes were unfocused, and his seat had been taken. He stood there a while, then focused his eyes, put food on a plate, sat alone at an adjacent table, and ate.
“You’re trying to say something,” Maura said to the tiny, wrinkled woman, who was moving her lips in an unhurried, fishlike way. Some spit got onto her chin and she coughed a few times. Little coughs, like drops of water. Finally she very clearly and quickly said, “What are your movies about?” She did not have an accent. They were all looking at her.
“That depends. Wait … do you mean plotwise?” the waiter’s twin said. “Wait,” he said loudly.
They all continued looking at the tiny woman. She was very wrinkled. She began to cough again, then reached for a napkin and knocked over her teacup, which was filled with something not easily describable. It wasn’t tea. There was food in it, and a small mound of sugar or something. “Oh shit,” she said, softly and without agitation, and then carefully stood and walked slowly out of the restaurant.
“I think what she meant?” the waiter said, looking at his twin. “Was overall, as in what are our preoccupations?”
“Life,” the twin said quickly. He stared at his brother, the waiter. “What, you don’t think so? I hesitated earlier. I shouldn’t have. We’re different.”
Maura stood. “Let’s go help her,” she said, and pulled Colin up. As she and Colin left, the waiter was saying, “She’s not as old as you think. She uses the internet, you know? Friendster?”
It was snowing outside. Colin felt cold, but in a stony, immune way. He was a marble statue, unearthed after a hundred million years — fascinating. The woman stood on the corner, small and shoulderless as a penguin. The wind lifted her hair above her head, like a small, white flame.
“We’ll each hold one of her arms,” Maura said. They went and did that.
Maura leveled her face with the woman’s and asked where they were going, then positioned her ear directly in front of the woman’s mouth. Maura’s nose ring was very bright. Colin stared at it and could hear it shining. It was a noise like a happy person waking from a nap — continually waking from a nice nap.
The woman pointed across the street. There was a McDonald’s, glowing yellow and red in complex, ongoing, and freakish acknowledgement of itself. As they crossed the street, Colin couldn’t see that well; snow moved elaborately toward his face, in curlicues and from below. But he felt that he could hear better. He could hear their six shoes sloshing against the snow. It was a crumbling noise, he realized, only faster.
Inside McDonald’s it was very warm. They sat in a booth by the entrance. The woman said she wanted an Oreo McFlurry, but had no money.
“You don’t need money,” Maura said. “Don’t move.” She stood and went to the back, to the ordering counter.
The woman began to shiver. Colin took off his jacket and put it on her back. She touched her ears. “It’s cold here,” she said. “These places.” She touched her forehead and eyebrows.
Colin pulled the jacket up, covering her head completely. It looked like it put an uncomfortable weight on her neck. Colin slid in close, right next to her, and held the jacket up a little.
“That’s pretty good,” the woman said. “I don’t like the city. No, never. Don’t ask me that.” She began to talk faster and louder. “I’m moving to the Florida Keys. I’m not driving. I’m taking a plane. I’m living in a hut on the beach.” She paused, then coughed.
“Oh,” Colin said.
“Everyone’s doing something and that’s what a city is,” the woman said. “I’m old. I don’t want to communicate at the speed of light on Mars. My daughter died in the towers. She didn’t need to be there, typing, doing things at the speed of light. Not my daughter but other daughters. I mean — people. Something. I can’t get at the things in my head. They’re tiny. They move too slow.” She was coughing or sobbing now — or both; there was a sound like two or three hamsters squeaking. Colin leaned over to look at her face, but it was just a shadow under the jacket, an abyss. “Where were you when the towers happened?” she said.
“Sleeping.”
“Singing? What?”
“Sleeping.”
“Oh, that’s good. So don’t wake up. Build a home by a beach. Leave the city and get a bed. Those are important. Beds. Don’t wake up through any of this, ever. Don’t dream about cities or progress. Don’t wake up or dream. That’s what I’m saying. Is that wrong? What should I say then? It’s too late to say anything.”
“It’s … what time is it?” Colin said inaudibly.
Maura came back holding a McFlurry and with a McDonald’s manager following her. She set the McFlurry down and sat opposite the woman and Colin. The McFlurry had some ice cream smeared on its outside and no cap on top.