They meet on campus, late afternoon. Boone knows a place, a tiny cafe crammed in the corner of Dyche Hall. Serves sandwiches and coffee. Business from eleven to one is brisk, then no one. The guy behind the counter listlessly shoves ketchup packets back in boxes, handfuls at a time. A child putting toys away. Joan is already seated when he gets there, coffee cup and cigarettes on the table.

“You’re smoking again,” he says.

She picks up the pack, studies it like a mounted butterfly. A bug. “Not really.”

“Can I sit?”

“Please.”

He slides into the booth, the red-plastic bench seat slick and cold. “You want anything?”

She looks at the table, eyes darting left and right across it. “I’m fine for now. But thank you.”

Out the window, the day is blank. Low clouds hug the tops of the buildings, pewter-plate the sky. Shadows absent. He wipes at his face with his hands, palms to forehead, cheeks, chin. His sigh fills the booth. He blinks, puts back on his glasses. “So what now?”

She fidgets with the lighter. “I don’t know, Boone.”

“Are you still seeing him?”

She shakes her head. “Not now, no.”

He can’t stand her sadness, the way her eyes look when she says it, the way it deflates her figure. Her shoulder slump, her elegant neck forward and plucked. Hates himself, then turns his hate on her. How dare she be sad? How dare she be so bold as to be saddened by her loss? The loss of this man she had been seeing behind his back? Boone clenches fists beneath the table, snaps his head left, looks back outside. A lone young man wanders out a door, his blond hair and healthy good looks unnatural on such a day, such life in the small concrete courtyard. “I have to get something.”

She nods.

How a man will rationalize for former love. Current love. He stands face to face with the young man on the other side of the counter. “Give me a minute.”

“Let me know.”

Scans the menu offerings, though nothing makes sense. Tries on the scenarios he sees before him. So they stay together, and she never strays again, and he must face her day after day like this. This sad woman bereft of something. Her eyes going from wan resignation to hard accusation. She would blame him, not herself for her unhappiness. And as he contemplates the hot apple pies, he knows she would be partly right. For Joan is always at least partly right. “Give me a fucking coffee.”

“Excuse me?” The boy’s eyes wide.

“Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry. That just came out. It’s not you. I just need a coffee.” And if he stayed and she strayed again, what then? He fits it, the scene like a rumpled traveler’s hat, now familiar. Something he’s used to. But why? What about it seems so comfortable, so familiar? Because she’s done it before, of course. “Do you have cappucino? From that machine there?”

The boy, coffee carafe in hand, looks at Boone, to the machines in back, clean white nozzles ready for students in the late afternoon. “It’s just a powder mix.”

“What flavors.”

The boy points at the large labels, left to right. “We got French vanilla, mocha, and cappucino flavor.”

“Cappucino flavored cappucino?”

“Like I said, it’s just a powder.”

“Well, ok then.” So she would stray again, and again he would leave and come back, and she would grow unhappy and stray. And to what?

“So you want one?”

“Mocha, I guess.”

The boy shrugs, puts back the coffee carafe, grabs a styrofoam cup from a stack next to the machines. The nozzle shoots air at first, then a horrible farting sound as the drink mix spews into the cup.

“We should take some time. To process,” She says.

“I don’t think I want to.” He has come back to the table with divorce.

“For Kyle, Boone.”

He nods. Again, she is partly right at least. They owe it to the boy not to rip their lives permanently to shreds. But what will it do for the boy, this silent moment writ large in their house? The sounds of a settling unmasked by conversation. The growing silence. “No.” Shakes his head. “I mean, we can take the time, but I’m not sleeping in that bed.”

“I understand.”

He sips from the gritty drink, sugar crystals not fully dissolved. Hot chocolate powder floating in the unknown liquid. Hopes it’s mostly water. “How many?”

Joan fiddles with the cigarette pack. Stands it on end, pushes it over. “Excuse me?”

“How many?”

She meets his eyes, holds his stare too long, and he must look away, back outside to the flat, gray day. No shadows. Wonders if Kyle is using the weather for portraits.

She clears her throat. “Seven.”

“Seven?”

“Not like that. In as many years. Or close.”

“Since the middle school years.”

She nods, a faint smile coming to her lips. “That’s a good way to put it. ‘The middle school years.’”

“Why?”

“You’re not around, Boone.”

“I’m here all the time.”

“Except you’re not.”

Outside, they hug good bye. It seems right, their bodies together like flavors from childhood, though there is reticence in both. A certain stiffness, trying now untested waters. He can feel her shoulder blades on his hands, ribs against his. “Have you been eating?”

She looks at the ground. “Here and there.”

“Jaye,” he says, touches her cheek.

“Shut up,” she says, though there is no anger, their old selves revealed for a moment beneath a slate-gray Kansas sky. “I’ll try.”

The wind picks up, leaves and a paper cup skitter across the concrete. “You parked far?”

She huddles into her thin sweater, shakes her head.

“Need me to walk you?”

Looks over her shoulder, toward the parking lots. Shakes her head again. “I should just go.”

Boone nods. She takes his hand, squeezes his fingertips and hurries off, hugging herself. Several moments, several yards, then breaks into a trot, her arms still wrapped around her, and then she is gone, around the corner, the courtyard as vacant and flat as if she’d never been there, as if she were still inside, waiting for him in the small cafe.

Photo by Stephen Mackenzie on Flickr.