Solo Doubles

[Caspian]

15 Fall 522

As far as first dates go, one usually doesn’t envision that one’s sister is present.

But Caspian should have known better, as far as the things he wants and how often he actually achieves them. And specifically, when it comes to Taalviel - he sees now more than ever that his thinking he might experience this relationship without any interference was futile and unfounded.

Sitting directly on the barstool opposite from him, one leg crossed over the other, is said sister Taalviel; to her left is a dark-haired man Caspian has come to see as no more than a petty arsonist, and a pathetic one at that.

And to his right is Taroko, who Caspian had been under the impression was going to be meeting him at this tavern alone.

They’re somewhere down towards Baroque Bay, but a few streets inland, and the four of them are commandeering a space in the back, having turned their barstools away from the tables and arranged them in a makeshift circle. Caspian had not arrived first to this date – what he’s calling a date, had pictured it as such while he was fussing with his hair in the mirror today – but Taroko hadn’t either. No, technically the compulsive match striker had rolled up ahead of them all, and then Taalviel, and she had swooped in on Taroko the second he’d walked in. Which left Caspian last, out of the loop, and distinctly out of any good humor once he’d given the place one look and realized the way he’d envisioned the night going wasn’t anywhere near fruition.

Why would have been the natural first question. But in this case it’s just a resigned, gritted ”What is it now?” that he smears out.

And of course Taalviel says nothing, only stares pointedly at the one empty barstool beside them, which he sulkily takes.

Maybe his first mistake had been thinking, to begin with, that this outing with Taroko was going to be a romantic one. It wasn’t a designation he’d jumped to; meeting with Taroko again after all these years hadn’t been the most pleasant experience. Reuniting with one’s ex usually isn’t, to which anyone might attest. And in this case there are reasons, very specific ones, of the morbidly violent variety, all of which had never been discussed or resolved. But ever since they’d run into each other in the summer, they’d gone out looting a handful of times. And then Taroko, after the last hit-and-run, had caught him by the wrist just before they’d parted ways, and beneath the yellowing moon had asked him if he wanted to do something different next time; if he still liked amber ale and stewed chitlins and that dark bread with the thick crust and oats sprinkled on top.

So has he read the signs wrong? Did he take those words and the question and artificially paint them with a warmth from Taroko that wasn’t really there?

And if so – after everything terrible that had come between them all those years ago – why?

Caspian doesn’t miss him. Hadn’t, all this time. That’s what he tells himself. There’s been too much going on to dwell on someone who had revealed himself to be capable of terrible things, as easily as one might brush one’s teeth in the morning.

But seeing Taroko again, that day last summer – something had sparked in Caspian. Something had cracked. And curiosity had called.

[Caspian]

Now that they’re sat and settled – though for Caspian, he’s got at maximum just ten percent of his ass on the stool – he’s got his eyes roving. It’s not really a compulsive thing, some kind of twitch, anything that even objectively he has any reason to curb. It comes to him as easily as breathing. Noticing, that is. Taking stock. Sometimes when he lies in bed, just before he drifts off, he’ll remember an errant day, and it’ll be painted in his mind in such detail, with painfully sharpened clarity, that as he approaches limbo he muddles the memory and his reality and could almost reach out and touch it. As a result his dreams, on occasion, are alarmingly vivid. But it’s the small things that make it so, little props that constitute the larger picture. The weft and weave of a woman’s scarf; the grain of the wood of the bar top; the soggy, dirt-encrusted remains of a biscuit in its wax-paper wrapper, spilled across cobblestones. And all this means that his dreams, despite their boundless opportunity, usually don’t occupy fantastical realms. But that’s okay. There’s something off-putting, in his opinion, about the whole concept of dreaming. That there’s a space out there, a place, an area defined by undefinable boundaries where one can do things one couldn’t, or perhaps even shouldn’t. Terrible things, wonderful things, either just as likely as the other. Once when he was 15 he made the mistake of noticing too much, of watching too closely when Taaldros split someone’s skull open with an ax. That night he braced himself, the scene replaying over and over in his mind – and he was afraid, because by then he’d come to understand this about himself, the hard imprinting of sound and color and line and light on his memories, and was sure the gruesome death would visit him in his sleep as well. But it didn’t, not then. No, it came to him one night years later, tangled in someone else’s sheets in Ravok, and he woke with such a start that his bed partner cursed and ordered him to sleep in the den instead.

Is this moment going to haunt him someday down the line? Taalviel’s skirt has a high slit up the right side, and she’s wearing leggings underneath, and supple leather boots that go over her knees. That skirt is new, that’s what catches his eye, and if it’s not new, exactly, then she’s had it for quite some time and for some reason hidden it until now. Her blouse is tucked into the skirt and the neckline is several conspicuous smidges lower than her usual. This is why people make a very specific and particular kind of joke about him and his sister; yes, admittedly it is a bit weird to stare at one’s sister’s neckline, or even lower, and especially when one doesn’t blink too much.

“I’ve got a job for us,” Taalviel says.

Caspian looks from his sister’s collarbone to the arsonist, whose gaze had been lingering a smidge too long on the same expanse of skin.