Though my headache was fading I could still feel how my eyelids were still tight and puffy. I shrugged further into my hoodie and concentrated on the screen in front of me and urged my fingers to fly faster over the keys. Keep focused, keep busy. People won't notice you've been crying. They'll just see another coffee shop blogger. On the heels of that I heard Adelle's voice "Is it that important to you what strangers think, KaMu?" Fuck. It hadn't even been an hour after I collected myself and pushed up out of the comfy loveseat in my therapist's office, leaving behind a handful of wadded up tissues like a nest of broken origami fledglings; I was still –still- hearing her questions. The damned therapy sessions. I hated them. Maybe I didn't hate them as much as I needed them and that, I hated more than anything. Brownies baking back in the kitchens distracted me as I tried to compose a fight scene. At the moment I was letting words spill out in a stream of consciousness block that I told myself I would organize later. My inner editor was glad of the interruption. I was just spewing keywords at that point. It might as well have been a pile of hashtags to accompany a square cropped, motion blurred image of a capuchin riding a javelina.
"Cute." A weathered bag with formidable buckles and webbing dropped in between me and the person that dropped, as heavily as her bag, into the chair opposite mine. "As long as I'm the capuchin and not the javelina." I grabbed the edges of the little pedestal table to settle it from its wobbling. My empty smoothie cup fell and rolled to rest near her foot. Thick armored motocross boots encroached my space as my new neighbor slouched back in her chair and kicked her legs out. "Wait. Maybe I want to be the javelina. Those little fuckers are pretty kickass in their own right." Her eyes seemed to study the light fixtures above as if they might provide insight into the question of monkey or peccary.
Something was eerily familiar about her. I started the mental back-scrolling trying to remember and found that my mind wouldn't lock on anything. Everything before my visit with the therapist was a haze; an almost remembered image or idea that would dissolve into the murky soup of my mind.
Setting the cup back on the table I managed, "Excuse me?"
Ignoring me she stretched out and yawned hugely before slumping back into her rag doll posture "Yeerg. Fucking cagers! Mmm… I smell brownies. Hey, buy me a brownie."
I hesitantly looked about the shop. Only a couple of people in line and another seated in a tall chair at the bar. Plenty of seating but this stranger wanted to share my tiny table. Fully intending to ask her to find somewhere else to sit I said "Excuse me?"
"Oh, don't even act like you don't know me, chica."
"Huh? Umm- I don't."
"Por favor, mujer. Don't act stupid." In response to my blank look she threw her arms open to encompass the space and raised her voice "You call the shots, right? Is this, or is this not your show?"
"I..."
"For the love of skunk pigs! Get with it!"
"I'm sorry but I'm lost. Or maybe you are. You're mistaking me for someone else."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shut up and listen: It's kind of lucky for you that I'm the first one you pulled in, but look: the others are going to show up eventually and they're not as nice as I am. Most likely they're not going to be happy. Matter of fact, some of them are going to be fucking livid. You get me?"
She was talking to me as if she knew me and a foggy nagging assured me that I knew her. I stopped trying to make sense of what she was saying and just really looked at her; the girl that sat in front of me, not the stranger that had interrupted my writing.
Though she was short her figure was impressive in a motley array of worn motorcycle gear. In varying degrees she was wrapped in leather, carbon fiber, mesh and armor attached with Velcro or Fastex clips. There was a line like a scar that ran across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, the arcs matched the lower curve of the goggles that hung from a faded strap around her neck. That line was the demarcation of natural brown skin tone and a shade of dust that coated her face below the goggle-line. Her thumbs, index and middle fingers were exposed by cutoff gloves with Kevlar reinforced knuckles. These she drummed on the scuffed up helmet in her lap as she watched me from under short messy wisps of red ombre hair.
"Oh, shit! You're the courier." I whispered, partly thrilled, partly horrified as memory snapped into place and erased the fog.
"Glory-fucking-be. She remembers me. How sweet." She flashed a smile that was not at all a smile. I felt my face start to flush. It was the kind of embarrassment reserved for the moment you are about to introduce someone who's name you just up and forgot. It didn't seem to matter as much to her. Her gaze was fixed intently on me as if she was waiting for something. An arched brow urged me past my awkwardness onto the next thought.
"And the others…" I started to remember them. "Oh. Fuck."
"Yep. Now you get me. Welcome to your world, chica."