Page 43 - Sweet Embraceable You: Coffee-House Stories

Sweet Embraceable You 31

“How can anyone care anymore?” Cameron lay back on the
couch. “There’s just too many.”
The depot had been a mess with people. Too many people
always meant a mess. They had drained him of sympathy. All their
patience. All their hurry. Their smell. Their sound. He knew he was
the same to them. Just another body taking up the last available
seat. If the security officer had shot the red-haired man in the face,
Cameron would have felt no pity. No more sorry than watching
an actor like Edmund O’Brien get shot in a TV series. Maybe the
cleaning woman might have minded the red-haired Appalachian
brains blown under the bus station seats about as much as she
minded the hooker’s snipped crescents of dead-white fingernail.
*

“Hello in there!” Ada rubbed Cameron’s forehead with the cool
wet bandana.
“Cassie’s really gone then,” he said.
“As much as Cassie ever goes,” Ada said. “I wouldn’t worry. She
has her own ways of coping, weak as they are.”
“She’ll keel over out there, Ada.” The hand with his drink sank
to the floor beside the couch.
Ada lifted the glass to her lips and finished the burning whiskey.
“Cassiopeia will be alright. So will Curtis,” she soothed, climbing
on top of Cameron’s outstretched body. She kissed him. She loved
him. “Everything’s alright,” she said. “Everybody drops people now
and then.” She kissed him again. “We’re alright, Cameron. We’re
here now.”
She cupped his head in her hands, nuzzling his lips, nose, eyes.
“They’re both gone,” she said.
“They’ll come back.”
“And we’ll send them away.”
“We have no choice.”
She kissed him. “We’re all alone.”
“We need to be alone together,” he said. He brought his arms

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