The Depths

[Near]

Near offers a shrug, a lopsided thing that expands into standing up from the bench then contracts back into a sharp twist of his neck to crackle away a twinge he's been telling himself developed while he was moving a couch a few days ago but which in reality is the same one that has nagged at him off and on since the car crash. Maybe he's getting old. All to say, he knows what he meant, whatever he said.

Jude's wrath seems to have shifted toward the cup in Near's hand. He rattles the ice one more time before dropping it from an unnecessary height into the trash can beside the bench, to join its friends.

"So let's do it," he says. "Stop them." If the proposal brushes up against nonchalance, it's only because he's been thinking it so long it's turned comfortable.

"I'm meeting someone for dinner later," he adds, glancing toward the end of the promenade. The trouble with Guthrie is that he's too stable. He has his shit together -- as much as anybody working retail can have their shit together. Enough anyway that he doesn't now and will probably never *need* Near the way that Near will, eventually, need to be needed. For now, though, it's fine.

"But not for a while. "

[Jude]

Jude wants to bury his face in his hands. He resents the senseless inspiration that compelled him to observe Near for several weeks and then make this approach. He could have been doing something better with his time. He doesn't know what that something better would have been -- it is only a sliver of Jude's time that he spends doing the most important part of his work, which is persuading people of his cause. The majority of his time is actually spent waiting, interspersed with running. It's hard to say whether he really had anything else he could have been doing. But there must have been. Whatever it would have been, it would not have been wanting to shake Near like a button-eyed ragdoll.

Wrapped up in his anger, there's a lag in processing time in what Near says. Jude looks up from his place on the bench and stares. He listens, thinks, and then waits for the punch line. He waits for something like, 'Is that what you want me to say?'

When it doesn't come, he coughs out a laugh and looks back at the dry fountain. He smiles with his teeth, his tongue coming worry the front of one canine. He clasps his hands between his spread legs; his grip tightens briefly at Near's mention of 'meeting someone'.

'Your boyfriend?' he thinks of saying. Jude has taken note of him in his observing of Near. Instead he loosens his hands, presses them into his knees, and stands beside Near. "You make it sound so easy," he sighs. "We should go somewhere else to talk."

He doesn't like the way that comes out.

[Near]

What Guthrie needs less even than Near Farr (whom he has taken to calling Court because he's the only one who does and because he's convinced it's the righting of a wrong, the deliverance of a dignity, that "Near" is somehow derisive -- which it was once upon a time, only Near hasn't been able to bring himself to put up much of a fight about it) is any piece of this bullshit. Nobody needs it; that's Near's position on the matter. For all that the episode at The Reaches occupies the recesses behind and between his thoughts, he has never said a word out loud about it to anyone. Never intends to. What's the best he can hope for on the subject? Wow, that's fucking weird, bro?

So yes, somewhere else, before anyone who knows him walks by and sees him hanging around chatting with a Jude he didn't really expect to have to explain. In a perfect world, somewhere else with someone else, but for all his ruminations, he hasn't been able to figure out how to erase the kid from the picture and still have any hopes of accomplishing his goals.

"Easy?" he scoffs back. He can't imagine anything about this will be easy beyond his own resolution to do it. "Sure." He has questions. Of course he does. Where has Jude been staying, how has he been living, has he been pulling rabbits out of hats for rent money?

"Your place or mine?"

[Jude]

When Jude arrived unannounced at The Reaches, and Near did not immediate throw him out, Jude sprung a trap: he caught Near in a historical event that would be unbelievable to almost anyone else. There is nothing more lonely than a history shared between two people and one of the parties is lost. Who can you turn to say and, 'Do you remember?' Who can verify or deny that you are remembering it right or wrong? Who can say whether you merely dreamed it? The insurance claim for the rental car can only testify to the fact that, at some point, there was an accident. All this time, was Near still sure that Jude was even real?

Perhaps he'd been putting out classified ads for a ghost.

Jude does not know Near's goal. He has gotten better at understanding other people; in some ways failing to understand Near has aided him. He stopped expecting clarity. Most people could be sorted into categories of defensive self-interest and enthusiastic self-sacrifice, and Jude has learned when to cut his losses with the former. His successes have been few, but like any start-up CEO, Jude has discovered that you only need a few wealthy patrons to bankroll a pipe dream.

The line of his mouth constricts once more at the question. He's quiet for several seconds. "Are you close by?"

[Near]

Too bad.

Antagonism and nosiness not being mutually exclusive, Near is of course champing to know what Jude's living arrangements are, and what they have been, and so many other post-then details -- almost as much as he's determined not to let his curiosity bleed through to the outside of this interaction. Jude, he suspects, will find gratification in any blatant interest in his life, and the thought of making himself a source of gratification for Jude (more than this meeting has already made of him) gives him mental hives.

"Actually, yeah," he says, and while the answer begins neutrally enough, it develops a flavor of self-consciousness as it crosses his tongue.

Yes, he is close by. He's close by because everything he has cultivated here in Seattle, his whole life, is hemmed into a very small radius: walk here, walk home, walk to the Burger King, etc. He could walk to work if his schedule didn't mean he'd be a two-thirty in the morning pedestrian, which is a bad thing to be in the best of neighborhoods. Used to be he would stretch out in his chosen places, explore the margins. These days he doesn't care to stray too far out of his bubble, and it isn't something he thinks about much, except when all of a sudden it feels like admitting a weakness.

"Pretty close." Like that tempers it. "Fifteen minute walk. Come on." He leads away from the wide, windowed Nordstrom, although the exit just beyond it is closest to his route.

Outside, the air is thick and clouds are looking moody, but it hasn't started raining yet.

[Jude]

Jude does not live glamorously; his standard of living took a decided downgrade with his venture. That is probably the biggest difference between him and a startup CEO. Where others might get ahead of themselves spending investment cash, Jude holes up in an extended-stay motel, the kind with the crappy eighties furniture, an orange felt chair crammed up against a flimsy wooden desk, carpet with a confetti pattern that would be just as happy at home in a bowling alley, placement along a busy commercial corridor that hosts drunk vagrants at odd hours. He could probably upgrade himself to a Motel 6, maybe a La Quinta, but Jude prefers to have money to spare in case he needs to buy a plane ticket on demand, get out now, run fast and far if Juliet and company show up in town once more.

Like the other holy fools that have preceded him, Jude does not take much interest in his day-to-day material life. Save for when one of his patrons insists on taking him out to dinner, he eats blandly but in a healthy way: steaming vegetables in the microwave, Cheerios for breakfast, a dollar fifty McDonald's sundae as the occasional treat. Along with talking to strangers, he has had to pick up innumerable life skills that other people usually learn a little at a time. The result is that many of his choices are boring, because the amount of effort introspection and personal taste would require is beyond him. He tends to buy outfits off the mannequin. It is what he has done before and after staring at Near from a distance.

Outside, the telltale humidity of the coming storm envelopes him. Out of habit, Jude scans the parking lot, everyone going to and from the mall. His eyes dart, rabbit-like, from person to person -- a woman with dark hair pulled up in a ponytail, two plastic bags each in the crooks of her elbows; a blond man pushing a stroller while his partner mans a cart an Instant Pot and a Ninja blender precariously balanced. A distant rumble of thunder echoes.

"Let me get my backpack." He steps out into the parking lot in front of Near, wanders across the asphalt to a beat-up Subaru Forester, its navy blue paint peeling in places. It has an Oregon license plate. The backpack, an olive green L.L. Bean, is retrieved from the passenger seat. Probably contains Jude's wizard materials, for whatever tricks he'll pull next.

[Near]

What a bad idea this is.

Just terrible.

Near's misgivings about his current course of action arise in the form of physical sensation more than articulate thought. Deep sensation, a dyspeptic rumble in his large intestine, an old shrapnel wound acting up before a storm. His body rebelling, a little, against his brain's half-baked insistence that it engage in stupid activities that will neither be enjoyable to carry out nor bring him any particular betterment to complete. Isn't it true that he could have left well enough alone and continued on with a reasonable expectation of never being bothered by any of Jude's crap again?

He would normally, in times like these, turn to the noise of mindless chitchat, weather talk, job talk, whatever talk, for distraction, but he's quiet as they make their way through the mall and out; there is no point, none, in attempting anything like a conversation with Jude.

Only when Jude sidles over to the SUV and pulls the backpack out of it (this kid and his damn backpacks) does Near say anything,

"So you're not going to offer to drive?"

[Jude]

He could have never bothered himself with Jude's crap again. Jude and his crap would have continued happening off-screen and Near could have simply had an inkling of what this slow slide into deep oblivion was all about. Just as he doesn't need to interfere with the melting of the ice caps, he can sit on his ass and let malevolent cosmic forces infiltrate the earth from beyond the veil. His teriyaki chicken bowl will still taste the same, until it doesn't -- until chickens are extinct or until all flavor, all pleasure, is turned to ash. Whichever comes first.

Finally something they agree on: that conversation between them is pointless. Jude is astounded by how, across all this time, talking to Near still has the effect of feeling like a bully is holding his hands, slapping them to his own face and yelling, 'Stop hitting yourself!' If he doesn't say anything, Near cannot find something stupid to say back.

And then -- and then! -- Near demonstrates he does not need any input to provide output. He takes Jude's metaphorial hand and whaps him with it.

"Do you want me to drive?" A fifteen minute walk means that it must be five minutes or less by car. Jude glances up at the sky, seeing if the threat of rain justifies the request. Unlikely. Near just enjoys inflicting demands. If he hadn't just finished a coffee, he'd probably ask Jude to buy him one, or something stupid like that. Stupid things, all the time.

[Near]

At least offering to drive would be a normal thing to do. Normal in a situation where you have a car and the person with whom you share a destination does not. Normal when it looks like, feels like, it could start raining midway through the fifteen minute walk. Normal at least if you're not going to conceal the fact that you have the car and instead lead the other person straight to it.

But there's the issue: Near is habituated to normalcy. A kind of it, anyway. His personal version of it, wherein the world at large may be going sideways, but the individual people around him still generally behave according to a basic mutual agreement regarding what to do in certain situations. Like this situation. Hey, brilliant idea, how about I drive?

He has to glare at Jude for a second after that "do you want me to drive," to remember that he already knows not to expect normal human interactions out of him. Whatever the reason -- because he is a toddler, because he is an alien, because he is autistic, because he doesn't give a fuck -- he hasn't signed the standard social agreements. Remembering doesn't make any of this better, exactly, but it does divert some of his exasperation away from Jude and right back to himself.

"Do you want to spend more time with me than you have to?" he asks back, guessing that Jude hasn't suddenly developed a taste for his company.

[Jude]

Near is not just habituated to normalcy, in Jude's opinion. He is habituated to getting what he wants. Maybe it is because he has money, maybe it is because he is used to applying his particular form of social pressure and finding success, maybe it is because, to everyone besides Jude, he is some kind of charming. But that is not the worst thing. The worst thing is his 'gotcha' game of wanting things that he doesn't ask for, and then, when they are not offered, complaining.

Jude has watched a great deal more television since his jailbreak. Near is like if some sadistic screenwriter stuck him with an irritating stepbrother.

He forgets that, if they proceed with this agreement, they will be spending a great deal more time with each other anyways, and giving or taking ten minutes is not much. He imagines digging the empty frappucinno cup out of the garbage and pelting Near in the head with it.

The Subaru beeps as Jude unlocks the doors. "Get in."