Stranger Times

Pick Your Poison

Mirror mirror on the wall, as I make my curtain call
What joys will I never live, with these fateful vows I give
Where every choice that I make, denies me a better fate,
Is this the path I would tread, are you the one I ask in dread

Garth Evans taps his finger against his phone as he relives the night he first sang that chorus. High on a cocktail of hallucinogens and stimulants, he had nearly screamed his vocal chords out of his throat. The drugs had stopped him of the buffers that normally diluted his emotions, and he cried in crippling sorrow, and crowed in euphoric delight, as he laboured through the few minutes it had taken to sing that song through. He had nearly ripped his mind apart that night, sharing how afraid he was of all the mistakes he had made in his life.

He had even died of an overdose during the concert. The memory still gives him nightmares.

But in the many lifetimes he had lived since, that song stuck with him, and he liked to have it on hand. A talisman, a memory made real, worth the trouble of re-recording in every life he had lived since.

And it is a fitting thing to listen to as he waits in line. There is a woman in front of him, now talking to the barista at the till, whose voice has him reflecting on the paths in life he hadn't walked.

Just as she finishes paying, and turns away from the till, Garth let's himself say her name aloud. "Miranda?"

Letting her name pass his lips feels like drinking sunlight.

Her eyes are wide open, her lips slightly parted. Her gaze is clear and direct, there's no moment spent wondering who was speaking to her. The corners of her mouth are being pulled into a smile, but stops halfway, as if whatever is happening behind those eyes is too complicated to attach an emotion to yet. The heartbeat worth of shifting expressions is so deep, so rich, that even if Garth could read it, it would take days to understand.

He finds himself wishing for the opportunity.

"Garth? Holy shit," she says, and the sound of her voice has Garth swimming in old memories. "How long has it been?"

Her slightly disheveled, night-black hair still caught the light exactly the same way it did sixteen years ago. There are new lines on her face, and the indentations on her nose from her reading glasses are gotten deeper now. And her right eyebrow was a bit thinner than her left, the casualty of her old habit of picking at her eyebrows while reading.

Her blazer is mahogany-brown tweed, with elbow pads. White button-down shirt, motorcycle-riding pants, and the exact same brown leather boots she had bought from a cobbler seventeen years ago. Garth realizes, one heartbeat in, that what she's wearing is a collection of trophies paying tribute to who she was, and who she has become.

"It's been long enough for you to get tenure," Garth says, delighted and impressed.

"You've been keeping tabs on me?" Miranda asks, but her voice quivers with laughter, and her smile doesn't waver. She makes a rather blunt look down and up with her eyes, her sight lingering on his shoes and his tie. "Looks like you could afford it."

"Small macchiato," Garth said to the woman at the counter, and he set a silver card on the counter. Miranda's eyes widened, though the barista didn't blink as the girl processed the transaction.

"Corporate execs come with cards like those," Miranda says, pointing at the card. "Charge card, rather than a credit card, and nothing more than your name on it. No credit limit, only issued to people who can buy a car with the same ease I bought my coffee. Around here, they're usually used to wine and dine a prof into agreeing to fudge the results of a study. Downplay the environmental damage of a mining project, cover up the side effects of a new drug, that sort of thing. I have colleagues who admit they write their research for nights paid for by cards like that one."