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“You hurt yourself.”
Agnes Tachyon’s ears twitch.
The sound of coffee dripping into a pot fills the silence, just slightly failing to follow a rhythm; the scent, heavy and thick and acrid, hangs in the air, intangible yet infinitely more present than Manhattan Cafe’s “her” has ever been. The idea occurs to Tachyon to say it.
She drops another sugar cube into her tea.
The tension in the air is even more palpable than the smell of coffee. Every time that damnable machine drips, she puts in another cube. The lack of discernible pattern in the sound is irritating. Drip. Plunk. Drip. Plunk. DripPlunk. Drplunk. She’s catching up. Figuring it out. Chasing after that sound, trying to drown it out before it happens.
Tonk.
Tachyon watches the sugar cube bounce off the mountain already piled high in the cup, absorbing the tea and turning it into a grainy sludge.
It falls to the floor, tumbling like a die, leaving grains of sugar scattered in its wake, and Manhattan Cafe watches it too, taking a quiet sip from her mug. What face would it have fallen on, if it had them? A one? A six?
How much force would it have needed to fall with to shatter?
“Tachyon.”
There’s no uncertainty in her voice. Agnes Tachyon has never divulged the reason for her hiatus, but it’s not a particularly difficult line to draw. Why else would someone so dominant in the field, so definitive of her era, suddenly stop? Certainly everyone else has come to the same conclusion. She hears the whispers even from her solitude; she sees the glances thrown toward her laboratory window. Speculation and rumors are faster than any student at Tracen could ever hope to be.
They don’t bother her. They’re not in the same room, threatening to bore a hole into her head, peering straight into her mind, with a relentless, glassy stare. She has never bothered to look back long enough to discern the colors of their eyes, but that golden gaze has been leveled at her enough that she could pick it out in a swatch sheet, she could concoct any number of formulas with the exact sickly shine; she is staring back, as emotionlessly as Manhattan Cafe is challenging her, and she adjusts her sit, plants her feet on the ground to keep from being sucked in.
Get out, she wants to say. Her mind is her temple. A holy site with no gates open to those who seek a pilgrimage. No one else is allowed to peer within. Others guess, gossip, but Manhattan Cafe knows. Each time their eyes meet, Cafe is allowed in, even though neither of them wish it.
“Yes, my dear Cafe?” she asks, lips curling in a grin.
Those eyes like shimmering coins never falter, even as Manhattan Cafe reaches for the coffee and pours it into her mug. A refill. Steam rises from the bottom of both of their fields of vision. Neither concedes so much as a blink.
Coffee is best enjoyed fresh. Tachyon has had to hear the dreary woman before her tell her so, time and time again. As though it’s special—anything meant for consumption should be consumed at its peak of freshness!
Finally, Manhattan Cafe averts her gaze. Tachyon cranes her neck almost unconsciously. She wonders if the reflection of her eyes in the deep umber of the coffee would look like a full moon. She wonders if Cafe even thinks anything of the sight herself—the sight only she can see.
There are a great many things that only she can see, but this is the only one Tachyon will allow her in this moment.
“Never mind. I don’t know why I was ever worried.”
“Worried?” Tachyon parrots, leaning in. Her ankle twinges as she straightens it, and she masks the wince of pain by grinning wider. Manhattan Cafe shrinks back, unaware she’s doing it, holding the mug higher up to her face. A physical wall between them, however small and fragile it may be.
But this should not be mistaken for fear. No, Cafe’s eyes are narrowed, her sickly, gaunt complexion only heightening the effect of her exhausted glare. Tachyon has never seen her so haggard, so defensive. She has never been more beautiful.
“You still watch races,” Cafe offers to the uncomfortable silence between them.
“As do you.” Tachyon leans back. “My research takes priority. Finding the most skilled runners possible only serves to improve my experiments, no?”
“What experiments? You haven’t offered me anything lately.” Manhattan leans forward to follow her, placing the mug on the table with a quiet clink. Her eyes widen slightly, and Tachyon scoots her chair back just a bit. There’s a terrible crunch as she rolls the chair over the forgotten sugar cube.
Manhattan Cafe stands up, swaying slightly. She’s sick. Tired. Pushing herself to her limits, but never surpassing them. Eyes fixed firmly on an invisible, perhaps insurmountable goal. Eyes that see right through Agnes Tachyon, as though she’s been the ghost all along, as though she is barely worth the effort to look at.
Manhattan Cafe will still run. Agnes Tachyon will watch, eyes gleaming, darting to every move she makes, every glimmer of her dark hair in the sun, legs trembling with need. She will never hear those footsteps thudding behind her, graceful even in desperation to win, ever again. She will never see that mix of admiration and self-doubt that gleams in her eyes beyond the finish line ever again.
They grew as racers and as people every time they clashed. Their focus, discipline, and passion are equal in scope. But Manhattan Cafe has a clearly defined goal, and Agnes Tachyon will never be satisfied, and this insurmountable difference is a vast rift between the two of them.
And still, they sit on the edge of that rift, legs dangling dangerously into the void, in the hopes that they might glimpse one another on the other side.
“Have you grown lonely, Cafe?” Tachyon asks. “And here I thought you didn’t appreciate my experiments. But since you’re asking…”
She reaches for a test tube, watching Manhattan Cafe’s expression twist in something that looks very much like pain. “You’re awful,” she wheezes, and whirls around to take her seat again. Tachyon feels her grin sharpen. “You were the dream for so many.”
“Was I yours?”
Manhattan Cafe sullenly sinks into her seat and picks up her mug. Even after all of that, she doesn’t leave. Tachyon laughs, low in her throat, eyes focused on the way Cafe’s expression tightens, and kicks her chair back over to her desk, where a mess of formulas awaits her attention.
None of them compare to the enigma seated behind her, bitter as the drink she sips.
Agnes Tachyon turns on her tea kettle.