Mecon

By

George O. Obikoya

Nothing prepared him for what he sees he says. On the other hand, it was as though his was like no other he tells his friend, who paces up and down, still apparently worried about what she almost witnessed. 

His reassurance does not seem to work, given the strain on her face that the imminent darkness paints with even more dread. Soon they head home, stopping first to have coffee in a nearby shop, for which he offers to pay, even though she is uncertain they both had any money. 

He gave all his money to her earlier during the week, he says for safe-keeping, the cheque for which she then put in the bank account of his eighteen-year old daughter, his only offspring, and the only person he professes to miss anytime he had to be away for long. 

His apology for not just his planned act earlier, but for finding out he had no money on him to pay for the coffee coincides with the switch from pain to panic on her face as she gropes through her handbag in search of her wallet to no avail.    

For reasons apparently unclear to both, the waitress mumbled something and says they could leave. They assume she would pay for their coffee and thank her profusely for that, although she was gone before they could even start. 

She lives just two blocks from the coffee shop, in a rather quiet part of town. He now lives downtown, since not long prior moving out of his rented apartment he says costs too much for a retiree as he is. He also recently sold his vehicle, and says he has no plan to buy another as all he needs are within easy reach where he now lives.  

He continues to explain his motive, the real one he says, having told her earlier he needs her company to the waterfront just to enjoy a cool summer afternoon. She appears concerned but he reassures her all is well now. The look on her face though says something else. As they approach her home, she says that they should head for the hospital and not her place. 

His dismay at the idea is evident, as is the intensity of his disdain for anyone purporting to comprehend his psyche, which he says he struggles to figure all his life. She says she understands his position, he, politely that she does not have all the facts. He tries to convince her to go home and that he would be okay.  

Then she reminds him of their common practised skills, her acquaintance with his earlier works, the analysis of some of which she missed but he explained, and the seeming coincidence of what just transpired with elements he explores routinely in different ways in those works that may reasonably be said to herald what could have just happened.   

He admits his works sometimes precede him, but that there is a lot more he wants to say, to her, in private. She looks at him momentarily, her trepidation palpable. She says he has never heard him say any such thing. He is blank for a while, perhaps unsure of what next to say.

By now, they are just minutes from her home. She is separated from her husband who she says still asks her why she seems ever more distant. She says they may get back together some day but that she would not refuse to be friends with others awaiting a reunion that may never be.   

He often says he realizes that she wants no intimate union for now and assures her that neither does he seek it. She says she never doubts his sincerity when he finally blurts something inaudibly. It is unclear if she has what just occurred in mind, but she opens her door and lets him in. 

For the next hour or so, he treats her to a historical medley, which for someone who says little, tells of probable catharsis, a psychic dance with himself on display that leaves nothing to her imagination this time she muses. The tryst slips into nothingness, he laments for another chance to see the show anew perhaps he claims.

She agrees and lapses it seems back into time too, this time, she says, letting it all out. He listens, his chin rested delicately in his cupped palms, his eyes gyrating in tandem with his more expressive hostess. It is indeed, he says as if he sees the mirror again, this time its visuals played out in full. 

She admits he makes her know herself in full, and he says he feels the same way too, after one he always knew seems at odds with the first he did, for reasons he ascribes to another that always told him the difference was real that this other insists he must believe. 

They agree the mirror does not lie, but what it reveals often does, what informs over time, seen in the mirror often in conflict with what really ought to be there, or we wish were there, informed from the start, etched in our memories as we marvel before the mirror then, not to weep before it now.     

Yet they concur that the parts could transcend the whole, hence the need to know the elements in the mirror that no longer belong save to drive our souls to seek refuge elsewhere away from a whole it no longer feels tells its story. He admits he fails to see that, what thus his soul seeks to discard a fusion itself seeking relief in cognitive dissection. 

The dissonance of the dyad they say perpetrates the angst they admit cofounds others in an impasse to wrench from which further annihilates the dyad as they recoil either in retreat or otherwise from the confusion, the potential of which to entrench the elements of the whole and hence to perpetuate the sham in the mirror manifest. 

They pause and look into each other eyes, it seems, at another mirror in which they now see the whole as it should be, as they did in the mirror whose evolution they just traced and where they say they are now at the first mirror revealed they declare is where they would remain, a pledge they sealed with a passionate embrace.