Disclaimer:  They aren't mine.  I do realize this--most of the time.  My delusions do not include hopes of making a profit.

Offered in memory of breakfast at the Ferris Wheel Diner--April, 1999.  ;-)

Many, many thanks to inkling and Jayne for beta reading this one right down to the nits.  You ladies are my heroes!

This is a vignette.  This is only a vignette.  Had this been an actual story, you would have been instructed where to tune for the plot and other vital information.

Go ahead, push your luck,
say what it is you gotta say to me,
We will push on into that mystery,
And it'll push right back,
and there are worse things than that
     ~ Dar Williams
 

It's not every morning that someone grabs me in the middle of a busy intersection, so I'd be lying if I said I was expecting it.

To tell the truth, I was so preoccupied that I didn't hear the ambulance until it was right on top of me; that was probably what caused the problem in the first place.  I should have been paying attention, but there was too much to think about: getting the taxes paid on time; the apology I needed to make to my best friend for overreacting and ditching him in a fit of pique; and Emmett, his birthday present, and all that that entailed.

A lot to think about.  Still, I shouldn't have been trying to sort it out while crossing the street.  I missed what was coming until it should have been too late.  When I heard the siren, I hesitated--and you know what they say about she who hesitates.

It would have been true, literally, if it weren't for Gary.

The strange thing is, I knew it was him.  Don't ask me how, but in the split second before he reached me, pulling me in so tight that there was still sweater-weave imprint on my chin an hour later, I knew it was Gary.  Maybe I caught a whiff of his scent; maybe I heard something familiar in his step, even with the noises exploding all around us.  Maybe I just knew, the way I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and know the phone is about to ring.

It wasn't much of a warning, but it was enough that I didn't fight it; didn't try to pull away when I felt the change in the air around my face and then the arms encircling me, tight as a python.  And thus I was able to hear, to feel, the most frightening part of that moment--Gary's heart, not just beating, but pounding right through his rib cage and into my ear in a rapid, asynchronous staccato.  His breathing, when he had breath to catch, was ragged; he was sucking in air as if his lungs didn't quite remember how they were supposed to work.  In the few seconds that it lasted, there were sirens, there were horns, there were cars whizzing by and newspapers rasping in the breeze that swirled around our ankles, but that was all white noise in the background, fading out of the moment as my best friend clutched me like one of us was drowning.  I wasn't sure if it was me he was trying to save, or himself.

When he finally relaxed a little, and then let go, I asked what had happened, but he wouldn't answer me.  He said it didn't matter, but of course it did.  It mattered like crazy if Gary was in such a state.  I didn't press the issue; I knew he'd tell me eventually.  He always does.

More important, on that street corner, we spoke the words that mattered most.  Not explanations, but acknowledgments of our shortcomings as friends.  He said he was going to try to be there for me more often, though in typical Gary fashion he tried to gloss over it by joking, "Some of the time."  I wanted to tell him that he already had been there for me more than anyone else except my own parents had been; that when it really and truly mattered he had never let me down.  I wanted to tell him that I trusted him; that he wasn't as much of a schmuck as I'd made him out to be the day before; that I'd overreacted.

Instead, I told him, "I'll work with that," and smiled, so he'd know that I believed his promise.  Gary's not good at getting to the heart of the matter, not unless it's an emergency, but when he does, he's completely sincere.  In that moment, what mattered was not so much what either of us said as that we said anything at all, as long as it touched on the foundation of our  friendship--mutual respect and concern.  For all the bickering we've done lately, we do care about each other.

Neither one of us wanted to be without the other right then.  After giving the taxes to a passing mailman in an interaction that was unique in my experience of Gary Hobson--and that's really saying something--we went in search of scrambled eggs and burnt potatoes.  I sounded like my ever-practical mother as I outlined the basic principles of time management, but it didn't really matter, because neither one of us was paying attention.  We were just using the words to bridge the distance that had been yawning between us while Gary tried to calm down and I tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

He kept his hand on my back as we walked, rubbing my neck, then my shoulder.  I know he thought he was just being friendly, but he told me more than he realized--I could feel his fingers through my coat and my sweater, and they were still trembling.

Gary was reassuring himself that I was there; that I was real.

That I was alive.

Of course.  He hadn't shown up in the middle of a busy city intersection just to say hello and give me a hug, or even to apologize for the way he'd acted the day before.  Though I'd known it, intellectually, as soon as I realized he was there in the street with me, it wasn't until we were walking to the diner that it hit me, really hit me, just why he'd been there and why he'd been so panicked.  My knees turned to water and I stumbled, but Gary was there to catch me, as he has been so many times before.

"You okay?"  I couldn't tell, from his weary voice, if he meant more than whether I'd stubbed my toe or twisted a knee.

"Yes.  I'm fine."  But instead of taking his arm the way I usually do, I slipped my hand into his and, fingers laced, we walked on in silence until we came to the restaurant.

Gary might not know Armani, but he does know every greasy diner between Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field.  I'm not sure which one we ended up in; for the second time that morning, I was in a fog.  He didn't need to say anything as we were led to our table and seated; a touch here, a change in the pressure of his fingers there, and I was in my chair.

The place was just starting to fill up.  There were voices murmuring all around us, and the air kept changing temperature as the door banged open and closed.  Overpowering odors of down-home, not-in-any-sane-person's-diet food assailed my nostrils.  From the greasy smell that wafted from the kitchen, I guessed that the griddles hadn't had a good cleaning in months.  The table beneath my hands was Formica, pitted with age; the napkin was thin, cheap paper.

But I was there.

"Eggs, pancakes, waffles...what sounds good?" Gary murmured, apparently unaware of the wonder this hole-in-the-wall diner had become for me.

I was sitting in a chair, at a table; not lying on a hospital bed, or even worse...

"Marissa?"

Gary was waiting.  So was our waitress--I could hear her pencil tapping against her pad of orders.  My stomach growled and I took a deep breath.

"Two eggs, scrambled--no, wait, an omelet.  With cheese and vegetables.  Hash browns.  Bacon.  Pancakes.  Orange juice.  And coffee, cream and sugar."

"Double it," Gary said, after a hesitation that no one else would have noticed, and the waitress's heels tapped off.  Somewhere in the back, off in the kitchen, a dish shattered on the floor, but the sound was muffled by the voices all around us.  Ordinary people talking about ordinary things--stocks, football, weather, kids.

Clearing his throat, Gary interrupted my informal eavesdropping.  "You never eat that much."

"Yes.  Well."  I folded my cane and laid it on the chair next to me, then pulled my napkin into my lap.  "Brushes with death tend to make me hungry."

"Marissa--"  Gary's hesitation suggested that he thought he was on thin ice with me again, but it wasn't that at all.

"Tell me.  Please, Gary, I need to know."  He didn't answer.  "Whatever it is, it can't be worse than what I'm imagining."

His brief laugh was sardonic.  Okay, maybe it could be worse.  But instead of avoiding the issue, he asked, "How 'bout I make you a deal?  If I tell you this, will you answer a question for me?"

If it had been Chuck, I never would have agreed, but this was Gary.  There was the same concern and kindness laced through his voice that I'd heard a few minutes earlier, out on the street, and I knew that there would be no hidden traps in his question.

And I had to know the answer to my own.

I nodded.  "Deal.  But I want your answer first."  Just then, the waitress arrived to pour our coffee, and we fell silent, except for tiny tappings of fingernails on glass across the table. Gary had picked up something to play with.  He always has to have something in his hands when he gets nervous.  Tiny granules skidded over the paper place mat.

"Gary, stop playing with the salt shaker."

The coffee pot clinked against my cup.  "Oh, sorry."  Our waitress sounded flustered as she set the pot down and wiped up what she'd spilled.  Neither Gary nor I spoke another word until she left.

"Did you do that on purpose?"

He should have known better.  Granted, sometimes I'll say things like that just to mess with people's heads, but this wasn't one of those times.

"No, not really, I'm just--"  I was just so scared of what he wasn't saying that I was losing the ability to form coherent sentences.  My own hands busied themselves, tracing the rim of my coffee cup over and over.  The rising steam had no power to warm them.  "Gary, you have to tell me, now, before I get so wound up that I say something that makes her spill your orange juice on your lap.  Don't think I couldn't do it."

"Oh, I know you could."  He sighed, and the salt shaker clinked as it hit the table between us.  "You--you were going to be hit by a car."

There was pain woven through his tight voice, as if he'd imagined the accident so vividly that it had, for him, actually happened.  No matter how upset I may have been, I never would have wished that on him.  I nodded.  "I got that much."

Gary's voice dropped even lower, becoming a hoarse whisper.  Why we always end up discussing these matters in public places, I'll never understand.  "And--and you were gonna die."  He gulped.  "Three times."

My hand fell away from the coffee cup, landing limply on the table.  Gary's words hadn't just confirmed my worst fears, they'd turned them upside down.  "You mean I was going to be hit by three cars?" I asked, even though I knew that wasn't what he'd meant.

"No."  We were both leaning across the table, foreheads almost touching, and he did something next that surprised me almost as much as his words--he reached out and grabbed my hand.  Actually, at first he just covered it with his own, but as he spoke his fingers tightened until he was holding on as fiercely as he had in the intersection.  "Marissa, you--you were going to die, three different times.  Except they were all the same, almost, but the first two, I-I didn't make it right."

I hadn't thought it was possible for life with Gary to get any stranger, or for the morning to get any more upsetting.  Obviously, I was wrong.

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I.  Look, it doesn't matter.  You're here now, everything's okay."

"It does matter, Gary, because it's upset you."

Of course it was at this point that our food came.  We pulled our hands back into our laps, and this time I kept my mouth shut while the waitress set everything down.  She must have wondered what was up with this odd pair--every time I'm out with Gary I get strange comments about how mismatched we seem, but that's ridiculous, because we really do make a great team, as long as we're both functioning on all cylinders--heads, hearts, and souls.

As soon as she left, Gary's fork began clinking on the china, but he wasn't going to get out of this by shoveling food in his face.

I touched my own fork to the different masses on my plate, trying to figure out what was where.  "Gary, you can't drop hints about a crazy story like that and not tell me everything.  I promise, I'll believe you."  Which is, in the end, what Gary needs.  Someone to believe him, and believe in him.  I know that I pushed my way into the job, but there haven't been any other takers, especially not lately.

I took one bite of my breakfast, then two, as he explained what his morning--or, rather, mornings--had involved.  The hash browns were indeed burnt, but it wasn't carbon residue and bad coffee that put a bitter taste in my mouth.  He wasn't even through the first part of it before I lost my appetite; the eggs and cheese congealed in my stomach and sat there like lumps of lead.  I pushed my plate away, suddenly unable to stand the smell of the food so close, and set my fork down--missed completely, and toppled the salt shaker. Gary didn't even seem to notice.

"...and so this last time, this time it was real, and I'm still not sure how any of it worked out, or if--if it was a dream, and if it was, how I managed to dream so much of it the way it really happened.  Twice."  He sounded as he often did when talking about how the paper and its associated bizarreness works--awed and a little resentful that all the secrets of the universe aren't open to him.

I, on the other hand, was feeling more than a little overwhelmed, and somewhat guilty as well.  If I hadn't been so stubborn and self-indulgent the day before, Gary would have taken care of the taxes.  I was as sure of it today as I hadn't been yesterday.  "Maybe it doesn't matter how it happened.  I know it doesn't to me, Gary.  I--I'm just..."  I didn't know how to express my gratitude to him, and to whatever guiding hand had brought us through this.  "Just saying 'thank you' doesn't seem like enough."

"It's not me you have to thank."  Gary's voice was thick.  "Someone's watching out for you, Marissa.  For both of us, because I--I don't know what I'd do if you--if you weren't here."

"But I am here."  Completely inadequate, but it was all I could think of to say.  There were salt crystals pressed into my palms; they'd gone everywhere.

Gary gulped down something--coffee, I guessed, from the sound of the mug that hit the table.

"Gary, you've saved my life so many times--"

"And every other time it's been because of something in the paper.  This time--this time, it was because I was being such a lousy friend, and--"

"Stop that.  You are a good friend, Gary.  You've always been here for me when it's really counted."  It was too much, to hear him chastising himself after what had just happened.  "I overreacted yesterday.  I know the paper makes it hard for you to do everything you'd like to, and I shouldn't resent that."  I groped for my coffee cup without success.  Gary slid it into my outstretched fingers.

"Yesterday you kinda did, though, huh?"

The cup never made it to my lips.  I set it back down.  "I was wrong, Gary--"

"No, now, you stop.  My turn.  This is what I want to know, okay?  I should have figured it out, but like I said, I haven't been paying enough attention, so I've gotta ask.  Why exactly were you so upset about yesterday?  I know you said it was an important birthday present for Emmett, but you didn't say why.  What makes this such a big deal?"

My first reaction--this was what he wanted to know?--was quickly followed by the corollary--why didn't he know already?  I realized this was one of those chromosomal things that sometimes comes between Gary and me.  His friendship has been one of the strongest relationships in my life outside of my family, but he's not a girlfriend, and I shouldn't expect him to act like one.  Mom was right--it's not that men are unreliable, it's just that sometimes they see the world in a completely different light than we do, and we can't expect them to notice or understand certain issues, certain very important issues, unless we make them clear.

The problem was, what had been a gigantic issue twenty-four hours ago now seemed inconsequential  Near-death experiences have a way of realigning perspective.

"It's just that--it's just that it is Emmett," I tried to explain, picking up my fork again, but only to push food around the plate.  "He's had a rough few months with his classes, and when he needed me, there were times when I was too busy to help him out.  Lately, without anyone at the bar to help with the day-to-day, it's been hard.  I haven't been there for him the way I wanted to, the way I should have been, and with his birthday coming up, I want to give him something--I know, it sounds ridiculous, no thing can be a cure-all, but something that would show him, let him know, that I believe in him."

"And that something would be a fancy suit?"  Gary's voice wasn't judgmental, but it was clear he still didn't understand.

"Well, yes.  He's surrounded by all these young, gung-ho kids who have enough money to breeze through law school, and they have these cut-throat, gunner attitudes--he doesn't feel as if he fits in.  The professors are just as bad--for half of them, he has to turn somersaults in order to overcome their assumptions about a cab driver from the wrong part of town.  The ones who know where he's coming from expect him to do twice as much because they want him to be some kind of standard-bearer for all 'our people'.  Plus he has his own insecurities to overcome and--it's just a jacket, I know, but it means I think he can do it, and that he is more than they see, that he deserves something nice..."  I was rambling now, and Gary actually chuckled.

"Okay, okay I get it.  Anything else?"

"Well, no, there's a lot more than that."  The queasiness had left, and I tried a bite of pancakes.  They were too thick, and I had to swallow the rest of my orange juice before I could go on.  It gave me time to figure out what I was going to say.  "I guess--I guess I felt guilty.  I mean, the whole time I was accusing you of not being there for me, I kept thinking about how I haven't been there for Emmett like I should, and then when I had to cancel last night--you didn't hear his voice, Gary.  You don't know how hard it was to let him down like that."

"Actually, I kinda do."

Ouch.  I sagged back in the chair, duly chastised.  Of course he knew.  Meredith, Emma, Renee, Erica...of course he knew.  And I had tried blithely to tell him what to do about each of them, as if I could possibly have known what it was like.  Now I did know, and I was about to revoke my ban on "sorry" when Gary quickly continued, "But you shouldn't have to, that's the point.  After all the complaining I do about the paper taking up my life, I shouldn't expect you to give up yours, too."

I sat up straight.  Surely he wasn't saying--I didn't want him to say what I thought he was leading up to.  Because as many difficulties as Gary's paper might create in my life, the only thing worse would be to stand by and not help Gary with the difficulties it created in his.  "Gary, don't you even think about letting me off the hook here.  When we agreed to be partners, we weren't just talking about the bar."

"I know that, Marissa, but--"

"No buts.  I'll be here for you, Gary, no matter what.  I just have to find a way to be there for Emmett, too."

"He's pretty special, huh?"

"Yes, he is."  I used my most practical, "no-of-course-I'm-not-being-defensive" tone and hoped like crazy that I wasn't blushing; took a long swig of coffee to hide it if I was.  "You know the reason he wants to be a lawyer?"  Gary made a noncommittal noise, and, still holding the warm mug, I propped both elbows on the table.  "Not to make money, or work for some huge firm.  He wants to work for the state, or maybe even for a nonprofit organization.  Emmett wants to help people, like you do--well, not exactly like you do, but close enough."

It was so good to finally be talking to Gary about Emmett.  Even though the break with Erica had been the right thing for both of them, he'd been lonely and adrift for months afterward, and talking to him about my own relationship had seemed about as helpful as offering a drowning man a glass of water.  But now seemed like the right time to get things out in the open, and with that sense of release--coupled with my considerable relief at not being dead--I found I couldn't stop talking.

"The biggest fight we've ever had came down to that.  We went around and around at the beginning of the semester about my course load.  He didn't understand why I'd cut back to one course in psychology.  He said I should finish so I could be out there helping people deal with their problems."

"Maybe he's right," Gary said, and he couldn't hide the trace of guilt in his voice, not from me.  He thought it was his fault, somehow.  Gary seems to think a lot of things are his fault.  "You would be good at it--heck, you are good at it."

"I'm good at running the bar, too.  And I don't need a degree in psychology to help people.  I know that, Gary, and so do you.  Emmett will figure it out eventually."

"Well, of course I know it.  If it wasn't for you, I couldn't do what I do, and I wouldn't be able to help half the people I do--we do."

The conversation seemed to have come full circle.  I folded my napkin and put it back on the table, on one of the still-full plates of food.  "So we are partners."

"Right."  Gary's chair scraped back, and then he was behind me, pulling my chair out like the gentleman he was, has always been.  His hand on my arm as I stood was familiar, natural--a homecoming.  "So..." he drawled as he helped me get into my coat, "why were we so mad at each other yesterday?"

"You know," I said with a smile, "I don't remember."

We stopped at the cash register, and Gary squeezed my arm before releasing it to fish for his wallet.  "This one's on me," he said when I started to pull my own billfold out of my purse.

"How was your breakfast?"  The cashier's question was not merely perfunctory--there was real wariness in his voice.

"It was great," Gary assured him.

"But--was anything wrong?  You two sure left a lot at the table."

A woman came through the front door, heels tapping on the linoleum, and the chilly wind that accompanied her beckoned with the promise of a fresh start.

"That's the point," I told the cashier, and Gary and I walked out into the new day--together.
 

FINIS

And now I laugh at how the world changed me
I think life chose me
After all.
     ~ Dar Williams

Don't forget to feed the author!  peregrin_anna

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