Fanfiction: Not All Connections Are Snail-Based (Zero Time Dilemma)
I'm vaguely dissatisfied with this fic, which I suspect is because Carlos is having neither a psychological meltdown nor a threesome in it. (Clearly I need to write something where Carlos is having a psychological meltdown and a threesome simultaneously.) Still, the Zero Escape series canonically includes both a guy who took his cat to prom and a guy who uncontrollably makes cat puns whenever he talks about cats, and it was my moral obligation to do something with that.
Title: Not All Connections Are Snail-Based
Fandom: Zero Time Dilemma
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,600
Summary: Carlos had never met any of the other participants before the Dcom project, right?
There’s a girl; she’s maybe ten or twelve, definitely younger than Carlos. She’s gripping something with both hands; it looks like some kind of old computer monitor. She’s crying.
Jumpy! Help me!
She doesn’t seem to be saying it out loud, but somehow Carlos can hear her. He doesn’t know how he can see her, either. He’s not here. He’s in bed, half-asleep. But somehow he seems to be here at the same time, inside this little room with this scared girl.
He’s dreaming. He’s probably dreaming, right?
Jumpy? Is that you? No. Who is that?
“My name’s Carlos,” Carlos says. “Are you okay?”
“Carlos?”
She’s looking around, like she’s trying to find him, but her eyes pass straight over him. She seems able to hear him, at least.
“Can you help me?” she asks, desperately. “I don’t know how to do this, and if I can’t...”
She’s struggling to force the words out through her tears.
“Automatic incineration will take place in ten minutes.”
“Incineration?” Carlos asks, tensing up. He looks around the little room she’s in. “This is an incinerator?”
The girl nods. Tries to speak, doesn’t seem able to.
“How do you stop it?”
She points at the monitor. Carlos looks at it.
She has to stop the incinerator by solving a Sudoku? That doesn’t seem right. But someone put this Sudoku machine in an incinerator, and he guesses there’s a reason for it.
It doesn’t look too tough, fortunately; a couple of numbers have already caught his eye. “Don’t worry, I should be able to-”
He’s in bed, and the girl is nowhere to be seen.
The crying girl in the incinerator, who needed him, who had ten minutes to solve a puzzle if she didn’t want to burn.
She’s gone. He abandoned her, and he doesn’t know how to go back.
He closes his eyes and tries to concentrate. Tries to picture the scene, as if that might be able to send him back there.
Nothing happens. Time is ticking past relentlessly, and somewhere that girl is about to die. And she’s so young, she can’t be any older than Maria...
He tries and he tries to get back to her, even though he doesn’t know how it might be done, and he’s half in tears by the time ten minutes are up. He has to get up and check on Maria, just to be sure that she’s still here, she’s alive and okay.
He’s never really pinned down what line of work he’d like to go into, but that’s when he knows he has to save lives. He has to be a firefighter.
-
Taking his cat to prom seemed like a good idea to begin with. Well, okay, maybe it never seemed like a very good idea, but, if he’s got no one to dance with, ‘sitting alone and petting a cat’ is a more attractive option than ‘sitting alone and doing nothing’.
People laugh, they make fun of him a little, but mostly it’s in a friendly way. They’re probably conscious that, if they’re too mean-spirited about it, he won’t let them touch the cat.
The problem is that it’s too crowded and noisy for her, and she’s getting increasingly on edge, and Carlos is starting to worry that she might run off into the crowd and disappear. He takes her outside for some air.
He’s sitting on the wall outside the school, calming her down, when a younger boy walks past and does a double-take. “Is that your cat? It’s really purr-etty.”
Carlos laughs. “What?”
“Can I pet it? Purrlease?”
“Yeah, go ahead. Be gentle, though. She’s just been in a crowded room and she might still be kind of freaked out.”
The boy grins. “Clawsome.”
He hops up to sit on the wall as well, and holds a hand out to the cat. She sniffs it, considers him for a moment, and eventually nudges his fingers.
“Do they let you take cats to this school?” the boy asks, scratching her under the chin. “I have to apply fur this place.”
“She’s just here for prom.”
“She’s here fur prom?”
“Ah.” Carlos scratches the back of his neck. “I didn’t have any humans to go with, so she’s... kind of my prom date.”
The boy stares at him. “Are you kitten?”
Carlos shrugs.
“Me-wow.” The boy returns his attention to the cat. “Okay. I’ve gotta tail you, I always thought it’d be the worst not to have a girl fur prom. But this might... kind of be better?”
“See, I’m opening up a whole new world of prom possibilities for you,” Carlos says. “Please take a cat to prom so I’ll look less weird in the history books.”
A moment passes. Carlos’s curiosity gets the best of him.
“Do you always talk like that?” he asks.
The boy flushes. “It’s only ’cause there’s a cat ameownd.”
-
The elevator is definitely stuck and this is definitely a problem. He was just planning to drop into the department store before heading to work. He can’t be late; what if there’s a fire, what if someone needs his help?
But what can he do? They’ve already pressed the emergency call button, so they just have to wait to be rescued. Probably by the fire department. His colleagues are definitely going to laugh at him.
The lights are still working, at least.
There’s one other person in the elevator: the most awkward number of other people possible, but at least it’s not overcrowded. She’s a teenage girl, with short-cropped red hair and glasses. She’s already sat down against the wall and settled in.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I know the guys at the fire department. They’ll get us out of here.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she says, barely glancing at him. “Thanks.”
“My name’s Carlos.”
“Okay, I’m now worried that you’re going to try to make small talk the entire time.”
He’s startled into laughing. “Sorry. You’re just - you’re around my sister’s age, so I wanted to-”
“Pick me up?”
“I was going for something more like ‘reassure you’,” Carlos says. He was not previously aware that a conversation was something that could be won or lost, but he has the distinct feeling he’s losing this conversation. “What kind of pick-up line is ‘you’re my sister’s age’?”
“A bad one,” the girl says. “But you don’t look like the kind of guy who has good lines.”
She’s good at distracting him from the situation, even if she’s not great for his self-esteem, but he guesses he shouldn’t pursue the conversation if she’s not in the mood to talk. He settles down against the opposite wall, and they stay there quietly until rescue arrives.
As predicted, it’s Carlos’s co-workers and they make fun of him, good-naturedly but mercilessly. The girl catches Carlos’s eye and sends him a smirk before disappearing into the crowd.
-
“You’re not part of the usual nursing team, are you?”
The new nurse is young, red-haired. She smiles at him, and it’s friendly enough, but there’s a tiredness to her eyes. “It’s a busy day here. I usually work at another hospital, but I volunteered to help.”
“Well, I won’t get in your way, if you have a lot to do,” Carlos says. “I’ll just be with my sister. Let me know if I can do anything to help.”
“We’re not so busy we’re asking the visitors to do our jobs,” the nurse says, evidently amused, “but thank you.”
Carlos is reading to Maria, hoping she can hear him, when there’s some kind of commotion outside the ward. He looks over at the nurse, puzzled, and is taken aback by the look of dread on her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
A man bursts into the ward. “Diana-”
“How did you find me?” the nurse asks. She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears.
“Diana, come home, come on. You have to give me another chance. I’ll be good, I’ll treat you so good.” He’s drunk. “I’ll fuck you just the way you like it, just come home with me.”
“Please,” the nurse says, half in a whisper. “Please, just let me work. You can’t keep doing this.”
Carlos is ashamed of himself for it, but he hesitates to act. This man could be dangerous, and if he’s noticed Carlos is here visiting Maria, if Carlos gets on his bad side and he decides to hurt her...
But it’s clear that the nurse - Diana? - is the only thing this guy is interested in. He’s probably barely registered that Carlos is in the room.
Carlos stands up. He does take a few steps away from Maria before he speaks, just in case. “Hey, why don’t you leave her alone?”
“Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?” the guy suggests.
“She’s just trying to work,” Carlos says. “Whatever you have to say to her, it can wait.”
“Are you fucking him?” the guy demands, pointing at Carlos.
Diana shakes her head.
“Don’t lie to me,” the guy snarls, stalking towards her, and Carlos intercepts him. Takes him firmly by the arms.
“Look,” Carlos says, “we’re going to leave now, and the police don’t have to get involved, and nobody is going to get hurt.” Not that he intends to hurt this guy anyway, but he’s hoping his muscles are enough to deter any calling of his bluff.
They seem to work well enough.
He escorts the guy off the premises. Keeps watch for a while, to be sure he’s not coming back, before going back inside the hospital.
There’s another nurse on duty in Maria’s ward.
“Do you know what happened to the nurse who was just here?” Carlos asks. “Diana?”
“She went home, I think,” the nurse says. “Or maybe to her usual hospital. She was a little shaken. We had a bit of an incident.”
“Yeah, I know something about that.” He was hoping to check on her, make sure she was okay. Still, he’s glad the staff shortages have apparently eased enough for her to leave; she shouldn’t be stuck here after something like that. “Thanks.”
When he returns to Maria, he finds a note at her bedside. Thank you. It means a lot. I hope your sister recovers.
-
“Hey, have you seen a guy and a girl?” the guy asks, breathlessly. “They’d have been coming from Nevada. Both Japanese. The guy’s got white hair - he’s young-”
“Are you okay?” Carlos asks.
“-and the girl’s really pretty, I mean super pretty-”
“You really don’t look well. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just have to find them.”
“If all you know is they came from Nevada, I think you’ve probably lost them already,” Carlos says. “Take a break. Pick the search up later. You look like you haven’t slept in days.” Or washed, come to think of it. “Look, I work at the fire station, we’ve got showers there. Do you want to use them?”
The guy looks tempted for a moment, but then he shakes his head. “I have to get back to the others.”
“Hey!”
“Oh,” the guy says. “Guess they found me.”
The woman who approaches is Japanese as well, older than the guy Carlos is talking to. She might be his mother, Carlos guesses, although her attire is a little unusual for taking a roadtrip with your son. She looks about as exhausted and filthy as he does.
“Seven found a police station,” she says. “We’re going to drop our passenger off before he suffocates.”
“He’d deserve it,” the guy mutters.
“Any news about Santa and June?”
“I can’t help you find whoever you’re looking for,” Carlos says, “but I was just offering a shower.”
The woman stares at him. “A shower.”
“I don’t know if we can risk the trail getting any colder,” the guy says.
“Junpei, if you prevent us from having a shower, I will single-handedly murder you.”
“Come on,” Carlos says. “Get your group together, and I’ll show you to the fire station.”
-
“Oh, my God, are you okay?” Carlos asks.
The woman is wincing in pain, limping badly along the sidewalk. There are shallow lines of blood all over her hands; it looks like someone’s scratched her up with their fingernails.
“I can drive you to the hospital,” he says.
She shakes her head. “I’ll be okay.”
“Did someone attack you?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “He got away.”
“What did he look like? Maybe we can find who it was.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “He didn’t see my face.”
He guesses that means she probably doesn’t need to worry about follow-up attacks. Still, though...
“He still did this to you, didn’t he?” Carlos asks.
“Forget it,” she says.
He holds up his hands. “Okay. I won’t push it.” He gets it; getting the police involved would probably be a big inconvenience to her.
Still, he feels bad about just leaving this woman alone on the street when she’s been attacked.
“I’m not hitting on you, and you can absolutely say no,” he says (the last thing she needs right now is some new guy making her feel trapped), “but it seems like you’re having a bad day, so I thought I’d offer. I was just going to get an ice cream. Do you want one?”
She looks at him for a moment.
“Yeah, okay,” she says.
They head into the ice cream parlour and are served by a guy who seems a little nervous and is smiling slightly too much. He doesn’t seem able to take his eyes off the injured woman. Carlos feels a little bad for being here and preventing the conversation that Ice Cream Man is evidently dying to launch into.
Still, he has a feeling Ice Cream Man may have caught the woman’s attention as well; maybe she’ll come back here, maybe they’ll talk. The thought that he might have helped two people find each other makes him smile to himself.
Carlos and the woman take a seat by the window to eat their ice creams. Carlos tries to pretend he doesn’t notice the longing glances Ice Cream Man keeps throwing in their direction.
“You’re very kind,” the woman says. She’s looking at Carlos with a strange intensity. “People probably say you have a good heart.”
He laughs, embarrassed. “I don’t know about that.”
“I’d like to know you better,” she says. “Perhaps we could meet again? Somewhere more private?”
Some social interaction would probably be good for him. But he can’t afford it. Getting into a relationship would impose obligations - on his time, on his finances - and he can’t make promises like that, he can’t, not when Maria is in the hospital.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not you. I’m just not in that place in my life right now.”
The next morning, he sees on the news that the Heart Ripper struck nearby later that night. He wishes he’d got that woman’s number, just so he could check whether she’s okay.
-
Carlos has only vague memories of being in the hospital with a fracture when he was a kid. They come back, sometimes, when he’s sitting with Maria. The other boy he got along pretty well with. The old man who he thought always looked at him strangely.
The old man shook his hand when he was discharged, he remembers, and looked deep into his eyes, and said, I have a feeling we’ll meet again.
Somehow, Carlos felt it as well. But he guesses they were both wrong. There’s no way that guy’s still around.
Title: Not All Connections Are Snail-Based
Fandom: Zero Time Dilemma
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,600
Summary: Carlos had never met any of the other participants before the Dcom project, right?
There’s a girl; she’s maybe ten or twelve, definitely younger than Carlos. She’s gripping something with both hands; it looks like some kind of old computer monitor. She’s crying.
Jumpy! Help me!
She doesn’t seem to be saying it out loud, but somehow Carlos can hear her. He doesn’t know how he can see her, either. He’s not here. He’s in bed, half-asleep. But somehow he seems to be here at the same time, inside this little room with this scared girl.
He’s dreaming. He’s probably dreaming, right?
Jumpy? Is that you? No. Who is that?
“My name’s Carlos,” Carlos says. “Are you okay?”
“Carlos?”
She’s looking around, like she’s trying to find him, but her eyes pass straight over him. She seems able to hear him, at least.
“Can you help me?” she asks, desperately. “I don’t know how to do this, and if I can’t...”
She’s struggling to force the words out through her tears.
“Automatic incineration will take place in ten minutes.”
“Incineration?” Carlos asks, tensing up. He looks around the little room she’s in. “This is an incinerator?”
The girl nods. Tries to speak, doesn’t seem able to.
“How do you stop it?”
She points at the monitor. Carlos looks at it.
She has to stop the incinerator by solving a Sudoku? That doesn’t seem right. But someone put this Sudoku machine in an incinerator, and he guesses there’s a reason for it.
It doesn’t look too tough, fortunately; a couple of numbers have already caught his eye. “Don’t worry, I should be able to-”
He’s in bed, and the girl is nowhere to be seen.
The crying girl in the incinerator, who needed him, who had ten minutes to solve a puzzle if she didn’t want to burn.
She’s gone. He abandoned her, and he doesn’t know how to go back.
He closes his eyes and tries to concentrate. Tries to picture the scene, as if that might be able to send him back there.
Nothing happens. Time is ticking past relentlessly, and somewhere that girl is about to die. And she’s so young, she can’t be any older than Maria...
He tries and he tries to get back to her, even though he doesn’t know how it might be done, and he’s half in tears by the time ten minutes are up. He has to get up and check on Maria, just to be sure that she’s still here, she’s alive and okay.
He’s never really pinned down what line of work he’d like to go into, but that’s when he knows he has to save lives. He has to be a firefighter.
-
Taking his cat to prom seemed like a good idea to begin with. Well, okay, maybe it never seemed like a very good idea, but, if he’s got no one to dance with, ‘sitting alone and petting a cat’ is a more attractive option than ‘sitting alone and doing nothing’.
People laugh, they make fun of him a little, but mostly it’s in a friendly way. They’re probably conscious that, if they’re too mean-spirited about it, he won’t let them touch the cat.
The problem is that it’s too crowded and noisy for her, and she’s getting increasingly on edge, and Carlos is starting to worry that she might run off into the crowd and disappear. He takes her outside for some air.
He’s sitting on the wall outside the school, calming her down, when a younger boy walks past and does a double-take. “Is that your cat? It’s really purr-etty.”
Carlos laughs. “What?”
“Can I pet it? Purrlease?”
“Yeah, go ahead. Be gentle, though. She’s just been in a crowded room and she might still be kind of freaked out.”
The boy grins. “Clawsome.”
He hops up to sit on the wall as well, and holds a hand out to the cat. She sniffs it, considers him for a moment, and eventually nudges his fingers.
“Do they let you take cats to this school?” the boy asks, scratching her under the chin. “I have to apply fur this place.”
“She’s just here for prom.”
“She’s here fur prom?”
“Ah.” Carlos scratches the back of his neck. “I didn’t have any humans to go with, so she’s... kind of my prom date.”
The boy stares at him. “Are you kitten?”
Carlos shrugs.
“Me-wow.” The boy returns his attention to the cat. “Okay. I’ve gotta tail you, I always thought it’d be the worst not to have a girl fur prom. But this might... kind of be better?”
“See, I’m opening up a whole new world of prom possibilities for you,” Carlos says. “Please take a cat to prom so I’ll look less weird in the history books.”
A moment passes. Carlos’s curiosity gets the best of him.
“Do you always talk like that?” he asks.
The boy flushes. “It’s only ’cause there’s a cat ameownd.”
-
The elevator is definitely stuck and this is definitely a problem. He was just planning to drop into the department store before heading to work. He can’t be late; what if there’s a fire, what if someone needs his help?
But what can he do? They’ve already pressed the emergency call button, so they just have to wait to be rescued. Probably by the fire department. His colleagues are definitely going to laugh at him.
The lights are still working, at least.
There’s one other person in the elevator: the most awkward number of other people possible, but at least it’s not overcrowded. She’s a teenage girl, with short-cropped red hair and glasses. She’s already sat down against the wall and settled in.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I know the guys at the fire department. They’ll get us out of here.”
“I wasn’t worried,” she says, barely glancing at him. “Thanks.”
“My name’s Carlos.”
“Okay, I’m now worried that you’re going to try to make small talk the entire time.”
He’s startled into laughing. “Sorry. You’re just - you’re around my sister’s age, so I wanted to-”
“Pick me up?”
“I was going for something more like ‘reassure you’,” Carlos says. He was not previously aware that a conversation was something that could be won or lost, but he has the distinct feeling he’s losing this conversation. “What kind of pick-up line is ‘you’re my sister’s age’?”
“A bad one,” the girl says. “But you don’t look like the kind of guy who has good lines.”
She’s good at distracting him from the situation, even if she’s not great for his self-esteem, but he guesses he shouldn’t pursue the conversation if she’s not in the mood to talk. He settles down against the opposite wall, and they stay there quietly until rescue arrives.
As predicted, it’s Carlos’s co-workers and they make fun of him, good-naturedly but mercilessly. The girl catches Carlos’s eye and sends him a smirk before disappearing into the crowd.
-
“You’re not part of the usual nursing team, are you?”
The new nurse is young, red-haired. She smiles at him, and it’s friendly enough, but there’s a tiredness to her eyes. “It’s a busy day here. I usually work at another hospital, but I volunteered to help.”
“Well, I won’t get in your way, if you have a lot to do,” Carlos says. “I’ll just be with my sister. Let me know if I can do anything to help.”
“We’re not so busy we’re asking the visitors to do our jobs,” the nurse says, evidently amused, “but thank you.”
Carlos is reading to Maria, hoping she can hear him, when there’s some kind of commotion outside the ward. He looks over at the nurse, puzzled, and is taken aback by the look of dread on her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
A man bursts into the ward. “Diana-”
“How did you find me?” the nurse asks. She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears.
“Diana, come home, come on. You have to give me another chance. I’ll be good, I’ll treat you so good.” He’s drunk. “I’ll fuck you just the way you like it, just come home with me.”
“Please,” the nurse says, half in a whisper. “Please, just let me work. You can’t keep doing this.”
Carlos is ashamed of himself for it, but he hesitates to act. This man could be dangerous, and if he’s noticed Carlos is here visiting Maria, if Carlos gets on his bad side and he decides to hurt her...
But it’s clear that the nurse - Diana? - is the only thing this guy is interested in. He’s probably barely registered that Carlos is in the room.
Carlos stands up. He does take a few steps away from Maria before he speaks, just in case. “Hey, why don’t you leave her alone?”
“Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?” the guy suggests.
“She’s just trying to work,” Carlos says. “Whatever you have to say to her, it can wait.”
“Are you fucking him?” the guy demands, pointing at Carlos.
Diana shakes her head.
“Don’t lie to me,” the guy snarls, stalking towards her, and Carlos intercepts him. Takes him firmly by the arms.
“Look,” Carlos says, “we’re going to leave now, and the police don’t have to get involved, and nobody is going to get hurt.” Not that he intends to hurt this guy anyway, but he’s hoping his muscles are enough to deter any calling of his bluff.
They seem to work well enough.
He escorts the guy off the premises. Keeps watch for a while, to be sure he’s not coming back, before going back inside the hospital.
There’s another nurse on duty in Maria’s ward.
“Do you know what happened to the nurse who was just here?” Carlos asks. “Diana?”
“She went home, I think,” the nurse says. “Or maybe to her usual hospital. She was a little shaken. We had a bit of an incident.”
“Yeah, I know something about that.” He was hoping to check on her, make sure she was okay. Still, he’s glad the staff shortages have apparently eased enough for her to leave; she shouldn’t be stuck here after something like that. “Thanks.”
When he returns to Maria, he finds a note at her bedside. Thank you. It means a lot. I hope your sister recovers.
-
“Hey, have you seen a guy and a girl?” the guy asks, breathlessly. “They’d have been coming from Nevada. Both Japanese. The guy’s got white hair - he’s young-”
“Are you okay?” Carlos asks.
“-and the girl’s really pretty, I mean super pretty-”
“You really don’t look well. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just have to find them.”
“If all you know is they came from Nevada, I think you’ve probably lost them already,” Carlos says. “Take a break. Pick the search up later. You look like you haven’t slept in days.” Or washed, come to think of it. “Look, I work at the fire station, we’ve got showers there. Do you want to use them?”
The guy looks tempted for a moment, but then he shakes his head. “I have to get back to the others.”
“Hey!”
“Oh,” the guy says. “Guess they found me.”
The woman who approaches is Japanese as well, older than the guy Carlos is talking to. She might be his mother, Carlos guesses, although her attire is a little unusual for taking a roadtrip with your son. She looks about as exhausted and filthy as he does.
“Seven found a police station,” she says. “We’re going to drop our passenger off before he suffocates.”
“He’d deserve it,” the guy mutters.
“Any news about Santa and June?”
“I can’t help you find whoever you’re looking for,” Carlos says, “but I was just offering a shower.”
The woman stares at him. “A shower.”
“I don’t know if we can risk the trail getting any colder,” the guy says.
“Junpei, if you prevent us from having a shower, I will single-handedly murder you.”
“Come on,” Carlos says. “Get your group together, and I’ll show you to the fire station.”
-
“Oh, my God, are you okay?” Carlos asks.
The woman is wincing in pain, limping badly along the sidewalk. There are shallow lines of blood all over her hands; it looks like someone’s scratched her up with their fingernails.
“I can drive you to the hospital,” he says.
She shakes her head. “I’ll be okay.”
“Did someone attack you?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “He got away.”
“What did he look like? Maybe we can find who it was.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “He didn’t see my face.”
He guesses that means she probably doesn’t need to worry about follow-up attacks. Still, though...
“He still did this to you, didn’t he?” Carlos asks.
“Forget it,” she says.
He holds up his hands. “Okay. I won’t push it.” He gets it; getting the police involved would probably be a big inconvenience to her.
Still, he feels bad about just leaving this woman alone on the street when she’s been attacked.
“I’m not hitting on you, and you can absolutely say no,” he says (the last thing she needs right now is some new guy making her feel trapped), “but it seems like you’re having a bad day, so I thought I’d offer. I was just going to get an ice cream. Do you want one?”
She looks at him for a moment.
“Yeah, okay,” she says.
They head into the ice cream parlour and are served by a guy who seems a little nervous and is smiling slightly too much. He doesn’t seem able to take his eyes off the injured woman. Carlos feels a little bad for being here and preventing the conversation that Ice Cream Man is evidently dying to launch into.
Still, he has a feeling Ice Cream Man may have caught the woman’s attention as well; maybe she’ll come back here, maybe they’ll talk. The thought that he might have helped two people find each other makes him smile to himself.
Carlos and the woman take a seat by the window to eat their ice creams. Carlos tries to pretend he doesn’t notice the longing glances Ice Cream Man keeps throwing in their direction.
“You’re very kind,” the woman says. She’s looking at Carlos with a strange intensity. “People probably say you have a good heart.”
He laughs, embarrassed. “I don’t know about that.”
“I’d like to know you better,” she says. “Perhaps we could meet again? Somewhere more private?”
Some social interaction would probably be good for him. But he can’t afford it. Getting into a relationship would impose obligations - on his time, on his finances - and he can’t make promises like that, he can’t, not when Maria is in the hospital.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not you. I’m just not in that place in my life right now.”
The next morning, he sees on the news that the Heart Ripper struck nearby later that night. He wishes he’d got that woman’s number, just so he could check whether she’s okay.
-
Carlos has only vague memories of being in the hospital with a fracture when he was a kid. They come back, sometimes, when he’s sitting with Maria. The other boy he got along pretty well with. The old man who he thought always looked at him strangely.
The old man shook his hand when he was discharged, he remembers, and looked deep into his eyes, and said, I have a feeling we’ll meet again.
Somehow, Carlos felt it as well. But he guesses they were both wrong. There’s no way that guy’s still around.