The Final Enemy to be Destroyed

“You’re not going to order anything?” he asked, “You really can’t go wrong with whatever’s on the special today. It’s all good, really. I don’t even read it, I just order it.”  

“You know, I have actually always found your carelessness to be surprisingly endearing.” 

He chuckled mirthlessly, “Well, I wouldn’t say that. But seriously, you’re not even going to get a coffee?”

She shook her head at him as if disappointed, but not surprised by his insistence. “There is nothing on a menu like this that could possibly interest me. You know I have a sophisticated palate.”

They were sitting across from each other in a booth at the back corner of what had recently become his favorite diner. It was a quaint little diner, with a comfortable atmosphere that inspired familiarity. Rarely would it be crowded, yet there would always be enough people there to make it feel warm and alive with the soft susurrus of conversation. And more importantly, the owners didn’t care if he would stay there reading well after he had already been done eating. The waiter would simply give him his food and then leave him alone. 

However, it seemed that today would not bring his desired solitude. He had just finished sitting down at his booth when he saw her stride into the diner. She had quickly spotted him and begun taking her confident steps in his direction when he begrudgingly resigned himself to the fact he wasn’t going to get any reading done this morning. It’s somewhat crowded, and the waiter has an extremely annoying cough today anyways, he had thought as he closed his laptop.

“I do. So you could imagine my surprise when I saw you walk in.”

She smirked at that, clearly finding it amusing. He didn’t particularly understand why but thought against asking her when it became apparent she was not going to comment on it. Instead, he continued.

“Last time I saw you, you were with Alex.” 

She thought about that for a moment.

“Yes, I suppose I was…He was a much better flirt than you by the way. One would think that with that devil-may-care attitude of yours, you would be a little less… boring.”

This time it was his turn to smirk, “Have you ever considered that I simply don't fancy you?”

“Yes, yes,” she waved her hand dismissively, “You are not the first person to tell me that.”

“And you think they’re lying?”

“Of course I do. I do not believe any of you. It always ends the same.”  

“Well, they could still be telling the truth. You can be very persistent, you know? Maybe they all just give up in the end?”

“Don’t be ridiculous Tom. Some? Sure, but all of them? Besides, people love and respect me. I have never gone anywhere and found that to not be the case.”

“Well, I definitely don’t love you.”

“Oh please, you’re obsessed with me.”

“Hey, don’t take it personally. I’m just afraid of commitment.”

She giggled, “Now you are being honest.”

He heard the waiter’s cough before he saw him approaching with his food. His stomach growled at the sight of his breakfast, and he eagerly began moving his neglected laptop and notebook aside to make room for it. Once the waiter finished placing all of the items from today’s special on the table, he turned around and left for the kitchen, stifling another cough. Tom couldn’t help but scoff and stare at the waiter’s retreating figure as he left back to the kitchen. 

“You really are boring,” said the haughty voice in front of him, “Is every hour of your day dedicated to your work?”

“Well, they do say to make your passion your paycheck,” he replied while eyeing his breakfast suspiciously. He wondered if perhaps one of those coughs had ended up all over his food. 

Giving up on his futile examination, he returned his attention to his impromptu breakfast companion and found her flipping through the notebook he had just moved to create space for his food. She had stopped on a page filled with his notes on the Turritopsis dohrnii before she spoke up again.

“I find it fascinating that you can even receive a paycheck for this. It is a Sisyphean job.”

He shrugged.

“You are getting paid to entertain an impossibility,” she said while continuing to flip through the notebook.

He shrugged again, “There will always be ambitious men willing to tackle impossibilities, and rich men willing to sponsor them.”

“Ambitious is a rather flattering way of describing fools,” was her snide reply.

He didn’t have a response to that, so he decided to enjoy some of his food instead, but the echoes of his doubts reflected in her words seemed to make the task a bit more difficult than he cared to admit. He sighed. It was too early in the day to revisit those thoughts. So Tom drank some coffee and complained to himself about what an annoying morning this was turning out to be.

His companion didn’t seem to share his annoyance, however. Smiling gleefully, and in a tone that conveyed she already knew the answer, she asked, “Well, any breakthroughs?” She paused to flip through some more pages. Then, with less confidence than her tone implied, “I will admit I see some interesting ideas here, but their feasibility seems a little dubious, at best.”

Tom looked at her curiously, swallowing the sardonic remark that had been on his tongue. He suddenly wished he knew the actual reason why she was here. 

Eventually, he replied, “If you really want to know”—he was certain she didn’t. Yet something about her curiosity felt honest, so he decided to answer in kind—“there was an epigenetic aging study I worked on that recently got published. I genuinely believe it could be revolutionary. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but we have successfully reversed aging in mice. We’ve already begun testing with primates now and, with the original study having just been published, I’m hoping we will soon begin to see more research down this avenue from all over the world.”

She seemed to genuinely ponder this for a moment. A fugitive emotion flickered across her contemplative face, but it was gone too soon for him to decipher. When she replied, he could hear the smirk in her voice. 

“Fascinating…”

He rolled his eyes.

He had to hand it to her, she really had a way of making one feel insignificant. It happened every time they met. It seemed effortless too; one sarcastic or condescending remark, a simple, dismissive glance. It was all in the delivery, he mused.

Tom didn’t mind though, not really. He knew her well enough to know not to take any of her flippant remarks too seriously. It never helped. He could never actually figure out when she was being honest or simply teasing (or honestly teasing) either. At the end of the day, he supposed it didn’t really matter. He never did care about others’ opinions regarding himself anyways, and he wasn’t going to start making exceptions.

He looked back down at his food which was steadily becoming colder and was overcome by a sharp sense of disappointment in himself. Allowing his mood to poison his breakfast was simply unacceptable. He might not have been able to do anything about the waiter’s incessant coughing, or about not being able to read and work in peaceful solitude with his current company present, but some things were still within his control. Besides, and perhaps more importantly, he was a surprisingly spiteful person, and he’d be damned if he let her take this away from him too. Enjoying this breakfast suddenly felt personal. It had become his edible vendetta.

He took a readying breath, much to his companion’s amusement, before biting into his food and letting out a contented sigh. He had forgotten how hungry he was. The food tasted great. In fact, he reckoned it was the best he had ever tasted since he started coming here. They must have gotten a new cook or something. Or maybe it was the waiter's cough. 

“So,”  he asked in between bites, “why did you decide to come here? You didn’t really answer me earlier.”

“You didn’t really ask earlier,” she pointed out.

“Yeah well, I’m asking right now.” 

“You know why I’m here.”

He chuckled in earnest at that, the food doing wonders for his mood, “That’s a terrible answer.”

“Not really.”

“Is that why you didn’t say anything earlier? Because you thought I already knew the answer?”

She looked at him like he was one of the dumbest people she had ever met before responding, “No, I did not say anything earlier because you did not ask earlier.”

It was at that moment that he heard the waiter break into an extremely loud coughing fit and he had to try his hardest not to laugh at the absurdity of how his morning had turned out. He didn’t think she’d appreciate it, and since he was sharing his morning with her for a reason he was beginning to suspect he’d never know, he thought it best not to antagonize her. 

“Well I didn’t ask because I was actually hoping”—somewhat obviously, he thought—“that you would volunteer the information.”

“I figured you had not asked because you simply do not care.”

He sighed at that, “I thought I was ‘obsessed’ with you.”

“It might not seem like it, but they are not exactly mutually exclusive,” she replied with a smile, “for example, you do not care about anything. You still have obsessions though, and I am one of them.”

He scoffed, “That’s just simply untrue. You said it earlier too, but I am not careless either, and I’m certainly not uncaring.”

She shrugged but didn’t say anything.

“There is a huge difference between not caring about anything, and simply being selective with one’s care. I am the latter,” he continued.

“Ok then,” she replied as she crossed her arms, “Name one thing you care about.”

“Well for starters, I care about being able to enjoy my mornings in blissful solitude so that I can get some work done.”

She actually laughed at him, “You like being alone because you are self-obsessed. And your job, quite frankly, is the biggest obsession I have ever seen.” 

“Ok then,” he mimicked, “what are your criteria for differentiating between the two? Because I’m pretty sure you’ll just find a way to shoehorn anything I care about into an obsession.” 

“The difference is in the self-destructiveness,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Self-destructiveness?” 

“Yes. For example, the reason you enjoy your ‘blissful solitude’ is not because of a healthy sense of confidence or comfortability with yourself, but because you simply have no friends.”

“Right,” was his sarcastic response.

“You also have a tough time forming lasting friendships, mostly due to your self-obsession, which only exacerbates the whole issue. And it only gets worse throughout the years.” 

He scoffed, “You’re a psychologist now too?”

She shrugged, “More of a hobby. I have a lot of time.”

“And that makes you an expert?”

“I would not go that far,” she replied with that annoying smile of hers that only made him think she would, in fact, go that far. He simply stared at her before going back to enjoying his food.

“Ok, perhaps that was a harsh example. But what about your work?”

“What about my work?”

“Surely you can see how that is an obsession, right?”

“Personally, I think you’re a little biased.”

She ignored that comment and continued down her train of thought.

“What do you even do outside of work? Seriously, even now, you are eating breakfast and grumpy because you can not work at the same time. That is not normal Tom.”

Tom just continued eating his food and nodded along, allowing her to continue.

She did so, more seriously this time. “I understand that you do not have a ‘normal’ job and that your plan is probably to actually finish that first—good luck with that, by the way—and then spend the rest of your life doing whatever it is you would do if you did not spend all your time working, but what if I am right?”

“What if I’m right”, he countered, “I think you’re more afraid of me being right than I am of being wrong.”

She ignored him again, and looked him right in the eyes before saying, “What if you never finish your impossible job and do not get to that part?”

He opened his mouth, response ready, but the look she gave him silenced him.

“Life is what happens in between your past regrets and future plans Tom. Your obsession with this work is not allowing you to live. You do not find that the least bit ironic?” 

He simply continued eating and after a couple of bites replied, “See the thing is I actually like my job. I care about it,”—she sighed and shook her head at that—“so it’s not harmful, and it’s not an obsession”.

He swallowed another bite before changing the subject, “Anyways, while I really do enjoy arguing semantics in circles with you, I do hope that wasn’t the only reason you came here.” 

She smiled like the cat that got the canary, “No, you being here was just a happy coincidence.”

Just then a sharp, distressed cry followed by the crash of glasses and plates falling on the floor resounded throughout the diner. As everyone turned towards the interruption, a cacophony of shouting erupted from the kitchen and, moments later, the hostess bolted out, straight to the phone. A worried murmur broke out throughout the diner as she dialed.

He was about to add to it but, when he turned back around he was all alone again. He saw her at the door, leaving the diner as swiftly as she had entered. It was a curious sight, everyone staring in his direction as she walked away unnoticed; the thief who stole all of this diner’s warmth and familiarity and got away with it, leaving him swimming in doubts, and finding himself suddenly wishing he could still hear the waiter’s cough.