Confidant Part Two.



Start 000614213208
Working Title: Confidant Part Two



After realising further conversation was impossible, they had gone up the escalator to a quiet place in the piano bar. After calmly sitting and listening for quite a while, Jane leant back in the couch while maintaining her unique distinterested-cat-watching-prey stance.

"You're right, I don't believe you."

He looked her trying to read what she might be thinking. Desperately wishing for those barriers that had been built between them of late to no longer be so. Those beautiful cool blue eyes that once made everything in the world seem all right would not speak. What she was thinking may have surprised him even in his state: Careful, this person knows you like no other. If you involve him then-

She met his imploring gaze unwavering. He looked hurt, lost that she hadn't believed him. My God, he honestly believes what he is saying! A part of her wanted so much to believe that this wasn't some sick joke, some delusion, some test conducted by... A part of her wanted to tear down her own carefully maintained composure, to reach out, to reassure, to touch his heart, his soul, his mind. Again.

---

He was sure that Jane of all people would see that what he had said, while completely unbackable by evidence, deserved at least a fair hearing, an open mind. He had hoped that Jane, understanding him as she did, would know - or at least would be able to reassure him - that he hadn't gone completely off the rails. The communicator still pulled his suit jacket off centre. Maybe there was a way. He fished it out and placed it on the coffee table between them. The obsidian-like block blinked a calm cobalt blue on one of it's corners every few seconds.

"If you think I'm making this all up, then explain this!"

A few conversations at neighbouring tables paused for a second at his intense plea. Jane looked at the object on the table for a few seconds, then diverted her calm gaze back to his eyes betraying not a thing.

"Marc, I'm sorry but all I see is a pack of cards. Go home. Get some sleep."

She got up and left.

The pianist continued with a tragically rigid rendition of Frank Sinatra's All The Way, people continued talking in muted tones at the surrounding tables. Had he not had tears welling up in his eyes he might have noticed someone in the crowd near the bar speak briefly into the lapel of her suit jacket and then continue to humour the man beside her trying to engage her in conversation.

---

Jane walked as serenely from the table as she could. The guy was clearly delusional. Who would put a pack of cards on the table and claim it was some kind of extraterrestrial communications device!? There had to be a connection with the way Marc was acting. Why would he gather the nerve to contact me after all this time? And now?? It was too much to be written off as a coincidence. She took a taxi home and after mulling it over for another hour or so went to bed. To stare at the ceiling for an hour more. Then to sleep.

Beside the bedside clock a very real obsidian-like communication device silently blinked a calm cobalt blue on one of it's corners every few seconds.