Telephone

“So I heard your news.”   

“Which news?” she sputters, laughing, toying.  

We are all about 30, which means we are all about 35, and I hear someone down the coffee shop bar assume they are joking about another’s 40^th birthday until the other says, “Yeah, finally 40.”  

The news I have is worn.  I heard it like a kitschy game of telephone, of whisper down the lane, words passing and mutating as they travel mouth to ear, mouth to ear, to mouth.   

This news came via several five year olds, laughing jubilant five year olds.  It holds no more weight than a helium balloon.  

“You keep looking at my hand,” she says.  She  never shows me the ring, so I keep sneaking glances, as she punches the man next to her.  “He gave it to me.”  Like it’s the clap, a disease.  Maybe it is.  We say ‘I’m getting married.’ Do we mean it like ‘I’m getting sick/hungry/tired.’  This is a conversation for next year, a few years into the disease.  

For now she is jubilant, radiant, jauntily punching her lover-cum-husband.   

And so I pluckily respond, “Yeah, I thought so, I saw him taking out your trash.  A true sign of love.” 

Or maybe a symptom of love, of desire for cohabitation and codependence and a cosignature.   

It was only after I walked out that I heard her question, “Which news?”  I had had options in my discovery, a choose your own adventure ending.   

There will be coffee tomorrow and like a fortune in the grounds, more news will pass from mouth to ear.