1944

As she brings the coffee pot and fills our mugs at the table Melissa sits down across from me.  "We both prefer our brew black and bitter", say I. "Like life", she quips but without even a meek suggestion of a grin.  "We both have synesthesia.  Do you know what that means?" "That we're both a little bit unusual?" "Besides that", she snaps. "I'm not sure what you're getting at." "Synesthetes are both highly sensitive and highly aware, highly conscious, it's like we can never quite reach  our off switch.  Do you have trouble staying asleep, dream vividly? ""Yes, and yes." "Greta Thunberg, the environmental activist, is not neurotypical and she calls her asperger's a superpower.  See what I'm getting at?" "Yes", and now this needs no further explaining, and yes, now suddenly, it is like being an archeologist and finally discovering the key to Linear A script and unlocking all the secrets of Ancient Crete...

1943

"I am not surprised to hear that", I am wiping and scrubbing clean the ice cream scooping spoon. "He's quite a bit better now, but still loses focus and goes off on tangents sometimes." "Like when he got drunk in the diner." "Exactly so." I am not telling her anything about her brother's adventure at Wreck Beach.  Perhaps Carl can tell her, though I am sure that is one secret he is going to be keeping for quite a while from his darling little sister. "It looks like we're done", say I. As she is wiping down the counter and sink, Melissa says, "Sit awhile at the table here with me and I'll put on some coffee..."

1942

Melissa breaks the prolonged silence that has enveloped us.  "Christopher", she says, pausing to take a lengthy, slightly slurpy sip of her coffee, "You never had a mental illness.  We are unusually wired, and that makes us also unusually conscious and aware.  We are a threat to the normies.  Time to break free." The coffee before me appears particularly black, though with a certain betrayal of red beneath the surface.  It is strong, not really bitter, but deeply flavourful and aromatic dark roast.  "Jesus said that not only was Lawrence being taken away from mental health work, but that I am no longer going to be there either." Instead of replying, Melissa says, "There is something else I have been wanting to ask you...Has my brother told you about our father's death...?"

1942

"Do you have synesthesia" she repeats. "What is that?" "You've never heard of synesthesia?"  She is repeating the word as though she really wants me to learn it. "What is it?" "First, before I answer", she says, picking up to dry one of the lovely crimson and gold plates, "I want you to tell me something...  Have you always identified that shade of green with the number seven, and gold with four?" "For as long as I can remember." "What is number three for you?" "It's an intense shade of crimson, like the red on those plates, and deeper than the red of your T shirt you happen to be wearing right now." "Number one?" "Dark blue, more ultramarine than indigo." "Two?" "A light vibrant turquoise." "Five?" "Magenta." "Bingo!"  She has just pulled out of the rinsing water a coffee cup that matches the dessert plates. "Bingo, because..." "Because that is how I see number five." "Do you have this condition too?" "For as long as I remember.  Numbers, letters, days of the week, music too.  Do you see colour in music?" "Sometimes yes.  Sometimes."  And yes, sometimes, especially when hearing Carol on the piano the colours fly everywhere for me.  "Does Carl know?" "Still haven't told him." "How come?" "Don't know", she shrugs.  "We can both tell him tonight." "Will he be okay wñith it?" "My brother isn't a normie either." "You mean..." "He has ADHD...."

1940

"Who is that guy?"  says Melissa to me as I start filling the sink, first hot water, liquid soap which drips out an astonishing shade of sapphire blue, and now I am adding the first of several dirty plates and utensils to the swelling foamy mix. "We saw him on the road just a couple of miles from here", like my father before me, I never quite got used to thinking in kilometres.  Curiously, I work well with kilograms and celsius. "He looks familiar." I am just opening my mouth and suddenly remembering that he has told Kenny and me to know him as Ethan, forbids any words from coming out.  Instead, "I am really starting to notice colour these days." "Colour is everywhere " she replies, picking up to dry the first plate I have washed. "Like the beautiful intense blue of this dishwashing liquid." "Isn't it beautiful?  And did you notice the colours that the dude on the bike is wearing?  That is the most glorious and intense emerald-malachite green I have ever seen.  And those golden shorts of his." "That shade of green", say I , "Always suggests the number seven"  The plate I am rinsing has a particularly lovely pattern of deep crimson and gold lines in  fluid art nouveaux intricacies.  "And gold is number four." "Do you have synesthesia", asks Melissa...

1939

"Miss ...Thing?" he inquires with a dear little smile hovering over his lips "How did you know," says Glen, clearly astonished.  "Have we ever met before?" "Years ago, honey...years ago....And you are still handsome." "Wait a minute.  Years ago...How many years ago...Wait...It must have been back in the...Nineties?  no, wait...the eighties...It was back in the eighties...Stephen...You knew Stephen Bloom...Didn't you? "I knew her mostly as Tanya.  And you would have known me as...Cassandra." "You were both drag queens...you were working girls..." "The oldest profession. Good-lookin'...the oldest fuckin' profession." "Yes, and now I remember...you guys..or...you gals...That was your nickname for me...Miss Thing." "Well, fancy meeting you here, Glenda." "Yeah, that would have been your other nickname for me." "You are looking very well." "As are you...Kennny?...As are you."

1938

The breakfast room where we are tucking into chocolate orange cake with ice cream is every bit as lovely as before.  Melissa has joined us, along with Glen and Sheila. "Yes, we were also there", says Sheila, "Just as you saw us and just as we saw you.  And yes, that was the same boy I kept on seeing in dreams and...I don't know...visitations?  But yes, ever since back in the late forties, not long after the war, I happened to see him on the front porch of the house we ended up living in, when he was standing there with the old widow De Souza, as though...I don't know...as though he was watching over her." "Jesus was always there for you", says Kenny. "Only, I didn't really know him as Jesus.  I couldn't put a name or identity to him, perhaps i thought of him as an angelic spirit.  It's hard to say.  But our visit just yesterday, though it really is still today, that simply erased from me all shadow of doubt about who he is. Kenny has been staring at Glen in a way that can only be called knowing...