Until I Die

newspaper under his arm and walked quickly away.
“Another friendly acquaintance of the oldsters,” I muttered to Georgia, and then I said more loudly, “Hi, Arthur.”
Arthur stood politely to greet us. “Hello, Kate. And Georgia, is it?”
“Georgia it is ,” my sister said flirtatiously.
“Yes, well”—Arthur gestured toward his table—“would you like to join me for a coffee?”
“Sure—” Georgia began.
“No,” I said, cutting her off. “Thank you, though. We have things to do. In fact, I’m supposed to be meeting Violette soon.”
“Ah, yes, for one of your movie dates. Well, she’s just up the road shopping.” He indicated the direction with a nod of his head, and then stared silently at me, with an expression that looked almost apologetic.
I stared right back, challenging him to say something. If forgiveness was what he wanted, he wasn’t getting any from me. “See you,” I said after an awkward pause, and, taking Georgia’s arm, led her away.
As soon as we got out of hearing distance, she turned to me. “What is wrong with you?” she asked. “He was trying to be nice.”
“He also got me kicked out of a house meeting for being human.”
Georgia drew her breath in sharply. “He did not !”
“He did,” I confirmed.
“So they’re both racists,” Georgia mused. “But the difference is, he’s cute. Katie-Bean, doesn’t he kind of remind you of …”
“Kurt Cobain.”
“Totally!”
We were barely out of view of the café when we saw Violette a half block away, inspecting the display in a shop window. Spotting us heading her way, she smiled broadly and waved. “Hello, Kate! Hello …” And then she saw who was with me.
“Oh, wonderful. The evil munchkin herself,” moaned Georgia. “I’m outta here,” she said loudly enough for Violette to hear, and walked off down a side street.
The revenant acted like nothing had happened. “I was about to phone you about our movie.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said, “but we saw Arthur, and he told us where to find you. We weren’t supposed to meet for another hour or two, but if you want, we could go now.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “My only plans were to sit around with that sourpuss at La Palette and wait for you.”
“Sourpuss?” I asked, surprised. This was the second time she’d said something unflattering about her partner. Not that I didn’t agree.
“Oh, Arthur can be such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes. I have stayed with him for centuries, but sometimes he makes me crazy.” She grinned at me conspiratorially. Laughing, I grabbed her arm and walked with her toward the nearest art-house cinema.
    “That was very, very strange,” Violette mused as she sipped her coffee.
“I warned you,” I said, stirring some whipped cream into my hot chocolate.
“But I thought it was going to have something to do with … you know … Brazil. I mean, that is what it is called. If they had called it ‘Bizarre Alternate Universe,’ I would not have chosen it.”
I smiled, thinking of the confusion and disgust I had seen on Violette’s face during the face-lift scene. Special effects weren’t yet in her movie vocabulary. I would make it a point in the future to stick to older, classic films.
“So, how is it going with Vincent? Has he talked to you about things yet?”
“No,” I said, my smile disappearing. “And I’m getting a bit worried. Have you noticed how bad he’s been looking lately? Whatever he’s doing, it’s obviously really hard on him.”
Violette nodded. “It is probably a case of things getting worse before they can get better.”
“That’s exactly what he said!” I exclaimed. I sipped my chocolate and shook my head in frustration. “You know, Violette, I’ve started looking for my own solution.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Really? Like what?”
“The same thing he’s looking for. Something that will prevent his need for death.”
“You are really that upset about seeing him die?”
I nodded. “I didn’t react well to Charles’s death last fall, and he’s not even my boyfriend.”
“I guess that is the normal human reaction. Especially for someone like you who has been affected by death so recently.” She touched my hand lightly in sympathy. “So … what are you thinking of?”
“I don’t know. I’m just researching it right now.”
“Oh, so that is why you were in the library this morning!”
I smiled guiltily. “I actually found something somewhere else—at my grandfather’s gallery.