The Ongoing Adventures of Stupendous Girl!

The Morning After 09 Jan 2008

John looks down at the small mountain of pancakes in front of him and for a moment the aesthetic enjoyment of a well-plated breakfast wins out over the desire to tuck into the doughy, syrupy experience of a breakfast. The moment doesn’t last that long, of course, but it is there.

(By the way, my new band – Omniscient Narrator and The Doughy, Syrupy Experience are playing a big show at that new blues place uptown. You should come, it’ll be fun! I’ll send you a flyer later.)

After his first bite is washed down by a sip of grapefruit juice, John looks across the table to address Ophelia.

“Nice place, huh?”

She simply nods to answer in the affirmative, and quickly changes the subject so as to cut to the heart of the matter.

“So, what do you think we should do?”

“Well, first of all, we don’t tell anyone at the office.”

Ophelia waits a moment to respond, downing a drink from a cup of coffee blacker than the heart of a tobacco company marketer before she agrees with John.

“Oh, of course not. It’s none of their business, and it would just make things awkward. Er, more awkward.”

John pushes a small piece of pancake around his plate with his fork, thinking about how awkward this situation is, and how to make it less so moving forward.

“It shouldn’t be too hard to keep private, right? Don must know, or suspect, but he’ll be discreet about it if we talk to him. So there’s no reason for anyone else to find out, since they didn’t even know we were together this weekend… I mean, we don’t want this to be an ongoing thing, do we?”

John didn’t, but he didn’t want to come across as completely dismissive to the idea either, not with how fragile Ophelia had shown herself to be ever since he’d known her. In a way, John had always thought of her (and here’s why I bust out my metaphoring chops) as an intricate ice sculpture, beautiful but inherently ephemeral under all but the most carefully controlled conditions. Since he’d found her less than 24 hours before sitting in a window ledge after her traumatic breakup, he didn’t want to risk placing the strain of anything that could look like a rejection on her so soon.

To her credit, Ophelia demolishes this impression in John once and for all with a measured, mature response.

“No, I don’t want that. It’s not about you, John, but I just don’t think that kind of relationship would be good for either of us right now.”

His expression becomes as relieved and breezy as the décor of this neighbourhood breakfast joint, at once released from the fear that he’d have to coddle Ophelia when he himself had so much to think about.

“I think you’re right. But I do hope we can be friends… well, closer friends then we have been, I mean.”

“I’d like that, John. I really think this is the best way to handle this.”

John smiles a little impishly as he pulls at the peel of an orange slice without looking at it.

“I’m pretty certain the best way to handle this also includes lots of conspiratorial in-jokes.”

“That does sound quite mature and adult. I approve, sir, I approve.”

Ophelia raises her coffee mug to offer a mock toast in salute of John’s suggestion, and he reciprocates. It’s clear now the two are going to be fine; Ophelia, though hurt, won’t be hopelessly heartbroken about the breakup with H back in Denmark, and she’d no longer be obsessed over her romantic life. John wouldn’t be leaving town, though he still isn’t sure how to deal with his unspoken feelings for the now engaged Irene. Both of them were at least back to a relatively even keel, though.

Neither has any idea that just a few blocks away, their friend Maria is distinctly unwell, She is just beginning her training in a non-descript looking walk-up apartment building, just now coming becoming fully prepared to become a twisted instrument of revenge against Stupendous Girl!. She was rapidly learning how to harness the newfound power she would use to battle this city’s champion. She was, at this very moment, getting ready to murder her co-worker and friend.