Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Incongruence

Jaime looked deeply into Alex's eyes and thought as hard as she could: "I have a secret I have a secret I have a secret I have a secret," and he turned to her and he leaned in close and he whispered,

"I have a cat named Clarence."

She couldn't help but laugh.

The couple across from them turned to stare because they hadn't heard what he said or what she thought but they had heard her laugh because it was loud and abrasive and it woke their little curly-haired child who was sleeping in her stroller encased in a plastic rain covering, and now the child began to fuss and pull at the plastic and it was their stop and it was raining buckets outside, but the child did not care about the rain, only about the oppressiveness of the plastic.

And Jaime felt bad about waking the child, but not about laughing because she didn't really have a secret after all, except that she wanted to know if her boyfriend was psychic which was only half a secret because they had tried it before, thinking things at one another, and it had really never worked, but had always always always been funny because he could think the most absolutely random things, and all she could ever think was "I have a secret," and yet he could never guess.