Five
an excerpt

Katherine studied the contents of her plate. The greens sparkled with a coating of unnecessary, at least from a taste standpoint, oil. The sculpted pile of rice contained a mixture of those curious yellow and orange grains, perfectly distributed to represent the color spectrum. She wondered whether there was anything nutritional about the colored rice, or if they only used it to make a boring pile of rice appear less boring. The meat was thin and bloody and organized carefully on the plate. The whole thing felt suddenly unappetizing, particularly when she noted that her companion had not bothered to even disturb his place setting.

"Are you certain you don't want something to eat?" The question felt simple enough. Usually when meeting in a restaurant one assumes that food is to be consumed. He hadn't even ordered a drink, and had barely touched his water, replacing it into the wet ring on the tablecloth with a disappointed sneer.

"No. Thank you." His response felt gracious and practiced. He understood manners and the awkward situation of having a dinner guest that didn't bother to eat.

She could tell he had made that same apology many times before.

His name, as far as she knew, was Van, and she did not feel she could pronounce it correctly, despite his having tried to help. Once again, he seemed comfortable and practiced when assisting with his name, as though he had been doing it for all his life. Van wore large, heavy, black clothes. Perhaps a kilt, though she couldn't have said for certain as he'd only stood long enough to help her with her chair. On the back of his chair rested a long, heavy leather coat, one that he probably would have preferred not to be crumpled against the floor. His hands looked like they would fit better on a bear and his hair was cropped short and close to his head. His eyes were an absorbing color of silver, or maybe a very light blue, Katherine couldn't tell which. He appeared younger than he should have, younger than she knew him to be.

She carefully cut off a thin slice of flesh and savored it on her tongue.

"I had a dream this morning," he spoke as if he wanted her to eat and not attempt to record his every word., "I realized I could fly. I was walking my dog, I have no dog, incidentally, and I jumped behind it into the air. Just a careless leap, one like a child would make, but I managed to get above some certain height, a previously unknown limit, and as I descended I could feel this point as a sort of neutral limit, above which I could drift as I liked, and below which the pull of gravity would once more try to anchor me to the earth. I practiced this skill in my dream, leaping high and floating off, pushing against things to control my direction, willing myself to remain in the air." He took another sip of water, and once again replaced it with a disillusioned sneer. "It was not the dog that allowed me to fly. I could do it as I willed, and others could see and understand that I had achieved something spectacular. They were skeptical, of course, but, like humans are prone to do, they trusted what their eyes saw. I tried to tell them that all they needed to do was to jump above this level," he held his hand about two feet over the floor, "and believe that they need not come back down."

Katherine swallowed and took a sip of her water to clear her throat. It tasted like a bad lemon. One that had died before being cut up and dumped, without consideration, into a pitcher of water. She too gave the glass a sideways glance, then pushed a little farther out of reach, conceivably to prevent herself from tasting it again. "Did it work?"

"Of course not. It was a dream." Van raised his hand and snapped at the waiter. It made Katherine flinch, then blush and look around, but the man came to the table immediately, not acknowledging any slight. "Wine please. Red. Whatever is good."

"And please change our water." Katherine added.

The waiter nodded and snapped at a bus boy, completing the chain Van had begun. She wondered if she was the one who had been missing something. She stared into his eyes for a moment and saw something cold and frightening there, so she redirected her attention to her food once more.

"I tried it, you know. Tried to see if it was true. If a simple thing like belief could provide flight for me." He watched her eat.

"It didn't work?" She spoke through the food in her mouth, not caring all that much about impressing him anymore.

He shook his head. "I think there are too many variables for something as simple as faith to provide flight."