A thousand choices.
“…and so then today was super random, I was really hungover from last night, so I just took a Lyft back to the hotel from his house at 7am, he was still asleep, and I got free late checkout, which was amazing, so I was in bed until like 1pm watching Friends, the one where Joey and Ross nap together,” she chuckled, “and then I had to finish packing obviously, so I did that. There’s also this REALLY good dumpling place you should check out next to the metro station there. So yeah that’s my day so far. How was your day?”
The prompt snapped him back to this reality. The aroma of lemongrass and chilies continued to saturate his lungs. Sounds of silver against ceramic wove between the jovial conversations of the Saturday evening patrons. Arya’s gaze was fixed upon his face, awaiting his response. It was all so normal.
“Well…” he started, looking around the restaurant. From their small table against the wall, the whole room was positioned in his line of sight. His eyes lingered on the tall plants on each side of the door. They were so well maintained, and such a lively shade of green. Beautiful vases decorated the room, bringing a splash of color the wooden decor so desperately needed. He saw indecision scrawled on the faces of people studying their menus. Passerbys glanced into the window as they strolled by in the brisk Boston air. It was all just SO normal, right??
At any given moment, there are literally thousands of options, thousands of things he could do. The normal things, like sip his water, or twirl his pad kee mow around his fork. He could put his elbow on the table, or cross his feet. Even the act of breathing, he thought.
Or there were strange options. He considered just getting up and walking out of this restaurant. “Arya would have to pay the whole bill, and she might be mad at me for a few days, but she’d get over it,” he hypothesized. Or what if he unexpectedly started to bark like a dog? Slither on the ground like a snake? Slither while barking? These were all things that would earn him some well-deserved quizzical looks, but nothing that would permanently affect him, right? He felt the corner of his mouth twitch, ready to giggle at the scene in his head. It took all his concentration to hold it back.
But there were crazy things he could do, too! Like punch Arya in the face until it was bloody and bruised, or knock over every vase and table in the room. He tried to imagine the reaction of all the diners. They’d yelp and curse at him, but would anyone actually DO anything about it or would they just look on? What if he went up to the cash register and tried to extort the restaurant for money? Would anyone act then?
“Isn’t that absolutely amazing, though?” he realized, “At any given second, I have the option to do something that would irrevocably alter my life. Just a simple action, and I could be arrested and land in jail, be fired from my job, or lose all my friends. There’s no going back.”
It’s all so absurdly fragile.
“The best part is that I wouldn’t even have a reason. ‘Why did he do it?’ they’d ask. And they’d never find an answer, because one never existed. Why do people always need reasons to do things? That’s so boring.”
But for the past 1,839 seconds of this dinner, he’d been normal. Every second, he chose to stay socially acceptable. He gripped his knife. The light’s reflection slid across the blade as he rotated it, finally directed at his own stomach. He pushed with light pressure, but felt nothing through his thick sweater. He pushed harder, till a dull sensation reached his skin.
It wasn’t a threat to himself in any form, just another one of his experiments. He wasn’t a psychopath, he felt emotions — he felt hope and happiness and sadness and anger. Just yesterday, even, he was elated for his sister’s promotion. He wasn’t suicidal or depressed either…he was just really, really curious. Curious about why people do things. About why people don’t do things. Why they feel the need to do things. They’d never understand.
Twirling the knife around in his hand, he placed it back on the table.
“Well, so I actually had to finish up some work today. I was out of office a couple days ago, because, ya know, the DMV takes forever, but I’m back on track for my project deadline!” he finally said.
A proper choice. He’d act without reason someday, sometime. But today was not that day.
