Talitha Koum

Chapter 28

TALITHA KOUM

CHAPTER 28

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Tom entered the tent. He saw Julie sitting on a couch. She had washed up and changed her clothes. Her hair was wet and it hung in long and twirling tresses down her back. She had propped open a door to the far side of the enclosure and now with her head tilted and her fingers combing through her hair, she was gazing out unfocused on the orangeness of the evening that was the approaching sunset and the night.

“Julie?”

No answer. Tom edged a few steps closer.

She raised a cup to her lips, but when she got it there, she just held it and didn’t take a drink from it.

Tom frowned. Keeping on his toes, he picked up a stool from nearby, and then stole up and eased down beside her. “Hey, you all right?”

She shrugged.

“Are you upset?”

She shook her head.

“Hey, at least we’re not dead. That’s something.” He laughed.

She shook again. “What are we going to do, Tom? How are we going to get home?”

He shrugged. “I was going to ask you that.”

She scoffed. “You and Mr. Fong both…”

He edged in closer. “I’m sure you’ll think of something…”

She spun to him.

He caught himself. “I mean…we’ll think of something…like…together!” He smiled at her.

She turned back the other way. She put her cup down on the table next to her. Julie picked up a long twig, a tree branch of sorts from the ground by her feet. She poked it into the sand and began to draw things in it. Like a sad, sad face. “I miss my apartment.”

“What’s that?”

“I miss my apartment. My bed. My sheets. I miss going down to that overheated basement and the lab…” She sat up. “…and marking all those useless papers that were due next week…” She sighed.

Tom nodded.

She turned to him. “Why aren’t you upset?”

Tom frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m surprised. Aren’t you always the one flying off the handle? Weren’t you the one who was all upset that my crazy computer has somehow landed you over here, smack dab in the middle of nowhere?”

“Well…I was.” He shrugged. “But now, not so much. I guess I’m just happy to be alive.” He laughed. “If it means that much to you, I can always be upset again later.”

She frowned. Reaching back, she meant to swat him in the arm, but she bumped into the table instead and knocked the cup she had put there to the floor.

She bent to pick it up. Tom bent to get it too. Their heads thumped together. “Ow!”

Julie went to straighten up.

Tom did the same thing.

Their eyes met halfway and they stopped.

Gazing into each other’s eyes like that, their thoughts and worries for a moment forgotten, the timeless pair, it seemed, found themselves dancing and swimming in the infinite pools that were the oceans of the other’s affection and they were found and lost at the same time, in the same place.