𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐒𝚰𝐂 𝐃𝚰𝐍𝐄𝐑

Tuesday, November 7. 145 days left.

Mollie arrived twenty minutes early because she was a lunatic who couldn't be late for anything, including her own death.

She'd chosen the back booth because it faced the door, which was a habit she'd picked up from the funeral home. You learned things, working with grief. You learned that surprises were bad and exits were good and you should always, always sit where you could see who was coming. She had her coat on-the black wool one, the funeral one, the only coat that made sense for a woman who spent her days arranging the dead-and she had a cup of tea because it was 7:42 in the morning and she would rather die than drink coffee.

Which. Well.

She stirred the tea. It didn't need stirring. She stirred it anyway, because her hands needed something to do that wasn't picking at the skin around her thumb, which was a habit she'd had since she was twelve and had never been able to stop and had no intention of discussing with a stranger.

The diner smelled like bacon grease and burnt coffee and whatever cleaning product they used on the vinyl booths, something floral that was trying very hard and failing completely. The jukebox in the corner was playing Huey Lewis. Mollie didn't know who kept putting money in the jukebox at 7:42 in the morning but she respected their commitment to chaos.

The waitress had already come by once. Older woman, maybe late sixties, with a face like she'd lived through several things that were none of your business and come out the other side with strong opinions about coffee. She'd put the tea down and said "You waiting for someone, love?" and Mollie had said "Yes" and the woman had said "First date?" and Mollie had said "Absolutely not" with enough force to knock over a small building.

The waitress had smiled like she'd heard that before, too.

Mollie checked her phone. 7:48. She checked it again. 7:48. She put it face-down on the table. Turned it face-up. Opened the Reddit thread. His profile picture was a painting, something warm and blurred, orange and red, like staring into a bonfire through wet glass. No face. His bio said painter / dog person / currently losing an argument with a canvas.

7:56. No sign of him. She folded her napkin into a square. Then a smaller square. Then a triangle. Unfolded it. Started again. This was a mistake. This was a colossal, stupid, desperate mistake and she was going to sit here like an idiot drinking tea she'd already over-stirred waiting for a man she met on a suicide forum...

It wasn't a suicide forum. It was Reddit. Reddit was many things but it was not technically...

The bell above the door rang.

• • •

He was tall. That was the first thing she noticed, because the door frame of The Classic Diner was built for a generation of shorter Newfoundlanders and he had to dip his head coming in, just slightly, which gave the impression that he was bowing to the room. Dark hair. The front longer than the back, swept sideways, the kind of hair that looked like it had opinions. A leather jacket that had seen better decades. And his hands, she clocked them immediately, the way she clocked everything.

She'd seen those hands before. Last night, stalking his post history at midnight because of course she had, there'd been a painting in r/art, a harbour at dusk, blues and golds so thick you could practically feel the texture through the screen, and the caption said I painted this because I needed to remember that things can still be beautiful and then I ate cereal for dinner standing over the sink, which kind of undercut the whole thing. Forty-three upvotes. One comment: bro same. She'd almost laughed. She hadn't, because she didn't do that anymore, but almost.

And now here were the hands that painted it. Ochre and blue, same as on the screen, except realer. Lived-in.

He scanned the room. His eyes landed on her. She expected... she didn't know what she expected. A wave. A nod. Some gesture that said hi, I'm the stranger from the internet you're planning not to die with, shall we?

Instead, he walked to the counter. Spoke to the waitress. Ordered something. Then, and this was the part that made her press her lips together so hard they went white, he picked up the plate the waitress handed him and carried it to the booth and sat down across from Mollie with a full stack of pancakes already in front of him.

He'd ordered before sitting down.

He'd ordered pancakes before sitting down.

"Hi," he said.

Mollie looked at him. Looked at the pancakes. Looked at him again.

"You ordered first."

"Yes."

"We haven't even introduced ourselves."

"Yes, but I was hungry," he said, and his voice was... she hadn't been ready for his voice. Low. Careful. An accent that rolled where English flattened, that softened consonants and stretched vowels in places she didn't expect. "And I figured if this was going to be terrible, at least I'd have pancakes."

She stared at him.

He picked up his fork. Cut a triangle of pancake. Ate it. Chewed thoughtfully, like the pancake was a painting he was trying to understand.

"These are not very good pancakes," he said.

"They're terrible," Mollie said. "The eggs are worse."

"Then why did you pick this place?"

"Because it's three blocks from my flat and I didn't want to take a cab to my own death pact."

He stopped chewing. Looked at her. There was a beat, half a second, maybe less, where something crossed his face that she couldn't read. Then a sound came out of him. Low, surprised, like it had escaped before he could catch it.

He was laughing.

"You're laughing," she said.

"You're funny."

"I'm not funny. I'm British. People mix those up."

"I'm Fayiz," he said. "Fie-yiz. Most people get it wrong the first time. I'll correct you once and then I'll give up, so." He held up both hands, briefly, a gesture that said this is the window, don't waste it, and his fingers were long and his palms were broad and the paint was everywhere, ochre and blue, living in lines and grooves like a second skin. "Fie-yiz."

"Fayiz," she repeated. She said it carefully. "Mollie."

"Mollie," he said. And the way he said it, Moll-lee, two syllables instead of two letters squashed together, soft in the middle, like the name was something he was holding in his hands and didn't want to drop...

She looked down at her tea.

"Right," she said. "Well. Here we are."

"Yes."

"Two strangers in a bad diner."

"With bad pancakes."

"Planning to die together."

He cut another triangle of pancake. Ate it.

That was the thing. He hadn't even flinched. Just sat there with his bad pancakes and his paint-stained hands like the thing they were discussing was a chore and the chore had a deadline and the deadline was April and the only real question was logistics.

She stirred her tea.

"You said you paint," she said.

"I said I paint things that don't sell. There's a difference."

"What do you paint?"

He thought about it. His head tilted slightly to the right and his hand came up near his mouth, hovering, not touching, and he held that position for long enough that she thought he might have forgotten the question.

"Warm things," he said finally. "Colours that feel warm. Oranges. Reds. The colour of..." He stopped. Looked at his hands. At the ochre in his knuckles. "The colour of where I'm from. I paint the place I can't go back to. Which sounds pathetic when I say it out loud, so let's pretend I said something cooler."

"Where are you from?"

"Kerala. Southern India."

"Is it warm?"

He smiled. Barely. Just the corners. "It's the opposite of this. In every way you can think of."

"Then why are you here?"

The smile left, the way warmth leaves a room when someone opens a window. "Why are you?"

"Fair enough," she said. "We'll save that one."

"We'll save that one," he agreed.

He went back to his pancakes. She went back to her tea. Huey Lewis ended and the jukebox switched to something by Hall & Oates, which was objectively worse. The waitress passed their booth and topped off Mollie's hot water without being asked, and Mollie said "Thank you" and the waitress said "Dottie" and Mollie said "Pardon?" and Dottie said "My name's Dottie. You're going to be a regular, I can tell. Might as well know my name."

Mollie opened her mouth to say I'm not going to be a regular, I'm going to be dead in a hundred and forty-five days, but what came out was: "Mollie. And he's Fayiz."

Dottie looked at Fayiz. Fayiz looked up from his pancakes with syrup on his chin.

"Hi," he said.

"Hm," said Dottie. And walked away.

• • •