Invest in Rain - Part 2

The young man grabbed a beer from the fridge and started wringing out the young woman’s wet clothes. “The sink’s still clogged,” He watched the water fill up. “What?” the young woman came out of the bathroom barefoot. The blue petals of her nails were chipped at the edges.

“You want a turkey sandwich?” The young man pulled out a blue-capped jar and a bag of pink meat. He placed them on the countertop next to the paper towels.

“Yup.” The young woman was wrapping a towel over her head and into the bathroom she disappeared. Sporting a white t-shirt and sweatpants she reappeared in exactly the time it takes to assemble a sandwich. She sat cross-legged atop a bar stool that was printed to look like wood while the young man was leaning over the edge of the counter to place her clothes on the hooks that just barely caught some of the heat from the clicking box. Under the counter he could see the curled bottoms of her feet peaking out from her sweatpants. He stood up and slid a ripped paper towel sitting under a sandwich across the counter to her. “Thanks.” She took a bite so big that part of the mess would stick out every time she chewed.

“So is this sandwich part of the physical world?” She muffled out through bread and lunchmeat. The young man blinked and shook his head in a settling way, as if something immediately sobering had just taken hold of his thoughts.

“It’s not whether the sandwich is or isn’t part of the physical world it’s more about whether we can determine if the sandwich actually exists in a physical world.”

“Yeah, but I’m eating it.” A bit of crust fell from the side of her lip.

“You’re tasting it. You’re feeling it. You feel yourself swallowing it, but you could do all of those in a dream too.”

“So?” She wiped the white-balled crumbs away with the back of her wrist.

“So you’re relying on your senses. Your perception.”

“But that’s everything.”

He watched her take another bite of sandwich. “Yeah, that’s all we got.”

The young man turned back to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of wine and poured a glass.

“What about instinct? Like, when we just know something?” She took the glass with the tips of her fingers along the blankly-crystaled rim.

“Isn’t that more of a feeling?” He said pulling a gray beer out of the fridge.

“I guess.” She sipped. “I don’t know.” For a moment she thought the ceiling had creeped a few inches lower since they’d left for class.

“I like to think that I exist.” The young woman brought the wine glass up to her mouth. “The sandwich was good,” She spoke directly into the glass before taking a drink. She swallowed. “And thanks for the wine.”

“But you do exist. Your thoughts have to come from something and that something is you. You’re a thing that thinks. He’s just not sure that you can prove definitively that there’s a physical world you exist in.” He poured the beer down the inside of his glass.

“I don’t know, I kind of like the other guy’s argument better. I exist physically because—“ She started picking up and putting down her wine glass and the unlit candles next to it, then the books, then the space heater.

“I get it.” He tried to look unamused.

“I can do this.” She picked up the sandwich as if she had just earned it.

“Yeah, but you exist in dreams don’t you? You can pick those up in dreams, can’t you?”

“I don’t care about dreams.” The young woman tore into the partial sandwich as if it were the only thing in the room that had anything going on.

“What if you wake up from all this?” The young man waved his beer at the apartment, tilting the white foam to the brim of the glass, but not over. “It’d just be a dream just like any other.”

The young woman tilted her head as she chewed her last bit of turkey. The young man placed his beer on the countertop and wiped a touch of mayonnaise at the edge of her lip.

“Do you actually believe this stuff?” Her eyes were concerned.

“I mean it makes sense. I’ve tasted and smelled things in a dream. I think we all have. Who knows? We could just wake up one day.”

“So you could wake from this?” She set down the wine glass.

“Yeah.” He shrugged.

“All this?” She waved as if the little studio apartment was a landscape that the mind’s limited production crew could not replicate.

“Mm-hm.”

“Even me?” She pushed the glass away.

“I mean,” He searched her eyes. “Yeah.”

“So I’m not a thinking thing,” She crumbled up the paper towel. “To you.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like that.”

“So I don’t exist?”

“Hold on, that’s not what I meant. I think this stuff makes sense, but I don’t necessarily believe it.”

“Well,” She shrugged, and her face pinkened. “Do you believe it?”

“All the guy’s saying is that—“

“Do you believe it?” The young woman had her hands in a pile of white scraps. The young man thought about how she’d always ripped up whatever paper or plastic that remained in her hands too long; he thought about when he used to tell her things that he thought she had wanted to hear. They had just started dating and it shocked him how well she could separate what was real from what was bullshit before he even realized something panderingly false had just come out of his mouth.

He shook his head. “I believe that you exist. I believe that you’re sitting across from me in a chair that exists and you’re a thinking thing just like me and we both exist in a physical world, but I think that this other stuff makes sense, too.” She didn’t look convinced.

“Listen, I think It’s important to prove things otherwise we have a world where people get fooled and taken advantage of. Look at the internet. You have to enter a password in every website just to prove who you are because—“

The young women broke into a menacing grin.

“Oh, you little shit.” The young man was fooled in a warm way.

“It’s just too easy when you’re getting all serious.” The young woman stood up and started closing the bread bag, the turkey, and the mayonnaise. She swept her pile of shredded mess into the wastebasket. The young man put his beer down and took soft steps to position himself behind her. She bundled the wine bottle and her nearly empty glass against her chest. Before she could turn around he had his arms around her waist and his chin in her ear.

“I’m going to drop all this.” She pleaded with hidden joy. The young man waited till she was completely still.

“How can I fall in love with something that doesn’t exist?” He whispered into her ear.

“Pffft.” She shook her head and ducked under his arm. He sat with his arms on the countertop.

“That was, by far, the cheesiest thing you’ve ever said to me.” She called with her face in the fridge. “And you smell like beer.” She waited for a response, but the young man ignored her.

The young man watched as the young woman shot back the rest of her wine, put her glass in the sink and threw away the wadded paper towel.

“I was only kidding.” It was a matter-of-fact confession.

“Oh, I know.” The young man drank the rest of his beer as he listened to the young woman brush her teeth and then shuffle with quiet feet to the bed near the window. He waited a moment, twirling the bottom-wash of beer in his hand before dumping it. Then he poured a glass of water, chugged it, brushed his teeth in the restroom and sat on the chair next the young woman who was rummaging through the top drawer of her dresser. He took off his wet jeans and got into bed...