(Photo by Enric Cruz Lopez)

Eleven o’clock arrived and with it came Simeon and the Indian food. The receptionist was already outside the clinic when he walked up.

“There’s a park just over there,” she told him, pointing.

“Sounds good,” Simeon replied and they began walking. “I hope you like tikka masala,” he added.

“I do, actually,” she said, “but who doesn’t?”

“Right?” Simeon gave a short chuckle. “I got it a little spicy, and there’s also some naan.”

“I do love me some spice,” she replied. “How’d you know? Did Jenny set this all up?”

“No, I told you I don’t really know Jenny.”

She eyed him suspiciously.

“How’d you know about her, then?” she asked.

Simeon was about to respond when he realized her lips hadn’t moved. It was actually a relief to him that she hadn’t asked him that question since he really didn’t know how to answer it.

“So, uh, what’s your major?” he asked to avoid an awkward silence from developing.

“Theater,” she replied. “What about you?”

“Economics.”

“Fun,” she replied in that slightly drawn out way that meant she actually thought that sounded boring but didn’t want to be rude. “At least it pays good.”

“It can, but you have to get in with the right company.”

“It can what?” she asked, a little confused. “Are there seriously companies that are fun to work for as an economist?

“No it –

He was going to say it can pay well but then realized she might not have said that last part about the pay. He may have just heard it.

“You know, some people are more fun to work with, I guess,” he said instead.

“I don’t think I could do it, staring at spreadsheets all day, doing math.”

She shivered with obvious melodrama and a hint of a grin.

“It’s not for everyone,” he admitted, “but I enjoy it.”

They arrived at the park and sat down at one of the picnic tables that were scattered around. They weren’t bolted or chained down to anything so people tended to just grab them and move them to wherever they wanted them. A few of the tables were upside down but for the most part they were undamaged.

For the next few minutes, they portioned out the food and started to eat. Periodically, Simeon would catch snippets of her voice in his head, though it was mostly her reminding herself to be back to work on time.

“Oh, let me set an alarm so you aren’t late getting back,” Simeon said, pulling out his cell phone and doing just that.

“Thank you,” she said with a relieved smile.

If this was supposed to be a way he could prove to himself that he was just mildly crazy and not actually hearing people’s thoughts, it wasn’t working very well.

“Are you in any plays right now?” he asked her. Regardless of his personal concerns, he was still interested in making this a good date.

“No,” she said wistfully. “I love acting but I’m not quite good enough to really pursue it. I’m more of a techie, doing the behind the scenes work,” she added to make sure he understood what a techie was. “Eventually I’d like to work for a big theater company of something. Maybe make it onto Broadway, you know?”

“That’d be really cool,” Simeon agreed. “And who knows, maybe you’ll get to do some acting along the way.”

For some reason, that made her smile falter and she looked away.

“I’m not good enough,” he heard her say but Simeon couldn’t tell if she’d said it out loud or not. “And I’m too afraid.”

“Maybe you could do, like, community theater?” he suggested. “There’s an old theater by where I grew up that did a few plays each year. No one was all that good, but it was still fun to go and see.”

“No, I,” she began and Simeon noticed how her hands were clenched to the edge of the table. “I have really bad stage fright. I get panic attacks and…I had to go to the hospital the last time I tried to perform on stage.”

“I’m sorry,” Simeon said, feeling like an idiot for pressing her on the subject. “I guess we all have our problems.”

“Yeah,” she replied and the mood at their table was heavy and threatening to become depressing.

Not knowing what else to do, Simeon grabbed for a piece of naan. It was just out of reach so he stretched, leaning over the table. As he moved, the foil wrapping that held the naan slid a couple inches away from him, keeping just out of his reach. Simeon froze. He hadn’t touched it, yet it had moved on its own. He looked up to his date and she was looking at the naan wrapper as well with a slightly puzzled look on her face.

“You know, I don’t think I got your name,” Simeon said at once to try and distract from what had happened. Was she looking at the naan wrapper because she had seen it move too? Was he imagining it?

“I’m Claire,” she said, still a little distracted. “Jenny didn’t tell you my name?”

“I, uh,” he reached for the naan again, sliding a little ways down the bench, and again the naan wrapper slid out of reach.

“Are you doing that?” Claire asked, pointing at the naan wrapper. “Is he doing a magic trick to cheer me up?”

That last part, Simeon was pretty sure, was not spoken out loud by her. He gave one final attempt at grabbing the naan and it slid right off the edge of the table. It did not, however, fall to the ground. Instead it just hung there in the air as though the table were still beneath it.

They were both at a loss for words and as Simeon sat back upright, the naan came back with him, always staying the same distance away from him as though there was an invisible rod connecting them. Claire looked under the table as though looking for just such a device but didn’t find anything.

“Are you really an economy major?” she asked and then began looking around them. “Is there a hidden camera or something?”

Simeon heard her in his head beginning to worry this was all some elaborate hoax, that maybe Jenny was pranking her. But if she could see the moving naan wrapper, then either she was part of his hallucinations or else what he had seen was, in fact, real. Carefully, Simeon leaned his body back but this time the naan wrapper didn’t move. He leaned forwards and finally got himself a piece of naan.

“How were you doing that?” she asked, picking up the whole package of naan and inspecting it.

“I don’t know,” Simeon admitted. “That’s actually part of why I saw Dr Roche.”

“I see things, sometimes, that don’t make sense,” he said, “like the naan moving.”

“But I saw that too,” Claire said. “You just did some kind of magic trick.”

“I swear it wasn’t me,” he told her. “I don’t know any magic tricks at all.”

“So you see things,” Claire said, a bit more to herself than to Simeon.

“Liar,” her voice said without her moving her lips.

This was not going well, but hadn’t been expecting a second date anyway so why not just say the rest of it now and be done with it.

“I also hear voices,” he told her. “It’s like I hear their thoughts.”

“Uh huh, another magic trick,” she said and her expression was turning to one of disdain.

“It’s just a…” he was going say it was just a hallucination, but hadn’t he been right about Jenny, the ring, and pretty much everything else he’d heard? “Fine,” he said, “let me do my trick. Think of a number between, no, think of any number.”

She was looking more and more like she was going to get up and leave but then he heard her voice in his head.

“five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred,” he said. “And you were singing it.”

Claire was, in fact, about to get up but she stopped after Simeon spoke.

“Is that from a musical?” he asked.

“Lucky guess,” Claire replied. “Look, this is getting weird. Thanks for the food. The magic tricks were cool. Tell Jenny, uh, tell her not to set me up like this again.”

“Two,” Simeon said as he heard the number pop up in Claire’s mind. “And now you’re going through a speech from Shakespeare?”

“Stop, how are you doing that?” she demanded.

“I was right?” he asked, almost as surprised as she was.

“If you can really read my thoughts,” Simeon heard her say without her lips moving, “then stand up.”

He stood up and she leaned back in shock.

“Jump.”

He jumped.

“Pour the rest of the tikka masala on your head.”

His shoulder’s sagged at that one.

“I, really?” he asked.

“Really what?” she asked back as though daring him.

With a sigh, Simeon grabbed the tikka masala and was halfway to dumping it on his head when Claire shot out her hand and grabbed his rising arm, stopping him from ruining a perfectly good meal, not to mention his shirt.

“You told Dr Roche about this?”

“I thought I was just hearing voices,” he said. “Only my roommate thought it was real.”

Claire still looked like she was half expecting a hidden camera crew to jump out at any moment and Jenny to shout surprise or something, but she was having a hard time denying what had just happened.

“Do you hear everyone’s thoughts?” she asked with a sudden fear. “All of them? All the time?”

“No,” he told her. “Some people I hardly hear at all. Some people I hear more of, but I’m pretty sure I don’t hear more than just surface thoughts. I’ve never heard anything too embarrassing or, you know.”

Claire relaxed a little. Simeon hadn’t exactly been totally honest with her, since he had heard some rather interesting things from time to time, but for the most part what he heard was harmless.

“So you aren’t actually hallucinating, then,” Claire observed.

“Not unless you’re part of the hallucinations,” Simeon replied.

“Dr Roche told me once that visual hallucinations were extremely rare,” she said, shaking her head.

“So still a possibility,” Simeon said and Claire shrugged.

He sat back down and took a bite of his tikka masala. It was spicier than he was generally used to but it wasn’t bad. Claire resumed eating her meal as well. As first dates went, this one wasn’t the worst he’d ever been on and judging from what he could hear Claire thinking, he might get a second.

Simeon’s alarm began to chime.

“I’ll walk you back,” he said and they cleaned up their trash and dropped it off in one of the trash cans on their way back to the clinic.

“Want to show Dr Roche?” Claire asked when they were about halfway there.

“Should I?”

“Well if you aren’t hallucinating then you don’t really need to keep seeing her,” she pointed out.

He thought about that for the rest of the walk back. When they reached the door, he pulled it open for Claire but didn’t follow her in.

“I think,” he said, “it’d be best to just delete my next appointment. She told me if it doesn’t interfere with me living my life, I didn’t have to worry about it, so I guess I don’t need to make anyone else worry about it.”

“What do you mean?” Claire asked.

“Can you imagine what this could mean to someone like her? If I really can hear people’s thoughts?”

“I don’t think she’d turn you into some kind of science experiment, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Still, I don’t think I need to bother her with it. Just keep it our little secret.”

Claire shrugged but nodded and turned to go back to work.

As Simeon left, he heard her voice in his head once more.

“You forgot to get my phone number.”

He smiled and pulled out his phone, adding in the number he was now hearing.