Surveillance. A Short Story. Part 3.

"Nice glasses," said a voice beside Jude.

It was a voice Jude recognized. But he could not place it immediately. This happened to him often. A face glimpsed. A smell caught. Something he knew he had come across before. Yet over time - over the years - the experience slipped away...forgotten. The things that made him who he was at times dissolved.

Jude wasn't sure who he was in these moments. Who was anybody then? What even was humanity but centuries upon centuries misremembered, cast out, carrying the remaining rubble of Babylon with no plot to place them?

He remembered the audio Verse had played for him hours before going to bar Eudaimonia.

No, M's voice stressed. Things are great. I'm just a little too tired to come over today. Next time, OK? No, no...please don't send me anything from Uber Eats. (pause) OK. If you insist on cookies from The Cookie Place...send that.

Then Jude recalled what Verse had stressed to him.

You need to know what M sounds like in case she gets away from you. Verse insisted upon this. It will help you locate her. Track her. Please provide all the necessary information so I can get what I need. The glasses will protect you. There is strength in surveillance...however hidden. It's for her own good. She'll never know. She'll never need to know. What's the saying? What they don't know won't hurt them? That, that. She knows what she needs to know because I have organized everything for her to make it so. Trust me. Trust the glasses. Trust this way of things.

"They look good," the familiar voice continued. "On your face. Your head, I mean...your head and your face."

Jude's hands rested ten and two on the bar. When he turned to face this mysterious voice, it felt at first as though he were about to be arrested by the police. Instead of the cops, though, it was M all by herself.

"They're mine," Jude stuttered. "I got them for me."

Jude felt paralyzed...caught in Verse's and his act. Was he supposed to be even talking to her? Jude wasn't sure. Verse hadn't said anything about it. He wanted to reach out - text him...but it was too late for that. She was right there. All he could do was talk and try to act as normally as he could.

M half-laughed at Jude, stating the obvious. "I'm sure you did."

"I mean, they were a gift for myself."

Jude shakily readjusted them. He tucked both sides tightly behind his ears so they wouldn't slip. Then he reoriented them, steady now.

"Thank you for noticing."

"My pleasure." She smiled and held out her hand. "I'm M."

Jude wasn't sure whether to give his real name. He hated to lie. It didn't feel right to put on someone else's skin and apply their imaginary brain, but it needed to be done for surveillance.

He held out his hand and said the first one that came to mind.

"Versailles?" M asked. "That's a name? I thought it was a city?"

"A palace," Jude replied, feeling the rising heat of his cheeks as they were about to explode, blushing. "It's also my name...Versailles."

"Just the one name?"

Jude nodded as he tried to track where the name flub had stemmed from. Ah, yes, he was thinking about what Verse would approve of - what he wanted. He said it only because he was so focused on making sure that Verse saw everything Jude was seeing, so he could, from afar, feel in control of M. It was what Jude was ordered to do.

"Strange." M pursed her lips and cocked her head to the side, staring no place other than directly into Jude's eyes behind their semi-clear, lightly tinted glasses. Jude felt as if she were examining the outer and inner workings of his eyeball. He had never met someone so unapologetic about where they fastened their gaze, without reason or apology. Strangely, this put him at ease, which made him wonder...does she feel the same?

"To be honest - can I be honest?"

"Sure," Jude replied. "Probably the fastest way to get to know each other."

M stopped and eyed Jude up and down. "You want to get to know me?"

Jude's mouth slacked. The stale, dank air of the barroom rushed in and over his cheeks, across his teeth, under his tongue. All of it, punishment for saying what was really in him. It tasted like stale popcorn... botched barley...cigarette smoke. Carbon dioxide. Fun at the cost of death. Horrible.

He remained. He closed his mouth and tried to gather himself as old memories rolled back, visions of his younger self talking to the girls of his youth throughout elementary, middle school, and high school: babbling, sweating, eyes bulging, and then just as fast sucking back in only to then viciously turn around without warning and sink further into his skull.

Jude had trouble talking to girls back then and, he still did yet, he remained.

"Very forward," M replied, not smiling but semi-keen. Jude noticed how her original boredom with the bar from before appeared to be fading away, and a new fate - a possible path - began to reveal itself. "They usually aren't like that. I usually don't like it. I know my ex wouldn't."

The glasses around Jude's head squeezed and then surged with what could only be a jolt of eel-like electricity. Jude literally let out a yelp and jumped a little in the air out of surprise and shock. M gasped and bounced back to protect herself from what appeared to be Jude internally combusting. Jude, out of commitment (his downfall) and poise, did not remove the glasses. If there was one thing he was truly gifted with in terms of character, it was finishing something through, even if it was the worst thing for him. There was no use starting something that was meant to be finished. How else could Jude prove that he was actually here otherwise?

"You jumped." M had noticed. "You screamed a little."

"Your ex?" Jude managed to ask, trying to gather himself.

His eyes reset upon her. The glasses, then, were ready and waiting to see and listen to anything and everything she had to say. There was no escaping what the glasses wanted to see, hear, and report back. They needed to be everywhere to get back to Verse. That's what they were there for.

"Relax, relax." M moved around Jude to get better situated with the bar, and he noticed that he was a bit closer to him. "We're together - kind of - and we talk. Here, there."

M sighed. Jude thought she looked like a pretty red balloon slowly deflating in the sun. He didn't say this. He wanted to, but he didn't.

"To go back...honesty," said M. "For me, at least, has always been about love."

M brought her bowl of yellow Funyun's along. She plucked an unlucky one from the faux-wooden bowl she held in one of her hands and popped one into her mouth - crunch, crunch, crunch - watching Jude the whole time. She had barely taken her eyes off of him...observing curiously with no definitive reason as of yet as to why. And Jude welcomed it, half for Verse and half, secretly, for himself. In a sad and pitiful kind of way...it felt good to be reminded what it felt like to be seen...looked at.

Life had turned into a series of transactions throughout the middle of his life: coffee for energy, streaming subscriptions for distraction, gym memberships to stave off the guilt of the inevitable - to increase endorphins to alter his mood, to reduce the pain to something bearable for the day-to-day. Every desire was disguised as a requirement with a receipt tallied in dollars, convincing Jude - convincing everyone - this was the cost of being and staying present in the modern world.

"Um," Jude murmured. "My grandma used to say that, 'Love is going outside to check if it's raining before your other half does.' So, for me...I guess... Love is about being both unconsciously selfless and being honest."

Jude cleared his throat to show himself he was really talking.

"Right?"

M's face looked as if an invisible glass of water had splashed over her. The room, once filled with the regular chatter and noise of any bar, fell silent. Still. Usually, M had a handle on the space and time around her. In bars, at work, at school, and even at home, she knew how to hold herself in spaces where an identity, in its way, was already set. But in the after-moment of Jude's words, she felt like a little girl again, suddenly reaching out for one of her parents' hands - reaching, reaching, reaching, fingers wriggling, desperate but only touching air.

She, too, tried to gather herself, standing up straight-straighter than before-and then raising her hand to catch the bartender's attention.

Sentimentalism - or at least that's what she told herself it was - had hit M so hard she needed a drink. A strong drink. Not a beer. Something sharper. Something that could cut the feeling and settle it down.

"I haven't thought about her in a long time," Jude admitted as they both waited for the bartender.

M remained silent. It appeared to Jude that she didn't want to talk until she got what she needed. He stepped back, only to have M step forward in tandem with him. The bartender looked over at both of them from afar. They were trying to put out a small fire in the popcorn machine. The gesture of food - a simple snack - had been a nice touch, Jude thought, until it had burst into flames. The bartender noticed M as the mini-fire whipped at his face, his eyes, his hair. He seemed almost comfortable with it. They had done this before.

"Versailles is very suspicious," M said, breaking her imposed silence. She tossed another Funyun in her mouth. "But nowadays someone could be called Banana Pudding Frederick Shoe the Terminator, and we'd all have to be OK with it, right?"

Jude nodded in agreement, unsure how to react given her moment of mute, and then, for some odd and idiotic reason, asked her what her kind-of-together, half‑ex's name was.

"You know him or something?" asked M. She took a step back to get an entire view of him. "I've never seen you around."

"It was a stupid question," Jude bumbled, fearing there was going to be another hard electric jolt to come from the glasses.

It was the first thing on his mind. He knew he shouldn't ask. Of course, he knew. He did it anyway. But Jude wanted to hear it from M outright. Jude needed her to tell him everything about herself: the fears, the joys, the secrets tucked beneath the pillow in the middle of the night; the way she maybe liked how the hot water of the shower burned her skin, and she liked it; what she honestly thought happened after she inevitably died. Did M care? Would she feel like she had been here at all? Or were these only questions Jude wanted answered, finding someone - M - to give them voice, even if they were wrong, or lies, or not at all what he wanted to hear.

"If I'm being honest...which it feels like we are," M said. "Nothing feels quite as stupid but necessary as the truth right now."

Then, M faced Jude squarely. Her body aligned with his, and to her, it felt as if she were suddenly facing the whole world and every imagined edge. She had seen herself as so many people in the past. Never did M think she would discover a part of who she felt she was through a conversation with a stranger. Life was supposed to work that way, but it never had for her until. For M, the feeling was curiosity, confidence, and warmth. She had only ever experienced it in the mornings under the Christmas tree, or in the soft, flicking embers of birthday cake candles - a known that had always been known, but at some point, lost.

Before either of them could speak, the bartender sauntered over. Gruff-looking. Tall, but stooped like a tree struck by lightning - barely hanging on, like most. They clearly knew M. Her face said everything. Without a word, the bartender poured two tequilas, provided a few limes, and set down a tin thimble of salt to share between them.

Jude tried to stop them.

M gave him a look.

Not just disappointment. The kind born of actual abandonment. The kind too painful to name, even to one's closest loved ones or most expensive therapists.

"Of course," said Jude, yielding.

"Thank you."

M took her shot in her hand, and Jude took his. The glasses were recording everything, with Verse close on the other side. He now seemed unbothered by what he was seeing and hearing. Was this what he actually wanted? For Jude to take M off his hands. No, not her. Not like this. Verse had never told Jude about the shock treatment. Would he have said no to it? Probably not. He would have liked to know the repercussions of stepping outside whatever bounds Verse set for him. He had accepted it was the only way to get back to the path of whatever this new purpose he sought was. Sometimes someone has to make a decision, even if they are not sure it's absolutely the right one; fraught and spiraling in the in-between until solid ground can finally be found.

"To all the eyes that cannot see." M held up her glass. "And to all the eyes that can, may they fall on the beauties as much as the horrors of this world."

They took the salt from both of their hands, then tipped them back and let it burn the core of their throats as their eyes watered together. Frantic sighs and gasps -hand waving. Then teetering, light laughter. The room for Jude got lighter, framed in a kaleidoscope. He hadn't drunk actual liquor in a long time, and for a second, he was afraid of what he might suddenly start doing. M finally smiled after the pain of the drink passed, self-correcting Jude's anxiety. He had never felt such a sense of falling back.

"To being well-rounded," said M, finishing her toast.

"Yes." Jude put down his shot glass on the bar. "To that."

"I have to be honest with you, Versailles - you're different from the others."

Jude, with his head slightly swimming, feeling the growing heat and blood underneath his cheeks start to swell, tried to regain his attention.

"The others?" asked Jude.

"I kind of said it before."

"You did?"

Her gaze and stillness made him think outside of his body, as if she had been in control the entire time Jude had stepped into the bar. Verse was watching too. Everyone was watching each other from one angle or another.

"Verse's others," she said.

Jude felt the first signs of another surge of electricity from the glasses. It started as a soft humming - a mini vibration that began to rise. He was prepared for it this time and knew, though he didn't understand, that he deserved it in some way. M reached out her hand, took the glasses from Jude's face, and absorbed the shock until it passed, then dropped them on the ground with a pitiful, plastic rattle.

Jude's vision was, once again, clear and all his own.

"Others?"

"We were falling apart," M explained. "And we still loved each other, but we weren't able to see each other like we used to. We've changed too much and far, far too well to keep doing this.

Jude looked around. Clear. Unobstructed - for the first time since he had arrived. The bar was the same: messy, loud, wild. TVs blared from every corner. Outside, through the large bay windows, he saw the sidewalk and the street. A city of life, rushing past, splintering into a million directions at once. No thought. Just motion, motion, and action. And beyond that - beyond his city and to all other cities - hundreds of horizons. Each one hoping to be seen, to be recognized; to matter now, in the present, and not for tomorrow.

"Who am I to you?" asked Jude. "To Verse?"

The tequila was starting to get on top of him now, but he managed by holding himself steady by holding the bar with one hand behind his back and still facing the entirety of M.

"Verse designed these glasses," explained M. She kicked at them with the toe of her boot, rattling the things a bit, surely broken. "And our idea was if I could look at whoever we got to wear them for whatever reason, Verse could convince them to - in your case, a place to stay and maybe your job back - then I could look at him the way that I used to...anew."

M sighed. Jude could see all the years she had wasted fighting the inevitable passing weight of memory to try to salvage love. She was doing what all lovers do. What all people do: refuse to let go. It was the impossible fight to go back in time for one stupid reason, assumed to be honorable. To save what was meant to be. And what was always, inevitably, going to die so they could live and change and live differently.

"And Verse wanted the control. He needed it to show that he wasn't giving up, but he started to need to see everything. I learned he gave them to my parents, my friends, telling them they were some new invention that would make everything more accessible and optimized specifically for them. He even gave them to my fucking mailman. But I couldn't tell them. I didn't want to let them know what was going on, so I let Verse have it. Have them. Surveillance became the only way to uphold everything we had built over everything."

Falling forward, M admitted everything. Jude took her hand, felt her skin, the trembling heat to heat. Of course, she let him. There was nowhere else to go.

"With Verse… through all of this…I realize - I think - I've been living in anticipation."

She raked a shaky hand through her hair and leaned closer to Jude.

"Forcing myself into the false promise of being seen. All I've wanted - at least what I know - when it does happen, when it finally arrives, is simple. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel alive. To be present enough to experience whatever it is. Directly. Fully. And then, if I can will it, to let go. To let go unafraid that some new moment won't come again."

"I don't have anything anymore," Jude admitted. "That's why I went to Verse, who told me to get something back, anything really, I needed to do this."

"It's not your fault," M insisted. "We were manipulating you and all those others to keep up this remembered self. It's not real. None of the hours of tapes. Hundreds."

M took a few breaths and then felt her chest with her own hand open palm; pressed.

"I don't want to select, stage, and filter those moments anymore. I don't want to have nostalgia replace the present as all the good and bad experiences of my existence right now go by me unengaged."

Jude took M's other hand. He brought her close.

Together they stepped forward, shattering Verse's glasses beneath their feet. It was not an action that needed to be recorded. Not an effort that deserved to be remembered in some narrative frame for later use. It didn't need to look good. Not for anyone. Not for anything. Not even, ironically, for themselves. The gesture was only for now - wasted and forgotten for no social cachet of all the unremembered days of today, tomorrow, and tomorrow's tomorrow.