More Than Meets The Eye.

Later that afternoon we were stopped at the tracks as a train passed.

"HOO SHIT!"

I looked up from picking my fingernails. There was a yellow smudge under one, but I didn't remember eating anything mustardy, so I was kinda annoyed, "What?"

"There were two guys doing kung-fu on one of those train cars!" she squeaked.

My eyes, down and to the right for a moment, accessing the am-I-getting-shitted part of the brain. I decided she was joking. The joking was unanticipated, and not even particularly funny. But I appreciated it: we hadn't really been talking much that day; one of those silences that grows in a relationship sometimes. I laughed politely, "Hnhn.. That would be crazy... Wouldn't it?"

She didn't laugh. "I'm not joking there were two guys up there and they were doing kung-fu."

Eyes, down/right. Perhaps this was some kind of new game she was making up, a game in which the first person says something absurd and the second person plays along, a game designed to create a shared pretend-world for the two players, thus bringing them closer together as a couple and helping them forget the many small cuts that had snipped the lines of communication between them. Or something.

I played along, "Oh crap! I know who those guys are, they belong to the Cobra Commander's elite team of train hijackers! Or, no, one of them is Cobra and the other is G. I. Joe's ninja guy, Shadowfox? Or Shadowstorm or something, I can't remember his name... Anyway we should go help the good-guy out! Let's roll! Haha..."

Her eyes, down/right. "No Joey, seriously I'm not kidding, there were two guys, Hispanic or Asian, I couldn't tell, one didn't have a shirt and the other was wearing a white shirt and they were kicking at each other and they were in the kung-fu pose."

My eyes, straight into hers, "Like... How did they stay..." I stopped.

My eyes, down/right.

The train ended and we crossed the tracks.

We rode along in silence, her driving, me looking out the window wondering what in the hell she was trying to prove. A new and deeper silence sprouted up from the center console, twisting around my arm and across the back of my neck.

I wanted her to say something, maybe she was joking and now it had gone too far and she was embarrassed, or... I couldn't imagine what the point was.

We drove a few more blocks. At a red light she asked me if I thought she was lying, I said no.

Later that night as we lay down to sleep I told her I believed her.

"Really? I'm serious, I really did see them."

"Yeah, baby, I do. I guess that would be a weird thing to make up, so I believe you."

But I didn't.