Alive for Five Seconds

Paul looks around the diner and rubs his fingers against his lips.

Samantha looks down at the table and rubs her hands together and then messes with her hair.

Paul lights a cigarette and blows smoke into his hands.

“Who are we?” says Paul.

“You are Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless,” Samantha says, “And I am some girl with short hair.”

“You are Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” says Paul. “Actually, no.”

“I am Anna Karina in Une Femme Est Une Femme,” says Samantha.

“You’re right,” says Paul. “Haha. Haha?”

“Haha.”

 

Paul asks Samantha what she has been doing for the past three weeks. He has not seen her in three weeks. Samantha rubs her hands together and looks down at the diner table.

“Reading and drinking coffee. Reading and drinking coffee. Reading and smoking cigarettes. Trying to work out things and then destroying things in my head and feeling funny.”

 

A waiter walks over and stands by the table.

Paul says loudly, “I want to fuck over this establishment and crush capitalist society.”

Samantha says, “That sounds like fun, like in that movie which I have forgotten the name of.”

The waiter says, “Would you like any coffee or tea?”

Paul says, “We want neither.”

The waiter leaves and Paul takes two flasks of coffee from his satchel and unscrews the lids and gives one flask to Samantha and Samantha and Paul both drink coffee from the flasks that Paul has brought with him from his home.

“We are crushing capitalist society,” says Samantha. “This café is not profiting from our desires.”

 

“I am always pretending,” says Paul. “I am always lying.”

“Me too. We are much too self-conscious,” says Samantha.

“No,” says Paul, “You are just saying a cliché. People always say, ‘Don’t be so self-conscious’ all the time. Self-consciousness being ‘bad’ is a cliché. If the only reason that you do not want to be so self-conscious is because another person has told you that being self-conscious is ‘bad’, then you are living in ‘bad faith.’ If we want to live for ourselves, then we need to be more self-conscious. That would be more novel and more fun.”

“Okay,” says Samantha. “Let’s do it.”

 

Two people walk away from a table nearby and leave their coffee mugs on the table. Samantha walks over to the other table and picks up a mug and then drops it on the ground and the mug smashes and then she picks up the other mug and drops it on the ground and the other mug smashes.

“That was exciting,” says Samantha.

“I haven’t seen that in any movie ever before,” says Paul.

“For about five seconds I felt alive,” says Samantha. "I was exciting in complete novelty."

“For about five seconds you weren’t a cliché,” says Paul. “I feel as though mindless property damage is a good way to feel alive momentarily. We have to make sure that this doesn't become popular, because then it will become a cliché. We have to make sure that nobody from MTV finds out about this.”

“Self-conscious mindless property damage is foundational for my newly-developed philosophy of life,” says Samantha.