Grotty Little Cafe

As the agony of the leaves progressed, so did the voice of the under-trained actor playing out a drama on the screen in the corner. "Dante! Why?! WHY!?" cried the woman. "Why!" cry the unfolding leaves. "Because," answers a scab on Hugh's lower lip, taking a premature sip of the brew. He was alone, as always in such afternoons he managed to stray away from the mop and bucket and steal an hour or two with the cheap ceramics of the underground shop.

The tea was awful. A sugar cube bobbed, dissolving not, near the 1 o' clock edge. Had Sophia received his note? He'd sent her a note, yes. A very curt slip of a thing, asking her to, if she were so inclined, meet him in this slice of purgatory under the brothels and cockmongers and distilleries. At this rate, hopes were low.

A dull sounding buzzer rung through the shop, almost as if it had grown tired announcing the entrance of the scum of England. But, the young woman wasn't quite a piece of scum. She was more of a teenager, than anything. Her messy red hair, dark in the cold lighting up in a messy bun, she was wearing a comfortable looking blouse and jeans. There was still a small curve around her stomach.

Sophia carefully sat herself down across the fold-up table from Hugh. She motioned towards the waitress with the dyed black curls and raccoon eyes. A few minutes later, she had a cup of tea, just as weak as Hugh's in front of her.

"So... how are you, Hugh?" Sophia finally said, as she took the first sip of tea. She shuddered. It tasted disgusting.

Hugh prodded at the sugar cube with a plastic teaspoon, grumbling an incoherent reply.

"I heard our kid, if you find that interesting." Sophia said to him calmly, as she carefully served herself a couple sugar cubes into her own cup of tea.

"Guessed." He let go of the spoon. It floated briefly on the surface of the muck before falling, handle-heavy, onto the table with a small splash.

"It was a boy..." Sophia took another sip, so she wouldn't appear rude. But, she desperately wished she had a biscuit right there. "And, his name is Robin."

He preferred cardinals, but that certainly wasn't anything to name a child. "Oh."

"Well, I wasn't going to name him Cardinal. Cardinal Sawyer just sounds silly." Sophia said, with a very tiny smile. However distant their relationship had become, Sophia knew Hugh all too well.

She still knew how to read his mind. "Oh." Hugh had fallen back into his old way of not making eye contact and keeping his forearms close -- folded on the table as opposed to crossing his chest, yet the same principle.

"Have you always been this stoic?" Sophia asked him rather blatantly.

"No," he defended, taking up a brown paper napkin and cleaning up the small mess the spoon had made.

"It certainly seems like it, but, how have you been, Hugh? You haven't been talking much." Sophia said, rather darkly.

He crinkled up the napkin in the palm of his hand and held it there. "Haven't got much to say."

"What, something must have happened. We haven't spoken to each other in months." Sophia insisted.

"Moved a ways down the street from here, if that's anything." Passed the napkin from one fist to the other and back again; he needed something to do with his hands.

"In this dump?" Sophia's brow wrinkled together. "Why would you want to?"