A Map of a City a Thousand Miles Away

He had seen her sitting there nearly every day since he had started coming to the shop himself. She would give her name as Marina, order the special, and take a seat in the corner. Every day she would eat the food that she had bought, making notes in a binder full of notes until she had finished her eating or her writing. It wasn’t always one or the other, but the second she deemed that one had ended she would pick up her notebook, throw away her trash, and walk right back out the door.
On day she came in with a man (he thought that it was probably a brother or a cousin, although he could have been a particularly young uncle or some other relation). They sat down, and while she ate and wrote he pulled out a map of a city a thousand miles away and drew out routes to some destination that he could not discern. They didn’t say a word to each other, until she muttered something to him and they left. The next day he came in with a book, and she met him there. Neither of them ordered food, they talked to each other. They seemed to be angry, but they seemed to reach some sort of resolution by the end of their meeting. She pulled a map out of her pocket, lightly whacked him on the head with it, and left it on the table when she left. He grabbed it soon after, making his own way out. The man never came back to the shop, but she didn’t seem to be particularly worried so neither was he.
The pattern resumed, continuing unbroken, until one day she reached the final page of the binder. The next day she gave it to the person at the counter as she made her order and walked to her table to sit down. When his food arrived, they brought him the binder. He glanced at the woman but saw that she was already engrossed in her meal, and did not seem to be paying any mind to him. He read the story inside.
The story in the binder was one of a man and a woman, one an aspiring author, who spend their days watching each other, coming up with ideas for stories based on what they observe without ever speaking or even realizing what the other is doing. One day, the woman publishes her book and stops showing up at the place she first saw the man. On the final page is a single question written: “Do you think it should end there?”.
He looks up, and meets the woman’s eyes. She stands, and he sets the papers down to stand as well.

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