Geist

I had raised the mug of hot chocolate to my lips, prepared to take a drink of the luke-warm brew, except that a hand had gently come to rest on the top of mine.  “Do I know you?”  The voice was unfamiliar, so I did not bother to look up. 
         “No.”  The hand was removed, and I proceeded to take that belated drink. 
         “Odd.  I could of sworn you reminded me of someone I saw not so long ago…”  I could just hear the flashback begin inside the other person’s head, probably involving some semi-fictitious happening, which had nothing to do with anyone who looked anything like me.  As he did not speak immediately, I assumed that the man who had interrupted me was through talking to me, so I focused the entirety of my attention back on the page of comics that I had just been reading.  After what seemed like thirty seconds, this individual interrupted me again.  “Is your name George, or something?” 
         “No to the first one, yes to the second.”  I raised the newspaper, obscuring my face.  There was a particularly funny comic about a cat and a squirrel and a pine tree in the newspaper today, so I decided to read it twice.  I took one last drink of the frosty brew, only to decide afterwards that it was not deserving of having that drink.  I lowered the cold, bitter liquid to the counter. 
         “Do you ski?”
         I thought of not answering that question, except I decided to end this conversation in such a way that this man, whoever he was, would know not to continue it.  I folded the newspaper down the center, opposite of the way that it had come.  I turned to look at the person.  “What do you think?”  I lowered the level of quiet patience in my voice and significantly raised the peeved annoyance.
         “I don’t know.  I’ve never met you before.”  He had followed my example and made his voice sound angry, though I could tell that it was a lie.  I flicked the paper back up, thereby ending the conversation.  I returned my attention to the newspaper, moving on to the obituaries.  I was unable to start reading, for there was a faint niggling in the back of my mind.  I could not concentrate because of it, and began to wonder if I had seen this stranger before. 
         “You know what I mean.  I don’t remember if I have met you before.  Not that I haven’t actually met you before…”  He trailed off, this time not ending with an inflection stating that he had just entered a flashback, but an inflection stating he had just noted his surroundings.  “Um, I feel awkward asking this, but is this by any chance a ski lodge?”
         I closed my eyes in exasperation.  There was obviously no avoiding this nutter.  I carefully folded the newspaper, creasing the edges with my middle finger, and laid the finished product on the rough hewn pine table with the antler legs.  “Yes.  We are in a ski lodge.  In a place called Vail.  In December.  One day after thirteen inches of snow.”  I pressed my fingertips together, smiling a smile seen only on particularly perverse lawyers, though my voice remained angelic.  “I hope-”
         He broke me off pre-tirade.  “No need to be testy, nutter.  Just trying to be neighborly.”  He turned around on his swivel chair, and began banging away at a chess set.  “Just.”  A queen took out a little girl’s rook.  The girl retaliated by launching a spit wad at his head, followed by a bishop clobbering a pawn off the table.  “Trying.”  He picked up a knight, which treacherously backstabbed an opposing soldier.  The girl threw a tantrum, and castled her king.  “To.”  A pawn lashed out and nixed an opposing bishop.  The girl dissolved into tears, then made an apparently stupid move, moving her queen out of a defensive position, to a very useless place.  “Be!”  A rook exploded across the field, vanquishing a defending pawn.  The girl smiled a vampire smile.  The queen moved. 
         “Checkmate, Meester!” 
         “Oh.”
         “So much for the melodrama.”  I unfolded the obits, and took a careful glance before moving on to more serious subjects.  The man was silent for a good ten minutes, before he pulled out a dog-eared book that he had been reading.  He sat there in silence.  I kept glancing up, expecting him to say something, but he didn’t.  He knew that I knew that he wanted to say something, but he also knew that him not allowing me to answer the question (a question which I already knew the answer to, even though he hadn’t yet asked it) would kill me, so he intentionally remained silent for three hours, absentmindedly reading from “Plant Propogation: You need a Masters to read this.”  I sat there the entire time knowing that at any moment he would break.  At three hours and one minute he checked his watch, and walked out of the room.  I would never speak to him again.
         The next day, when I was in the bathroom shaving, it suddenly hit me that I knew who he was.