The train had entered evening by the time Missy found André Breton. He was seated beside the window, watching coincidence arrange the landscape into something suspiciously meaningful.
“People keep talking about objective chance,” Missy said. “As though it were a rare animal.”
Breton smiled.
“Perhaps it is.”
“Have you ever seen one in the wild?”
“I have seen traces.”
“Footprints?”
“Coincidences.”
Missy nodded thoughtfully.
“So people wonder what this mysterious objective chance actually is.”
“And what do you tell them?”
“That they should ask you.”
Breton sighed.
“How unfortunate.”
“You started it.”
Missy flipped to a fresh page.
“Very well. Let us imagine a skeptic.”
“A useful species.”
“The skeptic says, ‘Mr. Breton, I met someone interesting. Then I noticed a few coincidences. That proves nothing.’”
Breton nodded.
“The skeptic is correct.”
Missy blinked.
“That was quick.”
“Coincidences prove very little.”
“Then why write about them?”
“Because proof and meaning are not the same thing.”
Missy wrote that down immediately.
Breton watched her.
“You write down rather a lot.”
“I don’t trust memory.”
“A wise precaution.”
“Besides, if I don’t write things down, Mouse Trapp starts improving them.”
Breton looked concerned.
“As in making them better?”
“As in replacing them with squirrel notes.”
“Ah.”
The train rounded a curve.
The last light of evening lingered on the horizon.
Missy returned to the subject.
“So objective chance isn’t evidence.”
“No.”
“It’s not fate.”
“No.”
“It’s not magic.”
“Probably not.”
“‘Probably’?”
Breton smiled.
“I am a poet, Missy. We leave a few doors unlocked.”
She laughed.
“Then what makes a coincidence meaningful?”
Breton was quiet for a moment.
Then he asked:
“Have you ever read a sentence that seemed written specifically for you?”
“Yes.”
“Thousands of people may read the same sentence.”
“True.”
“But only one finds it at the precise moment it becomes necessary.”
Missy stopped writing.
“The sentence was always there.”
“Yes.”
“But timing transformed it.”
The rhythm of the rails filled the silence.
After a while Missy asked:
“Do you think objective chance creates love?”
“No.”
“What does?”
Breton considered.
“Courage.”
“Courage?”
“Love introduces itself.”
“And then?”
“We decide whether to answer.”
Missy rested her chin upon her hand.
“I was expecting something more French.”
Breton looked disappointed.
“I can try again if you’d like.”
“Please.”
He straightened slightly.
“Love is the mysterious convergence of desire, imagination, destiny, beauty, memory, and the eternal search for transcendence.”
Missy nodded.
“There he is.”
“Better?”
“Much.”
They both laughed.
For a while neither spoke.
Then Breton glanced toward her notebook.
“What are you writing now?”
Missy closed it immediately.
“You’ve become very interested in my notebook.”
“It concerns me.”
“Why?”
“Every interview begins with questions.”
“Yes.”
“And ends with the interviewer accidentally revealing themselves.”
Missy narrowed her eyes.
“That’s not how interviews work.”
“It is how good interviews work.”
She opened the notebook again.
On the page she wrote:
Possible flaw in Breton’s methodology.
“Did objective chance lead you to your ideas about love?” Missy asked.
“In many ways, yes.”
“How?”
Breton smiled.
“Love is one of the experiences most capable of revealing hidden connections.”
“Between two people?”
“Between a person and themselves.”
Missy raised an eyebrow.
“That sounds suspiciously philosophical.”
“It is.”
“My dear Missy, philosophy and romance have spent centuries pretending not to know one another.”
She made a note.
“That sounded rehearsed.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It sounded rehearsed, though.”
“Most people ask for answers.”
“And I ask for?”
“The thought before the answer.”
Missy looked down at her notebook to hide a smile.
“That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my inability to stay on topic.”
“I suspect staying on topic has never been your greatest talent.”
“Rude.”
“Observational.”
She laughed.
Outside, the stars drifted alongside the train.
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