When Ben comes into the ice-cream parlour, Alex is already there, staring reflectively at the fantan surface of the table.

“So,” says Ben conversationally, going over to the freezer, “how was the interview?”

“Not good.”

“Did you get the job?” Ben’s voice is muffled by the freezer and a lot of ice-cream.

“No.”

“Don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

“I know your head is stuck in the freezer,” says Alex icily, “but I hope you know I’m giving you a funny look. No, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Ben extricates his head from the freezer, having filled one cup of Berrynice. He puts it down in front of Alex. “Eat. It makes you feel better.”

“It might make you feel better,” replies Alex, not touching it. “It makes me feel cold. No thank you.”

Ben shrugs and begins to eat the ice-cream himself.

There is a long contemplative silence. Ben, having observed earlier that long contemplative silences are part and parcel of any relationship with Alex, shuts up and eats ice-cream until he cannot stand the silence any more.

“So,” he says brightly, “then you’re staying one more night at my house?”

Alex folds his arms and gazes impassively at Ben through his fringe. “It would seem so.”

“Great,” says Ben, and hastily fills his mouth with ice-cream to prevent his relief-loosened tongue from saying anything more incriminating.

“Of course,” adds Alex, “this stops once I get a new job.”

“Yeah. Sure. Of course.” I hope you never get one.

“Or maybe I should go back to see my mother. She should have calmed down by now.”

“No!” Alex stares at him questioningly, and Ben hastens to cover up. “Like you said, you need to give her some space. She might still be angry if you still don’t have a job, you know. Isn’t that why she – you know.”

“Right,” says Alex, and lapses back into silence.

Ben watches him over the rim of the cup, and tries to voice the suggestion that has been burning in his brain for three days now.

“Alex – I’ve an idea.”

“Mm?” says Alex, pondering the way the light scrapes over the scratches on the gleaming chair arm.

“You can work at the ice-cream parlour.”

Alex looks up. Ben feels the warning signs come crashing down on him in an avalanche.

“I mean, Mom’s always saying we need more help because it’s so hard to find reliable waitresses nowadays, and it pays well, honestly, and you don’t need to go for an interview or anything, and you won’t get sacked because of your bittergourd face – Alex, we can……”

His voice dies away in his throat, because Alex is standing up.

“I’m not your charity case, Benjamin.”

The words are screaming and tumbling over each other in his head, like a vaudeville of devils, NopleaseAlexpleaseno – but all that comes out is, “What?”

“I shouldn’t have come to you in the first place.” And Alex is heading for the door again. Ben leaps up, throws his last desperate missile at his retreating back.

“Why?”

Alex stops at the door, but he does not turn back. “Because I can’t stand it when people try to help me.”

And for the second time in three days, Ben finds himself chasing Alex up the pavement. “Alex, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that! I wasn’t doing it because of charity, Alex! Wait – Alex!”

But he’s gone in the crowds. Ben can see him, hunched against the flow of human traffic, and he could go on chasing him forever if he knew how.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there, but when he comes out of his reverie, the traffic lights have changed colour and Alex is nowhere to be seen.

Ben walks back to the ice-cream palour, pushes open the door slowly, goes over to the chair and sits down, all in a daze. With Alex, everything seems to go round in circles, little vicious cycles trapped in time.

It takes several moments before he notices something out of the corner of his eye – someone standing at the counter. He looks up.

There is a crash of metal as Ben tries to back away and jump sideways out of the chair at the same time, and nearly falls over in the process.

“Hello,” says Grace.

Ben mouths at her. Eventually he says, in a strangled voice, “Hi Grace!”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Grace tells him, smiling in a nonplussed way.

It feels exactly that way to Ben. In addition to this, the waves of déjà vu are crashing down upon and inexorably drowning him.

“I thought you were in Canada,” he says faintly.

“No,” says Grace. “I’ve been back in Singapore for a while. I’m Jerry’s relief Lit teacher.”

“Miss Ang,” recalls Ben. Yang. Ng. Ang. It all fits.

“She doesn’t recognise me,” confesses Grace, ruefully. “I didn’t really expect her to. Most people still don’t remember me. I haven’t managed to get rid of that, it’s quite inherent. Even Canada didn’t really change that.”

“That’s not true,” protests Ben dutifully. “I remember you.”

“I know,” says Grace simply. “Alex told me.”

The words cleave through Ben’s amazement at seeing Grace again like a spoon’s edge through half-melted strawberry sherbet. He’s been talking to her? Alex never told him about Grace, reflects Ben, and then thinks grimly, he never tells Ben anything anyway.

“I saw him on Thursday,” Grace says, watching expressions flit across Ben’s face, and adds, hesistantly, “Didn’t he – tell you?”

Then, as she searches Ben’s expression, “What happened to Alex?”

Ben doesn’t answer for a long time. “He left.”

“Oh,” says Grace. “I see.”

Ben looks up, and looks at her.

“Grace! You can help me get him back!”

Grace sits down on the chair opposite him. “What makes you think I can?”

Ben gestures ineffectually, resorts to intransigent words again. “Well – you did last time. You were the only one who could make him talk. When he walked out last time you told me to – ”

“Walk away,” interjects Grace. “I told you to walk away.”

Ben is stumped for a moment, but rallies. “It’s different this time. I can’t walk away. I don’t care – I have to help him, even if he hates me for the rest of his life. I just don’t know how.”

“Ben,” says Grace, “I didn’t help you last time. I just spoke to both of you. Alex was the one who made a move.”

Ben intertwines his fingers and leans forward imploringly. “Please, Grace. I need you to be there.”

Grace tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She doesn’t have glasses now, Ben notices. The difference leaves her eyes isolated in her face, a bit less tactiturn, a bit more vulnerable. “I’ll go with you,” she says, and her smile is like cold water in the desert.

“Thanks.” Ben leaps up and makes for the door.

“I don’t know where he is, though,” continues Grace.

“I do.” Ben fumbles in his pocket for the carkey. “He went home.”

He opens the passenger door for Grace, swings himself into the driver’s seat, and they jerk out of the parking lot, nearly scraping a lot of paint off the car in front and getting the right headlight smashed by oncoming traffic. Grace falls against the dashboard as she gropes for the seatbelt, and she laughs.

Ben manages to get the Toyota facing the right direction, and jams his foot down on the accelerator. They speed down the road, and he turns to her, forthright in his recklessness as they laugh together. “Oh, and Grace? I like having you back.”

A/N: I borrowed one simile from Neil Gaiman’s Looking for the Girl, and another from a Robert Girardi short story collection.