Given the engrossing conversation between the friends, Emma felt left out. Once the customers had thinned, she came by a nearby table on the pretense of wiping it off; both men looked up. “About the memorial service,” she interjected, “call me at four-thirty.”

Michael nodded.

Seeing the discussion had stopped on her account, the barista pulled up a chair in the hopes of restarting it. “So…” she beamed, “Michael tells me you can explain this transcendental stuff to me.”

Omar did not look like he wanted to be disturbed, but the painter was bubbling at the prospect of a change of subject. The philosopher turned to face the young woman. “Transcendental Idealism. Do you really want to know?”

Her smile was overstretched. “Of course.”

Omar, in perfunctory fashion, put his coffee down and pulled his chair close to Emma’s; she was surprised by his intrusion into her private space. “A long time ago,” he began, “there was a philosopher named Immanuel Kant, who had perhaps the single greatest insight ever had by anybody thinking about the world in empirical terms. Let me explain it this way: You see this cup of coffee in front of you?” He pushed his mug over near her. “Well, the only way you can interact with this coffee is through your senses. Right? In no other way can you physically relate to it.” Omar unexpectedly caressed Emma’s lips with his thumb.

She jerked.

He continued, “You can taste bitter with your mouth, but bitter in-and-of-itself is not a cup of coffee.” He then stroked her eyelid with his thumb. “You can see brown, but brown in-and-of-itself is not a cup of coffee.” He finally took her hand. (A little too firm for her liking.) “You can feel warmth, but warmth in-and-of-itself is not a cup of coffee. So, I ask you, if all of these things—which are the only things you can ever possibly experience—are not a cup a coffee, then where is the cup of the coffee? As it existence as a thing-in-itself?”

Emma, realizing she was asked a question, looked puzzled. “In all of them?”

Omar let go of her hand. “This is your understanding, but not your experience. Your experience is only particular sensations, like bitter, brown, and warm. So where do all these particular sensations come together to make a cup of coffee?”

She was on the spot. “In our minds?”

“Exactly. The cup of coffee, as it exists as an object, is only an idea in your mind. Reality as we understand it is only a collection of ideas assembled in our head. However, the thing-in-itself, the metaphysical essence of the cup of coffee, to which the bitter, brown, and warm are attached, cannot be experienced outside its idea because it cannot be absorbed as a totality through any one portal of our senses.”

Emma looked skeptical, but went along.

Omar explained, “Ultimate reality, of which this cup of coffee is only an idealized representation, cannot be directly experienced as it exists in itself. In other words, you can’t get there from here. Another way of looking at it is this: If reality were a beverage, you would err in believing it has an inherent shape simply because you experience it in a coffee cup.”

Emma remained confounded. “I don’t understand.”

Omar was as charitable as he could be. “Being unknowable, the Thing-in-Itself doesn’t require understanding. Only humility.”

“And you believe this?”

The philosopher quieted for a moment. “When I first heard this idea some twenty-five years ago, I thought it was laughable. And after thinking more carefully about it, I thought it was a clever trick. And later still, I came to view it as plausible. Then, finally, I understood not only was it the only thing of certain truth in this world, but it was the only thing that mattered.”

Emma was moved. “It sounds like God.”

“That,” the teacher answered, “is humility.”

Michael basked in the exchange. He got up to go to the bathroom, convinced the two would get along in his absence. Yet the moment he disappeared around the corner, his friend launched into the young woman.

“You couldn’t wait to get over here, could you? To piss on your kill like a lioness.”

Emma was thrown by the show of aggression. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Michael and I are just friends.”

“In the convoluted lexicon of female logic that means ‘pay no attention to the man standing behind the curtain’.”

Emma did not care for Omar’s professorial tone. “I suppose you are an expert on women, too?”

“I’m a student of human nature. When your boy strays too far away, you shake your cute little dinner-bell-of-an-ass and he comes scurrying back. It’s in your genes. You’re a woman. I know it isn’t personal.”

The barista was unaccustomed to being dissected. “I have no designs on Michael beyond being his friend.”

Omar laughed curtly. “She said with a straight face. Let’s cut to the bottom line. I know what you’re doing. But I’m not going to get in your way.”

“What do you mean by ‘what I am doing’?”

“Look,” the lawyer said, “I saw your undiluted sense of possession the moment I walked through the door. I can respect that. I also know you have an agenda. It’s the same agenda every woman has. You’re what…? A twenty-four year-old artist looking to have a career in arts? And Michael is a door. A convenient door. A useful door.”

Emma became defensive. “Our friendship is mutually beneficial. I am his muse and he is my mentor.”

Omar was sour. “Whatever. I know you’re putting him through his paces—that too is in your genes. I don’t have any patience for that nonsense, even though I am sure Michael will blossom—incandesce—under your womanly abuse.”

“I wonder if you even know your friend that well.”

“I know him well enough to know when to let go of him.”

The woman was flustered. “Aren’t you being a bit melodramatic? This isn’t an either/or situation.”

“Yes, but you see, it is. Michael cannot serve two masters.”

“That's a curious choice of words.”

Omar explained in his way. “Michael is an idealist. More succinctly put, he is a man in love with a single ideal. He first imagines seeing this ideal through a friend, so he may love the friend, and then through a lover, so he may love the lover. But the ideal, in truth, is something he cannot see with his eyes, only feel with his heart; and this makes the ideal hidden from his intractable reason. To this end, the ideal must become an end in itself: something he does not have to see to know it is real to both his heart and head: something he can love freely and unreservedly on its own unimagined terms.”

“What are you babbling on about?”

The lawyer came to his point. “It is own these terms I concede him to you.”

Emma was now the one laughing. “Your terms…? And what are ‘your terms’?”

The man's eyes took on a sudden Svengali quality as he moved in closer. “Can’t you guess?”

His breath was now swirling in the hollow of her neck, making Emma go rigid. “What do you want?”

Omar slid his hand under the table to pry apart her jittery knees. There was nothing hesitant about his touch. His reply popped on her chin. “Immortality.”

Confused, then defiant, the barista raised her hand to slap him, prompting Omar to grab her arm and push it down on the table with unhurried force. Fuming, she clinched her teeth. “Let go of me.”

The man released her and eased away.

The young woman scooted her chair from the table loudly, drawing the attention of those around her. She bristled. “What kind of friend are you, anyway?”

“The best kind.”

“Like hell.”

Omar took in her pretty dress. “Michael thinks you’re a Grecian urn up on a high shelf.”

“He’s a gentleman, and treats me like a lady. Unlike you.”

“Yes.” He was brittle. “Unlike him, I only fuck whores. No phony sentiment. No valentine cards. Just pussy and a carbon receipt.”

“You disgust me.”

“Yes.” The invective lawyer grinned. “But there is no escaping we both want the same thing.”

Emma rose from the table in a huff, but would not honor the hateful man with a show of histrionics.

Michael turned the corner. Her half-smile for him betrayed anxiousness on his return. A customer was going up to the counter, facilitating her hasty exit. Her original intent in coming over (which she had now forgotten) was to get Michael’s attention; his eyes obediently followed her back up to the front. Omar realized he would have to take his friend out of the building if he hoped to win back his attention. On rising to leave, the painter swung by the counter to say goodbye while his friend waited impatiently at the door.

Omar had nothing more to say to the barista.