The Fireplace - Chapter 7

And indeed, it was like something had broken the café in half. In the week that followed the accidents, Fern and the rest of the poets (Alder, Artemisia and Clover had returned) were huddled around the poet’s corner, not in the mood to interact with the other people around the café. There was no sign of Florence and Venice – Fern had somehow neglected to ask how they were, but he hoped the fact that Florence wasn’t in the café meant that Venice was alive.

After one whole week of Fern’s introverted life of alcohol and curling on the sofa with Sage, Florence and Venice came back.

Yes, Venice came back! Fern was overjoyed at this, and Sage was quietly hysterical, tears dripping down his cheeks as he tried to wipe them away furiously. Some had pounced upon the lean figure, embracing him carefully to welcome him home.

But Fern noticed in the next second that Venice’s hands were bandaged.

Venice’s hands, the hands of a pianist, were bandaged.

And Fern understood everything in Venice’s gaze now, as the young man looked around him, trying to return the passion of those around him, but failing as his eyes strayed to the dark piano in the corner.

Fern retreated suddenly, retreated in discomfort; he didn’t want to see Venice’s reaction to his disability. Fern didn’t think he could see that reaction without tearing himself into bits, though it was far from his fault it had happened. He understood Sage perfectly, he did.

And as another awkward week passed, all seemed the same. They kept on discussing, kept the Sunday Sharings going, kept writing. But still it was not the same. Florence and Venice would go out sometimes, always in the morning, and every time they came back Venice would have a hopeful expression on his face that Fern was anxious to ask about, but ultimately decided not to. He wondered what these trips were for.

He was informed three weeks after the accident, in a bright March morning.

Florence and Venice had walked in together (they were inseparable these days), and they had sat down at the rectangular table, with something on their countenances that betrayed a need to inform the others, and they all sat down to hear.

Well, long story short, Venice wanted to get synthetic arms.

There was a moment of deliberation in the group before Artemisia decided to congratulate them. The rest of them followed. Fern was quite happy about it.

But then – but then, as the news spread around the café, the other people’s reactions curdled.

It began with silence – a thick, disbelieving pause – before whispers slithered out. Fern watched as heads turned, brows furrowed, teacups clattering back into saucers like falling guillotines. A woman near the window, her hair streaked with silver and hands stained from decades of ink, stood abruptly. “Synthetic arms?” Her voice trembled, not with pity, but revulsion. “You’d replace yourself with machinery?”

Venice flinched as if struck. Florence stepped forward but the café was already stirring to life, a chorus of dissent rising like steam.

“Technology ruined my brother,” wailed a young man from the artists, his face shadowed beneath a newsboy cap. “Plugged himself into a corporate grid. Doesn’t even know his own name anymore.”

“It’s a betrayal,” hissed another, fingers gripping a dog-eared copy of Thoreau. “The SNC stands for Seasons and Nature, not… circuits.”

Fern’s chest tightened. He glanced at Sage, whose tears had hardened into something fiercer, and at Alder, stoic as ever, though his knuckles whitened around his pen. Artemisia opened her mouth – to mediate, to reason – but Clover cut her off, slamming a palm on the table. “Since when do we police survival?”

It was surprising that Diaz took the antagonist side. She stepped out from behind the counter, face so hard and disapproving that suddenly Fern remembered her as the owner of the café, nothing less. “No,” she said firmly, “if you were to replace yourself with machinery, you and your brother would no longer be welcome in the SNC.”

The room fractured. Arguments erupted, brittle and overlapping. Venice stood motionless, his bandaged hands curled into helpless half-moons. Fern recognized that look – the same hollow gaze Venice had fixed on the untouched piano as if his soul had already abandoned the fight.

Florence gripped Venice’s elbow, murmuring urgently, but he shook her off. When he spoke, his voice was a cracked whisper that somehow silenced the room. “I just… want to play again.”

The admission hung there, raw and disarming. For a breath, the café wavered. Then the woman by the window scoffed. “Play? Machines don't play. They execute. There’s no art in precision.”

Venice’s face crumpled. He turned, fleeing through the back door into the raw, open world, Florence at his heels. The poets, except for Fern and Sage, surged after them, but Fern lingered, absorbing the aftermath—the smug nods, the muttered disapproval, the way the piano seemed to shrink into the shadows, forgotten.

That night, Fern found Sage hunched over the bar, scribbling drunk verses about amputation—of limbs, of empathy, of suffering and loneliness. He didn’t ask where Venice was. He didn’t want to know.

The café had drawn its line in the sand. Venice, it seemed, was already on the other side.

They were broken.