Whatever
You Want

6:15 PM. She's at the counter with her phone out. "What do you want for dinner?"

"Whatever you want."

You mean it as a kindness. You've meant it as a kindness for years.

There was a nymph who could talk. Not chatter. Talk, the kind that holds a room. And she used it the way talkers do. When the king of the gods was off in the mountains with other nymphs, she'd find the queen and keep her busy. Long, easy conversation. Nothing false in any of it. Just long enough for everyone else to get away.

Echo. The one who kept the peace.

The queen worked it out. And she took exactly the thing Echo had used against her. She left the voice. She took the first word. From then on Echo could only repeat the last words she heard. She couldn't start a sentence. She could only finish yours.

You were a talker once. Maybe not loud. But you had a take on where to eat, which road to take, what Saturday was for.

Then somewhere along the way your voice got useful. It kept things smooth. "Sounds good." "Either way." "I'm easy." A hundred evenings that could have gone sideways stayed quiet because you handed the question back. It worked. Nobody fought about dinner. Nobody fought about much.

A man in his forties wrote that almost every part of his life had come out of pleasing people. Not one decision. Almost all of them. He didn't notice it happening. Nobody does. It never feels like losing anything. It feels like being easy to live with.

Everyone skips this part of the story.

Echo fell in love. With Narcissus, of all people. And she couldn't tell him. She had to follow him through the woods and wait for him to say something she could hand back.

He called out, "Is anyone here?"

"Here," she said.

It went on like that. Every true thing she had, she could only say in his words, and only after he'd said them. Then she stepped out of the trees to hold him, and he pulled back and said he'd die before he'd give her any power over him.

And with the only words she had left, she answered him. Give you power over me.

She finally said the truest thing she had. In his words. At the exact moment he was walking away.

That's the whole curse. You still have wants. They just only come out second, shaped to fit whatever's already been said. Somebody wrote that at forty he still had no feeling of what he wanted, or what he actually felt. It doesn't start there. It starts with a thousand small handoffs, dinner and the thermostat and the movie and the weekend, until there's no first word left to find.

Then the ending. Turned away, Echo went into the caves. She stopped sleeping. Her body wasted until nothing was left but her voice and her bones, and the bones turned to stone.

The voice stayed. It's still there. Shout into any canyon and she'll finish your sentence for you.

The body went. The agreeing stayed.

People still hear you all day. "Yep." "Whatever works." "Sounds good, man." You're the easiest guy in every room. You can finish anyone's sentence. You haven't started one in years.

One thing.

6:15. She's still at the counter. She asked you.

Before you check her face for the right answer, go first. One sentence that starts with you. Tacos. The quiet place on the corner. Anything, as long as it's yours.

Not the right restaurant. The first word.

Then notice how long it had been since anybody heard you start one.