“Do you believe in soul mates?” he asked.

She managed to let out a “Hm” before indecorously wrinkling up her nose and fashioning her mouth subconsciously into her best half Billy Idol sneer, which is to say hardly Billy Idol at all. She would never win a sneering contest with Billy.

Switching from Idol to kung fu master: “In order to believe in soul mates, one must first believe in the concept of a soul.” He rolled his eyes. She didn’t acknowledge the gesture and continued, “Soul is such a loaded word. I believe very deeply in soul music and there is no higher power than soul food–you have not experienced epiphany until you’ve had gooey cake–but soul as in a distinct entity that lives within us, our essence, if you will? Well, that’s a different matter.”

Taking her deflecting maneuvers into account, he tried again, “Perhaps, as usual, you are over-thinking this.” She sighed and crossed her arms as he continued, “Rather than getting into some philosophical, metaphysical, etymological, theoretical, manifest destiny, semantic, hoohah debate, let’s simplify the issue. Do you believe that there is an ideal mate for every person on earth?

“Alright, then. The bite size pieces of that question make it easier to swallow,” she made a motion as if she was going to flick a pea on her plate across the table at him, but didn’t. “Do I believe in mates? As in one person for every person on earth? Is that it?”

It was his turn to cross his arms, “Yes, something like that.”

“No,” she picked up the pea and popped it into her mouth.

“Care to elaborate?”

“I think two people can have a very deep connection indeed, even to the point where they seem like halves of the same person, but I do not believe in only one such person for each person on earth. Instead, I think there are many such closely connected people or ‘soul mates’ if that’s what you want to call them. Think about it from an anthropological perspective. From a survival of the species point of view, if there was only one mate for each person, the human species would never have survived as long as we have.”

“So, we’re not soul mates then?”

She flicked a pea at him, “Let’s go get some gooey cake at MP’s.”

“Done and done.”