As they sat basking in each
others' presence, drinking in the others' eyes, James sat gloomily at
the patio table at the cafe. His head hurt from too much drink and
not enough sleep the night before. He had stayed the night again at
Sandra's house, his on and off girl-friend who was married yet in an
open relationship. He enjoyed spending time with her, enjoyed the
sex, for what its worth, and enjoyed the no-strings attached style of
relationship. But, the days after always left him a little worn out,
a little blue. For whatever reason. And, seeing Matt jaunty off
with the pretty new girl at the cafe didn't make his mood any less
gloomy. He picked up his coffee cup and swallowed hard a big gulp,
then popped a piece of blueberry muffin into his mouth. As he
chewed, he stared ahead at the world in front of him, the cracking
sidewalk with the bits of weeds pushing through, (Nature always finds
a way, he thought), at the cars passing by on the street on the main
boulevard, the people moving from place to place busy with their
lives. He closed his eyes tightly and wished with all of his might
that the noise would disappear in his mind. That's how he could
describe it. Outwardly, he showed a calm exterior, but that only hid
the dark and wild thoughts that ping-ponged and ricocheted across his
brain. There wasn't always any real cohesive thought, just rambling
thoughts that trailed on and on and on without any end in sight.
Right now, he was thinking of Eve, his ex-wife and surprisingly he
found himself sort of missing her. Sort of. Then, as if by some
supernatural force of the universe, his phone buzzed. Looking down,
he saw it was her, Eve, calling.
In the depths of the park,
Matt put his arm around Deborah and pulled her close to him. She
leaned her head on his shoulder and placed her hand on his knee.
They sat that way for a few minutes in the serenity of silence, lost
in the perfection of the moment. Finally, Deborah, not moving her
head, started to speak.
“So, tell me more about
you,” she began.
“What do you want to
know?” Matthew asked.
“Well, I don't know, maybe
we should talk about our, um, past relationships,” Deborah said
brokenly. She knew that in this day and age the importance of
knowing one's past sexual excursions and such was quite necessary,
but she always always found it awkward.
“Oh, what's to know,” he
began slowly. “I mean, before you I was with a girl in high school
for like four years then she went off to college up north, then there
was Jamie and....ugh.”
“What's wrong with Jamie?”
Deborah looked up at him, sweetly.
“Oh, don't get me
started,” he snorted. “You know how you said about your ex? Sort
of like that, only she also cheated on me with, like, the entire
town, guys and girls!”
“Well, shit!” responded
Deborah and she reached for his hand in consolation. “Sorry to
bring it up.”
“Yeah,” Matthew started
again, suddenly caught up in the intensity of the memory. “Had a
ring ready to ask her to marry me and everything, until I found
her....”
“Found her?”
“Came home one night and,
well, you know,” Matthew explained.
“Shit,” exclaimed Deborah. “Say
no more.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Matthew
said quietly to himself.
“Well, um,” Deborah
began, trying to take the focus off of him in order to ease the
tension. “I just had a few sort of relationships in high school,
then the long-term one in college with the no-good asshole so...”
“Let's not talk any more
about the past, okay?” Matthew interjected and smiled down at her.
She nestled closer to him and he held her closer and tighter. “Let's
just enjoy the now.”
“Sounds like a plan,”
Deborah responded.
At the coffee shop patio,
James picked up the phone and answered.
“Yeah?” James barked.
From the other side of the
phone, Eve began talking nervously, never sure what mood James was
going to be in, an angry paranoid one or a less angry and paranoid
one. At least these were the two that she saw, all the time. Other
people saw a nicer, more quieter and calmer guy, but not her, at
least, not anymore. She could recall, slightly, a time in her
distant past when he was such a dream of a guy, so sweet, so
attentive, so head over heels in love with her. She fell fast and
hard when she met him, no warnings or deterrence from her friends got
through. She had to learn the hard way just what kind of guy he
really was, on the inside, the turmoil he kept so tightly hidden.
She wanted him to come over,
to pick up some remaining things from the house they had, until
recently, shared. She also wanted to let him know the paperwork from
the divorce had gone through, been filed, signed, and that they were
officially...over. She thought maybe he would share some sadness
with her over that, some memory deep within of the happier times
between them, if they were even real to him, or even to her. But,
she said none of this, only asked him to come over to retrieve the
remainder of his things at the house. His response was to angrily
bark at her, that he would see her in a few minutes. Then, to hang
up the phone abruptly. She sighed and leaned against the wall of her
room, their old room, and stifled a cry. No use being the weaker of
the two, not after everything they had been through, that he had put
her through, had done to her.
“Okay, so you don't want
to talk about the past,” Deborah said into Matthew's rough and warm
skinned neck. “So tell me about your friends!”
She took a huge whiff of him
and exalted in the pleasure it gave all of her.
“Well, which one you want
to hear about first?” Matthew said, feeling her soft hair brush
against his chin and reveling in it.
“Um, tell me about that
Shaggy guy,” Deborah said, drawing one of the names he had told her
about the night previous.
“We call him that because
he looks like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo,” Matthew began.
“Yeah, but what's his real
name?”
“Ah, that's top secret,”
Matthew laughed aloud. “Or at least to him its personal. He's kind
of a conspiracy theory geek who is afraid of the government finding
him so he hides his identity as much as possible blah blah blah.”
“Oh, shit,” laughed
Deborah. “Anything else I should know about him?”
“Eh, just started college
again, online,” Matthew began, thinking about his friend, Shaggy.
“Studying computer science...has this girl he sees on and off, Amy,
that's about it.”
“Okay, and what about
always wear a tie dude?” Deborah was continuing the conversation.
“Oh, that's Thomas,”
Matthew laughed. “He doesn't always wear a tie--”
“Yeah, just for work,”
Deborah interrupted. “But I like “always wears a tie dude”. I
like to make up names for people like that.”
“Oh yeah what's my name
then?” Matthew wanted to know.
“Well, that's easy, you
are, or were, until we met, the “cute-coffee boy,” Deborah
explained flirtatiously.
“I thought I told you we
preferred the term, barista,” Matthew reminded her.
“Yes, but that was after I
met you and learned the professional terminology for he who works at
at the coffee shop,” explained Deborah. “So anything else I need
to know about “Thomas”?”
“Eh, not much,” Matthew
said distracted by her eyes looking up into his. “I mean, he just
moved here after a bad break up with a girl up north and that's how
we met. Shaggy knew him and said we had to go up and rescue him from
this chic, so we did. You can imagine that car-ride home, all three
of us, chain smoking and talking about how girls are just so shitty!”
“I'm sorry,” Deborah
said and she placed a soft kiss on the inside of Matthew's neck. He
wrapped his arm around her and pulled her against him, warmly.
James walked down the
familiar street to his old house, just a five minute walk from the
coffee shop. He and Eve had discovered the coffee shop together and
until recently she had worked as a barista there herself. Until they
had split up and she felt it necessary to look for other work. The
trees were still leafy, filled with the oranges and reds of the fall
foliage, the streets equal in their leaf-strewn surroundings. He
kicked at the leaves as he walked and watched as they fluttered away
from him. Stepping on a few, he heard the familiar crunch that left
a satisfaction in his heart. Sometimes life seemed so simple to him,
most of the time it wasn't.
Coming up to the little
house on the corner with the blue door, he felt an inner twinge at
his heart. He walked slowly up the path and knocked loudly on that
same blue door. Eve came to the door, wearing a loose black shirt
and jeans.
“Um, hi,” she said and
bit her lip. “Come in.”
He stepped into the living
room and saw the changes that had been made, notably the lack of his
belongings that were now being tossed more and more into a storage
unit across town. There was a box in the corner, marked “James”
which he assumed was the last remaining items of his at the house.
He stood in the middle of what was his living room and gazed around
mindlessly.
“Um, you want to sit? You
want a drink or something?” Eve was saying, somewhere in the
distance.
“No,” he said gruffly
and stared at her hard. She sat on the edge of the sofa and sighed
heavily.
“James, I have something
to tell you,” she began slowly. He continued staring at her,
trying to read her thoughts and to her it felt like he was trying to
intimidate her.
“Yeah?” he said at last.
“The paperwork came back
from the DA's office,” she began and sighed again. “Um, its
official.”
“Aha,” he said, nodding.
“You happy?”
“Not really, I mean,”
was all she said and stared hard at the ground. Absentmindedly, her
hand reached up to her neck and she fingered a necklace. He saw a
glint of silver hanging from the chain and then recognized what it
was, their wedding rings hanging side by side. He grunted at that.
She looked up at him, smiling sadly, he thought, mockingly. Then,
she unclasped the chain from around her neck and held the necklace
out to him, the rings dangled off the chain between them, somewhat
symbolically. “Maybe you should have this.”
She stood holding it out to
him and he stared at her, penetrating her with his eyes. He moved
towards her slowly, slowly, slowly. She inhaled hard and held her
breath, then released it, as if gasping for air.
“So what about that old
guy?” Deborah wanted to know.
“The old guy?” Matthew
asked.
“You know the old hippie?
What did you say his name was?”
“Oh, that's Ray,”
Matthew laughed. “Yeah, crazy hippie drunk Ray, love that guy.”
“Oh, okay,” Deborah took
that in. “And what about...what about...the scary dark one...”
“Scary dark one? Oh, you
must mean, James,” Matthew smiled at her. “He's not so scary
when you get to know him, I mean, he's had it rough, mom just died,
wife divorced him, tough times. I just cut him some slack, hope he
comes around, you know?”
“Yeah, I can see that,”
Deborah smiled at him, loving the goodness of heart that appeared to
be Matthew.
James left his old house,
letting the blue door slam angrily behind him, leaving Eve behind as
well. The necklace with their rings was pushed deep inside of his
jeans pocket. He moved up the street back to the patio, maybe no one
would notice he had gone, it had been that short of a time. He half
realized that he had left the box of his items behind, the reason she
had called him over there in the first place, her rouse, as it were.
Good, he thought, don't need that crap anyway? Still, he thought, I
hope none of it was any of my mom's old stuff.
At the cafe, his blue coffee
cup stood on the table of the patio, where he had left it, the plate
with the half-eaten muffin beside it. He sat, heavily down on the
chair. The necklace chain leaked out from his pocket as he sat and he
pushed it back in. Peering inside the coffee shop, he noticed what's
her name, the barista chic, had her ear-buds in and was listening to
some music, totally unaware of the world around her. Good, he
thought, good. He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. The
liquid inside was still semi-warm.
Down the street came the
happy pair that was Matthew and Deborah, the fresh bloom of new love
upon their faces, rosy with the Fall air and the walk. As he watched
them walking towards him hand in hand, his eyes fell upon the small
frame of Deborah, slightly petite build, shoulder-length dark hair,
dark brown eyes, and she brought to mind someone from his past, not
too a distant past, and inside of him crept one thought, just one
thought: desire.
