by Geoff Gouveia
The young woman, dressed smart in her charcoal gray pencil skirt and matching blazer, thack-thacked her way across the black and white checkered floor. Her umbrella dribbled water and when she paused from speaking on her phone to look down at the floor, she cursed and then sighed. She bit her lip and shrugged at George. He smiled and waved it off, ready for the occurrence when the light gray skies swirled into deeper shadows as he walked into work earlier that afternoon. He twirled a red towel from behind the counter and cleaned the floor. The woman sat down with her umbrella propped against the wall.
“The usual, Rachel?” He said while he wiped his hands on his black apron. The woman paused while drips from the outside awning became her wet curtain of distraction.
“Oh. Sure. But hold off for a minute, would you?”
George nodded and spun to return to his station. From the bake case he watched Rachel interlock her dark fingers one by one before unlacing them, back and forth. She scanned the streets and looked over her shoulder once on the left and then sat up with her neck a periscope above the people in the shop. She shook her head and kept her gaze towards the street.
A voice called from George’s left. “Could you wash the dishes? We’ve got a fifteen-minute stack back there.” He smiled at his manager and washed the dishes in the lukewarm water. His apron dried his hands as walked back to his post.
Rachel sat alone with terse lips. Her right hand raised the cuff on her left wrist and the face of the watch released a deep breath and a roll from her eyes. George turned his back to make her tea. The honey sweetened the grassy aroma with a wet sugar zest.
George laid his towel down and swung out wide from behind the counter, tea in hand. Rachel stood with her umbrella.
“Here’s your tea. Chamomile with a pinch of honey- just the way you like it.”
With both of her hands full and her feet inching towards the door, he waved her off.
“Thanks George- I’ll get you tomorrow.”
The whole day was dark and when the sun set it was a yellow balloon letting the air leak out of it slowly, the light dribbling out until it ceased to shine amongst the deep Prussian muddy blue gray sky.
From behind him his manager called out. “Would you mind making a trash run?”
When George first started working at the coffee shop, he kept on high alert as he took the trash out back to the dumpster. He’d heard stories of the night bringing dangerous individuals with the darkness. The guard he had kept had long fallen down; content to breathe instead of let his heart race. He grew to love the trash runs, the fresh air fighting through the sour milk and the crunching plastic. He never smoked but reckoned this would be where he’d do it if he did.
The night had only begun to grow full strength when weak orange embers blazed with fresh intakes of oxygen near the dumpster. The smoke let out in great puffs. The homeless smoke with the same intent the coffee shop's open sign flashed neon orange. Opaque gray in the beginning puff, it receded transparent into the open air, away from the lips and the physical body that held it in the first place.
The hand that held the smoldering life beacon was dark coffee brown. It cradled the cigarette and kept it close to his body and out of the drops that feel from the awning he sat under. The bottom of his feet had crusted from the hard air and stiff walk where the backs of his shoes fell off as they wore down against the pavement. His pants were faded,crumbled bricks that had held against the wind day after day in the hot sun. His shirt dipped hard in the middle of his chest, the curling hairs dark black against his brown skin. He scratched at his collar.
“You’re a young man. Don’t drink alcohol.” The voice came underneath a faded cloud and distressed blue hoodie and yellow eyes. The right one squinted and revealed a misshapen black dot on the edge of his cream patina that he side-eyed towards George.
“Yes, sir.”
“Matter of fact-” the yellow cream eyes half opened, “do drink alcohol. It will give you power. It will give you the ability to cope. It will give you courage just as it has given me courage. I’m invincible today.”
“Invincible, huh?”
“Oh yes. Invincible.” The man stumbled onto his knees and then wavered to his feet. The yellow eyes slanted at George in a challenge. “Punch me, I won’t even feel it.”
His lips puckered terse in anticipation of the hit. The back of George’s neck prickled with rigid hairs. The man’s jaw slackened and a drunken smile replaced it.
“I’m invincible. Don’t drink unless you need to feel it. My daughter was supposed to meet me here today. I always get nervous when my daughter comes to town. My heads always gets heavier than I anticipate and poof - I’m invincible.” He wheezed into a tired laugh that the rain patted down like drops on strewn leaves.
He was a branch, fallen off the family tree. He remained alive and wet after he grafted into the vodka, the buzz keeping him limber so that any passerby couldn’t snap him. He’d dried up long ago and it wasn’t footsteps that snapped him but absence and longing and regret and missed purpose and fallen identity.
George was careful to not brush him as he carried the bags to the bin. The bags banged hollow inside of the green canister with the cups on the inside escaping into a gurgled rush of freed plastic. George wiped his hands on his jeans while he stared at a yellow mark on the outside of the trash container. Two upside down V’s nestled into one another.
“I wouldn’t need to drink if it weren’t for my ex. Says I’m not good for my own daughter. She’s right most days but I do want to see her. My daughter? She drinks her coffee as dark as our skin but I never could get behind that. I’ll buy it for her, though.”
“Oh yeah? What’s your drink of choice?”
“Well, I’ve got to have my chamomile tea. A pinch of honey to make the throat coat with warmth. Mmhhmm. Yessir. But I’ll buy her that coffee because that’s what I’ve got the ability to do. I’m invincible but I can’t do nothin’ for my daughter.”
The man pointed at the trashcan.
“Everywhere I go, I sign it. It’s two arrows, one under the other. Ancient Navajo symbol for bright prospects and good will and I wish it on everyone, even my ex. People see them and I hope it brings them something. Hope it does something for their day. I really hope my daughter sees it and knows I’m ok, that I’m still invincible.”
George nodded. He smiled at the man in the way awkward smiles answer complicated issues best.
The man tilted a brown paper bag towards the sky before he took a final drag and then flicked the cigarette towards the street. It landed on the pavement and spun across the concrete before it dropped down off the curb into the rushing stream. It landed with the precision of one who’d perfected his craft over months and months of sitting in regret.
George left him there and walked back into the shop. His manager stood at the window.
“Are you alright? You were out there for quite a while- did he bother you?”
“No, no. He was telling me about-”
“The stories these guys spin. Wild. Sorry about that. Let’s get ready to close.”
George cleaned the bar and washed the dishes and put them back and wiped the counters and back flushed the espresso machine before he labeled the teas and wrote out the change from the cash register. In between his usual duties, he steeped one last cup of tea. They locked the door and his manager parted left towards her car.
The tea burned George’s seasoned hand before it found a home under the two arrows. The honey soothed his senses before it combined with the damp grass and wet asphalt. The steam escaped the tiny mouth hole and floated like a vapor snake through the tips of the upside down V’s. Nearby big wet drops extinguished a half-smoked cigarette as it rolled across the pavement.
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