Bitten Foam illustration by Geoff Gouveia
My feet slipped on the mat above the black and white tile. I stepped in a puddle walking in, noticing a paper on the sidewalk when I looked down at my shoe. The paper stole my glance and then held my attention after entering in the shop. Ordering my coffee, with honey to subdue my sweet tooth, I take a seat near the window. The paper flickers in the wind. A light teal banner wrapped around the page.
The invitation picked up with the breeze, shoved closer to the street and then swept onto the asphalt. A white car drove over it- the paper bent back and then followed the motion of the vehicle. A man on worn out bicycle with large filled blue tarp wrapped up on the handlebars - his life on the move. The tire sagged in the back. He had red skin that burned against the cool outside world. No sun had come out today but it had licked his skin the week prior.
When he whizzed past the window, he looked at me and I glanced up. I lifted my gaze from the paper and we locked eyes for a second. His cigarette bounced on his lips and I blinked with slow heavy lashes. We didn’t care about each other. Without the sun to mirror our images, we saw right through each other. As he rode away, a cup dropped from his bike. An orange striped the rim with a bite mark near the top.
The bite mark reminded me of the times my father would take my brothers and I to the local market for slurpees. The foam cup would dissipate its contents as I sucked them down. Furious at the loss of liquid, I’d bite the cup in juvenile frustration. My dad would smile and I wished inside he’d bought me a larger one. Here the orange striped cup sat bitten and the wind spun it round until a woman stepped on it. The crunch came under her light brown flats. She had a slate blue open cardigan on, with indigo pressed jeans. Large glasses covered her eyes and her soft blue blouse fluttered. The cup lay crunched, her gaze shifted down and then up as she continued her journey past the corner towards the court.
At the corner, a man in a wheelchair rolled near. His name is Richard- we’ve talked before. He used to draw and he drew well. He’d had pictures hung in the galleries down the street in the 80’s, Native American portraiture. He used to be Native American, but now he was old. His thumbs worked enough to make the motorized wheelchair take him place to place. His hands shook when we talked and I wondered if his black backpack contained the graphite medium he used to master. My own pen rolled off the table and I bend to pick it up.
When I lifted my head, I noticed the shop has one occupant other than myself. A woman dressed younger than she was but not in a bad way. Her hair possessed youth. She sat like a young girl: bunched elbows on the table and feet swung above the ground. It was her eyes that betrayed her; they pierced, showed age in a way that let you know she’d seen life. Her shoes were white, with white socks cut off by the ankle and pants rolled well above that. She had ordered a latte in the for-here cups, the ebony porcelain ones with matching midnight saucers with inset rings for the cups to rest on. When the barista called her drink out, her white shoes swung from near the wall to outside of the chair to stand and collect her drink. When she stood, she arched her back and her shirt lifted, a touch of skin shown and vanished as she walked towards the counter. Thanking the barista, she turned with both hands on the cup and eyes fixed ahead, stoic in concentration to ensure the contents reach their destination.
Now back to her spot, she retrieved from her pocket a phone with bright cobalt rubber casing rimmed on the outside. She laid it on the table. Her fingers poised above the screen in slow sweeping motions. The content scrolled with her finger as she slouched towards her left, her hand resting on her face. Her other hand lifted the latte off the black saucer and brought it slow to her mouth, a sip to check for heat and then a gulp for satisfaction. Her eyes in a trance towards the screen were broken by a screech outside. Her head lifted and I matched her gaze to the exterior.
Outside the window, before the cup with the bitten foam spun endless towards the gutter, a white truck edged violent backwards. An irate driver, bald with a beige jacket, had his hand higher than the roof the truck. A jeep pulled behind and mistook the edging for leaving. The man in the truck motioned wild and the man in the jeep looked up and then down. The jeep man scowled. In truth, the jeep had been the wrongdoer, but he became the victim. Life happened like this: it wasn’t a matter of first or last but of perception and current perception was king over true perception. A man in large rolled pants, tucked into his long white socks, with a bald monk haircut chuckled idle to himself on the corner. His clothes were ragged when he bumbled past them. Possessed with a liquid fire drunken jolly, his movements betrayed his mental state.
When he walked past the truck, he twirled with his hands in the air and pointed towards himself. He shouted, “See!” and sidestepped the drivers. A musical of one and he danced despite the baggage carried with him. He had all the clothes he owned on him, dusted and baggy. His hands kept his pants from falling down. His head moved with small quick lateral movements that mirrored the reptile it reminded me of. Upon exiting the street, he stooped low on the concrete to pick up a cigarette bud and placed it into a small cup of other cigarette buds. He took one out of his secret stash and put it into his mouth. I repulsed at the thought of doing that myself and remembered viewing this in Rio de Janeiro during the World Cup.
My mates and I were walking back from a game and the party was happening all around us. The beer flowed from the cobblestoned sidewalk onto the streets and the empty cans were thrown next to the curb.
Two types of men picked up the refuse in that moment: Those carrying large bags with downcast eyes and those with sunken eyes carrying nothing. The downcast-eyed-large-bag men picked up the cans and kept moving. These men I respected despite their low position deep into the night. They collected trash to provide pão for their filhos before school the next day. These men we gave the cans when we walked by, hoping to add weight to the bag behind them. The addition of weight to their load was liberating them, one can at a time.
The sunken-eyed-bag-less men found liberation in the near empty cans in the refuse. Pouncing on the can before the bag-men, they were content to drink the remnants. These men lost my respect. They ran away from their problems into a disgusting state of garbage and refuse, seeking to extend their buzz for as long as possible. I turned my back as I watched the man stoop low for more cigarette buds. He was at once cleaning the streets and polluting himself in a dog-like manner. An absence of self-respect created a self-perpetuating cycle of degradation and absent reality.
The cobblestoned streets of Rio fade as the cigarette stower continued down the street, past the window broken up by the panes. Woken late, the sun shone on the passerby. The light hit the stower’s front side and cast a shadow on the opposing interior.
The flicker of shadow washed over the businessman’s briefcase, tinted sepia in the light and burnt in the shadow. A green striped tie with yellow small diagonal stripes rested below the Adam’s apple in a half Windsor knot. His arms crossed on the table, one hand just over the other. He peered outside, past the cigarette stower and past the bitten foam cup. A thick ring weighted his left ring finger, the phone on the table highlighted and he sprang to answer it. With a loud hello and a smile, he lifted the remnants of the coffee cup. His head nodded and the phone bounced in his hand, sliding from the top of the ear to the middle. He looked straight ahead and the smile began to wane as his eyes glossed. His brow furled and his hand reached across the table to dig out a paper from his briefcase. When he found it, he shook his head and his expression changed once more, terse and now resolved to finish the conversation. A stifled call me later ends the call. Hand still on the bag, he clasped down and walked out the door with a sigh. The mug lay off center of the table; the contents empty with a half crunched naples yellow sunlit napkin to the side.
My own mug fits in the palm of my hand while my other hand cups the top for warmth. I feel the steam lick my hand, slow rising in temperature and humidity. The liquid is not delicious but refreshing on the tongue based on habit alone. Not like a gin and tonic nor an old fashioned – it sits on the tongue much like you’d sit on your grandmother’s couch and hold her hand. There wasn’t excitement in the encounter that made it worthwhile. The familiarity was warmth and not deliciousness, it was not new and that made it worth pursuing in the morning.
This morning, with its characters and lifestyles were the cups of coffee we’d all had. We'd spin them in different directions, different mixtures and ratios of the ingredients we enjoyed most. We liked it that way; we were individuals when we stopped at 50% milk, 10% sugar in a way that made our coffee ours. Only we were in our heads, much like the men on the street. Spinning around cars and biting foam cups, casting shadows on business suits and grey cardigans. We loved what we loved and that made us unique, mismatched human cobblestones fit together in close proximity.
Thank you for reading this short story. If you have some time, consume another!