by Geoff Gouveia
This story is one of many to be featured in my upcoming Short Story Cycle. The working title is "Red Bench Coffee Stories."
“We’ve got to move on, Brian. I don’t want to either. But we have to.”
“Move on? What’s there to move on from? How does one ‘move on’?”
“Don’t snap at me. I’m working, I’m doing something. You don’t do anything, you don’t go anywhere.”
“Gina, do you want me to leave?”
“I want you to move on.”
“Shut up with that ‘move on’ crap. It’s old. I’ve told you that I can’t function well since it happened. I can’t breathe right- like someone’s on top of me holding me down and gripping my my throat. And- and I’ve got this hole the size of a football in my chest and it wasn’t there before it happened. It’s here now.”
She looked at him and took a deep breath. His thin arms stuck out from a chest that had lost all of its old meat to become a skeletal cage for his bird neck to come out of.
“What about going back to work? I talked with Tim and the guys at the firm yesterday. They all understand. They want you back.”
“I don’t care about Tim. I’m not goin’ back. I can’t go back.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“You don’t talk to me and you can’t even look me in the eyes. If you can’t move on…”
“Then I’ll leave. Only thing you’re doin’ is convincin’ me I want to ‘move on’ from you…and this life.”
“You’re not thinking like that again, are you?”
Brian left her standing in the kitchen of their small house. The screen door slammed behind him. He walked under the clanking rusted wind chimes they’d received as a wedding present.
“Where are you going?” She called out the door.
“Brian? Come back.”
He walked with both arms folded over his chest, his navy blue tee working its hardest to keep him warm as he put one foot in front of the other.
His feet wound their way downtown, rounding the corner behind the antique store before he crossed the broken asphalt. In the dark a car whizzed from the opposite direction and Brian flattened himself against the wall as the headlights flew by. A piece of glass illuminated in the moonlight and he held it to his wrist, lining it on two previous jagged peach marks that had been etched across the arm. The glass drew blood and he shook and sobbed and sunk to the ground to let his shaking sobs collapse into the dirt.
“I can’t even do this right.” With a yell he tossed the glass shard and heard it click against cinderblocks. Upon inspection he found a tucked in patch of concrete to look a near perfect one-man cot.
He checked both sides of the road before crossing into the hollow den. The night was still as he closed his eyes. He slept until a small cry broke the early morning silence. Brian poked his head above the concrete toward the dumpster up above the tiny hill behind the antique store. Brian stared up at the cinder block and forced his eyes shut.
He awoke thirty minutes later to an infant something making it known it needed food. Brian’s foot slipped on the gravel behind the dumpster and slid with a loud rush of dirt as he crawled to the top and waited for the cry to direct him to an overflowing bin with large black trash bags.
The infant tabby cat shook alone nestled in between the cartons, cups and napkins, a burst of shivering orange in a sea of grays. Brian took an empty cup and turned on the faucet behind the antique store and filled it to the brim. He held the kitten under its belly with a firm but gentle hand, the warm fur spreading like water over his skin.
“Ooh, ooh, there there, there there. Come here little one.”
He looked into the cat’s eyes and even in the moonlight he knew they were the type of blue that made a person pause and wish they could hold onto it. It was the kind of eyes you’d only see once or maybe even twice in a life and to not stare wouldn’t be polite. The kitten’s tongue licked the water in the ripped cup clean. Brian foraged for food in the dumped trash. A half eaten Danish still protected by the plastic case provided soft nutrients for the cat. When the cat was full, Brian finished the rest of the pastry while he carried the cat back to his makeshift den. Lying on his back, he curled the cat on his stomach.
“Lucy. That’s perfect. You look jus’ like a Lucy.”
Lucy looked up at him while he talked to her.
He ran two fingers down the soft red fur, careful to keep the pressure from disturbing her slumber. She melted into him, snuggling with her soft body into the hole he had previously been unable to locate. Her closed eyes and soft purring gave Brian the urge to guard her from the world and as such he slept like a new father with the satisfaction of the role taking over the value of rest.
2
The papers with Brian’s face on them had long lost their battle with the sun, fading into white washed crinkled trash by the time Lucy’s legs grew strong and her body leaned out with tough muscles and narrowed eyes. She followed Brian wherever he walked the streets. Whenever Brian crossed the street, he hoisted her onto his shoulders. She came to prefer this to walking alongside him and they made heads turn as they strolled man and cat together.
Brian’s ribs had poked out under his tattered shirt when the papers were freshly stapled onto posts around town. As the cat grew, so too did his own strength and resiliency. The months lengthened and Lucy gave him vigor and he transferred his idleness into newfound industriousness. An old stroller in the alleyway behind Red Bench Coffee gave Brian the idea to line the bottom with trash bags and to then begin a business collecting cans and bottles.
They started behind the antique shop, claiming the discarded glass while pulling out the aluminum cans. Then the route went past the local college and down towards the Plaza. From there it went back through Arlington and up into the train tracks and over the hill behind the local marketplace. The rotation stuck to areas invisible to the public eye. Only the other homeless saw him behind the stores, ripping open bags and taking the recycles with him. The contact he had with the public eye was at the very end of the cycle, when he passed the windows of Red Bench Coffee. As he rounded the corner of Main and 12th, the door to the shop opened and a woman’s voice called out.
“Brian?”
He knew the voice and kept walking.
“Brian, please stop.”
He turned. Lucy balanced on his shoulders with her head swiveling towards the voice.
“What do you want Gina?”
“Where have you been? No call, no text. I checked your bank account and you’re still depositing. I put out signs for you and I heard from others that you walked around here. What is this? A game? Why are you doing this?”
“You told me to move on.”
“This isn’t what I had in mind. You’re homeless for God’s sake. You walk around town collecting bottles and cans like a freaking bum. This isn’t a charade, people are talking.”
“To hell with them. I like this life because it is simple and sustainable. At least, for me and Lucy.”
“Who’s Lucy?”
Brian pointed at the ball of red fur on his shoulders.
“Oh, wow. That’s quite the cat. She’s got eyes just like our-”
“I know.” Brian bit his lip.
“Come home with me Brian. This isn’t normal.”
“You know tomorrow it’ll be four years since my life was normal.”
Brian pushed his cart away from Gina. She began to cry and walked the other way, making it ten steps before she turned to scream at his back.
“You’ve LOST YOUR DAMN MIND.”
Brian kept pushing and walking with Lucy purring in his ear.
The road between the antique shop had a small hill that connected the shop and the local bar, Rio Seco, to a beige wall and a row of dumpsters, the same dumpsters that Brian pointed to Lucy each time they walked by as her birthplace. Lucy liked this location and roamed the trash for morsels left alone. When Brian stopped for the night to sort his haul for the day, she would play near there and catch the stray mice, though Brian never applauded her efforts. Their soft breathless bodies were never praised but Lucy still regarded them as trophies. He knew it was natural, that all cats did such things, but still he hated this tendency in her. Anything small was worth protecting.
The road behind Rio Seco was vacant and only used by cars as an alternative to the main road for people rushing to get home. It wasn’t well lit and when Brian finished his work sorting the cans and glass he called out to Lucy in fear she’d stray too far.
Night unfurled its star blanket and the darkness flicked on the dim street lights at either end of the alley. Brian lay in his cinderblock house staring straight into the sky.
“I don’t think my wife understands I’m not comin’ home, Lucy.”
The cat weaved through his legs and pawed at the stone near his hand.
“She doesn’t understand me. She doesn’t know me. You get me, don’t you girl?” Lucy yawned at this tired fact.
“Sure you do. But you’ve only known the new me. Not new, new is a bad word for it. Broken is better. You’ve only known me broken.” She licked the tops of his hands before she went over the scars on his wrists.
“I was whole with my wife. Me and Gina were inseparable and we had a great love for each other. Our life was set.” Lucy swished her tail while she sat atop his chest. Brian spoke up into the night.
“A few years of marriage and then a kid. That was the plan. At first, I didn’t want a kid. I guess it was fear of how’d I do as a dad. I thought that wasn’t for me but Gina was insistent. Few years of marriage and then a kid, just like we planned it. Riley was born.”
Lucy lowered her head onto his chest.
“Riley was the greatest gift I’ve ever received. She was perfect. Tiny strands of blonde hair- perfect I tell you. The best blue eyes, like her mother. The kind of eyes that made you want to hold her and have her stare at you. She had circle eyes that were always open and wet and lovely.”
Lucy pawed at Brian’s chest, soothing his muffled cries.
“It’s weird now, how I didn’t want to be a dad and all. Because now that she’s gone, that’s all I want to be. That’s all I know how to be anymore.”
3
As summer hit and the heat increased, so too did the city’s capacity for drinking from aluminum and glass. Brian and Lucy found their load becoming heavy much quicker than in the winter when the wet sidewalks were barren. Now, the duo only had to take rounds nearest the bars in the area. They adjusted their rotation accordingly, circling in a narrow swoop. With the heavy load the pushing slowed to a crawl and it was night by the time the cart neared the windows of Red Bench Coffee. The cart snagged on an upturned piece of concrete and tipped the top downward, spilling the cans onto the ground. Brian picked them up one by one, careful to find a home for the stray recyclables in the packed cart.
“It is you, isn’t it?” A man said behind him.
Lucy wound her way in and out of Brian’s legs as the fur on her back raised up.
“Shh, girl. Shh.” Brian continued to move the cans one by one.
“Brian- that’s you, right? My god that’s some cat. The eyes on that thing! I was told to look for the cat but look at it. It’s a guard dog, too.”
Brian turned to face the inquiry. He nodded and blinked his apathetic eyes.
“Hardly recognized you with that beard. Gina told me you came around here. Do you need any help?”
“No, no. This cart is heavy and it stops every so often on the concrete. I’m more worried about pushing it up the hill back over there. Don’t suppose you want to help me push it, do you?”
The man grinned with an awkward tilt of his head. He shifted his weight from his left foot to his right foot and then back to his left.
“That’s not what I’m talking about Brian. I meant – I meant do you need some help getting out of this, er, situation?” He pointed at the cart.
“You can always come back, you know. Knowing you though, you’re probably turning a good dollar off this, aren’t you?”
Brian looked at him until the man thought it might be his turn to say something else. Brian let it linger before breaking his silence.
“I don’t want to come back Tim. I told you the business, the firm- it’s all yours. I’m out here by choice. I like this life.”
“I know it’s not my place, and I know we haven’t spoken since you’ve left – and you left for good reasons. Sorry not, good. You know what I mean.”
Brian scratched the top of Lucy’s head.
“Look, all I’m sayin’ is let me help.”
The cart was fully loaded and ready with wheels clear of the previous obstacles to move forward.
“This life has all it needs- for me at least.” Lucy pounced atop the cart before climbing on Brian’s shoulders.
“Good girl. Tim - see you around, I guess.”
Tim stood outside the shop and shook his head, the great mass of aluminum and human and cat floating away from him towards the back alley.
“That’s some cat.” Tim said as Brian walked under the street lamp and into the alley.
The pushing was slow as the wheels sagged and the bottom scraped against the ground. Though summer held its frugal grip on light, the night had covered the alley and the only illumination came from the weak street lamps at the beginning and the end. Brian worked in the dark to sort the cans and bottles while Lucy hunted in her dangerous game. After Brian finished the unloading and wrapping of the bottles and cans he tried to push the cart from the road into his living den. The cart front wheels caught in a broken wedge of asphalt and then snapped one of the plastic wheels off. Behind him, Lucy stirred a stray can before jumping on his shoulder. He turned into her damp fur and breathed deep as she purred on his shoulders. Her purring became louder and louder and louder until her eyes shone bright in the night, illuminated by the light of an oncoming car.
4
“The doctor says it will be another week or so before he can come home.”
“Oh good. He’ll rest up. Can he hear us?”
“You can try. The medication is keeping him sedated.”
“Brian? Brian, this is Tim. You’re old partner, I saw you last. We want you back on your feet, just like the old days. When you’re all healed up, let’s get you back on a project for the firm. We need you, man.”
Tim patted the bed before turning to the figure in the doorway.
“Gina, this is some hell. Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”
“Oh, thank you, Tim.”
“No, no. Please let me do something. In a way I think this is my fault. I should’ve reached out to him before he went off like that.”
“Don’t say that.”
“He was in an alley all alone at night. I should’ve done something. You said he’s been out like that for a year? That drunk driver didn’t even stop until the cans went through his windshield. I should’ve reached out to him.”
Gina hugged him.
“It’s not your fault.”
Tim walked through the doorway and back into the hall. Gina turned as Brian gurgled words.
“Shhh, shhh. Don’t talk now. The doctor said it wasn’t good for you to talk yet.”
Brian’s eyes were wide open and the deep brown mingled into the black pupil. They blinked and then searched the room.
“Lu- Luu-” He began to sit up.
“Shhhh, just relax. You’ve got a broken leg and cracked pelvis. Don’t move, I’m here. Do you need some water?”
Brian’s eyebrows came down over his eyes, the determination in his mind forming around the words he needed to communicate.
“Lu- Lucy. W-Wh-Where’s…”
“The cat?”
Gina patted the hair above his forehead. She pointed her vibrant blue eyes into his and shook her head. Brian looked away from the blue and into the fluorescent lights fastened into the ceiling.
“I’m sorry Brian. They found her near you. I don’t know if you know what happened - you were hit Brian. No, no sit down. Don’t touch that – a piece of glass went through your chest. It’s a good size mark – stop touching that. Don’t do that, your lung was punctured. Damn it Brian, stop. Nurse? NURSE?”
A woman in scrubs came into the room and increased the flow of morphine into Brian’s veins. His thrashing stilled as he slipped into forced relaxation with a lone tear running its silent protest over his sloped cheek and onto the light blue pillow.
5
The forty steps to the bathroom in his house were longer than he had remembered them before he left the house. His bum leg gave him a cane and his weak lung forced the breath from him faster than he could regain it. He paused often to wheeze, making Gina a poltergeist, sometimes walking straight through the wall to comfort him.
“Your breathing should improve in the coming months. It’s already improved since you first got home.”
Brian didn’t answer.
“You can talk, you know? I know you aren’t happy. But you’re alive and you’re walking on your own now. Besides, I’m happy you’re with me.”
Brian felt the stitches on the left side of his chest and looked at his cane near the door.
“Here- take these. They’ll help you sleep tonight.”
Brian took the pills from her outstretched hand and when she turned around to close the lid on the pill bottle, he hid them in his pocket. He drank the rest of his glass and nodded at her and went to the bedroom. Gina followed after cleaning the kitchen and then undressed before climbing into the bed. Brian’s soft wheezing put them both to sleep.
Clanging wind chimes stirred Gina before she dozed off again. In her slumber she felt across the bed and the cold sheets swung her feet out onto the floor to gather a blanket onto her shoulders. Sleep wasn’t Brian’s friend after the operation, the pain shooting down his legs when he turned. His living room chair, the one he slept on when his side flamed, sat alone in the dark. His shoes and cane were missing by the door. The night air hit her face and the rusted wind chimes scattered against each other in discordant noise.
“Brian?”
She ran out into the street.
“Brian?”
She hurried into the house and dialed the phone with trembling hands.
“Tim? I’m sorry to wake you. He’s gone. Yes, gone. Ok. Ok. I’ll see you soon. Thank you. I’m sorry. Ok. Thank you.”
Tim arrived at the house as dawn cracked light over the horizon as if God broke that heavenly egg with the yolk peeking from the shell. He found Gina sitting on her porch steps with her neck bent forward searching the street. She looked past him as he walked up to her, shifting her weight forward to scan the neighborhood.
“Thanks for coming Tim. I’m not sure what to do.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Right after dinner we went to sleep. He was tired, the medication makes him so sleepy. I heard something and then went back to bed. He wasn’t next to me, but then again, he’s never in the bed because of his hip.”
Her crying started slow.
“I’m worried he’s going to…he’s going to...do something permanent.”
Tim’s lips tightened to the side.
“Where do you think he could have gone?”
“I don’t know. He’s so unhappy, so unhappy. I don’t know.”
The street light at the end of the street cast a long illuminated spot over the far sidewalk. From the porch Tim concentrated his gaze on it. A figure passed under it in a slow hobbled walk.
“Gina. Gina- right there.” He pointed at the figure walking with great care. The right arm held a stick to the ground and the left curled inward to protect a football.
“Is that him? Brian? Brian?” Gina ran out to the figure.
Brian placed his cane one step in front of his foot and the soft metallic thump propelled him onward. He cradled his left arm and continued towards the house. His white shirt clung to him and his hair matted with the sweat, the pain leaking through moisture on his forehead and arms. His left arm held his sweater bunched in a ball.
“Brian. Oh Brian. You’re bleeding. Your stitches must’ve opened. Where did you go? Why did you leave?”
Brian shrugged off Tim and walked through their inquiries. He made it to the porch and sat down on the steps. Gina went inside and returned with bandages.
“Are you alright? You look pale. Gina, get a blanket.”
Brian cradled his sweater in his left arm before he unfurled it. A tiny nose poked through the fabric and his hand. A small brindled face broke free and the black nose sniffed upward. The pup yawned.
“Drink this water, Brian.”
He stroked the area between the pup’s eyes with a soft fore finger. The pup nestled into the loving nudge and closed its eyes.
“Stay with us, Brian. Tim – call an ambulance.”
Brian sat back, slumping into the wooden banister with half closed eyes.
“I’m whole again.”
Thank you for reading this story. If you enjoyed this one, you'll like this one as well- another part of my upcoming Short Story Cycle: Red Bench Coffee Stories.
Published by: Geoff Gouveia in Short Story