by Geoff Gouveia

“Hey Anthony- that guy is back again.”

Anthony paused his wiping of the espresso machine.

“He never leaves!”

The man picked cigarettes off the ground with yellow stained fingers.

“Look- look. I’m tellin’ you, George, every week!”

A green Ford Mustang rolled onto the side street. Through the window of Red Bench Coffee the sun smashed into the green and made it sparkle. The tinted windows receded in a perfect muted counter to the shining surface, remaining black until one rolled down and the man by the coffee shop shimmied over towards it, bobbing his head up and down.

“Every week that green car comes around and that guy walks up to it.”

The man reached with one hand into the window and withdrew a small brown package. He pocketed the contents and threw away the bag.

George watched the man’s head shake from side to side, mirroring his flapping hands as they followed a serpentine course through the air.

“Must’ve been his drug dealer.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me. This guy sits on the bench and just shakes. Makes me feel weird. I’ve kicked him off of it hundreds a’times. I would kick him out sooner if he didn’t always a gift card to buy crap. How does he always have money on that thing? These guys are crafty, man.”

The man bobbled back and forth in a fight within himself. He collapsed onto the namesake of the coffee shop and the backing bumped into the window. The bump stirred the inhabitants of the coffee shop. The rattled caged animals looked out at the beast fending for himself in the wild. His hands folded over themselves in his lap before they produced metal wires from his jacket.

“What’s he doing?”

“This is where it gets weird. Actually, you might like this, art boy. He makes sculptures, bends and folds that wire into statues. I’ve seen a few he’s done. He’s no Picasso though.”

The man on the bench began with hunched shoulders, the tops of which shook from side to side in small swaying figure eights. His head looked all around him, checking the street and then the cars and then inside of the shop through the window. He didn’t see anything, only open eyes passing around while the conversation went on inside of his head.

“Who’s he talking to?”

“Himself probably. That fool is crazy. That’s why people call him Crazy Ty. Watch the hands, man, the hands.”

The hands worked with mechanic precision, strong movements bending the wire over and over. His hands were the ones thinking, feeling, twisting, living, being – the body they rested on had lost its control years ago. The wire danced in between the burnt flesh and above the tattered sleeves of an old green sweater that hung loose on a frame that mimicked the material he manipulated. A figure began to emerge from the bits of wire, hands and torso next, small legs to make it stand. As it propped up on its own, the man retrieved a few pieces of string and tied them as if it were a bandana to its head.

“Is it always a figure?”

“Always. And he leaves them there, watch.”

The man stood up chest first, stretched and returned to shaking. He walked away from the bench. The wire figure stood sturdy while the man stumbled down the road away from the shop. A cyclist rode from the opposing side decked in full red and white tight polyester road gear. The cyclist locked his bike while he gazed at the red bench outside of the shop. On his way to the door he grabbed the wire figure and stuffed it into his back pouch.

The baristas greeted him as his road shoes clacked on the checkered floor.

“What’s good Blaine? Why’d you take that?”

“The wire figure?” Blaine said.

“Yeah- I’ve seen you take it before, right? You know who makes those?”

Blaine retrieved a cup to fill it from the free pitcher by the side of the bar.

“I’ve known Crazy Ty before he got the title Crazy.”

“Bullshit!” Anthony grinned.

“No, I’m serious. He grew up on my block as a kid. Didn’t see him for a bit after high school but he came back. Well, until after he ran away.”

“What does it take to get to that point?” George said.

Blaine shrugged.

“Maybe some are born that way - without all the wires connected.”

“Wait- go back. ‘Ran away?’” Anthony said.

“Yeah- ran away. Listen, there’s more to him than that.”

“Then tell it. Today’s slow and I don’t feel like cleaning the display shelves.”

Blaine leaned his elbows on the counter. He unzipped the top portion of his cycling outfit while he spoke.

“I remember Ty shaking his arms a lot when he was a kid. We’re near in age and whenever we played together, he had a pretty big temper. Not many of the kids in the neighborhood could hang on account of his shaking and anger. He scared them off. We always used to build things together. Stick huts, forts, ramps. The kid liked to build and use his hands, you know?”

“Is that why he makes those sculptures?” George said.

Blaine tilted the cup of water back while he shrugged.

“I don’t know. Say- how about an espresso?”

Anthony winked and then knocked the grounds from the portafilter. Blaine raised his voice over the whirr of the espresso grinder.

“I do know that his hands have always had only two powers: to create and to destroy. Ty didn’t have a middle ground. I remember one time his Dad gave him a rabbits foot to calm his shakes. It worked too, I guess, because they stopped for a bit. But as soon as he put it down, he picked up a stick and I watched him walk behind a tree and swing at a bird. We watched it twitch and then stop in the dirt.”

“He’s always been weird then?” Anthony said as he pushed the illuminated button on the espresso machine. 

“Kind of. Like I said before, born without the correct wiring. The medication his Dad gave him as we grew older seemed to work with his shakes. But I think his mind began to rattle at that point. He stopped talking. I mean, he never talked much before the medication, but he certainly didn’t talk after it. Ty ran away when he was sixteen, right after I graduated from high school. My parents said they found him under the 60, right over by Mission, near the riverbed. The same week I went to college his Dad took him to a mental facility. Apparently he escaped or something the first few weeks he was in there. Sad, really. Just busted himself out. He needed that place.”

“So what happened to him after he escaped?”

“His Dad tried to keep him at the house but you can run away only a certain amount of times before people give up on you. I don’t think his Dad gave up. He simply moved on because Ty chose to move on himself. I always remember his Dad being the nicest. This is where I speculate - I haven’t talked with the man in over five years - I only see him sitting on the bench and then walking away if I am lucky to time it right.”

“How do you think he got the way he is today? What happened in the last five years?”

“I’ve seen him walking. He’s still got the shakes, the same ones I saw back when we were kids. But he’s got more shakes now and he talks to himself-”

“That guy is so cracked out it isn’t funny. George and I just saw him walk up to his dealer right before he made the sculpture.”

“Really? That’s sad. You see a guy you knew, who lived close to you. Look how I turned out- not perfect by any means, but living and normal. No one notices when I walk and that’s a good thing. I don’t exist to everyone, only to those I care about. He got the opposite treatment. I think he fell into the wrong crowd. He had gifted hands, man. I tell you he could make some beautiful pictures as kids. He was talented. I think the streets found a better use for those hands, something nimble fingers could do.”

George wiped the counter with a wet rag. His eyes followed the mindless activity as his mouth let his thought escape.

“It probably started with the guy in the car.”

“You said that already – what do you mean, ‘the car?’” Blaine said.

“The green one. George and I think it is his drug dealer. Here’s your espresso.”

Blaine held the tiny saucer in his hand and closed his eyes when the hot beverage hit his tongue.

“Coffee is only good hot.” Blaine smiled at his statement, affirming his identity in the coffee elite.

“I don’t know about a ‘drug dealer’ but I do know its been a long time since I’ve talked with him. You can’t blame him if that’s what he fell into.”

George nodded and took the empty cup from Blaine’s hand. The cyclist clacked towards the trashcan and threw away a napkin he used to wipe his face. He waved at the baristas and then exited the shop.

“Let’s get ready to close.” Anthony said.

“You working tomorrow?”

“No, but I open on Friday.”

“Ok- I’ll see you then. I’m closing tomorrow and then come for the mid morning shift.”

The door locked with a click and the two men turned towards their cars. The weak lamplight lit a limp body in their path. The bottom half lay on grass while most of the torso flattened against the cold ground. When they walked past, the figure mumbled in its sleep and raised a dirty hand with tobacco stained fingertips.

Anthony leaned into George.

“Crazy Ty is a character- isn’t he?”

**

In the early afternoon heat, Crazy Ty lowered himself on the bench with his back against the backstop. He leaned against the glass until his hair touched it and then rocked forward. His eyes travelled over every detail, every crevice near him and his hands swooped along the ground until they found loose cigarette buds, half smoked and crunched but still able to be lit to stash away for later.

When he had finished his cigarettes, he rummaged through his jean pocket. The violent shake ended when his right hand clasped onto the metal wire spool flattened by the carrying and his left gripped colored string. He set to work bending the wire and the string into one. The two items combined into his hands and they too became extensions of the sculpture. He warped the materials and flesh into a blur and his face muscles relaxed. The finishing of the statue set his wild inner motions back into place, the shaking beginning in his arms and ending in a convulsive narrow frame until all that remained was an outside beast.

George watched this event from the interior and waited for the finished product. As Crazy Ty moved on, stumbling away from his perch and knocking through several groups of people, George retrieved the wire figure on the edge of the bench.

The figure watched from atop the shelf above the espresso machine as George gathered together the trash from every bin.

“It looks like it’s at home,” George said to himself as he walked the trash outside of the shop to the dumpster.

A green mustang parked outside of Rio Seco across the street over in the abandoned lot by Eleventh and Main. Crazy Ty approached it from the right side, on the opposing street away from Rio Seco. George paused to watch the scene.

Crazy Ty made it near the car and tapped with a gentle hand at the window. When the window didn’t roll, Crazy Ty looked around with a twisted face like a dog scratching to release himself from his kennel. He clawed the window.

“Hey- Hey!” A man ran to Crazy Ty.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Startled by the voice, Crazy Ty paused to look at the man.

“What are you, retarded or something? What are you doing by my car? Answer me damn it.”

Crazy Ty began to shake and this made the man tense up, his fist raising and his eyes narrowing into prepared slits. Crazy Ty backed away but the man still came forward. The Mustang blocked George’s view of Crazy Ty as he turned back towards the shop.

A squealing of tires preceded the green Mustang peeling off past the shop as George locked the door. Down the street the color shifted towards a blue hue as the light licked upon the car. The night swallowed it in the distance.

The street was empty except for Crazy Ty sleeping on the curb.

George walked to his car. 

“What does it take to get to this point?” George said as he unlocked his door. Crazy Ty rested his head against the concrete with an awkward elbow bent under him. “How is it comfortable to lay like that?”

**

George walked around the yellow caution tape that sectioned off a portion of the curb across from his work. Blaine looked straight ahead as he sat on the bench, looking out into the street at nothing but the asphalt heating with the morning sun. In his lap was a spool of wire. He pressed his lips tight together and gave George a shallow nod. Inside the shop a police officer stood at the counter questioning Anthony.

“We’ve seen him around, alright. He always comes around, cracked out – high as a kite usually.” Anthony said.

“You’ve seen him do drugs on the premises?”

“No, I didn’t say that. I said he was always cracked out, shaking and mumbling and talking with himself. But I wasn’t here last night. Finally - I’ve been calling you, George - That’s the guy you want to talk to.”

The officer turned on his black boots to talk with George in the doorway.

“Do you know anything about the events that occurred last night?”

“I’m sorry – what occurred?”

“The death of a vagrant in the area. People here at the shop have been calling him ‘Crazy Ty.’ The time of death is twenty minutes after your closing time. Did you see anything last night?”

George looked at the shelf above the espresso bar. The wire figure stood over them with short legs.

“I heard the commotion last night but I didn’t think anything of it. All I saw was Crazy Ty arguing with a guy over by the green Mustang and then when I came outside to walk to my car, Crazy Ty was laying against the curb. But he always did stuff like that. He looked asleep. What happened? Did his drug dealer do something?”

“Drug dealer? We can’t confirm that right now. Besides, the license plate was registered to a blue Mustang. You’re now saying green?”

“From the window it looked green. When it drove past me it was blue. We always see a green mustang pull up when we are working here. Someone inside gives him a bag and then keeps moving. Like a drug deal.”

The officer wrote the information down in his notebook.

From behind the officer a green Mustang pulled into a parking spot near the coffee shop. It idled for a moment with the man looking down the street and behind him. He exited the vehicle with fast steps and walked through the door.

“What’s this about?” The man asked.

Anthony looked out at the caution tape. “Some homeless guy tried to break into a car yesterday. The owner pushed him and he fell back.”

The man’s face lost its color, the white filling where the peach used to reside.

“Was his name Tyler?”

“He went by Crazy Ty. So maybe his name was Tyler. All I know is that he was probably cracked out-”

The man left the conversation to walk towards George and the officer.

“Tell me it isn’t Tyler.”

“Sir, I’m not sure of the vagrant’s name. All I know is that people in the shop have been referring to him as Crazy Ty.”

The man began to breathe heavy, deep pulls of air into his chest. He stared at the yellow tape and the curb across the street.

“Sir, is that your vehicle?” The officer pointed at the Mustang as he walked outside. George and the man followed at a short distance. Anthony looked through the window at the conversation.

“Y-y-yes. Why are you asking me this?”

“We’ve had reports of suspicious activity in the area involving a green mustang and the deceased. Have you had contact with the deceased in the last week?”

The man pursed his lips and looked at George and then the officer.

“Yes. I come here once a week or so and give my son a gift card and wire.”

“Is it your son that interacted with the deceased?”

“No, you’re not understanding me. He is my son.”

The officer looked up from his notebook.

“I’m sorry to be the one telling you this, sir. Would you mind coming with me down to the station to get a statement…”

George walked back into the shop. Anthony stood behind the counter staring out the window at the officer and the man.

“What did you see last night George?”

“I didn’t see much. I saw a guy yellin’ at Crazy Ty and then come close to him. When I came outside again, Crazy Ty was on the ground - same as when we closed the other night. Did you hear from the officer the real details?”

“Guess he was trying to break into someone’s car and the guy took a swing to protect it. Sad, but he had it comin’ to him. It’s crazy what drug addiction will do to you.”

“I swore he was sleeping. Man if I knew…”

“The police said he was dead on contact- hit that curb at the right angle.”

Crazy Ty’s father walked with the officer back to the police cruiser.

“I’ve never seen a drug dealer before- but that guy sure doesn’t look the part.” Anthony said while he straightened the cups near the bar.

In the distance Blaine rode by on his white bicycle. Swerving near the yellow caution tape, he folded his arm back into the pouch behind him. The bicycle sped up with powerful pumps from his legs. He tossed the item onto the ground and kept riding.

The item rolled on the asphalt and then teetered onto its own two feet, holding its ground on the rough street.

And it was made of wire.

 

---

Thank you for reading this story. If you'd like to read another one in this similar "world" go here.

 

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 12^th, 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.

by Geoff Gouveia

Every Tuesday Mario received an envelope addressed to him and his grandfather in scrawled cursive writing. The upper right portion of the envelope had STATE stamped red in large capital letters onto the crème paper. His grandfather said the return address was up north, somewhere near the Bay.

“What’s penatanory?”

“Penitentiary. It’s the place they’re holding him.” His grandfather said with tired eyes.

Mario received the first drawing six weeks after his grandfather held his hand in court. Prompted by the lawyer, tiny Mario pointed to the cut under his eye. His father sat with both hands near one another at a table on the opposite side of the courtroom. Under the eyes that stared with resolve at his son, a long dark mole lined his left eyelid. He did not blink nor squint nor give any sign of struggle when the bailiff took him back behind where Mario lost sight of him.

A rose with pointed petals was the first drawing Mario received. The words I'm sorrry, Mario garnished the top of the page. Mario held the drawing in one hand and with the other picked at the cut under his eye until it bled and the rust smelled thick on his red-orange stained finger. The facial gift from his father scarred by the time he had received three more drawings.

The drawings became the catalyst for his exploration into the world of art. He took the drawings to class and traced the flowers on lined paper, careful to add his own embellishments as his skill could allow. Each Tuesday the drawings came and each Tuesday they spurred him towards the creation of another drawing. At first it was to copy the image exactly as it was by tracing. When he found that he could replicate it without much trouble, he moved onto looking at the image and then drawing it, side by side. This kept his attention for the years that his grandfather took him to school. By the time he was riding there on his own bicycle, he was able to draw the image by looking at it. He consumed himself in his work. If it weren’t for the outside neighborhood, he wouldn’t have even considered it odd his father existed through sheets of paper.

His father had run the local gang, making sure the drug money flowed even through times of economic trouble. He had a son with one of the women who overdosed on his product a few months after birthing the baby. Mario grew up near the fiends that shook their withering bodies but paid in full. The neighborhood turned a blind eye to the activity as it fueled their growth as well as protected them from rival gangs. When Papa was put away, the local economy collapsed and the neighborhood kids blamed Mario for this loss of fiscal opportunity.

The local kids made extra money by running packages for the older members of the neighborhood gang. Mario’s grandfather made enough working as a janitor to keep the lights on in the house but little else. When grandfather’s medicine took the majority of the meager check three years after the first Tuesday drawing arrived, Mario approached the boys that gathered in circles on the street corner. They took his bike and slapped the back of his head as he walked towards the new leader, Hector.

“Ca-Can can I-”

“Can you what, pendejo?” The group laughed and pushed Mario from behind. He hit the ground and a bruise formed on his face. His hand covered his scar.

“This thing’s gonna look just like Daddy with that nasty scar.” Hector said.

Mario stood up to ask again.

“Do you need someone to run packages?”

“Yes we do.” Hector patted his hand on Mario’s shoulder, bringing him near to his side. Mario smiled up at him.

“We do, don’t we boys?” Hector said to the group and the group clicked their tongues and raised their voices. Hector held his hand up.

“There is one thing you should know, Mario.”

“What is it?”

“The packages-” Hector bent close to Mario’s face, “-don’t have cheese inside for little rats like you.” He grabbed Mario’s nose and pinched it until Mario cried. Hector held Mario by the shoulder with his left hand and then shotgunned his fist into the boy’s stomach. The group laughed very loud and shoved the gasping Mario out of the circle. He walked until he could run and then he ran home without his bicycle, straight into his room and clawed at the drawings on the wall. Each drawing became pulled meat under his writhing hands, the roses ripping and ripping until they were indiscernible piles of trash.

When the other boys rode by on their ape-hanger bicycles, they laughed at Mario carrying bottles and cans on his back. When the police turned on their sirens, Mario kept his pace while the boys ditched their bicycles into the grass to hop nearby fences. Thus he progressed through high school, alone and dirty and resourceful and his own.

Six years into the weekly Tuesday drawings he graduated. Instead of going to college he opted to work at Rio Seco, the bar right near Red Bench coffee shop. It was at this time his grandfather passed the torch of responsibility. Too frail to continue in life, he withered away in their small apartment. Mario kept his drawing habit instead of picking up another to cope with the stress. Before his shifts in the kitchen at Rio Seco, he drew the customers in line at Red Bench Coffee. In this way he did go to college – he studied the way light hit the customers, how it shaded their cheekbones and creased their dresses, how silk glided and how wool seemed to stand on its own. He noted the ruffles on the edges of sweaters and how skin shifted with every movement. Four years passed this way and his ability increased along with his small savings. His grandfather died the week after he stopped receiving the Tuesday drawings. Mario had packed his bag the month prior in anticipation of the day.

His last night on shift Mario parked his car out behind Rio Seco near the beige wall. The backseat held his belongings tucked neat into a black duffle bag. He walked into work with a smile and the resolve to collect his final paycheck. The night progressed like any other night on the shift except much slower and much happier. He made the customers drinks with precision and ease, chatting them up as he poured the alcohol together and shook the ingredients.

A man walked near the doorframe with a white shirt and khaki pants that were a little too large for his frame. He looked around outside the doorway and walked into the bar to take a seat near the far corner, outside of the light in the shadows. He raised his hand and Mario acknowledged him.

“What can I get you?”

“A beer, thanks.”

Mario held the bottle for a moment before he snapped the top off with a swift snake strike of his wrist. The hops hit his nostril when he gave it to the man.

“Thanks. You’re a smiley cat, aren’t you?” The man said before he took a swig.

“Sorry, I can’t help it tonight. It’s my last shift. Right after this I’m headed east. An agency accepted my portfolio about a month ago.”

“Congrats, hombre.”

The man’s arms were olive but looked like they’d be tan if they had seen sunlight. The tattoos on them were familiar to Mario, like he’d seen them in a different medium before.

“Nice work. Where’d you get it done?”

The man folded his arms and bit his lip, looking around the bar while answering him.

“I just got out. Did ten years up north.” Mario turned his head and touched his cheek right under his peach scar. He glanced back at the man who dipped his head into the light. A flattened mole lined his left eye.

Ten years can change a mustache or gray a hair but it won’t loose a likening, unless the likening is from a young boy to a man. Mario gave him a satisfactory nod and then tapped the other bartender on the shoulder, signaling a break.

The cool air outside the bar conditioned his hideout, an area right in between the dumpster and the beige wall. Nearby four men smoked cheap cigarettes and marijuana, the skunk mixing with the grape Swishers as it wafted down towards the bar. His presence stilted their conversation. They looked at him one by one until the last man, the bandana clad one, spit on the ground in his direction. Mario escaped their gaze into his hideout and opened a bottle of beer on the edge of the cinderblock wall. He drank the amber liquid in gulps. Papa? No one forgets a face. He shook his head. He never knew my face. He drained the bottle and left it on the curb.

The bar had slowed its pace for the night, the late hours dwindling the customers as they left to sleep or live or both. Mario asked Papa if he needed another drink. Papa nodded.

“Tequila.”

Papa slammed it. “Another.” The wood surface clanked when the empty glass hit it.

“You’re an artist then.”

“What?” Mario said with a turned eye.

“An artist. You said something about your portfolio.” He scratched his arm right above the wrist on the dark inked pointed rose petals. “Inside I sent my kid drawings every single week. You know that? Never got a single response. I imagine he’s old enough to drink now and I’m not even sure where he’s livin’. My old place was empty when I went by. Hope he’s found a life for himself.”

Mario began wiping down the bar, careful to shield his scar away from him.

“People like to bet on a winning dog. I wasn’t no winner and neither was my boy. We never had a chance. I fought like hell in this life and I hope he’s alright.”

He held up the empty shot glass, the light splintering through it.

“I hope he didn’t become what I am.”

“I’m sure he’s fine.”

Papa looked up, his eyes sadder than most fathers are when they look at their children. Except he wasn’t looking at his son, he was looking at a poor man’s therapist. They ached with the kind of hurt that has no fix unless they’re replaced with new ones that had never seen the original wrongs. Mario poured him one final shot. Papa stared it straight down the barrel before his head threw back.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Fifteen.” The number sounded small to Mario.

Papa left a crumpled twenty on the bar.

“You look kind of like my boy, in a way. Or how I picture him.”

He walked back out the doorway and turned right.

Mario resumed cleaning the bar, rinsing down the surface and washing out the various canisters used to mix the drinks. He gathered the trash into one large black bag and carried it through the back door into the night. He opened the lid and tossed the bag inside. Voices broke over the soft crash of plastic on metal.

“It’s not going to happen that way, Miguel. 300 Block is mine now.” The bandana man said to another with tattooed arms. The tattooed man turned into light and it illuminated a thin mole under his right eye.

“Escuchame, mijo. That’s my block. You know what I did for your father, Hector?”

“No me importa. You know what we did for your son? Or didn’t do - that fuckin’ rat.”

“Leave him out of this.” Papa’s fist clenched.

“We got your note – we did leave him out. You really think we woulda let him run packages? You’re lucky we didn’t kill him. What kind of man are you? Soft. You’re soft, that’s what you are. You can’t even take care of the snitches in your own family…how can you run the block?” Hector nodded towards the beige wall.

Three men crept from around the corner and surrounded Papa. Hector’s smile shone yellow in the street lamp and Papa’s mole was dark against his lit face.

The four men made a square around Papa and inched in. Their voices dropped but Papa held his gaze against Hector’s. One of the men flicked a knife. The bottle on the curb near the dumpster glinted off the streetlight. Mario gripped it by the neck and the glass became an extension of him as ran towards the group, swinging the bottle hard against the knife-man closest to him. The bottle shattered its last half and the man dropped to the floor. Papa kicked Hector in the groin and then punched the man next to him. Mario tackled the remaining thug and began pummeling his face.

Mario’s hands moved liked they did when they drew – an intuitive conductor moving the orchestra inside of him and he increased his pace until the sweat dropped down from his brow and over his scar and onto the man’s nose he flattened again and again.

Hector got to his feet with the knife that had sprawled across the ground. Papa exchanged punches with his opponent unaware of the creeping Hector behind him. The man beneath Mario ceased fighting. The broken bottle lay near his hand when Mario saw Hector moving in on his father. Mario intercepted Hector with a thrust into his side, retracting the jagged bottle on instinct before letting it find the mark again. The man who fought Papa ran off, dragging the conscious one with him. The bottled man remained still and Hector held his side as the laces of Mario’s shoe swiped hard into an unprotected face. Mario stood above him panting.

The streetlight combined with the moonlight and Papa saw his own face reflected in Mario’s. Fear made him older and Papa touched his mole while looking at the peach scar that lined under Mario’s right eye from a ring he used to wear. Mario threw up, adrenaline and all, at the sight of his blood-dipped hands and the street filling with more of it. He shook while Papa pried the bottle from Mario’s hand and then wiped the blood onto his own shirt.

“Go. This is mine.” Papa said.

Mario ran off to his car. In the rear view mirror his father’s tattooed arms hovered over the two men. He drove past the oncoming red and blue sirens and kept driving until he made it onto the freeway. He stopped for gas and to wash his hands. He stuffed his clothes in the trash and threw up once more. He drove clear past Phoenix and then east on empty desert roads, the sides of which combined out the window in a moonlit blue-gray blur.

**

“You’ve got another one, Miguel. Every week, huh?” The man said from the lower bunk.

Papa leaned over the side and stared out of the small window above the toilet.

“What’s in the letters?”

Papa took the week’s note out of the envelope and looked at the drawing of a rose. The petals looked real but smelled of the fixative that held it down. He hung it with tape along his wall near the bottom of the pictures stuck in chronological order with the very top holding the first one he had received.

I forgive you, it read, and the ‘I’ was not as ornate as the ‘you’.

 

---

Thank you for reading this story. If you enjoyed it, please leave a comment below!

 

by Geoff Gouveia

“You ever been here before, Dave?”

The two walked through an overgrown parking lot by a bush with a single rose in full bloom.

“Na. Driven passed it many times but never been inside.” Dave kicked the petals clean off. Natural faux-geometric magenta blood – poof. He smiled at the flower’s destruction.

“Quinn – what the heck is that for?”

“This?” Quinn held up the air soft pistol, brandishing it in front of the real weapon, his upturned jalapeño pepper thin grin. “Protection. The place is crawlin’ with bums. I figured I could get some target practice in.”

The warehouse blocked the late afternoon sun as it set for the night. A breeze ruffled the corrugated metal shingles on the sides, banging them against each other. A hawk circled above. Quinn held the sight of the pistol up to the sky and trailed the hawk, circling with it just in front of the wind.

“You couldn’t hit that if you tried.”

Quinn put the pistol in his back pocket and held up the loose metal sheet makeshift door for the adventure-inclined to walk in. Dave poked his head like a soft dive into a cool pool. The room held sound from him and blurred his vision, the darkness adjusted and Quinn pushed him from behind.

“Let’s go already.”

The two walked along in the shade, the late afternoon creating jagged shadows off the corroded metal. The ceiling littered in natural holes and man made ones, shot out with a shotgun or some other pellet spewing device. The little holes let light spill inside the rusted building. Wind picked up the shingles and shifted them, the groaning metal giving the building wheezing lungs.

“Looks like it used to build something.”

“My Pops said it was an old RV plant. Look at the doors and how high the ceilings are.”

“I guess so. But what’s with all of this wood?”

Quinn stepped onto the pile and let his shoelaces dangle onto the wood. He climbed it with the anticipation of a child. Treasure is always buried beneath piles of wood. That is, every pile save for that one.

“Dude we could skate here.”

“Looks like people already have. Besides- we don’t skate no more.”

Dave kicked a piece of wood across the floor. The wood became a rat and scurried until it stopped near a corroded rollup gate that wouldn’t shut. They walked to view the outside courtyard.

Quinn scavenged for a few unbroken beer bottles and lined them along the wall. His pellets pinged off the wall and into the dust, the bottles erect and untouched. Dave laughed and Quinn cussed under his breath at each shot of pride tossed into the dirt instead of crushed through glass. Dave left Quinn and his pistol to walk alone under the cool blue gray roof into the darkest part of the building. 

Near the corroded roll up door, against the rusted lined walls, looked like an old feather duster; the feathers dangled downwards and slumped against the wall. Dave lifted a plank of wood that held it upright against the wall. The feather duster was a decaying hawk.

The talon pinched through two rusted metal pipes that forked at the bottom and had slipped down over its shin and up its thigh. The skinny portion of his leg, once turned, locked him into the trap. There were signs on the talons of the hawk struggling against the rust, deep jagged cuts crusted over with dust. The wings had folded downward, no doubt as soon as the last breath left the hawk and absorbed into the building. They dried in that position and the folded dead hawk lost its majesty and grandeur that the air normally gave it. Up close, it didn’t look like a hawk. It just looked like dead bird.

“Squawked like hell.”

Dave turned at the voice but could only hear his heart beat as his calves tensed in anticipation of a race. Two eyes appeared from behind a large pile of wood. The voice came from a dusty beard.

“Never seen anythin’ sadder in my life. Flappin’ and flappin’, so so sad. Them beasts dominate the air and a simple chain did him in.”

“Wild. S-Sorry to bother you, man.” Dave spotted an oblong triangle, a piece of broken wood, near his foot.

“It’s no trouble. You can call me Darkie. That’s what all the skater boys called me when they built those ramps. Guess I only wear dark clothing.” Dave nodded at Darkie and bent to tie his shoe. He cradled the shard of wood into the sleeve of his jacket. Outside through a small window Quinn walked back from his glass targets.

“You see many of these birds a-a-around?”

“It ain’t no bird. It’s a genuine red-tail hawk. No I don’t see them, I train em.” He rolled up his sleeves. Great lacerations, healed again and again X’d their way across his flesh. Dave's heart thumped twice for every breath he took and his left hand clenched tight.

“I tried to help this guy. He was Rollie and he was a stubborn bastard right from birth.  When he caught in the metal he was beatin as hard as he could. He’da clawed my eyes straight out, almost like last time.” Darkie stepped into the light. Under the left of his dark brown eyes was a purple gouge two inches thick. Dave thumbed the edge of the shard.

“Bled like nothin’ you ever saw. Rollie here was a fool.” Darkie pointed his finger at the hawk. “All’s he had to do-” he ran his newspaper-bandaged hand up the metal, “was stop the fussin’ and move up. Temporary pain and then he’da been free. If I learned one thing from training these damn hawks its that they hate pain and when they experience it, they’ll do anything to never get it again. Even if it means dyin’.” Darkie sighed in the direction of dead Rollie and then clicked his tongue.

From the corner of the building fluttered great red-brown feathers, the clay armor that protected the silky smooth flight of the hawk. It landed on the forearm of Darkie and he stroked the hawk with a hooked forefinger, cooing with a soft voice.

“I found these two hawks, Rollie and Raymond. They was squawken with tiny chirps the first day I found this place. I always liked raising pups so I thought thes’a be the same. They was, right on down to how they play with your fingers, the little bites and nibbles. Not so cute after they grow up.” He stepped closer to Dave with his little finger outstretched, the tip sharpened with soft peach scar tissue covering the mistake. Outside the bottle targets sat alone.

“Why - Why’d you keep training them then?” Dave heel-kicked a piece of wood backing away and Raymond twitched his head in the same direction. Dave held out his hand instinctively to stroke the soft feathers but pulled back when Raymond flapped his wings.

“Whoa, boy, whoa! I thought I’da left this place by now. As long as I’ve got Raymond, I’ve got family. Besides, they’re two types of people in this world: those that clip wings and those that mend them. I may not have much but Raymond keeps us both fed.” He raised his arm and the hawk beat against the ground. Dave stepped back and watched it fly towards a perch on the other side of the building.

The first shot hit metal but the second pellet pierced flesh in a muffled thump. The pellet entered Raymond’s breast and sent him from the perch towards the ground. He landed like a crumpled clay pot with both wings sprawled out. Quinn stepped into view of both Dave and Darkie.

“I hit it!” Quinn called out before Darkie tackled him from behind.

Darkie clawed at Quinn and punched him over and over, the blows landing on soft flesh. Darkie paused in his rage to grab a nearby stick. He raised it over his head and fell crashing over when Dave swung with a balled fist. Darkie felt the shard Dave left in his side as Quinn connected the butt of his fake pistol to Darkie’s temple and found his own balance for the two to run off. The man sobbed with one hand on his head and the other holding his armpit.

“What the hell’s his problem? Trying to kill me over a damn bird.” Quinn said as he ran back towards the sheet metal entrance and waited for Dave to hold it open. Dave looked back as Quinn went under. The man wailed again and again, “Poor Rollie, Poor Raymond.”

Quinn glanced at Dave’s hand when he shot crawled through the gate. Fear overtook his adrenaline at the sight of Darkie's reddish brown blood on Dave's fist.

“We could've killed that man.”

Dave wiped his hand in the dirt under the empty rose bush.

“So what? He’s just a crazy bum.”

---

If you enjoyed that story, you'll like this one.

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.

---

After reading this one, you might enjoy another like it!

“Has my package come yet, Ricky?”

“No, sir. Mr. Newton- who are you expecting this package from?”

“Not sure, really. I have a feeling the package will come before my big race.”

“Ah yes, your big race.”

The mat scuffed on Mr. Newton’s walker, folding above the left faded green tennis ball.

Ricky walked from behind the welcome counter. “Do you need help with that?”

“No, no. Watch this.” Mr. Newton leaned back on his ancient feet while his hands shook. They gripped the anchor that prevented his floating into the next life. The walker raised and Mr. Newton flicked his wrist to shed the entanglement. Mr. Newton was free to run.

“And I’m off!”

Ricky laughed and patted him on the back and began to walk with him.

“How was the weather on your Tuesday walk?”

“Perfect for racing. If I keep this up, I’ll be in good shape for the race next week.”

“Did you used to run?”

“Run? Hell- I flew. They called me Jacky-boy and I was the fastest with my lime green shoes. I still got it though and next week at this time, you’ll see me running that race. Racing is everything. When you race, you’re remembered. You’re celebrated after you’ve won. You’ll see what I’m talking about - I’ll round that corner with the dust behind me. Jacky-boy’s a comin’ home.”

Jacky-boy straightened up as Ms. Lunkin rolled by in her wheelchair. He turned his head as she wheeled by and made eye contact with her. Ricky patted him on the back again.

“You and Ms. Lunkin, huh?”

“Gracie? She’s been cheeky lately- eyein’ me for weeks she has. Likes these guns I guess.” He slid back onto his heels to shake the walker with bravado. His shoes smoothed at the sides by the tired maneuver. He winked at Ricky.

Jacky-boy wanted to make Ricky comfortable with a leisurely pace. He matched Ricky’s slow feet, dragging his against the walker. The walker was a guise for all the other people in the home. Jacky-boy smiled with it, content to keep up the charade as long as Ricky walked beside him.

While he waited for Ricky to catch up, Mr. Newton let his shoulders drop under the yellow painting of his old running grounds. It had the same valley and dusted brown trees that lined the banks. After he’d run he’d blow his nose to release the dust in him while his chest breathed fire. The painter must’ve run the grounds and then stolen inspiration from it, using intense oranges to burn like runner’s lungs.

“Mr. Newton? Are you alright?”

Jacky-boy turned his head as far as his left side would allow.

“Oh yes. You’ve caught up. Let’s get to it.”

A checkered flag welcome mat slept at the base of Room 223’s door. Jacky-boy jangled his keys between his giant tree knot knuckles. His lips mirrored the movements of the clanking metal. During intense moments of concentration his eyebrows threatened to close his eyes with their curtain drop, the long white hairs encroaching on his vision. The door popped open and his eyebrows ceased their meeting to plot blind sabotage. The walker turned left and Ricky held it towards the door.

“No, no Ricky- I’ve done this hundreds a times. It’s my backwards dismount. Just watch.”

The slow spin on the walker preceded the scooting backwards into the room, the door bouncing off his scrawny back and bony hip. When the walker cleared the checkered flag, Jacky-boy raised his right hand to wave off Ricky.

“Don’t hide my package from me. It should be here any moment. In fact, while you were walkin’ – slow I might add- you probably got it on the desk. I need it for my race.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Newton. I’ll check on that right away.”

The checkered flag faded as Ricky walked back down the hall, passed the poor impressionistic painting.

The yellows sagged into the browns and all the whites popped in unison with the mild peaks and shallow valleys. The sky held smoky grays above the red-orange treetops. As a boy, he had started a fire in that same field. His grandmother doused the fire and agreed not to tell his mother. Surely the painter lived not far from that episode – the crackle of brushfire dictating his frenzied brushstroke.

The hall narrowed and then expanded as he returned to his desk. A ring called out at regular intervals, increasing in volume with each step. His pace quickened. A light flickered on the telephone. Line one an urgent blinking yellow.

“Ricky? Can you come clean up the dining room? Ms. Lunkin had an accident.”

Ricky ventured back down the hall, away from the checkered flag room and towards the dining tables. Ms. Lunkin sat hunched over. Her eyes held a permanent glaze ahead as the nurses around her cleaned the food from her bib. She stared at Ricky as she breathed with deep pulls into her chest from her nostrils and expelled the air with twitching lips. Ricky mopped the floor and smiled at Ms. Lunkin. She stared through Ricky as he carried the trash out of the room.

The sun glinted off the trashcan when he lifted the lid to throw away the refuse. He turned to come back inside. A simple kraft-brown box sat quiet near the daisies in the planter outside the sliding glass door. The box had the numbers 223 written in black ink on the side with a weak scrawled hand. The same hand wrote Jacky-boy underneath it in equally shaky lettering. A white paper 0n top of the box graced with flowery cursive writing: Found this out front.

He walked with both hands under the box back past the impressionistic painting and over the idle checkered flag. His knock stood alone for several moments before a scuffle of tennis balled metallic legs rubbed the carpet on the other side of the door. The knob fiddled and Ricky held steady the package to keep it level. The door cracked open and Mr. Newton’s ancient faded blue eyes poked through the slit.

“I knew it was here. I’ll need these for my race.”

Jacky-boy leaned over his walker and teetered on fickle balance. His hands shook at the wrists but his eyes never left the package. Ricky counterbalanced the box back into Jacky-boy, sending him to safety in the correct stance behind the bars.

“Would you like help with that?”

“No, no that’s quite unnecessary. Watch this.” Jacky-boy twirled in his mind while his feet lost the communication somewhere around his hips. The delayed performance left Ricky standing with the regret of accepting refusal for help.

“Have a good evening, Mr. Newton.”

In the late afternoon light the shadows made the blues in the painting gray. Ricky could smell the smoldering dry grass. The yellow grass burned quickest and resisted the dust he had kicked at it. He checked the hall for signs of smoke, shaking his head as he found his place at his desk.

* *

One by one Ricky set the BINGO cards out on the tables in the dining room. The residents filed in, trickling towards their usual Wednesday perches. The four tables filled at nine and then the numbers began to call out. Ricky scanned the room but found Ms. Lunkin’s table one shy of their seven.

“Where’s Mr. Newton?” Ricky asked the table. The gentlemen smiled and shrugged while the ladies shook their head and wished to return to the game.

“Don’t you remember?”

Ricky spun towards Ms. Lunkin. Her eyes lost their silver glaze and shone with wet brilliance. In full possession of her life, Gracie smiled. “He’s racing.” Her eyes faded back into their muddied crystal color as she put down a BINGO chip. The landline rang in the distance.

The number one blinked as a ceaseless beacon. Ricky held the phone to his ear.

“Ricky, we have a code blue. I’ll need some help moving him.”

“Room number?”

“223.”

Ricky let the phone find its home in the receiver before he walked in a brisk pace down the hall, past the narrow opening and the yellow painting of his grandmother’s field and stepped over the checkered welcome mat into the faux tiled kitchenette through to the living room to find Mr. Newton hunched over with his chin tucking close to his knees, both hands dangled towards the floor. The nurse stood by him.

“We found him like this before morning medication.” On the table, the 223 weak scrawled box laid ripped open and empty. Tissue left a trail to the couch nearest Mr. Newton.

“It’s a code blue alright. I was just with him, though. What happened?”

“Not sure. I do believe it has something to do with this.” The nurse held up a lime green shoe with a single stripe on the side, the laces interlocked in her fingers. She pointed at Mr. Newton’s foot.

His hands dangled forward. The left hand held its palm towards the ankle sock that fed into the missing shoe.

“Putting on that must've caused his heart to race.”

Ricky left the room to retrieve the wheeled stretcher. A diagonal sunbeam crawled along the floor until it scampered up the wall onto the painting of the field. The morning light muted the yellows, milked the whites and softened the browns. The colors became an invitation out of his heated memory.

It looked like a place where one might take a run.

 

---

Thank you for reading this story. If you enjoyed this one, you'll love one of my personal favorites: Croatian Coffee.

“Hey you! Yes, you old boy.” A voice calls as I sit along the pier. Across the path, the voice sounds again. It emanates near a handwritten sign advertising pie from a man in a wheelchair waving at me. He begins to walk with his left foot inching his squeaking wheelchair across the hobbled wood, seesawing his way with a prying left foot. The right held limp, scuffing only the toe as it dragged across the wood.

“You there. You old boy – can I interest you in some pie?”

The man made his way to my position and from the effort exerted, I could not abandon him now. Besides, where could I go but through him and back towards the sand? Closing in on a yard, the man scrapes to a halt with his left foot planted firm on the wood.

The moving shoe colored sludge brown, sundried and ripped, with burnt tomato shoe laces spending their dying days holding together an otherwise expired container for a foot. His other shoe, pristine save for the flattened toe, made him look ready for a lopsided ballet were it able to hold weight. Black pants hung over the tops of the shoes, the holes near the bottom waiving SOS - send relief - send new pants. His charcoal gray shirt tucked into the pants underneath a dusty wool jacket. The right sleeve had worn down from the jerking of his walk. With every sway the left foot rubbed a microscopic amount of fabric from the patch, tearing closer and closer until bare skin met the wheelchair pad. The wheelchair itself looked stolen off an old movie set, the kind that film horror stories involving ghosts and abandoned wheelchairs. This pathetic vehicle held a weighted phantom and he sat coughing to prove his existence in the natural world.

The wheelchair shook as he continued to wheeze into it. “Pardon me – any interest in pie at all, old boy?”

The hands that held onto the edges of the ancient chariot had also clutched onto the edges of too many burning cigarettes. Each of his fingers had permanent ash stains; the tips dipped in the gray substance muted his otherwise rose pink flesh. Pinkest at his cheeks and forehead, the skin there hung pure fuchsia, untainted by smoldering deathsticks. The pudgy lips pursed together under a sunburnt nose that gradated from rose red at the bottom to raw chicken pink at the top. His eyebrows, bushy and bristled with long hairs, were well acquainted with each other and decided after years of living apart to cohabitate in the middle of his brow. Underneath the brow rested the main reason people, including me, continued conversing with him: yellow eyes.

The yellowness started in the center, just after the black pupil, and then radiated into an outer rim of green. The spiral of natural colors drew people in, enchanting them like the changing of the season. It forced them to stare and while he spoke people wondered if what they were seeing were actually real. Strange eyes have that magnetism and everyone is impervious to it. Still his mouth did its best to drive the admirers away.

“Are you hungry for some pie?” The persistent lips said with gummy rebound. Checking my watch, I eye the approaching boat.

“Are you hungry for some pie, old boy?” Drifting closer the foot paddles over the sea of wooden boards.

“Pie? I’m fine, thanks.” Behind him the handwritten sign propped against the edge of the pier wooden guardrail. The sign held its place alone against a backdrop of ocean, a container of pie neither floating out in the tide nor near the sign itself.

“Are you sure? It may not look like it, but I’ve got access to the greatest kinds of pie you ever saw. Right here on this very dock. Why, it’s the pie place. Don’t you see the sign?” He whips his arm in a violent twist that almost clotheslined a running child. Indeed the handwritten sign corroborated his story. Greatest Pies You Ever Saw – 10.99 in bold print. Underneath it read Flavors be seasons, changin’ by the day.

“You see there? That there’s a sign. A sign for pie and I’m in the business. We call it the biz for short, us pie salesmen. Some days I got rhubarb, some days I hold the moistest apple, others I got that hot pecan – a fan favorite- outsold only to Momma’s blueberra.”

“Blueberra?”

“Yes old boy, blueberra. Just like the fruit. Baked into the pie and sealed in like a fart in a warm car.”

“I probably won’t order the Blueberra.”
“Aw no matter. I got red truffle cake pie and seaweed sherbert pie and Uncle Tony’s surprise tart pie. Whipped cream is extra, but you look nice so I might include it for free if you know the password. You don’t? I’ll tell ya. It’s Sea Snake Pie.”

I let the man ramble, declining to buy each type of pie the man pitched to me. At the end of the dock the boat’s passengers had disembarked, corralling in a jumbled army on march towards the shore. Pepe’s signature red beanie flamed above the herd.

“I should get going. I’ve got to meet my friend down at the end of the dock.”

“Well old boy that’s alright. If ya change your mind I’ll be here slinging pies. I tell ya what – I’ll keep my eye on you.” I left him pulling down his right cheek to reveal more of his strange eye.

Pepe and I shook hands like brothers do, clasping onto the palms before pulling in for a free arm hug. I carry his bag as we walk back towards the sand.  Near the man in the wheelchair I nod to him. Pepe doing the same before motioning for me to drop the bag.

“What’s up?”

“I have something for this guy. I never get to do this.” Pepe said, digging through the sack, victorious with a Styrofoam treasure. Pepe walked the Styrofoam to the man in the wheelchair. I couldn’t catch the sentence he told Pepe and winked at me, nodding before pointing at his sign with a shrug in a last silent attempt to sell me pie. Pepe returned chuckling and we continued walking.

"What’s so funny? What’d you give that guy in the wheelchair?”

“Oh. I had a full lunch on the island, came back with dessert. Figured the guy could use a slice of lemon meringue pie.”

“You gave him pie?”

“Ya. He asked if I wanted to trade. Said something about the ‘biz.’ His mind is as crazy as his eyes. Did you see ‘em? Wonder what that guy does all day.”

---

Fun fact: I wrote this story after hearing the chorus from DNCE's song "Cake by the Ocean." I combined it with an encounter I had with a homeless man in my city. Here's another, more true (but not completely true), story.

“Where’s the milk pitcher?”

“The what?”

“The milk pitcher, Fritz. Where is it?”

“Right in front of your face, right there on the counter. I swear- sometimes the night shift gets to you George.”

“The evening shift here is the worst,” George said while scrubbing the metallic counter. “The worst. I can’t do anything after this. Time for bed as soon as I’m done here.” He looked over at his coworker, a scrawny girl with dark brown hair pulled tight into a barista pony-tail away from the coffee.

The girl, whom George called Fritz though her last name was Fitzgerald, played with a pen near the cash register. George purged the steam wand on his hand, letting it too close to the skin and winced when the steam lava licked his fingers. He unhinged his wrist to let it flap the pain away. Fritz nodded with a small smile. “Did it get you?” She asked with downcast eyes while drawing a circle with the pen. “Always gets me.” The pen dribbled from her fingertips and a sigh rolled with equal carelessness out her mouth. “I’m taking my break. I’ll be in the back if you need me.”

George wiped the milk from the steam wand before emptying the metal catch tray on the espresso machine. In between the metallic tinks of loose pieces jumbling next to each other, footsteps clopped from near the door. George greeted the customer with a slow nod above the espresso machine.

The man walking towards him bounced from heavy right step to lighter left, back and forth in a singsong limp. His dark gray jacket mourned the blue it used to be, soggy at the sleeves and wilted at the edges. The jacket sleeve covered the left hand while his right wrist lay naked at the tilt in weight. The man favored his left side, the side with the bag.

Dark navy, the bag had scuffs of wear that faded against the denim. Brown handles popped against the darkness. The man walked from the threshold of the door towards the counter before stopping in abrupt rock, rearing his back straight to place the duffel bag on top of a table. When the duffel bag stood crumpled at the top but rigid against the flat bottom surface. He looked at George, wiping the steam wand again, before coming near to order.

Tufts of grizzled orange hair escaped with wild intent out of the sides of his head. A fiery balding van Gogh, the man’s beard climbed his face like an ancient infantry scaling a castle wall. Burning them back down the ladder, the hot oily face held no distinguishable features other than the suspiciously thin red mustache he held hostage on his upper lip.

He crept with hand in pocket to communicate via jingle his net worth. The man tilted his head to the side, the wild tiger tufts of hair following him as he turned. “Espresso, pur-lease.”  The words danced dainty steps around his teeth to reach George, its volume on the edge of a whisper. After ordering he swiveled towards the bag, eyeing the table it sat on while placing the change on the counter. Abandoned the duffel looked still but when George gazed upon it, he swore the left side of the bag rose as if in mid breath. George shook the sight off with a question.

“Your name, sir?” The coins tallied to a few cents under the amount for the drink he ordered but the man was half way back to his table.

“Er, Er…Nigel.” The man called out with his back to the register.

George sent a demitasse cup sliding across the metallic bar towards the espresso machine. The scraping of ceramic on the metal released a chemical reaction in his brain, his hands moving to an internal rhythm drummed into him by the year behind the bar.

Soft steps carried the espresso to the table and when George neared it, the bag pulsed. Right next to the table George noticed the duffel bag had a black mesh lined top. He turned to start a trash run when he felt a small claw hook his shoulder. Nigel was standing to tap it.

From this proximity Nigel smelled of warm mashed tuna, the breath the main culprit. “Er, do you have milk?” It leapt from the deep sea before lapping at George’s nostril. “Milk?” Nigel spoke again but George forgot to reel it, subjecting him to another round of fermented injustice. “Could I, er, trouble you for a small glass of milk?” The longer sentence overpowered George, half closing his eyes as shields from the fresh scales sliding off Nigel’s tongue. George matched the seafood smell with a crustaceous retreat to the refrigerator.

The milk poured delicate velvet, the high sheen cream folding neat into the cup. George carried the ceramic with precision to his customer, careful to avoid the classic barista mistake of over rushing the viscous liquid onto the floor. Nigel stirred his espresso like a café colored mouse trapped under his paw. With a nod and simultaneous wink he sent George back to his original task of taking out the trash.

A metallic scuffle preceded the crunching of plastic cups in the folding of a black trash bag. The sounds repeated in pursuit of George, one by one the bags piled up near each other. Near the door George stole a glance at the sole customer in the shop. Nigel’s nose drifted closer and closer towards the mesh, the very tip of it almost entering. Small thin lips held back a round tongue, the outermost piece of it dangling outside the mouth cage it called home. It protruded its pink half moon self for a moment before darting back inside with a straightening of his neck. George shook his head and let the bell chime from the open door reset his mind into the night.

Outside the January chill hugged him from behind like an awkward friend not spoken to in awhile, lingering past comfort. The bags his hands gripped weighed the arms into a seesaw as he walked to relieve the trash. Back from her break, Fritz began to straighten the chairs while George trotted back with hands in his pockets. The loud dingDING preceded a rush of artificial wind from the doorway, pushing a napkin from the wall towards the duffel bag. Fritz slipped from behind the register.

“Is that your duffel bag?” she asked with a point of her chin.

“My what?”

“Your duffel bag. That one, on the table.” She pointed with her finger. “The only duffel bag in the building.”

“What? That’s Nigel’s.”

“Who’s Nigel?”

“The guy that just ordered the espresso while you were on break.”

“I didn’t hear the bell while on break?”

“Maybe it’s broken. Where’d he go?”

“Where’d who go?”

“Nigel, Fritz, Nigel. The customer.”

“I haven’t seen anyone. So this isn’t your bag?”

“Nope.”

“Then who’s is it?”

“Nigel’s, Fritz. It belongs to Nigel. He’s probably in the bathroom.”

George stabilized himself with a hand atop the table while picking up the napkin with a grunt. Underneath the table a soft purr emanated from the opposing side. A slow ascension from George accentuated the noise, the purr gaining in volume as George neared the bag. The serrated zipper teeth parted with a narrow sliver on the left side. Through the opening a piece of fur moved before chiming a bell.

“There’s no one in the bathroom, George.” Fritz called from the hallway leading towards the toilet.

The top mesh of the duffel bag began to rustle. A tiny paw pushed the zipper away from the side before disappearing. An orange furry face poked through the hole. Yellow green eyes stared at George before the body they resided on bounced out of the bag. A tinkle bell binged like unpredictable jazz as the cat purred back and forth in feline pace across the table. A twill string held the bell and a glimmering golden tag, the faintest cymbals crashing to sound its presence. He edged near to catch the cat while it drank from the milk saucer on the table.

“Why are you crouched like that, George?”

George motioned with his hand to his lips but Fritz didn’t respect nonverbal cues.

She gasped like all women with animal shaped holes in their hearts do when they see small creatures. “Where’d this cat come from?” she said in a rush towards it.

The cat, in its mistrust of humanity, leapt from the table and shot towards the door. The milk saucer crashed to the floor when George pounced on the cat. Twisting from his grip the cat shot through a tiny hole from the wind-assisted door opening. The captive tabby cat skirted out into the night, red body burning against the cool blue cement away from the shop.

“That was somethin’. A cat. No one will believe me when I post this online.” Fritz sat laughing. “How’d you say it got in here?”

George stared at his hands, the simple twine collar ripped easy of the cat. Bing – bing. The bell and tag clanged together in his hand. In the fluorescent bulbs that lit the night shift, a lone word flickered in contrast against the small gold plate: NIGEL.

“Didn’t it look like the cat had a mustache?” Fritz said before shutting the night out with a firm pull on the door.

---

Thank you for reading this story. As a former barista, I love writing from this perspective. Here's another story from it.

“I saw her again.” The words leave the man's lips before they line a glass. A swig of the dark chilled liquid is his shelter against the humidity before he continues his story.

“She was darting in and out of traffic this time. Same girl, I swear. She’s got black hair and a dark helmet with a visor that hides her face. I know it’s the same girl because the moto is green.” His eyes mirror the oscillation of the fan from right to left, pause, left to right, pause.

“Aw stop talking about the girl on the green moto, George.” Two eyes roll as they look at hands about to pop the top of a Coke can. The swish fuzz oozes and the man slurps the top overspill into his mouth. “There’s about eight million girls in this town and you keep talking about her. You haven’t even seen her face.”

“I know, Ryan, I know. I haven’t. I don’t know what she looks like. But she keeps popping up in the most random of times, the green moto flashing by and I know it’s her.”

Ryan shifts his weight forward, the top part of his chest squaring up in a physical challenge to George’s statement. “How do you know for certain it’s the same girl? Every girl on a moto in Cambodia looks the exact same.”

“That’s the thing, man. I don’t think she’s Cambodian.”

“Does she teach English like us? Heck, how would you know? You haven’t even seen her face.”

George gazes past the fan into the lily pond sitting in the lobby of the hotel restaurant they ate at on nights like these. Nights that forgot to take on the characteristics of night. Nights like these back home cooled but here on the other side of the world nights don’t cool, not even in winter. The days stick around literally and the heat makes its home amongst the darkness. Nights like these made George think of home and whenever he thought of home, the girl on the green moto wasn’t far behind.

“You know who else rode a green scooter, George?”

“I knew you'd say that. It's not like that.”

“Don’t tell me this is about her.”

“You think this is about Violet? How is this about her?”

“You don’t think it is some kind of coincidence that you keep seeing a girl riding around on a green moto- in a city, I might add, across the world from the place that you and Violet were about to make home?”

“Why are you bringing that up? What’s the matter with you? She’s gone, man. What can I do about it?”

George couldn’t do anything about death and whenever he thought about it, he was quick to latch onto something, anything else. It was the same thing he thought about before it gave him the false courage to teach English abroad. Ryan’s going…why can’t I?

And here they were. Drinking cokes in a Cambodian café as refuge in the hot humid night. The change in culture gave George the chance to rewire his brain and to adopt the new surrounding as his home. It could never really become his home because home could only occur when you stopped running. The dark event that started this journey in the first place wouldn't allow him to catch his breath here.

George vacuums Coke through his teeth in a loud slush while Ryan stared through him at the street, the cars passing by on the night road.

“It’s not Violet. It’s just a girl I see riding around on a green moto. That's it. The first time I saw her was in slow motion. The taxi stopped and a hand hit the glass on my side. I stared straight into her visor. Her hair flowed out the back and the sides, jet-black and long. She wore a striped shirt and capris with sandals. And then I noticed it – the green moto. Green like the lily pads. Greener than these right here.” George points at the lily pad pond, a serene square cut into the cafe floor. Purple blooming pods poked through the circle disks, organic floating cd-roms of old.

“Green like lilies. The bike didn’t look dusty – you know how all the motos here look dusty? Caked on with years of use... the motos all look the same, a muted red brown? Hers was green. Straight off the lot and ridden with precision. Pushing with her feet through traffic, she rode off after a short burst and into the city. We never caught up with her that day. Next time I saw her was over by the pharmacy. It was after that sighting that I called her Lily. I saw her at the cafe downtown, outside of the university and over by our apartment. She follows me everywhere.”

George swirls the ice in his cup and then holds it against his temple while watching Ryan pick a stray grain of rice from the plate.

“Sounds a lot like how you met Violet.”

George's eyes met Ryan’s before they stare into the floating lily bed.

“I don’t know what to tell you. I keep seeing her everywhere.”

Ryan knew this might be a possibility. The months after the accident George had claimed to see other girls in a similar fashion. Always in a vehicle or in motion – the faces never seen and the body types always the same: Violet’s. When George brought these girls up, Ryan didn’t squash his hopes. He thought it might be part of the grieving process for George. Having never lost someone Ryan had the distinct disadvantage of consoling without the vital experience needed to be effective. After months of being in country, Ryan thought tonight it should end like all fantasies end, with truth.

“I’m not doubting you. Heck. Yes, yes I am doubting you. Lily? She’s not out there. You want to see Violet. It’s time to move on, George. Time to move on. I thought the change in scenery would do you some good. Clear your head and help you process.”

“I’m doing better. I’m better, I swear. I am.” A frog hops into the lily pond, sinking beneath the murky green water. The ripples sway even the furthest of lilies, the browning outer ones too close to the walking path. Only the middle of the pond had a cluster of the greenest lilies. The frog made its way there, as if the green were a natural magnet to the most vibrant life source. Atop the lily shone a light purple bloom, the flower popping in an explosion of the color…

“Violet. I guess I just miss her.”

“She was a great girl for you man. I’m sorry that happened. I hate that it happened the way it did. But we can’t change anything. I understand if you’re still mourning. I just don’t think the sightings are healthy anymore. We can’t bring her back.”

The clinking in the ice made its way back to the woman attending the tables. She came to the edge and asked if the men needed a refill on their beverages. Ryan looks at George's nod and then catches on a figure passing behind George's head. It stops to wait for the light. Past George’s ear and through the opening of the café door, sandaled feet rest against the street. They hold up a lily-green moto.

The sandals putter one foot in front of the other, duck waddling the moto towards the front of the pack. Slender ankles led into navy capris and a striped shirt underneath a light sweater covering most of her arms. Long black hair fell onto her back and the dark gray helmet shields her both from the street and from Ryan’s view. Simultaneous mini-roars and the pack of small-motorized animals leapt off, the lily-green moto in hot pursuit.

“Ryan? Do you want something?” George turns to the waitress. “Just get him another Coke, I’m sorry.” The waitress thanks him and walks back to the kitchen. George’s left eyebrow sank while his right one rose. “What’s the matter with you?” Matching Ryan’s gaze, George turned to see the street whizzing with cars.

“I’m sorry- I thought I saw someone,” Ryan says in a quiet voice.

“Aw come on, man. That’s poor timing. Now you’re just making fun of me.”

Ryan's head bobbles with mouth agape. The waitress returned with fresh Cokes, the ice dancing near the rim. Both men thank the waitress and sip against the cool glasses.

George distanced his mouth from the glass, “You’re right.” He tops the statement with a tilt of the beverage.

Ryan lurches forward, pulling away the drink from his lips.

“About what?”

“The girl on the green moto. She probably doesn’t exist.”

Ryan eyes the street. "No man, I'm sorry-"

“No. You’re right.” George turns to the outside and then back to the table before signaling for the check. His left hand rises with clenched fist, only the thumb escaping the cluster of fingers as he jerks it towards the street over his shoulder.

“She’s not out there, you know?"

The waitress brought the ticket and gave them change at the table. As he scoops the coins into his pocket, a 100-riel coin rolled down Ryan’s pant leg and into the lily pond near the table. The coin slides dagger like into the murky green water but not before setting off a ripple into the pond.  The men leave the restaurant as the purple buds pulse amongst the lily pads with the fresh burst of energy into the previously peaceful pool.

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Thank you for reading this short story. If you enjoyed it, let me (@geoffgouveia) know on Twitter.

by Geoff Gouveia

Swahili crackles on an intercom before bursting English to end with the number 213. My terminal reads the same number and the flight is on time. Around me, every ethnicity sits sweating. Fanning himself, a plump Indian man sweated heaviest, each pound exacting more liquid. To my right, a dark Nigerian reads his newspaper. My skin glistened from the moisture and when I move, so too does the Nigerian as if to avoid the glare off my Caucasian body. Only the hum of the crowd held white noise above the silence as we waited for the call to board the plane alone.

The call came for first boarding; I was in second. A large family with a light complexion lined up to seat first. A tiny fish necklace dangled from the youngest boys’ neck. Behind the family, a woman stood with a waddle of clothes and flesh against her shoulder while a curly black haired child tugging on her soft dress. The child whined in Arabic, begging (I’m assuming) to board the plane to leave the country. From afar I wished the same, to be on the plane and out of the humid terminal. Dipping her vermillion hijab to the boy’s level, she pleaded with him in their ancient language. The hijab itself did not sweat, an effortless vibrancy amongst the dullness of the terminal. Baby on her hip and child fussing the woman holds her place in line looking nervous forward.

“She must hate flying,” I mutter under my breath. The Nigerian caught it and commented back, "Don’t we all.” We lock eyes for a second but he broke it by lifting the paper. Spread across the front cover was a picture of the bombing in Kampala - an act by an extremist tired of the lifestyle Africa had to offer.

“How terrible!” I said in search of interaction.

The Nigerian lowers his paper, “It is what it is.” Raising his paper, our conversation finishes. Swahili before I hear Second Boarding, my leather bag creases on my hip. I thought of the lady in the hijab, but my mind switches as I hoist the pack. A lady with braids takes my ticket and her hand stops near a lone teal stone on a gold chain hung round her neck. The teal contrasted with the darkness around it but her neck swallowed the stone. It was her. She stood staring at me, in turn staring at her stone, holding the ticket out back to me, the number 11 facing upwards.

At the eleventh row a well-dressed businessman sleeps against the window. A lady with hair in a loose bun discovered her aisle seat next to mine. Stabbing the inevitable, she introduces herself as Claudia and I return the favor as George. Claudia’s striped navy tank top with light yellow pants strike me as optimistic. Why is she here?  Almost as soon as she arrives, her head finds the headrest and her hands produce a small black mask before fixing it over her eyes, adjusting her head with slow lateral movements.

I peer out the window, everything in reverse as the plane taxies off. Alone now, I close my eyes and drift.

The van’s bottom half was soft yellow with a light green striped band above that. White on top, the roof reflected the brilliancy of the sun. Our driver, Godfrey, knew the roads well. He sped down the slopes to break only for herds of goats to pass. This was the wild Uganda. Past the miles of beggars and trash-laden roads, Uganda dropped off into well-traveled hills. 

The rains and brush beat back against man to create roads impossible to maneuver alone. Each vehicle able to carry five loaded with ten and the weight sagged into deep, deep ruts that frequent ten-minute rainstorms burned into the ground. Stains rose as tires spun with futile traction on slopes of sliding mud, the hills of dark mud shaded with the hill's descent. At the top the sun tinted the dirt white while the soil ran downhill darkest with the torrential downpour. Only an expert could navigate here.

I had hired Godfrey to take my team to the remote village of Gulu. “Gulu? Two hours away,” Godfrey promised. Six hours in, the van passed another stalled out vehicle. The sun beat the black paint back into gray and chipped away the color on the roof. Four Ugandans looked at one tire, the other three sank with hopeless abandon into the soft black mud. Riley next to me admitted her queasiness as a pale green overcame her. The airline logo pulsed as it expanded on the bag and filled the entire van with the sour stench of fresh regurgitated mango and sugar cane. Godfrey smiled into the rearview mirror, “Two more hours, Gulu is two more hours!” And the roar of the engine revs against the dirt.

With our traction on the muddy road, our white roof climbed the hill. Below, the paint chipped black gray truck had seven men, black bodies against yellow shirts motionless on top of it. Villagers peered for a moment before losing interest in this familiar sight - one car with knowledge, the other with despair- and then looked away to corral children running amuck. The dirt road cleared ahead as dust coated huts lined the sides.

A high-pitched screech from the exhaustion of the brakes signals our arrival in Gulu. The hot air punched me like an unknown assailant with a brightness that blinded and a humidity that suffocated. Sounds measured my steps and I could sense that many surrounded us as I heard the customary tongue flicking and shrill screams of the women welcoming us. As my eyes acclimated, the village had come to watch and whisper though I could not hear what they conversed about. We loaded onto an old fire truck, converted with the red emergency sign paint still on. The back had enough room for fifteen men to stand. We loaded eight as Godfrey slid behind the wheel before we left again.

The truck trickled slow past the huts, the pace crawling to a point when a small boy could jump on the back bumper. One did just that and he held on with huge joy and a laugh that rang out. It was a loud, African laugh that started the rain again. Light cobalt blue drops hit his face and ran into his mouth. The pure blue mimicked the waterfalls this land possessed in abundance. Seeing the child on the bumper, others ran towards it, hoping for a free ride. Some reached out but the truck gassed ahead and hit a bump. The laughing boy on the bumper clutched with a frail grip and too wide of a smile: he was not prepared for this trick.

The boy’s body flattened parallel to the ground as he landed in a mesh of gangly limbs. Looking up, our eyes locked again and for a second I saw my reflection- the distance at once covered and then forever separated us. Swirling clouds cut vision and I was off into the brush. In the distance the village came alongside him. An elder consoled the boy, advising against the act as the boy sobbed into his shoulder.  

Out back of the truck, back towards the boy, the scenery calmed my nerves about Godfrey’s driving. A voice asked if I liked Uganda. No, I replied but watched as it escaped into the dust behind the tire, floating on the cloud as we left it behind. He assumed I said yes and replied me too. I turned to face the voice and it was Jon. His arms are paler than mine and his eyes squinted past the wind thrashing his face.

“I want to see an elephant!” he said stupidly.

I pretended not to hear him, smiling weak and hoping for him to stop the conversation. The wind provided an artificial distraction from the heat. One of the group began to sing a song I heard back home on a Sunday morning. They sang loud over the engine to preserve unison. In my head I wished it stopped, to them it was an adventure. We looked like a traveling band as we passed people walking with heavy loads on their heads. In the chorus, a sudden torrential rain broke the sky. Thunder clapped and granted my wish to pause the choir. That brief silence- between the music and the thunderclap - was louder than any moment in Uganda. For that moment I had clarity to process without external distraction until the distant rumble progressed into a crescendo of two clapCLAP-

Two taps precede the question water, juice, soda? My hand wipes the sleep from my eyes as my lips decide water. Claudia and the man next to me sleep while the flight attendant pushes her cart past my row. Why did she wake me? The air on the plane is thin, like I'd been climbing a spiraling staircase for hours. White noise – the whirring of the engine - creates a sense of separation in this flying tin tower of Babel. I sit in an area near individuals thinking many different thoughts in as many languages. Proximity should yield to community but in this cabin at 30,000 feet our tower has scattered.

Here loneliness breeds like vermin in the ancient sailing ships. No one will hear my thoughts above his or her own. Children sense this on flights. When the absence of community is loudest and the silence pierces like the popping of an eardrum: they respond. 

They retaliate with weeping and wailing. I remember yelling into a canyon, screaming to break the silence and the emptiness that ensues after only my voice returned. The boy who cries out in our flying tower is the same on the hip of the vivid vermillion hijab lady from the line. The hijab works to hush the child. Fear of the unknown grips his revolting body before rhythmic shushes from the fire cloth source close my eyelids.

The truck halted near salesmen adorned head to toe in African knick knackery. Swarming the truck, they pushed their colorful wares into our hands. They competed and pleaded, undercutting the other by a smaller margin. Disembarking from the truck, the twilight muddled the landscape and I couldn't make out the city in the confusing location. 

Forced into a sour smelling restaurant, the plastic tables accommodate the team. The electric zapper clapped constant to help the inhabitants relax. We ordered our food and began to talk about the journey. I sat on the edge of the table ripping a napkin into smaller and smaller pieces. A boy with no shoes entered the restaurant and asked people for their phone number. Godfrey shooed him away with his hand.

Godfrey leaned into my ear. “You must not give your phone number to anyone. They will expect you to save them from their poverty.”

I nodded and bit into a slice of pizza. The texture of the cheese made me gag and my chair squealed with a violent push on the plastic against the ground. Outside the restaurant, fresh air calmed my stomach. Shrill shrieks from a colony of bats flew overhead like covert night birds, unnoticed nightmares in the twilight. From the street wafted a sweet smell - the scent of a fresh made tortilla - and my nose followed the trail like I’d known it all along. 

A woman sweated above a stove and I asked her what she was making. Her teeth flashed stark white in the night, “Chipati.” I lifted two fingers. Chipati tasted like a quesadilla; chipati tasted like home. I thanked my African mother and walked back towards the restaurant. In the street, a door slammed behind me. The African mother disappeared and a plastic sliding door floated in the street, a door that resembled…

…the ones on airline bathrooms. Groggy, I turn my head back towards the rows of seats. A tiny head bobs down the rows between the sleeping cargo. His dark hair leans forward and then twists, checking each row for his kin. He passes my seat and we lock eyes in the aisle. His disheveled hair matches his dark brown round eyes. A long nose meets his pouting lips and they collapse into a fragile neck. The neck descends into a young figure, the body of a boy yet to earn muscle. 

He pushes on with the determination young boys have in finding their mothers. This is his mission and I am in the way of completing it. Leaning out of the seat, I see him make it to his destination. The vermillion fire cloth dips down towards him. Its vibrancy clashes against the cool, apathetic cabin sea. The cushion bounces then reclines as I tilt backwards, back to my trip.

Sitting in a ring, the elders of the town have gathered to discuss the future of the community. My team brought the money for the wells. Having seen the wells themselves, the team mentally boarded the plane. Sipping their mental Cokes and telling their friends what work we did, what a difference we made in their minds. The talk in the circle of people was congratulatory but my vision gazed toward the kids playing soccer in the dusty field nearby. They tied trash together in a tight wound ball, trying to panna each other and proclaim dominance. I excused myself, breaking a code of conduct acceptable for the meeting. In my pack I brought a proper ball to the field. Children swarmed and chanted “Mzungu! Mzungu! Mzungu!” to identify my ethnicity and the gift I’ve brought. I both smile and regret having come over. Their dark bodies the yin to my yang, our closeness separated by what I have and they do not. The ball released from my grasp and I am all alone again.

I shed my pack, the years of my youth playing the game flood my feet as I ran out after the ball. Africa is home to the individual within the pack, the futbol played like the economy. One versus all with the common good thrown to the sidelines. Such harsh competition is fun on the pitch but deadly in the real world. While I worked to steal the ball from my latest competitor, I forgot about their reality. I didn’t care. Why should I? We now had a common goal- to be the best. The ball disappeared into the crowd of bodies while laughter and frustration dispersed equal amongst the children. When it was time to gather the ball, the children grabbed my arm and asked for it back. I shake them away with small, stifled smiles and a quickened pace back to the truck.

Godfrey drove past the pitch and down countless winding roads to our accommodations. They were concrete structures with concrete walls around the exterior. Smashed bottles glued to the top of the wall kept the Africans out and the visitors in. My team filed into the structure and I veered right, walking towards the market over dusted roads.

The people on the street stared at me. Some wave, others whisper Mzungu. A few more steps and I’ve arrived at the only shop in town that sells a piece of home. The words read ice cream on the door but the heat turned the consistency into gelato. I ordered chocolate, paid my due and walked out the door into the heat. Outside to the left under a large yellow striped umbrella sat a woman wearing navy smoking a cigarette alone.

She ashed out the cigarette on the ground, knocking it against the chair as she stared into the dusk. The sky was blue up highest, then faded down through purple into orange. The shriek of bats haunted me like my own memories do, unable to show themselves in the twilight as I yawned. I wondered, after watching the bats and listening to their shrieks echo in my head, why the woman is there- sitting, smoking in Africa as if it is a Parisian café. Was she like me, eager to board a plane in naivete to contribute something half way round the world? I wonder if it took her 3,000 miles to realize she had nothing to offer this hot country.

My ice cream sweltered in the heat, dripping over the side. As I watched her smoke the cigarette, she noticed me with a subtle wink while she took a drag. “It’s hot as hell in here, eh?” she said with smoke billowing out her lips. She was a good ten feet away but her voice felt right next to my ear.

“Sure is.” I responded with a grin, hand cold with ice cream running over it.

“You’re dripping.”

My grin faded as the ice cream slipped from my hand onto my lap, the coldness freezing my thigh.

“You’re dripping,” she repeated closer to my face now.

I feel a nudge and Claudia leans over, “You’re dripping.” My leg is damp to the touch.

“We’re about to land, anyways.” She helped napkin the water on my tray and placed the trash in the pocket in front of her. The plane dipped forward and my stomach did a minor flip. Down to earth, back to reality. Over the intercom, an electric buzz before a metallic authority, “Flight attendants, prepare for landing.”

I wish the pilot said my name, diagnosed why I couldn’t sleep and told me why I could not prepare for landing. The lady in the hijab bounces her vermillion head, coo cooing her beautiful boy into forced laughter under the roar of the engine. His stomach felt the lurch, too, and he would not let it hold him back from expressing his true opinion.

If only we could all be so brave.

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