by Geoff Gouveia

I'm sure you've walked past us before, the little girl and I sitting at the table - no? We sit there Monday through Friday.

The coffee shop is right next to a Mexican bakery off Seventh. When I see Juanito, the owner of the bakery, we greet with a handshake and a hug. Most days the weather lets me write and I order a coffee and then take my seat at the table that straddles both the coffee shop and the bakery. Juanito delivers one of his bagels and after wiping the cream cheese from my lips, the muse joins me in the opposite seat while I write. The seat remains empty but I used to never let anyone take it. Although no one can see her, she exists and she helps me write. She protects the writing from the world and allows me to make it, no matter what the criticism it faces once birthed into black and white.

You have to have seen me - I’ve been doing this routine for seven years and I will continue to do it for the rest of my life. The first year the coffee shop stood alone with a vacant sign next to it. Juanito came and bought the place in the naïve, tenacious way immigrants defy the odds and starts something. Juanito knew his pan dulce would find a home in my neighborhood. The risk transformed into reward as the inhabitants of the community came alongside Juanito, supporting his delicious treats and providing him with ample business. In this brave act, my writing began to pick up again.  A year into their new business Juanito’s wife Rosa Marie gave birth to their daughter, Mira. When they brought her to the bakery for the first time, I paid for a pastry with a hundred dollar bill and smiled after I walking away without the change.

Mira was born early with a gaping smile and a small brown mark under her nose. As she grew, so too did the mark and it became synonymous with her laughter round the bakery. One day while writing, Juanito asked if Mira could sit on the chair across from me. Her brown mark scrunched under her nose when she smiled and melted my refusal. To my surprise the words ran unrestrained from my fingers with her near. I named the muse Mira and she and the fictitious being became one. From that day forward Mira and I shared the table- me writing and her playing. Her laughter was the cadence to my typing, the giggles pressing me forward in my prose.

As the years wore on, she became taller and taller, losing her baby voice and gaining young confidence in the way she spoke. She didn’t play as much but she kept laughing and I kept writing. I didn’t see her as often as I needed (these words won't write themselves, you see.) My writing waned as Mira stopped coming by the table. The day the writing grinded to a halt was the day she asked to use the chair opposite of me.

Instead of her normal laughter and confidence in taking the chair, she asked with a tilted face, the mark away from my line of sight. I couldn’t understand what she was asking and asked her to repeat it facing me. She obliged while covering her mark with her hand. I stared at her hand covering the mark, questioning the purpose of the placement in my mind when she started to cry as she backed away, covering her whole face as she ran into her father’s bakery.

The next day the scene played out the exact same way: her asking to use the chair for another table to draw on. I understood her desire this time and was careful not to look at her hand. I tried to write that day but no words came as the table felt unbalanced with the missing chair. Mira’s self consciousness reflected in my own work and my own flaws stuck out like ink blots from a messy pen. The writing stilted for the next week before I had had enough.

When Mira approached me in her small, child footsteps with a hand covering her face- I asked her why she hid her beautiful smile. As her eyes widened her hand dropped for a moment and then returned to guard the mark. She took the chair and left but not before leaving me a few words to write. Paying for my bagel after eating it, I asked her father why Mira covered her face.

A boy asked her about it… he began and shook his head as an answer to his inability to restore her worth. I gave him a weak smile and then waved goodbye to Mira and the family.

The next day, before setting up to write, I placed a piece of paper and a pen opposite of my station on the table. When Mira came to ask for the chair, I declined. Her stunned look dropped her hand. I told her that if she wanted to draw, she could use the table. The chair made a rusted squeak when she climbed up. Children draw with two hands and while she drew her mark met the world uncovered, allowing me to write. At the end of my writing session I asked to see her drawing but she covered it. I smiled at her transfer from covering an external mark to internal creativity.

We wrote and drew like this for months, each helping the other unblock creativity and self-worth. It wasn’t in what we created, it was that we were willing to share what we created, if only for a moment before our insecurities choked them back into our interior.

You have seen us, haven’t you? Tomorrow then, when you walk by and see me eating a bagel and sipping my coffee while writing with a young girl drawing across from me with two hands, do stop and compliment her. It’s not the drawing, it’s her. And when she’s alive, so too does my writing flourish.

---

Thank you for reading this short story. Would you mind sharing it with your friends by tapping one of the social shares below?

by Geoff Gouveia

This is part two of four. They stand alone, but the greater narrative runs through all. Read the first.

Every year in March the colors present two opposing views of life. To those who notice the soft pastel pinks, the month is about life. Seedlings pop through black branches, the winter scorched trees begin to tint towards green as spring appears on the horizon. To those who notice the black destruction of winter, it reminds them only of what was and how the black replaced it. The new life breaking through is a cause for mourning as the world spins again and again despite the loss of life. What once was is no more and those who try holding onto the past mark themselves doomed as gravity pulls them the ever changing seasons. March, below the surface in each person, reveals what they experienced the year before.

The March I am in smells fresh. A deep-breath-in-the-chill-and-the-freshness-fills-the-lungs-and-straightens-the-posture fresh. The buds I pass on the way to my meeting are the lightest hues of rose pink, fuchsia and peach with greens underneath them to illuminate the undertones in nature’s harmonies.  A beautiful Southern California sun warms a yellow glaze over the greens, popping the colors like an Impressionist’s painting. March mornings are too delicate for the naked eye to process and my view bounces from art to art as I walk nature's gallery.

When I walk, the steps are light and they dance around black branches that stick into the path. One of my paintings snags a branch but the blackness hides its false interior strength and it snaps with a hard tug. The back of the canvas rips as rough as scraped flesh and my smile fades as the door swings open with a gentle nudge.

Small student paintings pasted over unfinished sketches and postcards from past shows adorn the cluttered office. The desk backs against the wall, paintings and paintings lining the wall next to it, boxing in the small office even further. Thompkins huddles over the desk, his nose casting shadow over his notebook. Small scribbles of dates on the calendar filling up as his mind unwraps its contents into the lined boxes.

I tap his shoulder.

“Professor Thompkins?”

He shakes for a second, answering with a startled, “Yes? Oh hello, George. Come in.”

I set the piece on the easel in his office. The natural lighting is weak and the studio lights buzz in anticipation of what the piece I’ve brought holds.

“How’s your week been?” I attempt break the stillness.

“My week? Oh. Well not too great. Patricia isn’t doing too…” his voice begins and then recedes into his chest as his eyes close, “…well. God gives, God takes, right?”

I search his eyes for context. Unfound, I shrug the statement off. His shoulders are drooping and I can't see what's pushing them down.

"Should I come back another time?”

Thompkins hands fold on his lap with his eyes staring through the small natural light source in his office. Outside the window, the branches are black. There are no buds on them and the beginning of something new hasn't evidenced itself yet. His eyes are gray, the blue they had beginning to fade. He looks like someone who's been carrying a weight for a long time and the exhaustion one feels after letting the weight go, setting it down and reflecting on how hard the journey has been.

His head turns on a slow swoop. “Today is fine. What did you bring me?”

My lips purse towards the pastel flavored canvas.

“I’m proud of the piece, I took the advice given last time and worked well on my preparation. I felt I held the piece in tact while painting it, focusing not on feelings but on technical craft. I like this one. I thought-”

“Well. First off its too much local color. What is this pink here? Straight from the tube, no? It doesn’t fit. You see the vibration here, against the green? That won’t do. It confuses the viewer.”

“I like it though. I like the green.”

“What does it matter whether you like something if it is wrong? What are your intentions?”

“To be harmonious.”

“See there, you’re wrong again. Stop forcing the work, make the work unfold naturally.”

I haven't seen this side of Thompkins before. His eyes move from the piece and then out the window. At the point he would normally close his eyes and voice soft concerns, today it switched with wide eyed gray orbs that sat above tired lips spewing curt sentences.

“I’m sorry, George. I’m sorry about my mood. Perhaps it would be best to follow up next time, maybe next two weeks or so?”

“Sure, not a problem. Everything alright?”

“I can’t say yes. She’s not going to pull through it this time.”

A third of his age, I can’t comprehend my own future marriage falling apart with me remaining long after her. Sorry sounds trite and pointless but I offer it regardless.

“Thanks, but this is another test. Just another trial. God gives, God takes.”

His voice loses its volume and then his eyes find the branches outside the window.

“Nothing seems to be growing this year. The branches are dead still, they don’t have the life I remember them having. Everything is like that. I’m tired. I’m sorry, George. I’ll talk to you real soon.”

He stands up and hands me the painting. I offer him a smile as a condolence but I wish I had something he needed. The door shuts and his chair creaks on the other side before a slam breaks the silence, the way a fist would on a desk followed by papers hitting the ground in a jumbled mess. My hand balls up to knock but a sigh precedes the statement “What next?” from inside the office.

My voice rebounds against the door, “See you soon Thompkins.”

Outside the office, the branches do look dead. More black than they are near my apartment. Perhaps the sun doesn’t shine on them like they do near my home. Time choked out the buds and I wonder if the trees will ever grow back, if branches have it in them for green to ever replace black.

---

If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends by tapping the social media button below 🙂

 

by Geoff Gouveia

Grandfather Luca told me the best coffee in the world comes from Croatia. “Croatian coffee,” he said, “is the kind you drink in the morning right before creation.” Grandfather Luca explained that he wrote the most magnificent stories after drinking his Croatian coffee. He called me in as I walked by the hallway and asked me to pour him a cup.

“What’s so special about this Croatian blend?” I asked the old man.

“Well, let me tell me you son. And before we get any further, it’s not a blend.” Grandfather Luca had a wispy Croatian mustache, white and curled on the edges like most men from his town of Hučhen (“Pronounced who-can,” Grandfather Luca loved to say, setting himself up for his own Croatian village jokes. “Like Hučhen get me some more coffee? Eh!”).

I scooted closer and the old man leaned in. His breath hit me in the face but he told me it was the Croatian coffee and I should learn to love the smell.

“So you want to know about Croatian coffee, eh? It begins in the town I’m from. Little Hučhen. Have I told you my Hučhen joke?”

“Yes Grandfather Luca.”

“Anyways, it begins in Hučhen. Along the western hills that roll with yellow leaves all year round. Everyone knows that yellow leaves mark the greatest areas to grow the best coffee. Look it up on your Google, I dare you to defy me.”

“Grandfather Luca I believe you.”

“Google has nothing on my Croatian coffee- why? Because I’ll tell you. Sit down, sit down.”

“I’m pouring myself some water Grandfather Luca.”

“Water? No one needs water. Only Croatian coffee. Under the yellow leaves that never turn green or red because Croatia is in the tropics you see.”

“Now wait a minute Grandfather Luca-“

“No- you listen here, sonny. Your Google will verify the geo-coordinates of my Croatia. Type them in. No service here? Ah too bad. No Google, just Grandfather Luca. Same thing. Listen up. It’s hot in Croatia, burning hot, but the leaves are yellow because they hold the moisture. You don’t believe me?”

“Grandfather Luca I’m not questioning you.”

“Ah yes. That’s right because you shouldn’t. I’m from Hučhen and Hučhen can question me! Ah ha ha-” Grandfather Luca trailed off into a wheeze that he extinguished with a quick Croatian coffee rinse.

“Where were we?”

“The yellow leaves, Grandfather Luca.”

“The yellow leaves…the yellow leaves ah yes - the yellow leaves that never turn anything other than yellow.” His silver eyes lit up, his hands revealed the effects of the Croatian coffee by fidgeting with the knobs on his wheelchair. “They are the tell tale sign of some strong coffee growing underneath the soil. Now the soil in Croatia is not like the soil here, the soil here is brown. Nasty brown. There the soil is clay red and that’s because it is clay-"

“Croatian coffee is grown in clay, Grandfather Luca?”

Grandfather Luca snorted and his eyes widened, the thin wispy mustache dangling on edge, teetering towards the ground. I almost reached to save it before he reprimanded me.

“Of course Croatian coffee is grown in clay- how else do you suppose it takes on the reddish brown when you pour it from the special Croatian coffee tin?” Grandfather Luca held up a silver tin with the words Croatian Coffee splashed across the side. He popped the plastic top and whiffed the dust. The dry fragrance wafted into my nostrils but disappointed me.

“Smells like all coffee.”

“Smells like, smells like all coffee?,” Grandfather Luca nodded his head up and down, the eyes slitting in anger. A crooked index finger rose to strike me down. “Smell here. Smell closer. You smell that? That’s the stuff. That’s the Croatian clay molding the molecules to the perfect coffee honeycomb. Google it. You see, Croatian coffee isn’t just beautiful, it’s a science. Croatian coffee, I tell you, is the secret behind my stories. It wakes me up, keeps me up and allows the ink to flow. I write stories, you know?”

“Yes Grandfather Luca, I know. I do enjoy your stories.”

“Well I’ll have you know that the first time I tried Croatian coffee was not in Croatia but right next door, in Haiti. Right across the bay, right on Haitian soil. Haitians make a mean sweet Hawaiian bread. I’ll tell you that the first sip of my Croatia coffee as I sat on the beaches of Haiti was delicious. Then we shipped out. Cucumber shippers, I tell you-"

“Grandfather Luca, you’re making this up as you go-"

Grandfather Luca swiveled his head with such a violent shake that I thought his mustache would spin from its fragile resting place and land on my lap. The piercing silver eyes were too much to bear and I relented, retracting my statement. After all, I didn’t have Google to prove him wrong. There was never any reception at work.

“I'm telling the truth, the Croatian truth. Croatian coffee is the best coffee in the land. I’d like another cup. I feel another story about to burst from these-” he wiggled his fingers “and they are itching to tell the truth.” The blue knitted beanie he wore had been slipping towards the right, but I reached out to push it back towards the proper perch. A knock at the door came before a young woman in muted blue scrubs walked in. My coworker greeted me with a smile as she pushed a cart of supplies into the room.

“Grandfather Luca this is Nurse Rebecca.”

Rebecca waved at Grandfather Luca.

“How are you today Mr. Luca?”

“My name’s Grandfather Luca.”

Rebecca smiled. “That’s right. Grandfather Luca, I’m sorry.”

“Nurse Rebecca here will take you to your appointment.”

I gave him a sheet of paper with a pen and then poured a fresh cup of the Croatian coffee. Back in the kitchen, I removed the labels on the new tin cans of coffee that Rebecca brought. The Croatian Coffee labels I printed earlier were then fastened to the side of the tins with glue. I restocked his pens and paper and tidied up the eating area. A small bit of Croatian coffee spilled on my scrubs as I lifted the pot to wash it. Mechanical pops came from the other room as Rebecca prepared the wheelchair for Grandfather Luca’s next destination.

The pen rested on the paper and his chin on his chest as I tapped Grandfather Luca’s shoulder though the silver eyes wakened and then sat back, eager to talk with me.

“Grandfather Luca, I’m leaving. Nurse Rebecca will be here tomorrow. I’ll be back the next day, please do take your medicine.”

“Medicine? I don’t need medicine. I need Croatian coffee. Do you know where Croatian coffee comes from? It comes from Hučhen.”

“That’s right, you’ve told me that,” I said as Rebecca began to push Grandfather Luca out towards the hallway. They disappeared in a slow aging parade of two.

From out in the hallway I hear, no doubt emanating underneath a wispy white Croatian mustache, “Have I told you my Hučhen joke?”

---

If you enjoyed this story, would you mind sharing it with your friends on facebook or twitter?

by Geoff Gouveia

The morning Xavi died he spent it like he always did, painting on two large canvases in his tiny Los Angeles apartment before leaving for work. His coworkers wondered why blue paint splattered on his fingertips when he manned the register at the local taco shop. His customers’ faces tilted with puzzled glances when he didn’t tell them the reason for the small flecks of blue on his knuckles. He painted in part to satisfy the creative desire but also to release the struggles that gripped him in his sleep. When he woke, early and on time, he painted and painted, keeping the paint wet while working at a feverish pace.

Xavi worried, like everyone who paints, about money. He kept his money bundled in stacks under the mattress and tucked in the small bookshelf that held his paint brushes upright. He swore the landlord knocked twice a month but it was the timelessness that occurs when work and passion and life overlap, the passing of days retreats into the passing of hours and then seconds. Before he knew it, he had managed to live more than seven months in this new city. The first weeks had been difficult for him.

An equal mix of anticipation and nervousness gripped Xavi as he flew to see his cousin in the new country that brought promise. His cousin, Edgar, had been living there for the past 5 years, carving a small piece of real estate in the form of a smoke shop on Spring and Sixth. When the wheels to his plane touched the ground, Xavi hadn’t spoken with Edgar for a month. The plan had been set but the trail had gone cold. Xavi shrugged this off and decided to venture out anyways.

Xavi walked to the smoke shop after taking the bus from the airport. The corner read Sixth and Spring but the smoke shop located there had plywood boards covering the windows. Graffiti sprawled over the loose boards and the metal bars rusted alone. A homeless man with a fire-red ball cap sat outside the shop but Xavi couldn’t communicate in English well enough to ask about Edgar. The family next door that owned the taco shop, Jorge’s Taco #3, told Xavi the news: Edgar was gone. Gone from this earth in a mistaken shootout. One night after counting the till, a man burst through the door focused on his own need for a fix. Edgar refused and the man shot him in the stomach. Xavi's hand still clutched the ticket that cost him everything.

Jorge and his family found Xavi a studio to move into above the taco shop. The second day in the country Xavi had a position at the cash register working for Jorge’s Tacos #3. By Xavi's request, Jorge pointed him towards a place to buy paint at discount on the edge of Little Tokyo. In addition to the small air mattress and food essentials, Xavi purchased two large canvases with three buckets of blue paint the same week he arrived.

Xavi painted in all blue paint, the varying values and hues spiraling over the surface in a fitful frenzy. Layers upon layers of the blue paint built up until the canvases themselves were heavy and unresponsive. The color blue had taken its toll on the months he painted with it, the hues mirroring his interior as he struggled to compete with the cold city. The swirls on the canvas became like the infinite loop of working nonstop that distorted Xavi’s view of himself.

Money seeped into Xavi's new warped soul and forced him to choose.The choice was either new canvases or new paint and he sided with the latter. His never-ending layers erased his own mistakes and he became better and better without proof. Xavi only saw what was on the canvas and it was never what started in his mind.  The lack of recognition coincided with a vanishing confidence in his talent.

Xavi had battled the city’s frigid realities with his paint brush up until the day he died. Do my paintings even matter? Why do I even try? he thought after a painting session and it was during one of these thoughts that the gun metal blue Suburu clipped his leg as it made a quick left turn, pushing his body into an oncoming gray Yukon. The paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

Jorge knocked on Xavi’s door the third day he didn’t show for work. Jorge and the entire #3 shop thought Xavi skipped town. The cash register rang the following day with slender hands with clean, unpainted knuckles. After ordering his tacos, Xavi’s landlord asked Jorge if he had seen the man, noting the rent was due. Jorge shrugged when he handed over his meal.

The landlord, a short Romanian man with hair everywhere except the top of his head, unlocked the door after he knocked twice. The landlord found nothing except for the bed, expired milk in the refrigerator and two large canvases with thick layers of blue paint on them. No sign of life for the next week forced the landlord cleared out the room, placing the canvases behind the building near the dumpster.

Later that evening a shivering man in the February chill found the two canvases propped against the wall. He moved one to a hidden side of the building to create a roof. He broke the frame of the second canvas and ripped the layered blue surface off. The canvas fit in the space between the wall and the building, thick enough to keep the man’s warmth from soaking into the earth. Before laying his head to rest on the canvas, he removed his fire-red ball cap. That night he slept the best he had in years and when he looked up at the canvas in the morning, he thanked the Lord for whoever painted blue upon blue upon blue upon blue upon blue upon blue...

---

Thank you for reading this short story. If you have a moment, why not read another?

by Geoff Gouveia

I learned awhile back that best way to turn her back into my grandmother is through her hands. She has glass mosaic hands. Fragile, the translucent skin reveals tracks of red and blue paned veins. If I give her something to touch, another part of her comes to life as the mosaics shuffle over the item. Sometimes it works though I have nothing to lose if it doesn’t as she’ll forget I even came. I bring pictures of my father and my brothers and our family and we look at them. She recognizes the faces but not the names. We don’t worry about particulars. She asks me if I remember visiting Spain with her and my brother (she’s now transitioned into telling something I would remember if I were the correct person in the story. I’m not, it’s my father.) I hold her hands and tell her I loved visiting Spain with her.

Last visit I helped her make Spanish rice. She laughed with me and told me how to make it. I followed along and didn’t care whether it tasted good or not. I liked the talking and watching her remember mastery. She didn’t move well but at least she moved and remembered why she was moving and kept moving. This week, I want to watch her hands prepare pomegranates from her yard with her breakfast.

When I was a young boy I visited my grandmother’s house every week. She cared for us when mom or pop had work. The three boys ran around the yard and played with each other. There were tears most of the time but my grandmother wouldn’t punish us unless someone was bleeding. The only times she became upset were the times in which we damaged her fruit.

The yard we played in sits between an aging wooden red fence that has always sagged. The yard extends on a diagonal line from the right, starting near a grapefruit tree on the side of the house. Next her roses lined the fence, taking their time adjacent to the old oak tree. Across the cement were the neighbors’ lemons that hung over  the fence near the orange tree. These all circled our favorite fruit-bearer as boys: the pomegranate tree. It was a tiny tree that provided seasonal sweetness from hundreds of little juice capsules contained in a hard shell.

My brothers and I learned to revere the purple-red fruit. We fought over who’d help my grandmother assemble the pomegranates when it was time for a snack. This season was our favorite; the tiny sweet pops of pomegranate bursts in our mouths. We took care not to stain the carpet or the bed sheets but although we were young, we were not naïve- any wasted fruit would be our loss.

I tell her in a loud voice I’m going to pick her a pomegranate from the backyard tree. She smiles, the word of the fruit alone helping to bring back the woman I knew. Walking past the orange tree and the rusting metal shed, the pomegranate tree sits tucked back in the corner. I cannot remember the last time I tasted one on the property as I peer upon the fruit adorned tree from afar. The leaves are yellow save for speckled greens throughout. Thin branches are visible in between the tired tree’s dying leaves. The tree slouches tired like someone trying to recall a word or a thought and it won’t come and the shoulders of the tree bend. Nearing the aged tree I begin to panic as my nostrils fill with a sour fermented warning. The red-purpleish pods reek.

The withered fruit that litters the ground, too heavy for the thin branches to hold up any longer, reveal spilt innards darkened by the passing days. I circle the tree, peering at each pod. I tiptoe around as to not startle the tree, fearing that one harsh brush against the fragile leaves will send all the remaining fruit crashing to the ground. Some of the pomegranates transformed into desaturated oblong pears. Others wilted like overgrown strawberries, mushy to the eye and malleable to the touch. Still others are false spheres, my hands close around the side that looks perfect and sinks into the other side, the thick juice oozing over my knuckles. Another pass around the tree confirms my suspicion that I am too late. With time the vivid pomegranates have mutated into muted, gray purple shriveled imposters.

The bag I brought out to carry the pomegranates with fills with wind instead as I turn to face the neighbors lemon tree. I told her I’d bring the fruit. And one by one the bag fills with premature lemons. The door back into her kitchen is a heavy wooden one that I push with my back. She remains seated, eating her breakfast.

Oh Hello! she says, startled. When did you get here?

Just a moment ago, I say with a kiss. I was picking lemons.

---

Thank you for reading this story. If you'd like weekly updates (as well as different stories) please sign up for my newsletter here.

by Geoff Gouveia

Monkey was a boy, and like all boys who rode skateboards, he was in love and overwhelmed by that fact. He had met the girl the spring of ‘96 and she was beautiful. Her blonde California sun hair bounced with vibrant swirls on top of the magenta scarf she wore everywhere. They ate melons on the corner of Fifth and Market next to the train station before parting ways for the night. Monkey caught a striped bird and named him Fernando before he gave him to the girl. The girl loved the bird but always asked about the feathers, to which Monkey lied about for fear of looking dumb in front of a pretty girl. The day of her round-trip train to San Louis Obispo, the girl and Monkey argued over Fernando’s feathers true origin. She exited the platform in a huff and hurry after discovering Monkey’s lies. She boarded the train before yelling out the window she’d be back on a Tuesday.

When the first Tuesday passed and she had not returned, Monkey became confused: he didn’t know which Tuesday she meant. He then rode his skateboard to the train station every Tuesday with a full backpack of melons, perfect for an immediate picnic after his love disembarked the train. Each Tuesday he went and each Tuesday she never came.

One Tuesday as Monkey sat on the platform he saw stripes fluttering towards him. When Fernando landed on his shoulder, Monkey sobbed as he bit into a melon. His tears overflowed into the rind and spilled onto the remaining melons in the bag. A hungry passerby tapped him on the shoulder and asked to purchase the remaining pieces of fruit. Monkey sold the fruit and walked away. Before he could walk out of earshot, the passerby squealed in delight, asking Monkey what his special sauce was in the melon. Monkey apologized for the tears but the man waved it off, claiming the melons were the most delicious he’d ever had. In fact, he said, if Monkey met him next Tuesday with more of the same, he’d bring his friends in a hurry.

And thus began the most profitable melon business in the history of Monkey’s tiny California town. Every Tuesday Monkey rode his skateboard to the station and sat on the same bench, watching all the train’s passengers leave for their destinations. When he didn’t see his blonde-haired, magenta-scarfed love, he sobbed into the backpack while Fernando flew to his post on Monkey’s shoulder. The people clapped at the sight of the bird and licked their lips in anticipation of tasting the melons their friends had told them about. With every passing Tuesday, the line grew longer and longer, until the train station stopped taking trains on Tuesdays all together.

Monkey became a multi millionaire selling the melons every Tuesday for ten years. His customers never understood why he still sobbed when they bought his last melon.

---

 

Did you enjoy that story? How about I send you a postcard as a thank you?

by Geoff Gouveia

As a small boy in the field near my childhood home, I mistook my skin for stone and only noticed that as I grew, so softened my flesh.

The field provided an expansive sanctuary for three young brothers. At the end of the field was the base of the mountain, the steep slope slid off water into various creeks to cut with liquid chisels into the canyon.  On our excursions we noticed piles of rocks lining the creeks. My Italian father told us the English word for these rock formations was cairn but was more proud to tell us the word his people gave it: ometto or little man. These little men held their positions in complete stoicism near the banks of the creek.

Young boys, in their bouncing and rambling, love to destroy anything the opposite of them. Our energy fed us destruction and the three brothers ran along the slight slopes to abolish the formations. As we shattered the purpose for their stance, the rocks tumbled into the stream with splashes of water and giggles of boys. One time we spied an elderly man in action of stacking the stones. He collected them on his hip before placing them one atop the other, standing back in admiration of his creation. We hid in the bushes far off, chuckling at his limp and watched him struggle over the terrain to the base of the mountain. Out of sight, we sprung from behind the bush and executed the stone man, his head crumbling into the slow moving creek.

That day was the first day I didn't enjoy knocking the omettos down. Looking back, it was the beginning of the end of my childhood. The end didn't happen until a few years later, on the same day my older brother married.

The morning of the wedding I sat in his room. The mix of protein powder and deodorant combined to make the scent of my brother. I sat on his bed staring the sheets taken away and the walls empty, the bookshelf with nothing in it. The only qualities of the room that gave hints of memory were accidents, small pebbles overlooked as the formations themselves shifted. Holes where I’d made him mad and then he punched the wall, the stain on the carpet I spilled my juice as a kid. I looked down at the spot next to the bed where he’d let me spend the night when I was afraid. Those were memories but until that point I thought it was brotherhood. Brotherhood never ends, life forced me to learn, it evolves. I knew it was time for new but I wanted the old, a familiar hug or to have him yell G one last time in frustration.

At the wedding, I tried holding onto our moments as kids. When you hold anything past its expiration, something releases in its place and it was tears when I gave the best man speech. Our giggles over toppled cairns rang in my ears, the crumbling stones each a different memory of boyhood.

My younger brother and I went into the field after the wedding. Stubborn stone men lined the creek. Two brothers pushed them into the water and the stones clanked without satisfaction. No laughter or surprise attacks on unsuspecting elderly hikers. Only scattered stone men, mirrored in fragmented memories within us. I roamed with the younger brother to protect him. He slipped when he was a small boy, busting open his chin and giving me (by way of Ma) the duty of looking after him. That job ended when I watched him drive off the first day to university.

It was a warm summer morning. I had woken at the usual time to go to work and then class. My mom made breakfast for the both of us; my father said his goodbyes the night before. I helped my young brother load his belongings in the car. When his back turned, I slipped a note in a painting I gave him, tucking it behind the backseat: a message in a bottle for one. When he got behind the wheel, my mother and I waved. The car door closed with a thump that resembled two stones knocking together. He backed out of the driveway, the music blaring with a slow turn rolling him up the street.

We watched him venture out, the wheels picking up speed. He turned left onto the familiar road towards the freeway. My mother leaned into me. She mistook me for a pillar; my confidence a skin sheet over jumbled stacked rocks. She sobbed into my shoulder, asking will he be ok: I didn’t know what to answer. I’m sure he would be, he always was ok, but I wished she’d asked about me.

I was the ometto and I wasn’t made of stone any longer.

---

 

Interested in reading another on boyhood? Here you go!

by Geoff Gouveia

The old man strolled silent and confident on the sidewalk. Wearing his signature coat, the blue corduroy with brown button one, he walked the same mile everyday to his favorite coffee shop. The people he passed whispered or yelled out his name; familiarity gave Richard notoriety in the small town he returned to. Richard walked by each day, chipping away at the layer of rubber on his shoes. His stilted walk was slow and chunked with a limp that wore down his left shoe faster than his right. He leaned left after his fall. It was then his children pleaded with him to yield for a wheelchair. Walking is all I have to combat the shake he told them with his thin lipped mouth. His wife had passed ten years earlier and his children were encouraged to get on with their own lives. Richard carried in his right hand a black notebook filled with sketches of days past. His ancient knuckles warbled against a diary of drawings that marked the days as much as the lines on his skin did.

At the café Richard sat and drew everything his mind processed. If he tired of thinking, he drew the customers in line. Richard used to be paid for his drawings, before the galleries flipped with new owners and sought fresh talent. The old man packaged his framed pieces and put them in the same room in the back of his one story house his wife lived the last few months of her life in. He let his artistic aspirations die with her but Richard deepened his craft by staring down his own mind with the pen in hand, examining his own psyche. Because of this he knew himself and because of this he shook and in California it was not cold. To curb the shake he had an ounce or two or six of Jack Daniel’s Honey, a poor mans scotch. He used to drink the good stuff, the stuff everyone glinted their eyes at when he had company. His wife would shine and scoff her rose cheeks at his attempt to become more of a man by drinking courage. Richard did not drink too much, he drank just enough. He drank at night but in the morning he tried warming himself with the coffee the shop served him.

The baristas called him Captain, though no mention of his lack of military and boating experience ever shied them away from his nickname. To them, Captain was their grandparent and unlike their real grandparents, they came into harmless contact with him everyday. They loved his jacket that was worn smooth at the elbows and the buttons he buttoned to the top though they never noticed him rocking in small shaking rhythms. On hot days he wore the corduroy coat but Richard donned the faded blue shorts he bought from his trip to Argentina in the late 90’s, his wife’s last goodbye to her family. The true reason he loved to visit the coffee shop was to walk by the barbecue restaurant and smell the cooked meat. It brought him back to that final trip, the smell from the asados wafted into his nose and transformed into the physical warmth his wife had provided.

It had been this spot that he spotted his young wife back in his twenties. There he sat near the court with crystal fragile eyes that searched the crowd. When he saw a girl who looked like his wife, a younger stronger alive version of her, he smiled.

And then he didn’t shake, nor did he feel the chill.

 

---

 

Hungry for more? Here's another story like this one.

by Geoff Gouveia

In the backyard of their desert California home Tyson made his creations in the shack near the small cactus that grew alongside the fence. From the backdoor the wooden shack looked empty, save for the tools and various gadgets needed to keep the lawn trimmed. Father agreed to let Tyson use the shack in any capacity as long as the tools were accessible. Tyson complied and kept his belongings behind the tools against the old timbered surface.

The shack erected with much help from Gran-Papa's stubbornness when Father was a child. Light blue painted chips fell off the sides near the doors and the cement cracked in the back from uneven placement and do-it-yourself wear and tear from projects Gran-Papa and Father and Tyson assembled. Father was a man with sturdy forearms and now owned the restaurant supply company Gran-Papa started. The forearms bulged when he picked up the loads and placed them on the truck, bulged still when he used a dolly to carry the supplies into the restaurants. Entering by way of back doors that opened when chefs in white coats with slim, muscular forearms yelled at boys in black shirts to open them, the smell of cooking made him smile. Gran-Papa had worked Father’s aspirations of becoming a chef out of him. Delivery was his business now and this did not dismay Father, he only wanted to work.

Tyson grew up working under Father, into the age that he was now, 17, and learned the ways from his Gran-Papa before he passed four years back. Now on their own, Father and Tyson fought over trivial issues with the shack being the principle of them.

Once, after skipping a time to help him with the business much like Gran-Papa had required of him at that age, Father confronted Tyson about the shack.

“Why do you spend so much time in there boy?”

“My work is important.”

Father grabbed Tyson’s arm and held it to his, comparing the forearms. Father’s dwarfed Tyson’s as it threw the slender arm back.

“Work? You don’t work.”

Tyson looked at his hands. The cuts and scrapes from the days prior felt they had lifted and known work, only not the work that defined his father.

Tyson desired to work with wood. Piecing the broken shards from the shattered palettes that held the supplies in the warehouse, Tyson took them home and assembled new creations inside of his personal factory. When the dry wood entered the shack, it soaked in ideas, saturated until they meshed into new lives. Tyson painted these and then hid them around town. The tiny figures he created were not pretty but they were unique and they were his.

Tyson never shared the space with anyone, never knew why he never shared and never questioned that of himself. He only knew to protect it from the outside world because the very notion of an outside perspective would, in his mind, foster mildew to seep into the wood in the stacks in the corners, bowing the pieces until they warped into unusable refuse. For this reason, he kept the creations covered when he wasn’t using or tinkering with them. He left a small piece of wood on the corner of the tarp that covered them, a sign of trespass should it stray. He made it up in his mind that if the piece strayed he’d destroyed what he’d made and start a new. But the piece never departed from the corner though the tools had regular use from the front of the shack. His heart skipped a beat when he heard his father open the creaking lumber door to retrieve a tool. This is the time, this is the time Father finds what I’ve done. When he went to hide the next figure, the muslin remained untouched.

Around town the figures began to create questions though Tyson never heard them. The children walking from the grocer to the parking lot had the distinct advantage of a new perspective, one no one could see and with it they found the figures half tucked near curbs. The faded magenta painted tribal faces on the figures mystified the children, how could treasure exist here in this arid dry place? Their parents knew from its placement it was set as opposed to forgotten. This gave the figurines untold importance. Tyson never saw this, he set the figure and walked away, checking back days later and found nothing nor the smile of the child holding the item above a seat in the car.

Despite his solitude Tyson created day after day in the shack. Often times at night he used a small lamp that bled light between the boards on the sides and out of the small window near the front of the shack. Father settled on the couch, resting his cold beer on the coffee table now that his wife had passed and couldn’t correct him. In between sips he peered out the sliding glass door, at the side of the shack. The soft glow from the lamp inside flickered when Tyson moved past it. His father never stirred higher than that look, returning back to the sporting event on the television.

After some time Father drifted to sleep in his chair. The alcohol helped him sleep but his interior alarm clock gave him confidence to drift into slumber untethered. Tyson waited for these moments, peering out through the shack’s boards and into the sliding glass window. When his father leaned back Tyson knew he had a chance to hide a new batch of the creations. The lamp switched off with a click and the door to the shack clumped closed with a muffled thump.

Slipping out the back gate, Tyson carried a gray satchel with wooden figures that bumped hollow in the night with his purposeful trot. The magenta paint on their silent faces reflected stray lights, eager to find a new home in the desert town. Nestled close together like paratroopers before the release of the bay door, the wooden soldiers were ready to embark on a new mission. Tyson felt proud sending them into the world. A small piece of him wished he could keep them but a greater part of his mind knew they were never his to begin with. From outside the shack they began, the shack assembled them and Tyson completed the cycle by spreading them back it into the world.

After the final placement Tyson returned home. Humming while he opened the gate, he sucked his breath in before it billowed out between his teeth in fragments: a slanted ajar door spilled light out of the shack. Tyson held in the doorway, his face illuminated in a three inch wide beam that went from head to toe, watching his father pick up the pieces on Tyson’s work bench.

A tiny pot of magenta paint sat next to a cup of water with a brush sticking out of it. His father swirled the brush with his right hand while he eyed the different mix matched wood fragments. Half built figures stood erect and scribbled sheets of paper gave away secrets for new creations. Tyson stood frozen, waiting for his father to turn around and confront him. While he waited his heart expanded and the breath in his lungs felt hollow. He watched his father trace with his index finger a scribble on a page to his left while touching the corresponding half finished figurine on the table. A slow tear rolled down Father’s face when he looked at his own hands, the puffed up parts at the end of meaty forearms, arms that looked different than the chef’s arms he thought he’d have by now. Before Father covered the table with the muslin and switched off the lamp, he scribbled a note on the scrap of paper. He stumbled through the door into the house. Tyson crept from the side of the shack, feeling his way towards the table.

In the moonbeam that shot through the window, the frail paper read in staggered capital letters:

---

Thank you for reading this short story! Please comment below what you think Tyson did next...

by Geoff Gouveia

Behind the register, he rearranged the bake case. His head worked inches above the refrigerated pastries. They smelled sweet but not like the Chilean manjar he craved. The chocolate that glued to his fingertip was not one of the decadent alfajores of Argentina nor were the berries that sat atop the cheesecake as purple as Brazil’s açaí. He kept conversations with the postres in their different languages, eager to stay sharp in spite of the distance. A year abroad gave him a new lens to look through - the sweets were no longer nutrition but a means of refreshing his vocabulary.

Faint roses wafted through the air. The fragrance hovered near the bake case and then fleeted. He thought it emanated from the bake, running his nose along the side in one continuous deep breath. Only sweet flour and sugar frustrated his longing for the scent. He remembered a time when he loved the smell of roses.

From the corner of his eye, out past the front facing croissants and Danishes, a woman in cheetah-print flats prepared to order. Bowlegged her curving calves stood powerful in their stubborn and unique orientation. Another barista assisted her while he clapped the metallic tongs in his reshuffling of freshness toward the front.

A cappuccino with honey, please.

Though his head never left the interior of the bake case, the legs and order gave her away.

She gathered her wallet back into her purse before making eye contact with him.

It’s good to see you. He says.

Good to see you, too. Wasn’t expecting this when I walked in. You’re working here again? When did you get back? 

Yes, this is temporary. Just got back from Chile, spent some time up the coast filming-

Still filming?

Yes, filming. His yes was firmer than his filming but he guarded himself in a hurried follow up. I’ve got a meeting with a producer tomorrow.

The familiar somber competition began between the two, much quicker than he anticipated. What are you doing now?

I’m working in the city at a law firm.

He nodded his head at the chance to redeem the conversation. Nice, you’re finally a lawyer. You always said when we were togeth- 

Sorry no I wish. Never took the exam, I’m the front of office.

Oh he said to an unsurprising realization as if Oh were in itself the only applicable answer.

He made her drink while she attempted to escape into her phone, the glass screen too small of a trap door to take her away. Her drink smelled bittersweet when the espresso vaporized into the honey, the miel competing against tiger-striping fresh coffee.

He tried not looking at her by staring at the cappuccino cups that warmed themselves atop the bar. They were shiny and he smiled at the first year they were together. Her lotion, when she applied it, emitted roses and the curved legs were soothing to the touch. This is her, Mom he introduced and was nervous when she made a joke with his brother, this is us, Mom.

The cups, reflecting the light, moved with his head and he peered past the reflection into the hollow shells as the last year they spent together flooded into his mind.

I want to travel he beamed at her one day. He thought she’d smile and ask questions but her answer, albeit a question, wasn’t what he needed: oh yeah? No confidence behind the answer, no serious consideration for the idea in the look she gave him. Aspirations were his armor and security was her medication. The distance increased between them when he told her about his intent to film for a living. Her response shattered his heart’s heart, the tiny heart inside where the creativity hides on miniscule fragile shelves surrounded by the thick-skinned muscle heart. The answer weaseled small enough through the veins and seeped into the room where it hid inside of him. Her answer was how will that work. He said aloud I’m not sure but to himself, it won’t with you. 

When he placed the bebida on the bar for her to grab, she grabbed it with a hesitant, forced smile. The fake smile, the one she gave to people who didn’t deserve her time or attention any longer. The go-away smile. He wished she gave him the smile that made him want to stare at her three years prior. The you’re mine smile. Her choice solidified his year-old decision in the way only confirmation can. Confirmation washes over a heart like a warm bath, leaving it cold when the liquid recedes, wondering if the water will ever heat again.

Look, I have to run but maybe she started and then her phone rang and finished the attempt to salvage a conversation, a life together. The trap door sucked her in and he watched her leave on purpose, paying special attention to her left hand as it swayed empty without jewelry. It looked emptier than it did before he had put a ring on it, the same ring that paid for his plane boleto to South America.

---

Thank you for reading this short story. I'd love to send you a postcard- click this link.