My hands twist the wheel slight right and I break. The car halts in the zone next to the curb designated for free parking. I turn the keys and pull them out of the ignition, a tiny bell chiming before the release. My backpack sits in the front seat and I grasp it and exit the vehicle. A thump closes the door and I walk towards the curb. A gust of chill creeps onto my chest, I tighten my beige bomber jacket closed. My black beanie sits snug atop my head and my shoes are black as they click on black asphalt. The light is red, now it is green and the white man in the black box is beckoning me to walk within the white lines across the street. It is a block before the café is in sight.

The red familiar Coffee sign, protruding over the street, signals where to stop every morning. I like to arrive as the baristas are unlocking the door: I want to be the first customer to begin drawing. Today I’m running late; I forgot to turn off the heater in the house and had to turn around to switch it off after driving a mile down the road.

Most mornings my two-block walk is solitary. One morning, I saw a couple fighting as they hurried towards the court. His brown shirt spilling out of his pants, his hands fumbling around the waste to tame the escaping apparel. This morning, in the February chill, I notice a man lying on the ground next to the red Coffee sign. Half a block out, the brown paper bag lies crumpled, a glass bottleneck peeping over the top. His sleeping bag is a muted cerulean, a blue ocean on a foggy morning when peering out over a bay.

He lay motionless, his sleeping bag around him. He had tucked his head under the bag, no pillow just a pale blue bag to lift off the still paler blue concrete. Matted hair escaped like tiny garden snakes, tiny snakes trying to find shelter and warm their blood. These snakes didn’t swarm; they lay tangled above the blue.

I pull out my phone to check the time and break eye contact with the scene. 10 steps from the bag and I pull the handle to enter the shop. I notice someone left a small white cup with steaming coffee coming out of it. I know now I’m not the first customer today, but the cup lay untouched near the paper bag. I walk into the shop and wipe my feet three times as a courtesy to the shop. I’m greeted with a smile, the barista wearing a red and white striped button up, the top button buttoned up. We exchange pleasantries, a healthy good morning banter and I order my usual cup of black coffee. He poured it by pressing on the valve to release the morning liquid. A split second while the coffee spilled out of the container into my cup, the white light of the above bulb tinted my coffee from black to a neutral muddled gray; I repulsed slightly. It was gone in a flash and I accepted the cup for a payment of $2. I was about to turn when the buttoned up barista sighed real loud and remarked it was a shame that they always picked the worst places to sleep at night. That they didn’t have any regard for the coffee shop’s customers- who wants to see him sleeping like that? I smiled and nodded and responded with an assured yeah, right? and sat down.

I looked over at the blue bag on the blue slate and it reminded me of the bay again. The bay moved but the man didn’t. The ocean bobbed and flowed, the man stayed motionless. His sea snakes were frozen- a reverse Medusa. Still, they spellbound me and I stared for a few minutes. I broke my gaze by sticking my hand into my backpack, retrieved a grey notebook with pages half filled with black sketches of important ideas and thoughts. I began to draw, placing one headphone then another in my ears to listen to something other than the slow jazz in the shop. 10 minutes pass and I look up, taking a mental break from a rendering of my coffee cup and I notice the stares of passerby on the stiff sea snakes.

A woman, dressed in a tight skirt in powerful black heels, the ones that women wear to tower over men, clacks past him. A binder hugged tight to her chest with her left arm, the same hand holding a cup of coffee and her right hand raised in a loud conversation over the phone. A man carrying a plastic white bag peers over to the left to catch a glimpse of the skirt moving up and down to the rhythm of the female walk, is interrupted by a glance at the bag pushed by the wind on the sidewalk. The sidewalk sleeper more and more a mirage, a pond that sucks people into it and then releases their vision once they decide it does not exist to them.

Behind me, the door is pressed open and I hear the red buttoned barista walking, now to the side of me and outside. Through the window I see him stoop down and nudge the sea snakes- I see the barista’s mouth move and a frown, followed by him pulling out a phone and a dialing of numbers. He walks back inside and calls to the other barista that he’s just notified the downtown patrol to come clear the sidewalk of what the “tide brought in.”

It reminded me of a time when I walked the bay and I saw drifting some ways out a red object in the surf. Each wave that crashed brought it closer to the sand and in my head the waves were black but the shore was a light blue. The fog messed with my memory but I waited for the red object to finally land. I picked it up out of the surf when a final swoooosh shot it towards me. It was balloon that had the words happy birthday on it, striped yellow and red, sadly written as the weather withered it down in the water. I put it in my pocket and threw it away when I found the nearest receptacle.

The sea snakes were now drawing a crowd; passerby of tattooed youth and loose-tight fit business suits walking hurriedly to their destination peering down and around the bag. A shaking of the head and an increased pace were the appropriate response of the morning. A few minutes passed before the black and white cruiser rolled up and an officer in an olive green exited the patrol car. He stooped over, a hand on his holster as he shoved the snakes. They didn’t hiss, nor swarm or contort in any way - frozen in the same place. The officer look annoyed, like when the teacher tells the student to put away the crayon but the student giggles and pretends to not hear, annoyed like that. He shoved the snakes again, with no response and further annoyance on his face. He stood up and took a step back, knocking over the paper bag bottle.

He called on his radio and then kicked the bag, gentle at first, then into a ruder call to wake. The snakes remained still, the pool of concrete around him still and the bag tossed about by the kicks and not the form underneath. Paramedics arrived, now a large scene formed as people continued to walk by, amazed at how many officers were in the area. The paramedics piled out of their vehicle and took away the bag. The sea snakes had a home on top of a pale blue sunburnt face. The lips puckered tight, drug use speckled the skin and years of street wandering forced his brow to furl on a permanent scowl. When the paramedics picked him up, it reminded me of Caravaggio rendition of David and Goliath: Caravaggio’s own head hanging in the hands of a young boy. The blackness of the chiaroscuro in that painting mirrored the coldness of the man’s eyes. They were open.

The paramedics checked his vital signs, shook their head and shrugged. They loaded him on stretcher, pulling a blanket over him. The officer cleared the roads and the crowd went on their way as the paramedic sped off, sea snakes in tow. The blue bag, cloth folded neat, brushed slightly by the wind. A strong gust swept the ground and pushed the bag open, revealing a striped red and yellow lining. The officer picked up the bag and stuffed it into the bin.

I resumed drawing, sipped my coffee and remarked at how it had cooled during the commotion.

 

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