TWO COFFEES
by David Kubicek
He looked up, startled. He was a few years older than she,
maybe thirty-one or thirty-two. He sat in a corner booth in the rear
of the small cafe.
"What?" he asked.
The fingers of both his hands curved loosely around a half
empty cup of coffee and met behind it. Across the table from him was
another cup of coffee, a full cup.
"You looked . .
. well . . . I'm alone, too, and . . . I wondered if you'd like
some company."
He glanced around as if not knowing what to do, as if
searching for help.
"Yeah," he said finally. "Sure, okay."
He moved awkwardly to get up, jostling the table and causing
it to creak. But she had already slid in opposite
him.
"I'm
Jeanne."
"Bill."
"I work at Mason's Department Store."
"I sell insurance."
An uncomfortable silence. Bill watched the waitress serving a
young couple at a table near the door. They were the only other
customers in the coffee shop.
"You can have the coffee," Bill said.
"Thanks," she said and took a sip to wet the inside of her
mouth.
The coffee was very black, very strong. Already it was
growing cold.
"I don't often do this."
"I didn't think so."
"I was brought up that way. A girl never approaches a guy,
Mom always told me. Nice girls don't, anyway."
"Then why'd you come over?"
She shrugged, looked down at her cup, and continued
demurely.
"I saw you
alone. I was in with a girlfriend the other day . . .
"
"I know. I remember you. It may not seem like I notice
much sitting here staring at the table, but I
do."
"It was my
first time here. We came in just to get out of the storm. She said you
come in every afternoon and that . . .
"
Her face burning, she stared hard at her hands on the
tabletop. Something clanked in the kitchen. The air smelled faintly
of hamburger.
"She told you I come in every day at this time, and the
waitress brings me two coffees and gives me one and sets the other
there where you're sitting. She told you that I drink mine then
exchange cups and drink the other."
There was a cold knot in Jeanne's stomach. She took a quick
gulp of coffee.
"She told you I was crazy, didn't she?"
"No. No, she didn't."
"Yes. People
who sit by themselves in seedy cafes and pretend that they're with
someone are crazy. Isn't that what she told you?"
"No."
"Yes."
"All right,
yes. That's what she said."
He settled back in his seat. It was a long time before he
spoke.
"My wife died last year."
"I'm sorry."
She wanted to touch his hand but was afraid of what he might
think.
"We came here
often," he said, a glazed, far-off look in his eyes. He sighed
tremulously and continued as if talking to himself."We'd tell each other what we did during the day, talk about
our feelings. In the whole world, at that particular moment, no one
else existed except us two."
"You miss her, don't you?" Jeanne said.
He nodded, his eyes moist.
"We met here.
This place was very special. When I have two coffees now . .
. It's as if she's not really gone.
Y'know?"
Outside, it was snowing again. The bell over the door
jangled, and a man came in stomping snow from his hiking boots. A
cold breeze touched Jeanne, and she shivered.
"She had asthma," he said. "One day when I was at work, she
had a real bad spell, and there was no one to call for
help."
"I'm
sorry."
"Stop saying
that. You don't know what it's like to be alone again after being
part of someone. While I was married, I cut myself off from other
people. She was all I had then; her memory is all I have
now."
A burst of laughter from the young couple by the door. The
man who had come in was eating a bowl of chili and reading a
newspaper at the counter.
"I don't need your sympathy," he said, glaring at her. "Who
asked you to come over and butt into my
business?"
"I was in a bus station once," she said softly, her voice faltering,
her eyes studying the tabletop, the scarred wood and the cup
and saucer with a little coffee sloshed into it. "And I had a strange
thought. As I watched all those people scurrying around, getting
onto buses and getting off of buses, browsing in the gift shop,
buying tickets, exchanging pleasantries that were just politeness,
that didn't mean anything - I realized that I was like
them, that I'd built this stone wall of ritual around me, that I
acted in ways that I'd been told were 'proper' and 'correct,' in
ways people expected me to act, and if I did something unexpected
everyone would be terribly shocked. It was very lonely living inside
a stone fortress, and I wanted to break out. Can you understand
that?"
He just sat staring at her.
"Is it wrong to reach out?" she asked.
He drew a shaky breath, ran fingers through his hair,
straightened up in his seat, glanced away, then back at her. A weak
smile trembled on his lips.
"They've got great chili here," he said.
"That's what my girlfriend says."
While they were waiting for their chili, the waitress
refilled their coffee cups. Outside, the snow had stopped, and the
sun was struggling to come out again.
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