There is this coffee shop I visit often visit. I noticed that the clientele loves bringing little gifts to barista. It made me wonder about the delight that comes from giving gifts and expecting nothing in return. And this story happened.
Sacrifice
Around the time I could no longer reasonably consider myself to be middle aged, I found myself vexed with an obscure anxiety and persistent insomnia. I began to walk through my neighborhood in the evenings, watching the insects worshipping the streetlights, and the flowers closing up shop for the night. Sometimes I wandered further afield and found myself lost in a tangle of side-streets – I have a terrible sense of direction, and my heart problem makes exertion difficult. Usually I can hail a cab to rescue me, but one evening I found myself totally lost. I cast about, looking for a street sign, but instead I wandered into weedy alleys and dead ends. My chest ached and I was beginning to feel the harbingers of panic. At last, though, I saw a string of Christmas lights curled around the post of a veranda, and a buzzing sign with a stylized coffee cup sending up punctuated wisps of neon steam.
The coffee shop was small – perhaps eight tables, each with two or four seats. There were several overstuffed armchairs scattered around, and some spider plants that caressed my head as I entered. The customers were a good sample of coffee shop patrons anywhere in a university town: bearded men studying arcana among heaps of dusty books, intense women lecturing each other on financial schemes, and morose artists sketching in the corners. The barista was a thin woman with hair dyed sapphire and jet black, wearing a black sleeveless t-shirt that revealed arms tattooed with cuneiform symbols and a large crow, drawn as if it were perched on her shoulder. She wasn't strikingly pretty, but there was something compelling about her; I immediately wanted to be in her company and to have her pay attention to me. I don't know how to describe it: I felt young and eager. I ordered a decaf latté and sat in an armchair close to the counter, glancing at her surreptitiously, then, in embarrassment, staring back at my mug.
While I sat there feeling oddly adolescent, a tall, skinny man wearing thick glasses entered and walked up to the counter, pulling a crumpled scrap of paper from his pocket. From my corner I could see it contained handwritten lines of verse.
"For you, Cleo," the man said. His voice trembled with some emotion that he could barely contain. "I wrote it for you!"
The barista – Cleo, I guess – smiled. She read the scribbled lines and her eyes widened.
"Oh! Marcus! This is beautiful!" She put her hand lightly over his. "Thank you!"
"No! No! Thank you!" he stuttered, stumbling out of the café in a daze, like a man who had just won the lottery.
A sigh wafted through the shop. Several patrons watched him leave and smiled. I don't know how to talk about the way I felt. I thought I should have felt envy; after all, I wanted the barista to favor me. But instead I felt something more generous – Cleo was pleased, and the café was a warmer, brighter place for it. I nursed my latté for perhaps half an hour longer, then found my way to a main road and caught a cab home.
For three nights I wandered around, trying to find that coffee shop again. Because of my weak heart I had been feeling less and less engaged with the world, and much more fragile – as if any misstep might be my last; that my reservoir of second chances was drained dry. But still, I felt compelled to find my way back to it. If it had a name, I didn't catch it when I left. Nor did I see a street-sign on the strange little cul-de-sac it nestled into. Google Maps knew nothing about it, and the taxi drivers, who knew everything, didn't believe it existed.
Nevertheless, on the third night, once again feeling disoriented, I saw the absurd out-of-season Christmas lights blinking in their rainbow garlands, and the neon coffee cup.
The shop had more customers that night. There was a line in front of the counter, and Cleo was dexterously pulling her levers and creating images of strange flowers with the milk foam. The glass tip jar next to her register was almost full, and there seemed to be a number of coins from countries that I didn't recognize. She favored me with a half-smile as she crafted my latté, then squirted a shot of some lilac-colored syrup into my cup.
"Something special," she said. "You'll like it."
All the armchairs were taken, so I sat at a table across from a pretty young woman with red and blonde hair who was alternately staring intently at her laptop, then typing furiously.
"Hey," I said experimentally.
Her eyes never left the screen. "You're blessed."
"Huh? What do you mean?" It seemed an odd turn of phrase.
"She doesn't do that for everyone."
"Do what?"
"The tonic. She doesn't give it to just anyone."
"What does —"
"I'm writing a story for her. I hope…"
"Hope what?"
The woman shrugged and went back to work on her laptop.
I've never been very good at smalltalk. So I cast my eyes around the shop, looking at the knick-knacks and art. There were a lot of flat stones, candles and feathers, several brass bowls with intricate mosaics on the base, and a number of bells. The paintings on the walls were all oil-color landscapes in sombre tones.
Not long afterward, a husky blond man entered. He seemed to want something other than coffee. A strange stillness enveloped the room. The woman across from me stopped typing. The man appeared to be making a mute appeal to Cleo. The barista continued to pull her levers. The steam hissed. A cat dozing on the rear windowsill lifted her head curiously. The man didn't even look at the mug she set before him; instead he attempted to take her hand. Without changing expression, Cleo moved one step backward out of his reach. I heard him whisper one word: "Please!". Then he took his coffee and sat in a chair in the back of the café, looking sullen and perhaps a little frightened. The atmosphere in the shop lightened. The cat put her head down again. And the murmur that accompanies all cafés started up again.
The woman across from me pushed her glasses back up her nose. "We won't be seeing him again," she said.
"What? Why not?"
She shrugged. I learned later that this woman, Julie, had a wide variety of expressive shrugs.
The walk home was easier than usual, and I slept very peacefully, never worrying about my unsteady heart.
The next morning I felt particularly alert and energetic. I put a fresh sheet of paper on my easel and found the box of charcoals that I rarely use. I didn't know what I wanted to sketch, so I let my hands tell me. They wanted to draw a dense forest with a little stream winding through it. Far in the background there were ancient ruins, perhaps of an altar. It must have been winter since the branches were bare, though there was no snow. The sun was setting behind the trees in the background, casting shadows forward toward the viewer. It wasn't anything like my usual work, and I knew it was somehow incomplete, though I couldn't decide what was missing.
I went upstairs and made myself lunch: a chicken sandwich and a small green salad, then went back to my studio. I looked at the easel again, but I still couldn't tell what the sketch wanted. Ceding control to my hands, I found myself drawing a family of sullen crows on one of the bare branches, and several more pecking at some indistinct corpse by the edge of the stream. I was a little horrified at the result; it looked like someone else, someone depressed and a bit cruel, had borrowed my hands. I sprayed the sheet with fixative and threw it into a corner of the studio where I hoped never to see it again.
Later, after sunset, I tried to find the café again. I had a new idea about how to locate it. I would blur my mind, distract myself – sing to myself, fantasize – and perhaps my feet would find the way to the café the same way my hands knew how to draw. It was a beautiful, warm night when I set out. But it was harder than I thought to find that empty, echoing space in my head. I kept looking for landmarks, trying to remember the things I passed the other two times I found Cleo's café. The moon was full and illuminated everything around me in silvery tones. Maybe that's why my plan was failing: I was paying too much attention to my surroundings, wondering how I could capture that silvery light on canvas. At last, though, just as my chest was beginning to complain, I thought I heard drums and bells in the distance. I stopped looking at the glowing moonlit world, and followed the strange music. And yes, I found myself approaching the café – but from the back, at a totally unexpected angle.
The music was coming from inside the shop. I walked around to the front but the shutters were down and the door was locked. Through the gaps in the slats I could just see bodies dancing rhythmically. A flash of fiery red escaping through the narrow space could only have belonged to the woman who had been sitting across from me; I'd never seen that exact shade of hair on anyone else – I have a good memory for such things. But it almost looked as if she and all the other women there (I somehow knew they were all women) were all naked.
I have never been a voyeur. Even in school I felt uncomfortable in figure drawing classes. I've always felt a certain reverence toward the human form. In any case, I didn't know what was going on in the café, but I knew it had nothing to do with men. I walked off in a random direction. I don't know how I found my way home.
That night I had a strange dream. I found myself in the charcoal drawing I had made that day. The dream was particularly vivid. I could see my hands and feet, smell the wet loam; I could hear the crows cawing to each other in the trees over my head, feel their distrust and annoyance at my intrusion. Off in the distance there was a flash of color — fiery red with glints of gold, the color of Julie's hair. As I walked toward it, I began to hear music; and I could see flickers of motion around a tall pile of flat black stones. But there was always a tree or a tangle of brush in my way preventing my approach and blocking my view. As is the way of dreams, the scene melted into a vague mist of disassociated images and voices. I remember a deep, sad voice saying "Not yet…".
Not yet. I didn't know what to attach the phrase to. I woke up at 5:00 AM – a good deal earlier than usual, and was unable to fall asleep again.
That day I had an appointment with my cardiologist. Doctor Koraki looked unhappy when she returned with the results of my tests.
"You've been exerting yourself again, Sam. Your troponin is elevated and your oxygen saturation is lower than I would like."
She followed up with some medical arcana about my cardiogram that I can never understand. Something about waves of tea? I nodded politely. Doctor Koraki – Jill – tries to look stern when she's concerned. She's not very good at it. But I took her compassion as a warning.
"I've told you that moderate exercise is good for your cardiovascular system, but I think you've been overdoing it."
"I've been walking, doctor. At night. That's all."
She shook her head. "That's not what these results suggest." She smiled. "If I didn't know you better I would say you're in love."
"I'm long out of that game, Jill."
"Alright. Just take it easy. Please?"
"I will."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
I wondered what blood alchemy or heart rhythms would suggest to Jill that I was in love? I hadn't had a lover for decades. Not since my wife died. And, to tell the truth, I'm not sure I would describe my feelings for her during those last years as being in love, though we were certainly comfortable together. I wondered about comfort and how antithetical it is to inspiration. When I was much younger I often found myself inspired by so many things: a woman, a sunset, children squabbling, a flock of birds. My art was cruder back then, but more vigorous. As I grew older, my work became more refined, more salable, but with less passion. I missed the days when a spring breeze showed me visions of all the fields and flowers it had breathed through.
Thinking glumly of these things, I set up my easel and clipped a fresh, prepared canvas onto it. I wanted to explore the forest I had sketched the other day. The low sun and the twisted bare branches spoke to me. So I sketched them in quickly, letting them fill the bottom third of the canvas. I stepped back and considered. Then, suddenly, I understood what the painting wanted.
It wasn't hard for me to find the café that night; my head was filled with the new painting. The room wasn't too crowded, and there was a relaxing playlist of some kind of folk music – lots of strings and pipes. I ordered a small latté and sat across from Julie again. (It was then that she told me her name.) I had brought a small sketch diary and began to draw her. I think I captured her sanguine shrug and quirky smile. Several people looked over my shoulder as I worked, but no one spoke. One man, who appeared to be the owner of a friendly golden retriever who wandered freely around the shop, put his hand on my shoulder and smiled. But that was all. Eventually, Julie looked up from her laptop screen and noticed that I was glancing at her. I showed her the finished sketch. She seemed delighted, favoring me with a half-smile, so I ripped my sketch out of the pad and gave it to her.
"You should draw her," she said, indicating Cleo with a quick flirt of her chin.
"No. I don't know if I could capture her…"
Julie nodded. "Yeah. It would be tough. But you're good. And she would…appreciate it."
I walked home that night, though I was very tired and my legs were trembling.
I worked all the next day on the new painting. It required a few sketch studies. I thumbed through some of my anatomy atlases and searched for some photos online. It was difficult to find precisely what I wanted. At last, I threw anatomical accuracy to the winds and simply drew and painted what I saw behind my eyes. I was thoroughly exhausted by evening, but nevertheless set out searching for the coffee shop. My head was filled with red-bellied clouds, and I found myself in front of Cleo's shop effortlessly. Many of the regulars were there – Julie was working on her story, pushing her big, crimson glasses back up nose and swiping cinnamon locks off her forehead; Phyllis, a tall trans-woman, was holding court in the back of the shop, sipping from a cup that must have held at least a quart of coffee; and Fern, the golden retriever, was gently demanding treats with an air of canine entitlement.
I sat down across from Julie and started sketching a sad-eyed, bearded man with a scarred chin. I tried to be inconspicuous, but I think he noticed that I was paying attention to him. He frowned at me and turned his back. Then, he pulled an instrument case out from beside his table, and removed, of all things, an oud! He tuned it quickly and began plucking out a tune that was somehow both perky and melancholy. I'm pretty sure it wasn't in any Western scale, though I'm no expert. Cleo smiled strangely, swaying her head and shoulders rhythmically. The candles throughout the shop started to smoke and a sharp aroma of incense filled the air. My chest felt thick and a little congested, but warm and comfortable at the same time. Fern's tail kept time with the oud. And, perhaps most oddly, a pair of women who had been talking about some marketing scheme, got up from their table and began to move together in such a sexy, sensual dance that I was both fascinated and embarrassed. The candles dimmed to tiny scarlet snakes, leaving the café in a thick darkness filled with vague shadows, invisible caresses, and that narcotic aroma.
I'm not sure how I got home.
After a late breakfast, I walked to a nearby art-supply shop to buy some alizarin crimson and cadmium orange – the tones of the sunset I was trying to capture escaped me again and again. I also bought some metallic gold paint – something I use very rarely – for the one tiny spot where the setting sun glinted off a distant glacier. I mixed and tested and mixed again. After several hours of work, I think I captured the tone I wanted – not just the optical properties, but the emotional tone as well – a compound of ecstasy and melancholy. The last section was going to be more challenging. The principal figure was to be invisible, implied only by its relationship to other figures. Imagine painting a hand holding a baseball, then erase the baseball. Something like that. But more intimate.
I couldn't find the shop that night. Nor the next night. I felt drawn back to my studio again and again. I worked on the painting obsessively – something I hadn't done in years, and which clearly was unhealthy for me at my age and the state of health. I put a nitroglycerin patch on my aching chest both nights after stumbling back to my bedroom.
At last the thing was finished. I should have let it dry, possibly for several weeks. But I found myself anxious and impatient. I sprayed it and went upstairs to eat lunch while the fixative cured. Then I went back downstairs to the studio and and found an old-fashioned, dusty-gold frame. My chest was hurting again – I suppose I should have used a respirator when I sprayed the painting. There is a small cot in the studio. I curled up on it and slept for several hours.
I woke up around eight without any appetite, although I was trembling a little, which usually happens when I'm hungry. I wrapped the framed painting in butcher paper and, noticing that it was drizzling outside, covered it in a plastic bag.
The drizzle had turned to a light right by the time I got outside. A gibbous moon was invisible behind the clouds, except for a silver-gray streak across the eastern sky. Tiny raindrops, too small to settle, made pearly veils over each streetlight. The houses on either side of the street were blurred and indistinct like watercolors, bleeding and pooling.
The rain grew steadily heavier as I walked. Silent flashes of lightning flickered on the horizon, briefly outlining the silhouettes of hills and skyscrapers. I clutched the painting to my chest as a north wind mounted and the loose edges of the plastic flapped and muttered.
At last the coffee shop materialized in front of me. By now I was dripping wet. (I had forgotten to bring a raincoat; Jill would have been stern…) There was a coat tree to the left of the door that I had never noticed before. I hung my hat on it and waited in line behind Phyllis while she ordered her huge Americano. I was trembling. With anticipation, I think.
At last it was my turn. I unwrapped the painting: a dark scene in a winter forest, with a single beam of fire-gold sun burning through a pass in the distant mountains, to fall on the ruins of a gray stone altar. In the foreground, an ancient crow perched on a bare branch. The crow was nestled up against an invisible presence, its head half-turned to look at her. I had caught the angle of Cleo's tattoo, leaning against her neck and chin, almost perfectly.
"It's for you, Cleo!" I barely managed to mumble. "I painted it for you!"
"Oh! Sam!" her voice throbbed with quiet delight. "It's perfect! I'll treasure this forever!" She put her hands over mine.
I was never happier in my life.
Just then I heard a loud uproar behind me! The husky blond man whom I saw that second day in the café (I never learned his name) pushed his way to the counter.
"No!" he screamed. His voice was trembling with rage, desperation, and profound sadness.
He had a gun.
"No! You promised," he cried. He aimed the gun at Cleo.
I have never been especially limber. Nevertheless, with a speed that surprised me, I jumped between the blond man and the barista. There was a deafening blast. The pain in my chest was indescribable. I suppose it must have been my heart…
I don't understand the place I'm in now. From time to time, Dr. Koraki comes to visit me and listens to my heart through a ram's horn. Sometimes I see the picture I painted on the wall of a long, long gallery. Sometimes I see Fern and follow her through gloomy cities and forests. Once, I'm almost certain I saw Julie dancing around a tall bonfire in the woods. Another time, I wandered into a ruined church where I saw Phyllis, the trans-woman. She was standing erect in a pure white gown, looking transfigured and beatific. She was sacrificing some small, whimpering creature on a blood-stained altar of flat gray stones. Often I hear crows calling and I know Cleo is near, though I never see her.
You have quite a gift, Ted
Thankyou for this magical story