a love story

He is sitting at a table by the door, and stands to use the restroom just as she comes in. She looks at him as if startled, confronted, as though he rose to challenge her, stop her from entering, or keep her from reaching the counter alive. Then she looks away, then back again at him as he follows her by sheer coincidence past the shelves of mugs and bagged beans. She won’t relax until she has one hand on the counter itself – Safe! You’re it!

It could have been a trick of lighting, her curious reaction; just the harsh dark of a midwinter’s late afternoon. Or a lie of the devil in her long brown hair. Maybe something new about his face, which she had never seen before, which surprised or bewildered her. Or something old but lost in fog: resemblance to a teacher from childhood, or a neighbor where she used to live.

It brings him down, like the water circling the drain as he stands at the sink. He doesn’t know her, just the shape and motion of her. But those eyes, with their tincture of worry, of innocence, would be a good place to dream. Maybe a good place to die.

Washing his hands, he remembers his grandfather, who made the children scrub their hands before eating; “You’ve been petting those dogs, so go wash up;” who knew little of women, save one, but knew the want of them will leave a man’s soul spent and dusted with ash.

He needs a shave. Maybe that’s what set her off. This is a classy place, lots of brass, glass and polished wood. She works for a doctor or a dentist and likes to find her own kind here. Men with neckties still knotted after work. No poets in jeans, faded to show where their wallets ride, potbellied in old sweaters, unkempt and existential.

So he may go mad, here and now in this coffeehouse bathroom with its overflowing wastebasket and silent buzz of wireless Internet. His grandpa always said you should wash up every time, and there’s a sign beside the mirror demanding it in two languages. But he wishes he hadn’t; that he had hurried back out to see her again. There’s a post he could hide behind, supporting a rack of funny greeting cards – blank inside – and from there he could see her pay and go. Her shoulders and the small of her back receding in light blue cotton, turning beyond the glass doors, into the night.

He shrugs, and watches himself do it – so it goes, we make what we made since the world began – and goes out. Back to his table, his notebook, and his fine point gel ink pen. And sees that she’s not gone, not sitting at a table avoiding his impecunious eyes by feigning interest in the empty street. She’s behind the counter now, in a burgundy apron, commanding a thunderous blender. Checking his cup, he doesn’t need a refill now. No, not just yet.


© 2006 by J. Kyle Kimberlin
all rights reserved
2nd Draft 1.11.2006