Outside it’s cloudy in New York City. Or it could just as easily be Chicago or Boston or Seattle, but not Los Angeles or Detroit. San Francisco is also an option, but it strikes me as too obvious a place to meet again for the hundredth or thousandth time. Either way, it is cloudy outside and the windows of the café are dotted with raindrops. If one were to stare out either broad window that faced the street outside, light foot traffic could be seen milling up and down either side of the road. Even on a cloudy day with rain freshly fallen; people still had places to be. It is a world in motion.
Inside everything comes together almost instantly. A wide-spaced area for little wooden chairs and tables, some occupied at random with faceless strangers I don’t even care to notice. These people eat and drink from cups while filling the air above and around them with a hum of chatter and muffled conversation. I don’t make out words because what they are saying is just about as important as the faces they don’t have. Which is to say I only care for the ambiance they seem to exude just by being there, sitting and making the kind of noises and sounds one would expect to hear in a café like this one. In a café that could be in New York or Boston or Chicago, but most definitely not Los Angeles or even, and I dare chuckle at the thought, a place like Phoenix.
Inside this café there are a couple of well upholstered chairs and couches, all of which remain unoccupied at present. A large bookcase, lined with titles that call back to a time when literature was paramount in entertaining and keeping a culture well versed and rounded, rests against a wall. Then of course there is the bar where the faceless baristas toil over imposing espresso machines and fashion beverages after names equally rotund and boisterous.
I’d like a venti triple layered, non-fat caramel macchiato deluxe suprema grava with no foam but extra whipped cream. In a world bent on keeping the events of our lives down to a one hundred and forty-four character blurb minimum, this kind of ordering and structuring of our daily activities fits perfectly.
I am sitting at the bar on a high-legged stool, my back to the door and hunched over a piping cappuccino and scanning the headlines of a newspaper. PRESIDENT TO SIGN BILL AUTHORIZING MASS EUTHANIZATION OF COWS! Or: SUICIDE BOMBER BLOWS UP BURGER JOINT, MARKET FEARS BACKLASH. Better still: COW UNION STAMPEDES HALLS OF CONGRESS. On and on these headlines pour down the pages and I have to wonder, for the briefest of moments, why society has become so hostile to the bovine community. I pause and wonder if there even is such a thing as a “bovine community”. Some would argue that if Jews, Gays, Blacks and fur-fetishists have a community, then why not our black and white-spotted, milk producing friends?
I continue to flip through the paper and realize, again, that the world is most assuredly coming to shit. Between financial meltdowns, global pandemic, wars, famine, homicide, patricide, suicide, embezzlements, entitlements, healthcare costs, terrorism, religious fanaticism, religious persecution, civil rights, animal rights, tsunamis, earthquakes, flood; a voice cuts through the background buzz of those faceless individuals.
I turn and look. I see the whole place as if viewed through glazed glass; all ripples and waves and indentations. Everything appears to have the vaguest of shape and form, but nothing stands out. The effect is rather haunting, but I’m not put off by this. It only serves to bring the most important thing to direct focus.
He stands now that he’s noticed I’ve noticed him. His lips form a cautious smile, waiting no doubt, to see if my reaction to his presence will be something of joy, happiness, even giddy enthusiasm or bitter rage, anger, or despair. Or maybe all three. His smile widens into something more confident because I’ve obviously given him some indication that his calling out to me was appropriate and well-received. I can’t tell if I’m actually smiling or not.
He looks the same, but older. His black hair, thin back then, is almost the same though cropped closer to his skull. He has forsaken the contact lenses of his youth for an older, more sophisticated pair of black framed glasses. His nose is thin and prominent, though now with a pair of glasses resting on its bridge seems to add more character to his face. True, his eyes are now obscured by the lenses, but they were dull brown to begin with. No pools to be lost swimming in for hours. He wears a white Oxford-style shirt, a blue-brown Burberry tie, neutral slacks and a fine blue vest. The perfect caricature of an academic.
He calls out my name again and draws closer; brushing past a fellow patron whose shoulder he casually touches and goes unnoticed. A hundred years ago, it seems, I would have killed to have been that nameless body he touched. A hundred years ago, I amend, I was. A hundred years ago we swapped more than mere glances and idle passing touches. A hundred years ago we-
I open my mouth and greet him warmly; the greeting of two old souls entertaining a chance encounter in a café on a crowded street on a cloudy day in a city somewhere on the edge of time. His name feels almost foreign to my tongue when it rolls out, like a traveler returning home after being months abroad in a nation far, far away. I extend my hand to his. He grins and instead engulfs me in a hug. I teeter on my stool as he says something to me my ears don’t quite catch. Most likely it is something rudimentary and polite. Something like: “you look great” or “imagine seeing you here!”
At the same instance I catch a whiff of his cologne and find it suited to the person he is now. Much like the change in his attire, this fragrance matches his professorial image. It is subtle, mildly spiced and earthy. A hundred years ago he wore graphic t-shirts with dead trees and birds and splattered ink blots. A hundred years ago he smelled of the summer sun, menthol and sugar.
We pull out of the quick embrace, our eyes meeting. I wonder if the smile on my face looks as weak as it feels. It must not because he continues smiling between his words, in his eyes and with the movements of his hands. His paper, I noticed, remains where he had been seated moments before, still crisp and folded. The bombardment of questions continues to come and I find myself giving answers as if on autopilot.
“It’s been so long! How have you been?”
(Fine, you know, just living life. I mean, it’s only been a hundred years. What could possibly happen between then and now?)
I tell him I’ve been well. Finally finished school.
“Degree?”
(PhD in Time and Energy, emphasis on Wasting)
English.
“Congratulations! Are you teaching or writing or what?”
(What’s the point of all this really?)
I shift nervously, trying to get him to break contact with my eyes but fail. He’s still grinning. I tell him the truth. I’m in town for a meeting with my publisher. Finally finished that novel I’d been talking about writing for a hundred years.
“Amazing! That definitely calls for some celebrating! When is it getting published?”
(Why? Are you going to read it? I doubt you’d even find interest in it. It would probably all be quite foreign to you anyway. A time long removed and best forgotten)
Two months.
He continues his inquisition, though never digging too far beneath the surface. It’s all small talk and polite exchanges. Little, insignificant morsels of words that tell only an eighth of what has really transpired over the course of a hundred years.
“Are you still in Phoenix?”
(Like you don’t know the answer to that)
Yeah, unfortunately.
“How long are you in town?”
(Not long enough to cause you any trouble if that’s what you mean)
Just today.
He manages a look that might pass for regret if I were stupid enough to believe he’d actually feel that way. Since I know better it just looks like relief. He doesn’t have to worry about extending himself any further than this. A casual, brief meeting that will most likely be forgotten about the moment he walks back to his waiting paper and coffee. A meeting that will leave my stomach in knots for the next
(hundred years)
He asks a few more general questions that make me feel like I’m talking to some stranger about the weather outside. It’s all inconsequential and amounts to nothing, just a way to pass time and keep from being too bored.
I see then time unfold before me. Hours from now, when the sun is sinking into the horizon and these skyscrapers of metal and glass are illuminated in hues of oranges, reds and purples; he will enter his high rise apartment and be greeted by his lover, probably calling out from the kitchen where the smells of some exotic meal is being prepared wafts out. He’ll remove his jacket, hang it on the rack next to the door. He’ll remove his designer shoes and set them neatly aside. He’ll look up and from the vantage point of the wall-sized windows see the world awash in the colors of the coming night. He’ll smile and know that life is practically perfect. He’ll start toward the kitchen and make it about halfway before his lover rounds the corner, a glass of fine aged red wine in hand. Their lips will smack in a kiss that belies the passion they truly have for another. He’ll sip red wine and talk about all sorts of things. The class that just couldn’t get enough of Mahler; the lunch with a colleague; the news that the college had to cut another scholarship program. All the while they’ll shift through the motions of a couple preparing for twilight. They'll dine. They’ll retire to a couch. He’ll sink into his papers and his lover will become engrossed with the television.
They’ll retire to their bedroom. They’ll undress one another and make love. And only after all this, and the two are in their afterglow, limbs entwined will he be asked one more time if anything else interesting happened. He’ll pause for a moment, eyes resting on the circling ceiling fan. He’ll take a couple breathes as if truly contemplating. It’ll feel like a span of hours, but in reality five seconds has ticked off the clock. He’ll shake his head. He’ll speak two words that indicate he had nothing further to add to the timeline of today and they’ll both wander hand-in-hand to peaceful dreams.
I’ll be on a return plane to Phoenix, lulled into near unconsciousness by alcohol and Valium. I’ll stare blankly out the small window at the darkened sky and the ground below. The city will start to sink away. He’ll start to sink away. And for another hundred years I’ll be grasping at an encounter that might not have actually happened at all.
“So it was really nice seeing you again.”
I hope my smile is strong enough. I agree with him.
He offers to exchange numbers.
(Translation: I know you’ll never call)
I take his. He takes mine.
“If you’re ever on this side of town again we should get together”
(I won’t ever be coming back)
I nod.
“Listen, I’ve got to run. Classes starting and I just stopped in to grab a latte before heading off.”
(Translation: You’re not worth my time. Though, really now, is that a surprise?)
I nod again, finding it the easiest way to deal with his words. His cheap and easy words. At this exact moment, when he hugs me again, I want to spit razors at him. I want to shake him. I want to smack him. I want to kiss him. I want to hold him tightly. I want to drive a pencil into his left eye. I want to ask-
He breaks from the hug and smiles. Repeats his enthusiasm for having seen me again. Turns. Walks toward the door, his paper and latte abandoned. The door chimes jingle.
(do you remember a hundred years ago? When you’re lying in bed at night and just falling into sleep’s embrace, do you ever think back a hundred years ago? Do you feel the same lament I do?)
Outside he’s lost to the traffic of moving feet.
I have had this meeting with him a hundred times. A hundred times a hundred. I sigh, disappointed with the events. I withdraw and the world around me starts to melt and run like a painted canvas dipped in thinner. It becomes streams of color until they all bleed into each other. And then it is simply black. And I am left alone, save for the singular ticking of a clock.
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