Coffee and Sugar - C. Sean McGee (mystery books to read .TXT) 📗

sweet life, Joao calmly watched The Nervous Lady sitting in her chair watching the passage of feet on the broken cement as she had done for the last eight years, seven months and eleven days; waiting for chance to bring love back into her life, and as he watched her, his hands slowly turned the cup back and forth as if he were gently trying to start a fire with a stick and some brush, turning his hands like one of Shakespeare’s witches, boiling her brew until the tiny individual grains of sugar slowly sank into the bitter coffee and found their places, putting themselves were they needed most to be and with a single breath, it was done.

He took the coffee over to The Nervous Lady and sat it down in front of her. She looked into his eyes for a moment as she bid him thanks but she paused as she caught her own stare looking back at her.

The Nervous Lady smiled; as she had at him when she arrived not long ago and she made a companion of expectation once again and as the coffee touched her tongue, her senses exploded with delight. Her soul danced; picked up by its own reflection, carried away in by the song of belief on the winds of hope. It reminded her that it was good to have hope, to expect the impossible and to make a prize of every breath and more so; for her, to feel sure in returning her eyes to the broken cement, knowing that the next pair of bustling feet to come out of the corner of nowhere will be the lover she has waited all these years to see again.

Joao was exhausted, his mind was awash with endorphin and he felt as if he had just run a marathon. He sat himself on a stool behind the counter and just watched The Nervous Lady experiencing her bitter sweet moment, thinking nothing of or to himself, thinking nothing at all, just watching in silent admiration.

“You’ve made a tough fan there Joao. She is a special lady, very misunderstood. I don’t know what you do with your coffee but it looks like you’re the only one who seems to understand her. You’re a good lad” said Fatts.

“She is very sad and so very happy.”

“She’s zero and one, both extremes. Bi-polar I think. What she has is not a symptom, it’s a gift. She feels intensely. So much better than the rest of these people that are content living their lives in summary” he said.

“What do you mean?” asked Joao.

“All of them, They entertain themselves my watching mediocre television, listening to mediocre music, reading mediocre books, having mediocre sex and living mediocre lives and you know what? They call this happiness. They’re scared to live, scared to feel. So scared of crashing from every height into every fall that they convince themselves that this television crap, the latest bestseller, the news, fashion, football, the newest shit band, all of it; their whole lives, they convince themselves that all of the mediocrity they consume is satisfying” he said.

“They set mediocre expectations for themselves so that they are always met. You ever heard the expression; don’t judge a book by its cover? Bullshit. They buy a book based solely on its cover and a three line blurb. You know what a blurb is, don’t you? It’s the three line description on the back of a book that gives you the gist of the story. You see, they need to know the story before they will read a story. God help them should they ever just open a book and discover something new. In fact, this three line blurb will ensure they only read stories they’ve read before; the same tired and worn narrative that in the guise of mediocrity, never gets old. They need to know what the movie is about before they watch it. They need to read a thousand reviews before they will listen to an album. They need to experience someone else’s mediocre emotional response before they will interject their own. They need to know why, before they do anything. You look at religion and spirituality and all of this nonsense. It all exists for this stupid mediocre expectative want of people. Everyone has the one empiric question, why are we here? They are too scared to feel, too scared to live their lives and find out for themselves at the end. They need to know the plot, the whole bloody story before they will commit to living. Lots of mediocre summaries and blurbs to help people get through their mediocre book, movies, music and lives so that when they get to the end, their satisfaction comes not in the journey or the experience, but in knowing that the meaning of their lives was exactly as what was scribed in the three lines they had read before this farce began. Fifty one percenters Joao, the lot of them, except her. She’s special” said Fatts.

“She is real lonely” said Joao.

“She comes in here every day at the same time, has for the last eight years. I started opening on Sundays on her account you know. She met a man a while back. He came in here for something. If you ever get close enough to ask her, she can tell exactly what he ordered and how many bites he took before he slipped away. She fell in love and she didn’t get his name or his number. She doesn’t even know what he looks like. Didn’t see his face, just the back of his head and his shoes. She didn’t have the gall to look at him when he came in. You believe that? She didn’t even see his face and still she fell in love. Incredible. So she started coming here every day following at the same time, hoping he would come back. She figured, if he worked nearby, then chances are she would see his loafers walking by the broken cement in front of her table. If he was here for a meeting, chances are he’d be called back in one day and would wander as he had into her life and that next time, she wouldn’t let fate beguile her with hindsight. Every day at the same time she is here, always fidgeting away at the stools, making her placing just right and having herself imaginary conversations, whispering away under her breath, smiling and tilting her head, blushing with some imaginary things that were said. She’s a special lady indeed. She doesn’t take to too many people but looks like she’s taken to you. I want you to serve her from now on, ok? Can you do that?” he asked Joao.

“I’d love to. I mean, if that’s ok, yes. I can serve other people if you like” said Joao.

“Are you sure? It looks kind of tiring, kind of slow. Maybe we could put a different price on it. Special coffee. I’ll cut you in on some of the profit. What do you say?” Fatts asked.

“Sound fantastic” said Joao.

“What should we call it, this special coffee of yours? The Bitter Sweet Life, Reflections, Calma Mater?” said Fatts laughing to himself.

“Coffee and Sugar” said Joao.

“Coffee and Sugar by Joao” said Fatts, “that’s it. Simple and perfect, I’ll go and make a sign up” said Fatts excitedly.

Joao was happy, happier than he had been in; well, the entirety of his life, for he finally felt really that he had found somewhere he belonged and he felt like the boy from The Carriage of my Heart and how he felt in episode seven of season thirty six when he got his first job singing in a bar and was asked to be a regular and it’s when the music business guys saw him and he became famous and Joao felt a bit like this now; not that he was going to be famous but that he was sitting at the right table, that his universe had just exploded and was now set to expand.

Later that evening; after the sun had fallen from the sky and brought with it the billions of star dust that lit up the blanket of night, from the streets came a different bustle, started first by chanting and singing; a chorus that was born from a great distance and by the time it was turning to enter the café, had reached an outrages crescendo. Hundreds of youths locked arm in arm and all dressed in their city’s colours all streamed into the café and spilled into the available booths and piled around tables clicking their fingers, ordering rounds of bottles of beer and shouting jovial, racial slurs against their rival and singing insulting songs, all in the name of pride.

“Fifty one percenters Joao” said Fatts smiling to himself and patting Joao on the back, speaking in a loud roar to battle with the ruckus coming from the animated youths throwing back drinks, shouting at the television and slapping each other on the backs in their primal competitive dance.

“Dyu ave pizza?” slurred a young man waving plastic notes in his hand, an assortment of colours, some of them cheap and some of them expensive.

“What are you studying?” asked Fatts.

“Medicine. We’re all.. I mean, them, over there, the table. We’re studying medicine. We’re gonna be doctors, fucking save lives and that; pretty cool yeah?” slurred the youth, spitting his words of the counter.

“Fifty one percenters Joao. His parents, just the same. You know the fastest sperm never fertilizes the egg. It gets there and is so tired it can’t even wipe its brow against the wall. Then millions more come along and bite and chew and make a hole so one lazy fucker can hop over the lot and jump through the window and take advantage of the situation and be the hero. Nature, is also a fifty one percenter” said Fatts laughing.

Joao laughed with him though he didn’t quite understand but what he could take away was that it was ok being him, that he shouldn’t feel less than these well to do middle class university kids or their parents, just because he wasn’t schooled and he didn’t learn how to think from a book or that he didn’t know or couldn’t remember how to pronounce the four syllable words they used together that made them sound really smart.

The crowd in the café got bigger and louder and the game got closer to starting and Joao watched around the room smiling to himself thinking of what Fatts had taught him. He liked watching the different groups within the groups.

There was a group of three or four guys who were generally not very attractive, in most cases overweight and they knew a lot about football and they said lots of names and statistics and lots of stuff that Joao didn’t know about and the person who remembered the most statistics was revered and he spoke like an angry father to his son, lathering the law in his fist, striking down on his child’s applauding mutiny.

And as he scanned the room; his hand twisting a wet sponge in a dirt glass, his eyes caught a surprise. There, staring up at a television, with a magnificent smile on her face, watching the weekend lottery was Charity; her hands clasped together, her eyes drawn upon the screen, drifting into imagination and her smile; so bright it could make the sun seem like a tiny star in the blanket of night.

“Hi Charity, are you here to watch the game as well?” asked Joao.

“Shhh” said Charity, “come back in a minute. Sorry Joao, I’ll talk to you in a second. Just give me a minute, ok, hun?” she said.

“Ok” said Joao, feeling a little flattened but not entirely deflated.

He went back to his post behind the counter and continued to clean glasses. He had spent the afternoon making coffees for a lot of patrons and I guess they had made a lot of money because Fatts was very happy.

Everyone left with massive smiles on their faces.

Fatts said it looked like everyone had just been laid for the first time. Joao thought about chicken laying lots of eggs with people inside them. He didn’t get the joke but laughed along anyway.

Once the students came in though, there was no more coffee, only beer. They came in every night at this time, once their classes were done for the day and they stayed for a few hours, drinking and singing; usually in good spirits but sometimes breaking into fight at which point Fatts would pick them up like empty chip packets and throw them onto the sidewalk.

So, now that there was a game, their spirits were lifted higher and the beer was flowing and for Joao, this meant simply attending to the sink and keeping the glasses clean.

Joao looked on while his hands scrubbed at dirty glasses as Charity sat by herself with her head titled high so that her