Coffee and Sugar

by C. Sean McGee

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When Joao awoke in the morning, Charity had already gone. There was a note on the table, but Joao was illiterate so he merrily tucked the note into the pocket of his pants that lay neatly on the floor and quietly snuck into the shower, so as not to disturb The Bishop.

  He head felt light, but his heart felt heavy. He was so tired and hung-over, having given so much of himself in every cup of coffee that he had made and having lived so much difficulty in such small containable doses.

  He stood catatonic, with one hand holding the neck of the shower upright so that it didn’t fall forward against the wall and the other, slapping away at the broken tiles of the bathroom with a broken squidgy, haplessly trying to evade the water from flowing past the drain where he battered about and past the filthy sink and rocking toilet and out into the small kitchen and church floor.

  And; as the cold water streamed over his face, shivering his body into shaking away the severity of the sadness and asperity that caught in his pores as if his soul were the muddy carpet that collected the pit and filth of traveler’s shoes, he cried. And even under a cold stream, he could taste the salt on his lips and strangely, it made him thirsty for more.

  “I wonder if the sun ever feels this tired.”

  As he left for work, he tidied up around the church so that The Bishop wouldn’t be mad. His temper was immeasurable and it was much easier to find ways to avoid it than to have to reason with it. He straightened some chairs that were strewn about, collected some papers that were on the floor, cleaned The Bishop’s vomit which was next to the papers strewn about on the floor and he set aside on one of the chairs, a pair of women’s panties that were pink with some frilly lace running around the top.

  As he walked out the door, he thought about the things Charity had told him and what they had talked about all night and basically he just tried to remember anything she had said so he could hear the sound of her voice so he could feel as happy and belonging as he did last night, sitting on his bed, holding her hand, listening to her talk about life, telling her everything about his and laughing at things that weren’t really funny but were just fun to laugh at and listening to her breath get heavier as she drifted into sleep with her ear press against his lap and her sleeping eyes watching the door with Joao; leaning against the wall, falling asleep after some time, running his fingers through her long black hair to undo the piles of dried, frizzed and tangled knots at the ends.

  When he left the church, he closed the iron gate that boarded off the entrance, wrapped the two chains back around through the bars like an old rusted snake and bolted their heads to their bums so that nobody could tear them apart.

  And with the house secure, he headed off. But as he did, a slight clicking sound; like the turning of a lock or the loading of a gun, caught his attention and it pulled his sight to one of the old shacks at the top of the hill. He couldn’t explain it but for one reason or another; a reason that was not his to debate, he turned back and climbed to the top of the hill and stepped up onto the wooden planks that ran across a small open sewer; the wood wobbling and creaking beneath his feet, daring him to take another step and fall into the sordid mess below.

  He stood at a door with his hand raised mere inches from a long chain that hung from a bar, welded across the frame and he stood still in capitulated, mute maladroitness; like he did before, wanting; but unable, to speak, to knock, to say his name or to ask who’s there, on the other side of that door.

  He could hear someone there; on the other side of that door, standing probably as he was standing and listening, probably as he was listening. Maybe they were kind and needed a friend or maybe they were just mean and selfish like everyone else; smiling and showing their teeth benignantly before gnawing off your giving hand and spitting it out again because they had probably just confused their repugnant hunger with their casual boredom.

  They could only be one or the other; mean or kind, and though he felt saddled with fear; the type that makes you run until your legs fall right off, there was a part of him that could see almost through the fog that pressed him to flee and he felt that maybe he could see some kindness, not a great deal, just a bit.

  But even a bit might always be just enough; that the person behind that door could be one or the other but if he were to say his name or rattle at the chain, maybe the person would be kind and maybe he could make another friend, someone close to home; like he’d never really had.

  His heart beat fast, his breath quickened and he felt as if he were losing his lungs to the aspect of drowning in a raging open sea for every time he opened his mouth, a short, sharp, desperate breath raced over his gritting teeth and stung the small sores on the side of his tongue which was pressed down upon rows of jagged teeth as its tip pushed down at the point where his teeth met his swollen, red gums, pressed with the force of a supporting beam as he maintained the construction of his silence, willing no sound upon his body, not even the taking of a breath or the licking of his tongue as he swallowed a single drop of saliva.

  On the ground, next to a large stone that was beside the door to the shack, was what looked like a small pencil or pen. Joao leaned down slowly, trying not to make any rash sound, but as he clasped at the pencil, the large stone slipped on a bed of small pebbles and loose gravel and a chorus of scrunching and scratching echoed in his ears and it sounded probably louder than it actually was but what played out in his mind had him ardently freeze, staring at the crack between the door and the planks of warped wood which acted like an unsteady bridge, jetty or wharf over a river of filth, waste and excretion, thinking to himself that each breath that he took sounded was like a clap of thunder and so he tried holding onto each breath, but it didn’t work because eventually he had to let go and every next breath was louder, deeper, more desperate and more addling than the one before.

  Panic set in.

  But he didn’t run.

  He reached into his pocket, crouching by the overturned rock and scribbled something on a piece of paper that was scrunched inside. He took the paper and pressed it gently to iron out the uneven edges that folded like the pages of an old textbook and when it was flat enough to slip through the crack in the door, he pushed it through.

  He pinched the thin paper with both hands, his thumbs and fingers delicately pressing the far tip of the paper into the dark and holding it for a moment while he thought if this was the right thing to do or not and when he had decided that it wasn’t, person behind the door snatched the paper from his gentle pinch.

  Panic set in.

  And he ran.

  He made no bargain of silence with his stamping feet, only one of distance and he powered through every step, unabridged from stealth or secrecy.

  He ran straight past the church with its heavy rusted gate chained and bolted shut and down along the rows of brothels emptying of clients and whores like an old washer spitting out the dregs of water from its last cycle and then he ran still, on past the scores of closing bars where old women with neat washcloths tied over their curled, purple hair stood with damp, bending cigarettes clinging to their yellow teeth while they hosed off the tables, chairs and floors, completely separated from the truth of their labour, staring idly into the distance, imagining something they had been watching hours before on television, when it was that the crux of this lecherousness had been consumed and then exhumed and then dried and crusted like an old scab onto the floor.

  He pushed through the swarms of people stumbling down the hill towards their dawning sobriety. Most of them split their direction and spilled to the side, falling heavy on one leg, hopping and cartwheeling their way back onto two feet and shaking their fists in slurred combatant banter but with all the threat of a polite address.

  Her ran and ran and ran until his bounds were so high that he was no longer running for he was leaping his way down past the scourge of the city, almost splitting his chin as his rampant rising knees sprang up like a tragedy on an otherwise bad day, catching him content and unawa
re, hitting him hard and leaving its inevitable bruise that would leave long after his explanation failed to suffice.

  At the bottom of the hill, he leaned over himself and caught his breath, gripping his hands to his hips and squeezing his stomach to drone the pain that was like an electric belt across his stomach and that coursed up his body and into his lungs.

  He stood hunched over in the middle of a busy sidewalk where people rushed from one side to another, heavyset in their obligation, all seemingly pressed for time and comfort, pushing past each other and nervously stepping on one another’s toes.

  Nobody ever looked at the hill as they passed. They all knew it was there, but they furthered to pretend it did not exist, like a friend with a crippling dependency; everyone just turned the other cheek, ignoring; in the wake of their own flight and flux, the flow of people coming down off the hill to join them in their disheartened mirth as; in the drudgery of their banal existences, they all wished away yet another day, haggling with god or the universe or secular chance for any another day to be today, bettering themselves instead to go unfed and caring only to lick at the sugared spoon.

  They didn’t look to their right as their paths were swept up as one with scores of men and women, spilling from the mouth into the open river of ‘see nothing, say nothing’, where eyes were just a dressing, like a coloured ring on an eagle’s wing, for the people looked only in their beleaguered minds, thinking of places they would rather be and not noticing how the people that spilled down from the hill had changed the complexity in their eyes and that in an instant, they went from perverse defiler to red handed reproof to finally; like a soldier’s feet falling into march, to the ubiquitous blank and obnubilate, cast iron stare of a decent, abiding citizen.

  They didn’t see the faces of the feet that quickly found their march, moving in learned, uniformed succession. They dared not to look, should they accidentally spy on someone they trusted, on someone they knew or on someone they loved or, by looking up and catching in a shop window, themselves, in their own escaping reflection.

  For the flux of degeneracy that poured from the open sewer into the river of obligated congeniality and decency was made of everyday people; brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends and every profession you would curse yourself to imagine.

  Joao saw them all, though, every one of them.

  He saw how the rapists, junkies, drunks and vile torturous pigs so easily put on their morning masks and became lawyers and preachers and prayers and mothers and fathers and judges and doctors and kindergarten teachers and every single person in this entire city, in this whole wide world, every last one of them, they all had their own bastardised and vitiating hill, maybe not here but somewhere, they all had their own hill and each and every one of these decent people, they all looked scant and horribly naked under all their clothes and though their dresses of good and charity and decency and well-mannered would have their appropriate occasion, they would always be just a dress, something to put on, something to take off and something they could easily stain, but decency, holiness, caring, affection, altruism and good tidings, they were not freckles or dimples or markings upon their skin and so, under their fancied and fashionable ideals; under their coloured and tailored, moral cloth, no amount of scouring would ever do away with the filth and decay of which they lathered and layered and wept from their sweaty pores and which was made all the more perdurable from the time they spent in wished upon days.

  Seeing his bus racing down the avenue, Joao rushed across the road and knocked into The Nice Old Lady, making her knock over an empty vase that was sitting on a table that fell to the ground and smashed into a billion pieces. The Nice Old Lady gripped at the table from where the vase had just come, clutching her heart at the behest of her distress; not because her heart was weak but because it was something old ladies seemed to always do when they heard a loud band, passed another person at a corner or a dog on a leash walked up from behind them, something her elderly husband; if she had one, would shake his head at but which was something to her that seemed appropriate and fitting.

  “Oh dearie me,” she said.

  Joao turned to help her, his eyes magnetic with apologetic care.

  “Stupid idiot,” she said. “Oh it’s you, what is it with you kids that you’re too busy to open you’re bloody eyes and see people who are just standing here minding their own business and its stupid idiots like you; stupid…..fucking idiots like you,” she said, “who have no respect at all and are the reason this city is going downhill and…..”

  It was The Nice Old Lady who took his money and cursed against his favour and there was that word again; ‘hill’. He had seen this old lady once before up on that hill whilst cleaning up around the church; as he did at night, with the lights off so as not to arouse the interest of the drunks and the junkies.

  As she rattled on; her bottom jaw flapping like a piece of torn screen in the wind, he stared at her small angry looking face, one that; without the searing eyes, flared nose and projecting false teeth, may have looked sweet and docile but regardless, for this act, was a face that he had seen wandering around the top of the hill with a searching kind of look etched in her eyes, but not of someone who was lost but of someone who had made themselves lost, so that they could find or be found by what it was they were searching for.

  “Are you looking for someone?” asked Joao.

  “You nosy disrespectful little…”

  “I’m sorry mam. I really am. I didn’t mean to knock you I don’t mean to be rude it’s just I saw you the other day and it looked like you were looking for someone. Maybe I can help you. You see I live there and...”

  You live there, on the hill?” she said.

  “Yes mam”

  “There are only ghosts on that hill. Nobody lives there” she said amidst a trickle of tears, turning away to go back into her store, hobbling slightly, but leaving her anger out on the path, away from her breast where it longed to keep but of where it did not belong.

  As she shed a tear, Joao rushed to her with a small napkin that was neatly folded in his pocket.

  “My husband is gone. My son is gone and my grandson is gone. All I have are ghosts” she said, taking the napkin from Joao and unfolding it to pull up to dry her eyes.

  Joao stepped onto the bus and as it pulled away, he moved into an empty seat and couldn’t see; behind him, through one of the stained windows, on the side of the street, just beside a light plume of smoke from the bus’ exhaust; a look of shock and extolling surprise and marvel that lit in the old woman’s eyes as she recognized the way the words were written on the back of the crumpled paper tissue. He didn’t see at that moment how The Nice Old Lady’s sadness vanquished at the sight of a ghost.

  The bus pulled up in front of the café and Joao piled out of the rear, being spat out in to the rat race once more, finding his feet quickly and moving out of the burgeoning flux before it took him with it somewhere annoyingly far from where he felt as if he intended to be.

  There were the same faces he saw every morning and the same displeasure in being squashed and squeezed next to one another. With so much in common, it was amazing really why none of them were friends.

  The Nazi and The Obese Woman didn’t exchange insult on this journey, but they did catch one another’s lingering threat as their heads turned in constant revolve like a boatman’s light.

  Both entered the café with hordes more people and each shuffled their way as close as they could to the counter where two baristas looked nervously at one another, shaking their shoulders and each looking to Fatts who was busy watching outside the café at Joao who was busy looking inside the café with the eyes of a bullied child, wishing he had the courage to be useless once more and to just walk away from everything; from the café, from these people, from the hill, from the city, from life, from himself and oh so very far, from this gift he had for connecting people with their own selves, with their souls and with their bitter sweet s
orrow.

  “Hello,” said a happy voice from behind him.

  It was The Nervous Lady.

  She was very giddy, almost jumping out of her shoes as she stood behind Joao waiting to show him what was in her hands.

  “His name is David,” she said, hinting at the small coloured fish inside the small bowl that was still and lifeless, without flurry, without flare and without swim inside the small clear bowl.

  “Is he alive?’ asked Joao, looking strangely at The Nervous Woman and then at the small clear bowl and the still black thing floating inside.

  “Of course he is. He’s just sleeping” she said, tapping at the glass vigorously in more of a poking manner than a tapping one.

  “Do fish sleep?” asked Joao.

  “I don’t know. Do you think he’s ok? I sometimes use cream on my hands because they get dry and the cream keeps them moist. My hands have to be beautiful, it’s very important. And it has a perfume. It smells really nice too. But I use alcohol on my hands before I give David his food so that he doesn’t get the chemicals in the water. Do you think maybe the chemicals got in the water? The alcohol, it makes my skin really dry” she said.

  “I don’t know. Do you have a bigger bowl? Maybe” said Joao.

  “But the man at the store said he needs to have just a bit of water because he gets scared if there is a lot and he needs to go to the top to get air and if there’s a lot of water then he’ll get tired and sick and die. Do you think maybe there’s not enough water?” she said.

  “I don’t know. I mean, fish, they live in the ocean and in rivers yeah? Well, there’s a lot of water there. That bowl seems real small, though. Maybe you could get David a bigger bowl. Does he always stay in that?” he asked.

  “The man at the store put him in this bowl. He didn’t tell me I needed to put it in a bigger one or I would have. Not too big. I don’t have a lot of money but if he needed a bigger bowl I would get him one. Do you think he needs a bigger bowl?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” said Joao.

  “Ok, I’ll get him a bigger bowl. Are you working today? A lot of people there now. Are you making coffee?” she asked, jittery and nerving.

  Joao looked tried.

  “No, I don’t think so, not today,” he said.

  “Oh, but you have to. You’re real important now. Your coffee is the best in the whole city. Everyone knows that. I came all the way here from my house, just for your coffee. You can make me one, though, right?”

  “I’m sorry mam, I can’t. I’m tired. I’m sad” said Joao.

  “Please. I travelled by bus. I came a long way. I brought David to show you. The least you can do is make me a coffee. Please, I came all this way. And David?” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you came all this way, I am it’s just I feel sick and I think I might go home and rest.”

  “No, you can’t do that. I came all this way to see you, to show you, David. Here you can have him. You have to make me a coffee. I have to see my soul” she said belligerently, holding out the bowl to Joao’s chest like a beggar with their silver plate.

  Joao started to feel edgy. The Nervous Lady was quickly losing her calm and becoming transparently dangerous. Her fingers twitched and it looked as if the bowl she was carrying might just slip from her tremulous grasp at any second and unfortunately for David, merge with the ground below.

  Her eyes looked glazed and her pupils were pulsing erratically. As she stared behind his reason and excuse, looking for some truth to harass or with which to bargain, Joao saw a thin red line; jagged, like a bolt of lightning, stretch across the white of her eye and cast a yellow stain in the corner while her grinding teeth only barely succeeded in keeping her trembling bottom lip quiet and restrained.

  “I’ll pay anything,” she said.

  Those words; so desperate and detaching.

  Would this make him a devil?

  “You should get some rest mam. Do you have someone who can collect you, take you home, look after you?”

  The Nervous Lady let go of the bowl. The earth invited the glass to smash into a billion tiny fragments that scattered about Joao’s feet and swept down the road while David; who had apparently been sleeping and was not yet dead, flipped and flapped on the ground once or twice or fifty times before he eventually stuttered then stopped and looked less like a dying fish and more like a small piece of black tar pushing up from the sidewalk.

  “I have no one. There is no one for me, no one, except my soul and you have it. You have it in your hands. You took it from me. Give it back. Let me see it, please, just a sip, you can keep it if you want, it’s ok, I don’t really want it back. I just want to see it, just one fix, please” she screamed.

  Joao panicked.

  The Nervous Lady screamed.

  The scores of people pushing, shoving and fighting inside the café and the hundreds outside all turned in their direction and their cursing and yelling then, less than subsided; it stopped all together; dead, like David the unfortunate fish.

  “I don’t have your soul mam. It’s just coffee” said Joao, holding his hands defensively in front of his face.

  “You did something, you took it from me; that day and you turned it around and you showed it to me, you put bits of it in my coffee, but you kept the rest for yourself and I tried to see it myself, like you showed it to me, but I couldn’t find it. It’s not there anymore. You took it out of me. I want it back. No, you can keep it, it’s ok, I don’t wanna live with it. I just wanna see it. I’ll give it to you forever, you can keep it if you want, just if you show it to me again, just once more, please” she screamed, rushing with her hands arched to pit around his neck.

  Joao knocked her hands away and ran and as he did, the scores of people inside the café and the hundreds pushing and shoving along the sidewalk ran at first, with him, then; when he picked up his pace, they ran after him; calling his name laudably, each making their call more prominent and throwing their voices with more gusto as they jostled for space, throwing their elbows and nudging their shoulders, knocking over whoever may pardon to fall and claw at the backs and sides of those that wouldn’t, edging to get closer to their idol, the provider of the window to their souls, the dealer of their heavenly ideal.

  They all yelled, each and every one of them, thinking that Joao would recognize their voice especially, amidst the taunts and screaming from hundreds of desperate and addled followers, each saying the word Joao more personable, more caring and more understanding than the last.

  Joao ran and he didn’t stop, not for his falling lungs or his elastic legs. He ran until he was so far from where he started that he had no real idea of where he was.

  He was somewhere downtown, on a street he didn’t know that was off many streets he had never heard of or seen before. He crouched behind a large skip bin that was placed crudely over a kerb near a construction site that was heavily boarded and while he crouched, he listened to his heart exploding in his chest, thinking he had never felt as scared as this in the whole of his life.

  The ordinary and mundane had never been as appealing to him as it was right now; cleaning a floor, opening a can of vegetables, peeling the sticker off of the tomato sauce bottle, sweeping vomit, tucking his father into bed, watching the television or combing his hair, anything at all was what he would rather be doing and anywhere but here was where he wished he could be.

  He looked quickly to his left and to his right, but the street he was on was a desert of commotion. There was an old stray dog sitting by a bench seat across the road and he was scratching with his hind leg behind his ear and flapping his tail up and down against the ground as he did. The dog had a pained expression as if the attendance to its itch with his digging and scratching claws might be incredibly galling or insatiably good, it was hard to tell really whether the it was enjoying it or not.

  Joao watched the dog and cast his stare on the shrub beside that grew unbaited from a hole in a red wall that stood erect behind the scratching dog
. There wasn’t a lot of shrub as the hole wasn’t that large, but it did look like the arm of a tree had pushed straight through the bricks to find itself some sun and Joao trained his eyes on the waving green that was picked on gently by the light breeze and he imagined; as he had done constantly of late, the small green shrub being parted lightly by the hand of a girl.

  But as he stared out across the road, his mind felt funny and as he thought; as he had become so accustomed to, of a delicate hand parting the leaves but when the brush was cast aside, he saw his own face looking back. The hand was not his, but his face was there. It was far from the opening and there was a rope around his neck keeping him hanging from a branch that was off at a height somewhere that he couldn’t see.

  The dog stopped scratching and skipped gingerly across the road, stopping by Joao for a second to sniff his hands and to look him in the eye before pitter pattering away into the construction site behind, slipping through some loose panels and disappearing amidst the sprawl of rubble and flapping tarpaulin.

  Joao followed, looking quickly behind as he darted to the fence and peeled back the broken panels so as to squeeze his skinny frame through. He took one last look at the deserted street before letting loose of the panels that jumped from his hands and swung like a pendulum in a heavy scraping swish before the two pieces came to a rest, one sliding over the other and both making invisible, the entrance behind the fence.

  The bricks crumbled and crushed under his feet and though he tried to make a secret of his pass behind the broken panels, he could do little to dampen the sound that invited cautious ears to his arrival.

  The ground was hidden under a loose mount of rubble, broken bricks and half mounted walls that teetered on the edge of collapse, moored by thick metal tubes, wires and piping that ran between the brickwork and pressed deep into the ground.

  Joao made every step a tentative one, feeling the tip of his foot touch the bricks before the rest of his body followed. The tarpaulin tickled as it flapped under the course of the wind, its sharp corners lightly whipping the back of his neck while, above him, the rest of the sheet pushed in and out as if it were breathing, being pushed down upon by the lightly blowing breeze.

  And as he walked through a plastic sheeting that covered an entry into the building, the light vanished almost entirely and he stepped forwards, blind and calling quietly to the dog that was sitting a way off in the distance, in a dark part of the building in which he could not see, sitting and watching as Joao patted at the darkness with his wavering hand, whispering a coming command to the dog to which sat, waited and watched, alongside its master.