mytopography {my topography} - Fleeting

Fleeting

December 3rd, 2009 § 16

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In the coffee shop I watch, furtively, knowing what I know. The light is almost unbearably golden, slanting across the ecru walls, the burnished wood floor. They’re here again, at the table next to mine.

She fixes her long gray hair, wipes the crumbs from the table, leans back patiently.

After awhile she says, “Shall we?”

And he nods.

“Are you going to drink the rest of your coffee?” she asks, standing up, gathering the plates with croissant crumbs and the wooden stir stick, broken in two parts. The broken ends are sharp.

“Yeah I might,” he says, and reaches for his cup, holding it possessively as she clears. She smiles. She knows. She puts the dishes in the bin, walks back him. She puts her hand on the back of his neck. Waits.

He doesn’t want to leave. He avoids her eyes. Looks out the window.

She sits.

“Well.” He says, and then the word just hangs in the air, softly, like cat pacing back and forth between them.

Conversation is less important, now, for him. Just being here is something. Here in this room with people’s voices rising and falling, and the rush of cold air as people open the door, order warm drinks, sit, laugh. He is thinner. His ring—a thick band that matches hers—hangs loosely around his finger. He moves slowly, listens to her talking, turns his head to look out the window and the sun illuminates his face.

“Alright,” she says. “Two more minutes, and then we really do have to go.”

She points things out to him: the man who walks with heavy footsteps. The way the house across the street has reused cardboard boxes to gather up their leaves. They know people here. They say hello, and when he gives her a questioning look, she reminds him patiently, matter-of-factly, of who they are.

Then she says, “Ok” and puts her coat on.

“Alright, let’s go.”

She puts out a hand but he doesn’t take it. Instead he stands slowly, so slowly. His belt is too large now, and he clumsily beings to unbuckle it, his fingers stumbling.

And just like that she reaches to help him—right there in the middle of the room she unbuckles his belt and cinches it tighter. Then she tries to help him with his gloves but he takes them from her. Slowly he puts them on his hands.

It takes a long time for him to get down the stairs. There will come a time when the stairs are no longer possible. A time when they will stop coming. But it’s not today. Today she pulls her sunglasses on. Turns to him, smiles.

I can’t shake this feeling: we are always losing things. Loosing each other. Losing light. Losing the our memory of the way things are right now in this moment. We are frail without tenderness, without the fleeting golden light, without coffee, without the warmth of each other’s hands.

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