Coffee and Sugar by C. Sean McGee (primary phonics .txt) 📖

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 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 and 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, they 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 to not 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 is lost but of someone who has 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 recognised the way the words were written on the back of the crumpled paper tissue. He didn’t see in that moment when the 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 sorrow.

“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 to. 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 were 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