"Salvation"
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“The usual?”
Eyes down, I nod and push the bills
across the counter.
“Is that it for you sweety? Sure I can’t get you anything else?”
“What?”
“Anything else for you this time?”
“Um…no.” My eyes jump back and forth, not wanting to
look at her—for her sake. They dart back
down to the counter. Back to safety.
My corner seat is
occupied by an old man with more grey hair than God. He is reading a newspaper, so I force myself
to glance around the room and find another chair. I settle in an unfamiliar seat, closer than I
wanted to be, but my laptop screen is a welcomed distraction. I plug in my ear buds and the music of Frédéric Chopin flows up and covers
the background noise. Just when I am just relaxing my shoulders and breathing
deeply, I catch a motion on the edge of my view. Before I can stop myself, I see a woman walking
up to the door. Unaware. Happy to be so. I shut my eyes quickly and squeeze the lids
tightly so she won’t see the sneer written on me—I try to focus on nothing. Turning the volume up, the wash of the music runs
up and over my brain. I close my eyes so
that I, in ignorance, can let her walk past.
She swishes past my seat, unaware.
I open my eyes, hoping, wishing it is gone. It never is.
Above her head is an illuminated sign.
Above everyone’s head is an illuminated sign. I shouldn’t have looked up. I know better than that.
A police officer walks by the window from my right,
one hand on his belt, the other shielding the sun from his eyes. Over his head the same sign hangs—as wide as
his shoulders, only a few inches above his head and neon words recounting
things I wish I could un-see. I shield
my eyes from him and look back at my laptop, not wanting to know any more. Focus!
On anything else, focus. I pushed
the ear buds further into my canals and they fire small bursts of pain,
threatening to break through into the core of my mind. If they did, at least it would go away. I wish that just for one whole day I could
let my eyes rest. Let my mind rest. When I first started seeing the signs, I read
them all. And why wouldn’t I? Knowledge is power and mine was great. A god in my mind, but a god with bones and
blood—cracks in my hull. Too much cargo
for not enough ship, I sank to the oceans floor, held down by the knowledge of
evil, gasping for a single bubble of air.
The café is full
now—fuller still for me. Regrets. Sins.
Failures. Mistakes. Darkness locked away inside their hearts so
deep, even they acted like they were
not there. They’re all scattered around
the room, crowding my senses. It seems I
can smell, even taste it all. The putrid
odor wafts around my head, threatening the thin walls of my skull. I can hear the heavy pounding of judgment echo
in this small room. When I breathe
through my mouth I can taste it—through my nose I can smell it—on my skin I can
feel it—so heavy in the air I wade through it.
The overwhelming nausea makes me want to be alone again. When I am alone, locked in my room, it is quieter,
but still there. Looming at the cracks
of the door, the florescent light seeming to seep up through the floorboards
like smoke. I prefer it dark and quiet,
but today is Tuesday, so I am here. Tuesday
is my day to breathe.
At that moment,
within the chaos I have never grown accustomed to, I hear a stillness. My eyes are closed, resting, and I can feel a
soft, cool breath of wind pass across my face.
The air seems less thick and the smell subsides for one glorious moment. Fresh.
Air. My brow unknots itself and I
suck in the fleeting wave of air. I
flutter my eyes open and look around the café.
She’s here earlier than usual--the girl, no more than 25. She has a plain face, nothing remarkable that
anyone else would see. Anyone else. Nothing remarkable, except that bubble of
air. I start in my seat, almost knocking
my laptop to the ground. Every Tuesday
afternoon I wait for that bubble of air.
The only bubble I’ve ever found.
Her face does not sit under the sick fluorescent light. Her face knows sunlight well and soaks it
like a flower. Above her head hangs no
judgment. I have watched her, envied
her, hated her and wondered at her freedom.
Every week for the past nine months she has lunch with the same
companion. Six days I hold my
breath. One day I breathe. Six.
Then one. Glorious. Breath.
She is tall, for a
girl, and has dark brown hair, straight and long and pulled into a
ponytail. It’s almost always in a
ponytail. She is wearing her blue blouse
today, though I usually prefer the brown one—it matches her eyes and brings out
her dark arms, long and slender. As mine
was, her normal seat is occupied—why is the café so full today? I pull out my notebook, slouch down in my
chair, continuing my notes. “The Clean One arrived first, again” I
scribble. “She usually arrives first, but she is a little early today.” As she waits, she reads. She always reads while she waits for The
Other. Ten minutes go by and I keep
making additions to my notebook. Her
companion arrives. She is not so tall as
The Clean One, and hair darker than coal.
She is usually late, but today she walks in quickly and sits down across
from The Clean One. They both meet here,
every week, one hour. Our tables are
closer than usual, but above the hum of the general babble, I can’t make out
their words.
The notes I’ve
taken are meticulous, but I feel they are still incomplete and missing some
grand revelation. Like a scientist
observing a creature’s eating habits, I note everything. The sounds around me turn to background
clatter--the feature presentation is beginning, and I have the only seat in the
house. Her face is like a crack of
daylight that pierces the catacombs I wander through. The darkness in the room bends in midair and
is drawn into oblivion.
Until today I’ve
seen them, exchanging smiles and nods and gestures. They always read, pointing to parts of the
book and interjecting, flipping through it like recipe cards. Their conversation is muffled, like an
argument you can hear through a wall, but their faces never made me think they
were angry at each other. She always has
such patience with The Other. She seems
to be teaching her something, but as an equal.
She has a certain look of humility, calm and caring. I scribble notes and channel all my attention
towards the pair discussing and reading only two tables away from me. “Today,
they are more passionate. The Clean One
speaks, The Other interrupts with a hand gesture like a lawyer, The Clean One
retorts.”
I sit there, eyes flicking up and
down, from my notebook to their faces and back down again to my notes. They carry on like this for the next ten
minutes and my hand gets cramped from writing.
“Their behavior is peculiar today. Earlier, they seemed to be wrestling with
each other with their words, but now they are calm and quiet. Both their heads are down and they seem to be
talking, but I can hear nothing. The
Other has her head on the table she is convulsing, quietly and rhythmically,
almost like she’s cr—“
My mouth slipped
open and the scream came from the core of my stomach—my eyebrows seemed to come
unhinged from my face—my eyes, so wide they might have fallen out, but were
held in by sheer friction. The entire
café is frozen and stares in abhorrent shock.
The scream was slipping out of my throat and into the open air. My ears understood what my mouth was doing
before my brain did. It lasted longer
than a breath should have—much longer. Both
girls looked at me. One. Long.
Pause. My ears, hot and heavy,
resound the pounding of my heart. I have
no moisture to swallow. The edges of my
eyes pulse white with the increased pressure in my face. The girl who was unclean sat there, mouth open and face flush. The fluorescent sign, the gallows that loomed
above her head was wiped away in one instant.
In one dramatic pass of some cosmic hand, it has been thrown into
oblivion. Where her sick glow was, I can
see the open, clean air. The darkness in
the room is bent inwards towards them both now, and they seem to give off more
than double the radiance. The two, now
Clean Ones sit, staring at me, horrified.
The moment that seemed to last an hour, that rushed to its climax in
just one sick second, was over as quickly as it began.
“My God! What is wrong with you?!”
It was the old man
who was occupying my usual table. His
face was contorted into a bulldog’s anger and he seemed to shake back and forth
as he breathed his heavy gasps of air.
He slammed one hand on his chest in a theatrical gesture.
“Son, you gave me a start! What the Hell was that?!”
“I…I’m not…sure.”
The engine of my
being is stalling and sputtering for something to fuel it, something of
substance to feed off. I have no answer. I can’t even form the question. As I turn back towards the two Clean Ones, I
say aloud
“But I need to know too.”
