On a Fall Night

Part One: In the Café

The man in front of me was sitting at a table in the middle of the café. He had his feet crossed on the empty chair that was opposite him and he was taking notes in a vintage notebook. He paused every so often and contorted his stubbled face to accentuate his square cheekbones. A pretty girl walked by. He squinted his eyes to intensify his brow and he ran his hand through his hair as he leaned back into his seat. She sat near by but did not notice him.

He was eating a muffin and an apple that he had brought from home. He had not purchased anything from the café and the barista noticed. He was told that he must buy something if he wished to stay. He fiddled with his woven, leather wristband as he sheepishly uttered something about buying a drink.

He got up. I looked over at the girl who was blonde and had blue eyes. I got lost in thought. I was thinking about the spring in Orange; how it had been cool in the early morning. I had crossed the bridge over the creek as the sun began to shine a deep light over the town. I walked to the main road where the vendors were rolling up the metal gates that locked over their shop fronts. The streets were still wet from the night and I could smell the fresh bread cooking in the ovens of the boulangeries. A truck passed by me and stopped outside of a shop. A man in a French peasant’s hat, jeans and a faded, leather jacket jumped down from the truck and opened the back. The vendor stepped out and pointed the driver into the back of his shop. The air was clear, it was sharp and it was calm.

The girl noticed that I was staring at her; she smiled. Her teeth were white and her smile was thin but friendly. I was in the corner of the old-fashioned brick café. I smiled back and changed the song on my iPod. Grace – Jeff Buckley.

The man came back. He was holding an iced tea with both hands and he was sipping it as a bird would. He had hiking boots – clean as a whistle – that stomped against the wood floor as he walked. He was wearing brown cargo pants, a khaki tee shirt and a large-beaded necklace that clacked against his chest as he sat down.

Against the far wall the blonde girl took a sip of coffee and looked into her book. I had a macchiato and it was strong and smooth and it was a proper drink for the afternoon.


Part Two: Pearl

The trees that line Pearl Street were wrapped with lights and their leaves were turning gold and copper with the change of season. It was dark when I stepped out. It was not cold, though it had been. It had snowed twice last week, but only at night when it was cool. Snow hugged up against the curbs and up against the storefronts. The grime of the streets dirtied it.

It was Friday. A parade was marching down the street mall and the band followed it playing the school’s fight song. It is always busy the night before a football game.

Those who come to the procession clap along and sing and pump their fists with the band. Children run through the crowd and throw small, plastic footballs. A small boy ran into a large man. The boy stopped and looked up into his eyes with an evaluating look. Then the boy continued to run and I knew that he would quickly forget the encounter with the large man.

The women are well dressed. They wear tight pants with snug boots that go up just above their calves. They wrap scarves around their necks and tuck the ends into loose-fitting, knit sweaters. Usually they wear earth tones. It is a simple sort of elegance.

“Is that a Michigan hat?” One woman asks me. She is slender and has soft brown eyes. She had been clapping along with the band when I walked past her.

“Yup.”

“1994!” She laughed and turned away. I shook my head and kept walking by the crowd – like a salmon against the currents.

These women were elegant but had the grace of a boutique mannequin. Women like that, at least. No. What am I saying? People like that. Men could be far worse.

Down a bit further the crowd thinned out. I stopped to have dinner at a falafel restaurant where I could sit outside and enjoy the night. Street performers stood in the open square before the courthouse. It was a rare building – square in shape with majestic, sandstone walls. It was art deco and seemed like something from a Parisian absinthe poster. Out front a man was playing his guitar and singing a song that he had written. There was an unsure vibrato in his voice. He was not bad, though what he had written felt clumsy. People would stop and drop coins into his open guitar case. The red felt was worn; he had been playing this fence for quite some time.

“Hey Nick, you wanna do a set?” A short fat guy approached Nick. He had a guitar with a rope strap and his beard was thick and untamed. The two men shook hands.

“Yeah, sure. I was just playing some of my stuff anyway.” Nick was tall and gaunt. He had long blond hair and wore a beaded headband. His guitar was for a left-handed person; the strings were wild and long at the head. The two of them played a song that was, quite frankly, rather terrible. Both men bobbed their heads enthusiastically as they stamped their feet. They climaxed into a shouting mess and high-fived each other when they finished. I was the only one listening.

When I stood up, I took my empty tray into the restaurant and stacked it atop a wooden garbage can. I thanked the man behind the counter and left. I walked by Nick and the short, fat guitar player as I headed down Pearl towards the bus stop. Time was slow but at the end of the day it had seemed to pass all too quickly.


Part Three: The Girl

I waited at the bus stop for fifteen minutes. It always ran slowly on Fridays. The foot traffic caused many of the stops to be unreachable which required the bus to take a circuitous route. Still, I liked taking the bus. It was reliable and there were always interesting people who rode it.

Once I met a Native American man on the bus. He had walked thirteen miles to town and he had a joyful look about him.

“I’m tired of walking,” he had told the driver. He dropped a few coins in the glass box at the front, next to the contracted doors. The driver handed him a ticket.

He had gone to the back of the bus where it was raised above the wheels. There was a group of girls sitting back there who had had just left the movie theater. They were talking loudly and had been in a good mood.

“Is everybody happy?” The Native American man leaned his body forward and supported himself by holding on to two handrails. He had a friendly look on his face. The girls nodded and smiled. He had intimidated them, but he was genuinely good. He walked back up to the front of the bus and sat down across from me. He was grinning. “I just want to make sure that everyone is happy,” he had said, “Are you happy?”

“Yes,” I had said.

There were always interesting people who rode the bus and truly that was not always good. There were times when interesting was, perhaps, just a bit too interesting. Sometimes one shopping cart full of collected bottles was one shopping cart too many. Sometimes one leg was one leg too few. Then there were times, as with the Native American man, when interesting was very much pleasant.

I showed my pass to the driver as I boarded the bus. I nodded and thanked him and looked into the cabin. Sitting in the middle between the raised back platform and the elevated seats just behind the driver was the girl from the cafe. She was reading her book. She was wearing jeans and red ballet flats and had one leg crossed over the other. Her white shirt fit loosely but elegantly about her shoulders. I sat across from her and she looked up from her book. Her face was sharply feminine and beautiful and her eyes were soft and refined. She looked at me with the same look that a child wore as they pressed their hands against the glass of a pastry case and the steam of their breath fogged up in front of their face. It was in that moment that nothing else was more important to the child than the pain aux chocolat or the palmier.

“You were in the cafe earlier,” she said and she smiled that same friendly smile.

“I was.”

“Nicolette,” she said. Her blue eyes were unwavering and her blonde hair fell off from her shoulder as she extended her right arm. The bus was empty as I took her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you.” I could feel my smile and I could feel how tight it was across my face. I remembered how the Native American man had asked me if I was happy. “Yes,” I had told him. And truly I was.

Now it could be you're onto something here. But it's like 2AM right now, though, and this reader can't think coherently for want of sleep. At any rate, this doesn't deserve to be ignored and is getting bumped for tomorrow, when this reader will go over it again. There's something funny going on here and it's hard to say what it is right now.








J


EDIT: Actually liked the native american part the best but not fond of how you concluded with it. Seemed forced and trying to be tidy where it perhaps cannot be... uh, tidy. Knit up. Wrapped nicely. Whatever. It's 2AM et j'ai mal au ventre so there.

This appears to be quite effortless. A rather hazy, haphazard style mirroring the actions of the narrator – and it works very well. Adding so much densely-woven texture through reference to the past as well as the present makes it seem as if the narrator is sleep-walking through the scene and adds to the ambiguity of the piece.

There were a couple of places where I stumbled.

The ‘Pearl’ section has several instances where, as you describe the scene and the crowds, you switch tense from past to present to past again. It’s a little distracting – especially as all the action on Pearl takes place in the present.

You tell us the song the guitarist had written ‘felt clumsy’. Did you mean it sounded clumsy? I was confused here.

Describing how the Native American returns to the front of the bus to sit across from the writer – almost immediately followed by I showed my pass to the driver as I boarded the bus. seemed like a chronological blip until we realise that the pov has shifted from past to present again. Perhaps the transition was made intentionally vague.

But overall it’s an interesting read – almost like a journal entry the writer in the opening section might have been working on. Good stuff.

H