The art of making good coffee

Dogs barking, chasing each other, kids chasing dogs, chasing each other, laughter: high pitched, childish, crackling, elderly. Single shrieks, a distant cry of a toddler, a mother hurrying across the lawn. Couples talking with other couples, husbands barbecuing hamburgers and sausages, sipping from sweating in the sun cans of Miller light, unnecessary, unhurried manly talk. Folding chairs, white plastic tables, blankets thrown everywhere as motley pools on the green grass, transparent air, sunlight of a usual spring midday.

She was sitting on the ground, reading a book, shoulders wrapped in a dark brown plaid; she was leaning on a veteran oak, almost varnishing on the background of its rugged bark, unwelcomely pressing its flesh into her shoulder.

He was drinking beer, casually talking to one of the barbecuing guys.

A couple of dozens of humming people between them.

Suddenly she felt he was talking to her, eyes froze on the page. She did not have to look at him to know that. She felt he was there and he was talking to her. Clearly, he was talking to her.
The reality froze, she thought, as they did it in the movies sometimes, when one layer lost its colours and sounds, being still and silent, half seen through, making a plain background for the other plane. He was looking at her.
She knew that. She slowly put up the eyes and looked back at him.

Silence.

"Hi", he said, eyes smiling.
They had hardly met before, probably, once or twice at some party, she searched memory for his name.
"Steve", he said.
"Hi, Steve", she smiled back.
Someone came up to him, he turned his back on her, she tried to concentrate on reading again.
"Hey, it´s not polite, eh? I am still here",  his voice didn´t let her read.
She looked up, puzzled, as he was still talking to the same person, still with his back to her.
She chuckled, eyes down.
They never came to each other at that early spring picnic party, none of them really needed that.

A large Ford was leaving the parking space, crushing gravel by its massive wheels and taking the last people from the place. She came out to the parking lot, talking on the phone, heading to her car.
He was there, leaning on the ugly bulky bumper of his Chrysler Ram, waiting for her.
She paused for a moment, finishing the talk, staring at him with a question in the eyes.

"Come", she read the order in his eyes.
She obeyed and walked to him with every step wresting, forcing gravel to moan under her feet. Hypnotized, she could not divert her eyes from his, he pulled her, dragged her to him. She submitted.
Inches apart, their eyes locked, nothing was around them: no space, no time, no sounds, no colours. One heartbeat for two was hitting the ears, crashing their lives with every beat, their present and future, erasing their past. They looked into each other´s souls and saw abyss. They saw the end.

Deprived of all her will, a small girl yet again, she raised herself on the tiptoes, her nose genlty brushed his unshaven cheek and froze, afraid to breathe, her cheek hardly touching his, still balancing on the tiptoes. A tiny trace of aftershave, clean cotton collar, his body... Slowly, slowly, as an animal escaping the beast of prey, eyes closed, she started to breathe. She read him all, tall and strong, mocking and ironic, strong and ... suddenly weak. She opened the eyes, startled by the discovery.
"Yes", he proved, eyes closed. He was breathing her lavender skin, her fresh bitter hair, her freedom, her life. Bound to each other so strong, they didn´t need to touch.

They both heard the low sound of a string breaking, long and thick sound filling the air.
"Violin", she thought.
"No, guitar", he answered.
She gently and slowly, as if afraid to scare the birds up, moved her face against his unshaven cheek, until their lips met for a second, the sensation of knowing each other, of sudden closeness, of inevitability ahead got so strong that she recoiled, and another, higher string broke in the air.

She looked up at him, asking, begging, searching for the answer in the depth of his eyes.
He cradled her face into his hands, warm and pacifying, and gently kissed her on the lips: "everything will be fine".
She startled by the first words said out loud. Unable to believe what she was doing, she turned away from him. As she made every step away, three strings broke one by one, sounds growing higher, maddening by their unknown origin, filling the air around them. Gravel shrieked, wailed and howled under her steps, the wind suddenly started to torture the crowns of the trees, spring disappeared: she walked away, never turning back, leaving him behind in a starting blizzard.

Three steps to the car, one, two, three, I am free; cracking sound of the lock, bones broke; she was in. The door slammed, the last string ruthlessly torn, screaming desperately into the growing wind. She started the car, pulled out, mercilessly mincing the gravel with the tires.

He heard that last string breaking, pointing up the wailing, roaring cacophony of the tempest. He did not move. Did not look at her car. He was watching the gravel.

Automatically, shielding herself from the storm, she turned on the wipers, washing off, erasing his face. One mile, two, the turn to the highway. The sun was shining. In groceries´ she had to buy butter, milk, coffee and Cheerios for the kids.

It was warm, the birds were singing, nothing changed in the mild and sunny weather of that early spring day. Only, when he finally stood up from his silence, the flock of the birds startled from the forest, alarmed, into the sky.

----
In the kitchen she made coffee for both her husband and herself. She was never good at making coffee, but that time she made her coffee right. So she thought.



Copyright © 2014 by Olga Johannesson