12

The creature comforts on the long stretch opposite the St Germaine were poor – the coffee, the bakeries, the theatre. Others might’ve fairly said that they were good stock, but the old man was in no mood to accept the fate of getting old. If these were his last resorts, he didn’t fancy them, even if they were pretty perfect. He could watch the coffee drip through the filter at the fancy coffee shop, or he could see sweet and tart selections, but in each he was bored. If he was resigned to live this way then there was surely something to be done about it.

The barista behind the counter, who had just moments ago made him a pour-over coffee, was kind enough to notice his dissatisfaction and mention nothing about it. In the man’s experience, the matters that he presumed the older gentleman to be dealing with, that were so typically solemn, were better left to the self because they were contemplative and only time could reorganise them. The man behind the counter had no means to verify the accuracy of his judgement, that the old man was having these class of issues, but accuracy was not the point there. The man more so needed some way of understanding the downtrodden, heated old man awaiting his coffee. He less than needed it than it was instinctual and came before any outright thought. The narrative he now had meant that his decision to leave the man in peace justifiably followed from the facts of the matter. Accuracy was of no issue because it wasn’t the goal. Accuracy if it stunted a narrative, and he couldn’t make another one, gave him nothing to chew on. He did this for every customer he was alert to. The smallest hint of an interesting feature or interestingly boring feature was cause for immediate speculation about the person in front of him, that small hint unfolded into an explanation of the person and became that person until further notice. That lady took two looks at me. She looks twenty years my senior, and I will tell myself, or more so I have been told, that the look I just witnessed was one of attraction. I will steer clear and look only at the brew I’m serving. Did he ask the lady how much she was attracted to him?

The old man sunk into his chair and pecked at his coffee while it was too hot. Each little sip seemed to speed him up and brighten a broadening field of view. It wasn’t what he needed at this point. He had had a lifetime of viewing people left in store, while he didn’t feel like speaking to them especially.

Within the busy areas, the mass and buzz of people left no other option than to ignore those in his proximity. The last thing people want on the trams, the buses and the trains is for the rules of polite conversation to apply. On the train? Yeah, you? Yeah. With this as one of his reasons for silence, the older man spoke minimally. He wished for no one to evoke the responsibility to hold conversation with him, so only fairly he avoided this with others. But loneliness ached and aches were painful, so it was better to see that idea as a rule soon to have exceptions, rather than infallible.

The speed at which he could forfeit a belief, and proceed to justify why it should have been removed, was fast. “I didn’t really wish to hold that belief, I was confused. But now that I am in good-spirits, I can see why people enjoy it.” It was in the way, visible if he looked even slightly, that he would work backward to make sure he was in the right with himself. He wanted to chat and this worked well with his words only ever being good for the current moment.

He leant over the chair next to him and pointed to an adjacent man’s espresso. The pointing gesture alerted the man next to him that he wanted to talk, and that it was about to happen. Naturally rising to this, the man warmly smiled, waiting to hear what was to be said.

“There really is nothing better than coffee is there?” He lied while sporting someone else’s face. He didn’t know why he said those specific words. His want for connection had to be funnelled through something reasonable and so these were fine. If he’d have piped in something genuine then it wouldn’t have been a waste of time.

His companion produced a fake, polite chuckle and was waiting out the end of what seemed to be a lonely man’s outburst. A completely accurate thought.

“I suppose not.” He made a low effort chuckle and grin.

The older man was typically the one who waited for others to cease talking to him; people had always found him too approachable. Quiet company still lent itself to human companionship but it wasn’t often contorted or forced. From his own experience, he knew what he had looked like. Taking hold of someone’s agency as a member of polite society. He didn’t wish to be charity and cut off the emerging conversation. He dropped the animation of his face and got up to leave.

“Forgive me.” The older man left the majority of his coffee, still cooling.

The younger man digested the contradicting interaction with the man for the rest of his day. The event followed an erratic, flippant scheme as if there were two or more ruling principles in person. One fighting to shelve the other. Two minds.

The pleasant man had little against people being confusing; he had always found the mastication and digestion to be satisfying albeit effortful. The unexplained was much more attractive. He considered that to be how things got done, hours and minutes discriminated toward particular things. Even background chewing in units of months or years surfacing revelations. That wasn’t effortful, it was just admitted to the person eventually from the recesses of the mind. Those who intentionally led a life of mystique, though, disgusted him; making it up as they went. Pure slog. The old man didn’t strike him as that.

Outside, the road out was blinding, in contrast to the brown’s of the novelty coffee shop, as that day’s grey light hit every day’s grey pavement and found a squatter’s home behind the older man’s eyelids. In the air there was a togetherness of the pedestrians. The gloom of the weather was a gentle binder of people. In the shared simple trouble of the gloom there was an attractive force between total strangers behind a common blight. The older man had some of his need for company met. The itch was slightly scratched without need for talk. It was a reminder that despite his periods of rejecting love and physical warmth, he would always come back around to companionship – it was no more necessity than staving off hunger.

He weaved through the flow of traffic with both eyes blind. He looked up and back to see the St. Germaine in all its size. It looked like an old-timey themed establishment with its gold ornamentation outlining all the stock brown walls. It occupied the amount of space that only an old building could have. Of being bought in a cheaper time, before the locations along the road were more competitive, refusing the cede its right to the space as long as it stood.

If he had the sensibility to modernise the road, he’d have counted the hours until the St. Germaine collapsed and the insurance satisfied the owner to never maintain another such building. If he sought nostalgia for an older time, he’d appreciate its awkward placing as an artefact of the past. In truth, he rejected both of these positions equally. He felt slightly dispossessed in both factions and left to middleman them as an outsider.

In any case, no sight would fix the mood of the older man. He was displaced with no clear landing. He bought three cigarette cartons from a street stall and vowed to stay inside until he sorted it out. A lock-in it was.

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