It’s a small coffee shop. Tucked into the bustle of the city and steeped in the chatter of loved ones over cappuccinos. Turn left down that one tree-lined West Village street and keep going until the Carrie-Bradshaw-hunting tourists begin to dissipate. Hang a right at the street across from the boutique pharmacy where the counter boy who stood him up last August works.
Right now it’s quiet enough to hear the gentle susurration of the ceiling fans over the early morning dog-walkers. The whine of the espresso machine rises to a hiss as the organic, fair trade, basic white girl approved oat milk bubbles. Henry prides himself on his ability to have the regular’s coffees prepared just as they step through the door. On cue, Hanna breezed in, another girlfriend who had been suckered into the 7am pilates class trailing behind her. Today she was all Lululemon leggings, obscenely white trainers, and “You will not believe my weekend! My soul, like, needed this you angel!” But her friend hung back, shifting nearly imperceptibly from foot to foot as if she wanted to be the center of attention but felt safer in proximity to it, pulling the ends of her hair through her hands like a rope. The brazen smile and flirtatious eyelashes begged to be read as cooly aloof, self-assured with a splash of mystery. Working here you learn to read people, it becomes a game. Henry labeled and tucked her away with all the other medium-length brunettes of average height and build, perfumed in insecurity and counterfeit bravado; then handed over her chai latte.
At 9am, a squat woman with plastic glasses and the kind of perm you can only get in southern beauty salons with faded glamour shots in the windows ordered two whole milk lattes and one non-fat, unsweetened macchiato with almond milk. He moved her from intrepid tourist to doting grandmother.
At 915am, a cougar presumably on her way home ordered a black coffee and “a ‘lil something special if he wanted to take his next break now.” She leaned in what she must have thought was a seductive manner over the counter, silicone chest dangerously close to spilling out of her plunging Zara blouse. Her face was so close to his that he could taste the locally sourced artisanal coffee on her breath and catch the flicker of cheap gin hiding behind her contact lenses. He gave her a pity croissant, on the house.
At 11am, a boy with a hook grin and sharp shark teeth ordered two mochas. His accent was grease-built and mixed deep with estuary English. He interested Henry. The way he carried himself was at once thuggish and apologetic, with the kind of eyes that had belonged to sorcerers or soothsayers in a different life- inky and endless. He carried the drinks to a willowy ginger tucked carefully against the wall with her knees drawn up between her body and the table. She seemed delicate, thin and pressed like a flower between the pages of a book.
Henry moved to organize the pastry shelf, positioning himself to better eavesdrop with a practiced subtlety. The sharkish boy seemed to be reading her a story, a thin whipped cream film glazing the stubble above his top lip. The set of her bottom lip said she was sick of being condescended to like a fractured doll.
“One day,”
He was saying.
“She realized she could not outrun her shadow. So she brought it in front of her where she could see it.
‘Why are you so dark?’
She asked. Her shadow replied,
‘That’s the thing about darkness, it yearns for the light.’
Though it was painful to stand in front of a silhouette of her unhealed pieces, she realized it was merely a part of her she had not made peace with. And as she held herself in the love of her own arms her shadow became a part of her like the dusk of the setting sun melting into the night sky.”
He looked up expectantly from his phone. Her gaze was surprisingly steely for someone of her stature.
“Did you seriously just read me that yoga chick’s fucking Instagram caption and call it life advice?”
She couldn’t keep the contempt from creeping into the edges of her voice, though Henry could tell she was trying. The following silence sat so heavily in his stomach that he offered them a second round of mochas on the house- anything to sever the tension. The boy stood up abruptly and strode out muttering something about a last minute casting call he’d forgotten. She lingered.
Since the other customers were contentedly preoccupied by their screenplays (or whatever the hell it is these Williamsburg types spend their days staring at with a particular abject hopelessness), he made two mochas anyways and slid into the straight-backed wooden chair across from her. She met his gaze easily, as if she’d expected him to come poke his nose into her business.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?”
She asked, taking a mug from Henry and sipping delicately from beneath the mountain of extra (comfort) whipped cream. He raised an eyebrow.
“All truths are paradoxes- we teach what we need to learn the most.”
Henry nodded sagely as if he had a clue what she was on about, racking the back of his mind for a new category to slot her into since wilted didn’t quite seem to fit her past first glance.
“I thought I could just not think. About any of it. Anything, really. I could move and be shiny and new again. And then I met him and he smelled like a thousand secret worlds, of rabbit holes and hidden doorways. Like escape and adventure and anything but home. But my thoughts got too loud and he heard them.”
Henry was beginning to panic, the little people in his head running around yelling “what the hell are you talking about??” He focused on inhaling his drink to avoid having to come up with any sort of answer or commiseration. All he’d wanted was to bitch about boys so he would have a chance to complain to someone new about what an asshole Tony was being that week. He’d had no idea he was strolling into some crazy’s personal crisis, but for some reason he found himself transfixed- unable to excuse himself and pretend to clean the espresso machine. She took the silence as an invitation to continue.
“I suppose I’ve always been a bit reckless. I always seem to be falling in and out of love with someone.”
She was absentmindedly scooping the whipped cream from the mug and licking it off her index finger with a notedly feline elegance.
“He wasn’t wrong, I wear red lipstick and little dresses and take drinks I shouldn’t from people who only know the version of me I’ve created for them. Nobody pays attention anymore. Except for him, but he pays too much attention.”
Henry, while still very lost in what she was on about, was beginning to feel an almost magnetic pull to her underlying chaos, he started to speak but she was too worked up to notice.
“So what if I’ve left lipstick on men’s collars because I can and wake up bleary and parched in their bedrooms because they want me.”
Almost as if in awe, she repeated herself.
“They want me.”
They shared a fragile silence before she looked up from her drink with a startling intensity.
“I always do this.”
It was a murmur, as though she was speaking at the same time solely to herself, and to the part of Henry that he both treasured and despised. He had somehow found himself staring into a pale, lightly freckled mirror.
“It’s what we do.”
He was surprised by the roughness of his own voice, the sudden tightness in his throat.
“We fuck everything up. It’s like a giant fuck you to love- screaming look, you aren’t the only one who can hurt me. Watch, I can destroy myself.”
