corner store

i was getting coffee the other day at a place where you could get slugged if you ever said the word “doppio”.  it was my kind of place, quiet and unplanned, without a hint of conspiracy.  a picture of the last italian pope, framed and dust-covered, hung over the register watching all the hands moving in and out of the till with gentle admonition to be accurate and honest.  as though that was an issue.  it has been decades since there was skin containing other blood which came close to a paper cut behind this counter.  i go back three generations here, stole my first comic book from the rotating wire display tree  over by the peg board that always had work gloves and balls of twine and small sewing kits that fit in your pocket.  real old school blue-collar, back when men were proud of their union jobs and well earned hardness.  back when a hand shake was a judgement and the skin made noise as it came together and separated.

i sat at the counter and drank my coffee considering the way it all used to line up neatly.  tidy people in an entropic universe who struggled to make sense of it all and keep a semblance of order.  i remembered sitting on the porch on sunday afternoons when the weather was good playing stoop games with a spaldine. our mothers would gather and sit and the men would go down to the corner and tell coarse stories and smoke cigars and cigarettes in their pressed linen shirts and fedoras.  you can’t find pants like that anymore. cuffed and pleated, pegged so you could see the shiny leather that wrapped around their feet.  i have tried.  it is the material which is gone. tightly woven fabric of fine woolen thread. intricate patterns of shading, intentional or not, possibly the natural extension of the variability of dying the yarns before they were ever woven.  most likely not though.  as i remember it there was ever so much less which was accidental back then.

it has been years since i had been in this joint.  so very little has changed.  the biggest difference for me was being eyed like i was a stranger in the place.  i never got caught for stealing the comic book. it was an amazing spiderman with the green goblin on the cover.  i remember reading it, scared that someone would know it wasn’t paid for.  i must have paid for it a hundred times over through the years, leaving an extra 15 cents on the counter when no one was looking.  i never was a thief.  thieves have a totally different aesthetic than the side of it i leaned on.  but i remembered angela when she was a little girl in pigtails chasing after the boys in my crew on summer afternoons when the sun was so much more warm than dangerous.  her brother tommy hated it when she tagged along so we would run real fast and hide under the causeway between the front and the back half of the park. the metal truss walkway dripping with dampness and spiderwebs, we would suffer the bits of dirt and web that would fall on us when someone crossed it or when a train clamored over the bridge just to be rid of her.

a few years later she was a chrysalis becoming a woman and the roles were reversed without the bridge or the spider threads that covered our faces.  i never fucked her but i sure wanted to.  if my bed could talk it would tell you about any number of nights when i fantasized about her dark brown eyes and perfect full lips until i exploded into an adolescent stupor of trembling limbs and misguided knowledge.  she was still a few years younger than me but i am 50 now so the age difference means nothing now.  i look at her from behind as she makes a fresh pot of coffee in the bun-o-matic at least as old as we are.  the five pound can of lavazza and the stack of filters haven’t moved since i was a boy.  but the coffee is secondary to her ass which is a good deal larger than i remember it but just as round and giving.  i left this place when she was like a size 5, and here i am back 11 dress sizes later not knowing for sure why i needed to be here today.

“you want another cup, mister?” she says without the trace of a smile. “fresh.”

i nod and push my cup forward and an old fella i half recognize gives me the up and down from the corner booth.  i thank her and smile small and respectfully, making sure i don’t look at her tits thru the buttons popping on her white blouse.  i put another dollar on the counter and she waves it off and turns on her heel and goes down the counter toward two young men who were here when i came in and will be here when i leave.  they get the real smile and see her eyes sparkle as they joke about asking her out on the town, or at what is left of it.  the glass pot gets cradled in the brown depression that will keep it good and hot until someone else wants a cup or a refill. she throws a glance over her shoulder at me and i think i see a glimmer of recognition, but she scurries off to the back room with importance and surety in her stride, as though any of it mattered.

the old guy moves and walks toward the register like he is going to pay his tab, but i know this move.  he is not the type that ever pays at the register, and that bleached white button down and the sleeves rolled up said watchdog then and still does. he leans on the counter and calls angela out and asks how much he owes.  she pretends to look at her order book and he just hands her a 20 and says “keep it” then turns toward me, looking me full in the face.

“i know you, don’t i?”

i say that i don’t know what he knows and go back to drinking my coffee.

“so what are you doing here?  we don’t get a lot of strangers coming in for a cup since the warehouse closed. you a cop?” he is sincere and i spit my coffee back in the cup and wipe my mouth.

“hardly” i say losing the residual smile and letting my ribs feel the 38 under my left armpit.  it is all starting to feel like a western movie only i don’t have a hat and my horse is a chrysler but i do have the boots, silver tipped and a little too much flash for going unnoticed especially in a place like this.

“you were from the neighborhood, weren’t you?” he asks. “i thought i recognized you. wait a minute. let me think. let me think.”

he puts his hand up to his head more like he is trying to keep all the thoughts in than trying to let one out.  his hand balls up in a loose fist and gently pounds the counter glass where candy used to be, now scratch off lottery tickets promising riches instantly.

“god that face i know that face.” he is about my father’s age were he alive and fatter than i remember him standing on the corner on sunday afternoons.  i know him now and realize what a bad idea it was coming in here, coming back here.  no one in this place would ever say anything even if they made the connection but people talk. stories get passed around like a six pack in the park on a saturday night, and invariably someone with whom you do not wish to share ends up with a can and all that is left are the plastic rings which once bound us together.

i throw a 10 on the counter and i get up, put my hand on his shoulder and say “don’t think too hard old man. it will only bring you disappointment” and give him a look that says forget you ever saw me you old fool while i walk out the door and past the hydrant and across the street to the corner where my car is parked.  i notice no sign of the blood that pooled here so long ago when life was easier and angela was so much better looking.