Obscurity

It was night. Isn't it always, in a film noir cliche kind of way, always night when anything of note happens? Only this wasn't much to note, unless, like her, you have to notice every chance encounter in order to see that one night is different from the next. It had to be night, because for her there was only night after the time change. She emerged into night from days that oscillated in florescent brightness from numbness to boredom and back, days that were a demand on her patience more than on her ability, days measured by a ticktock of fingers on a keyboard clicked around the clock with a second hand's regularity. Stepping out onto the rain-blackened sidewalk into the covering shadow, she closed the door on that false constancy of forced brightness and opened her eyes again.

Light pooled and splashed in gutter puddles, coursed by with the slow searching beams of passing cars, bled from windows and porches of the houses that lined the streets. Rain fell softly in a drizzly mist that hadn't quite decided whether to pour or to leave off. She turned her collar up and hunched under her umbrella, but the rain caught up to her and carried in on its wet breath a moment of indecision. That was all it took. She turned her steps left, not right towards home, and let them carry her instead into the warm, familiar busyness of her favorite bakery cafe.

She sat down with her coffee and should-have-been birthday cake at a small table near the door, the only one empty, where the night gushed in with a chill burst every time the door opened. "I need this," she thought to herself as she sipped the hot, fragrant brew. She slowly slid the tines of her fork through the cake's thick chocolate. "I need this," she affirmed as she held that rich intensity on her tongue until its bittersweetness melted into a shimmer of memory. It hadn't bothered her that her birthday had come and gone without regard over a week ago. She had seen too many to care much for them, and had no desire to be humiliated by a forest of candles, but she had missed this ritual sensuality, this dark perfection unfolding in her mouth as celebration not of age but of still living.

She was in the midst of this reverie when the door opened to spill the contents of the night into the room. This time it was a solitary young man who stood dripping beside her table for several moments as if to adjust his eyes to the difference in light. She saw him first in the soft focus of her half-lidded inward eyes, and the light of the room eddied around him like a glowing halo. He wore an old black trench coat open over black jeans and a once white cable-knit sweater. His wet black hair stood in spikes where he ran his fingers through it. He moved as if underwater, slowly and deliberately, as he ordered his coffee and looked around for a place to sit down. The empty chair at her table mocked her solitude with silent irony, and it was inevitable that he would sit down there.

He did not look at her as he wrapped both hands around his steaming cup, gathering the heat into his palms. He brought the coffee to his mouth with the same slow concentration that he did everything and held it there as if it were to become part of his face. There was something in his studied indifference that allowed her to look at him directly, to see the curve of his cheekbone blend into the hard line of his jaw and the ebony sheen of his eyes contrast with the pallor of his skin. He reached into his pocket and brought out a few items that he laid carefully on the table in front of them. A cheap black plastic Casio watch. A medium-sized cowrie shell. A battered black wooden domino. He spread them as if at a flea market, his wares for sale, worth a few cents more if displayed well to catch the light. Then he picked up each, like a reluctant customer judging the usefulness or sense in it.

By now, she was watching curiously, her cake almost forgotten. He drew her in with his silence, until even by speaking, he could not lose her. "What is the thread that binds these bits?" he asked in the tone of one picking up a conversation where it left off. "The connection, you know. There has to be one." When he looked at her, she knew his inquiry was genuine. His finger stroked along the polished curve of the cowrie shell in his hand and then back up along the dark line of the infolding edges. She shivered slightly. "I see one connection," she said, forgetting herself along with the cake. "Money. Time is money. Cowries were used as money. Dominoes can be played for money." He looked up at her sharply, his eyes direct into hers. "Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Alright!" was all he said before he became a flurry of activity.

He gulped down the rest of his coffee, stood and pulled out his wallet. He dropped a five dollar bill down on the table and in the same motion, scooped up his trinkets. "What....?" she started to say, but he cut her off. "That's for the tip. Thanks!" With that as parting shot, he was out the door into the night. She looked at Abraham Lincoln's face staring up at her. He didn't seem to know any better than she did what that was all about, but she decided to keep him, for he was, after all, a sort of birthday present and tribute to the pervasive obscurity of night.