The Soul Broker

“The Soul Broker”

By Andrew Steven Rodriguez

    Adrian spots a coffee shop off the Avenue. It is an old shop with a sign sponsored by Coca-Cola and that plainly reads: “Luncheonette.” Adrian never ducks off the Avenue but today, sideways snow forces him to do so. He had been only a block from his train station. Inside, he sits at a counter and is greeted gruffly by a skinny man wearing a paper straight-sided hat with aged signs of grease. Adrian studies the man before engaging him. He imagines that the man might have worn a garrison hat like that in his World War II army portrait, only it would have been made of felt and drab olive in color. But then, he couldn’t be that old. Korea, perhaps? ‘Nam?

    Without a response from Adrian, the man places a plane white cup and saucer before him and fills it presumptuously with hot coffee. Adrian shows his appreciation with a smile forced out of himself despite the cold, the late hour and his dissatisfaction with the whole unwanted, albeit temporary situation. And the coffee is good—very good.

    The counter man walks away without a word and disappears into a kitchen that is visible through a short-order opening revealing a bear of a man. Adrian makes brief, meaningless eye contact with him. The cook is draining oil from scalding French Fries by tipping the strainer up and down like a ball-and-paddle toy. To Adrian, for an instant, the aroma is of roasted potatoes bathed in truffle oil.  But just as quickly it descends into the smell of burnt diner shortening. The counter man reemerges, and Adrian gives him a petitioning nod.

    “I’ll take a slice of this apple pie,” Adrian says, pointing at a glass pastry case.

    The counter man serves it unceremoniously onto a white dessert plate. Adrian takes a nibble preoccupied by the climes outside. Then a nibble turns into a gouge of a bite and a flavor sensation he’d never experienced before. This momentarily distracts Adrian from the storm. He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a folded-up article torn from this morning’s paper. The headline is stark enough: “Ceasefire Rejected: Invasion Looms.”

    Amid a stack of his grandfather’s hoarded periodicals, these words would have been vague. But in his here-and-now, Adrian understands its meaning all too well.

“That be all, buddy?” Counter Man asks.

    Adrian winks affirmatively and Counter Man begins clearing away the dishes.

    “That’ll be twenty-five.”

    “I beg your pardon?” Adrian questions indignantly.

    “Look, buddy. Five cents for the coffee and twenty cents for the deluxe pie.”

    Adrian unambiguously scans the place curiously spotting details he hadn’t noticed before; tin signs advertising Lucky Strike cigarettes and Manhattan Special coffee soda and one that reads: Ask for Orange Crush! Refresh! He notes pour-out sugar dispensers and glass ketchup bottles on the two lone tables. His eye catches a particularly confounding feature: an old Wurlitzer jukebox that plays 78 rpm records. When Adrian returns his gaze to Counter Man, he sees someone from a Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover. Hastily, he digs a dollar bill from his pocket, slaps it on the counter, and moves toward the door.  

    “Hey, wait for your change!”

    “Keep it!” Adrian tells him, and before he opens the door, he can see a commotion out on the street through the glass. Off toward the Avenue, a trolley bell dings and rumbles into and out of Adrian’s view. Some wool coat wearing men gathered right outside are huddled around a newspaper and gesturing in a fashion that could’ve been mistaken for roars at a Joe Louis prizefight. One man flings his fedora up in the air and when he tries to catch it, he slips on the snow, drops onto his bottom and laughs at himself.

    Adrian turns back into the room.

    “What are they so happy about?"

    “I guess you haven’t heard, buddy. That Japanese general, Yama…whatever his name is, was found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death!”

    “Cheering?”

    “What else would they do? Why aren’t you?”

    Adrian feels around in his pocket where he had tucked the earlier article. Cheering?

    Outside, Adrian hears the distinct sound of a different kind of commotion. On the other side of the glass, a group of men had begun scuffling. It is not the gleeful energy from moments earlier. Adrian opens the door partially with a vote of heroic exuberance. At the center of the mob, he sees an Asian man in a business suit being tossed about like a game of “keep away.” Counter Man joins Adrian at the window. Adrian is immobile and by the time the mob eases up on the shoves and punches, the businessman holds a gloved hand to a cut on his forehead. He runs off.

    Adrian retreats into the luncheonette again.

    “What’s happening here?”

    “Ah, he was probably a commie?” Counter Man explains.

    “How would those men know that? How long has this place been here, anyway?”

    Counter Man slips behind the counter again and the bear of a short-order cook has plodded out of the kitchen. He looms over Counter Man. Bear Man stares at Adrian with what Adrian interprets as warmth at first. Slowly the warmth melts away and Bear of a Man finally speaks.

    “This is all new to you, I see. Come. Sit. No one can harm you in here.” He places a hand on Adrian’s shoulder. “My name is Osmand. This is my business partner, Mack. You are in a safe place.”

    “Of course…” Mack shouts. “…that explains it, Ozzie. He ain’t from around…”

    Ozzie, the Bear of a man, holds out a palm at his partner. Mack stifles the stream of his thought.

    “Do you know why you’re here?” Ozzie asks.

    “Yes, I ducked in here to get out of the stupid blizzard!”

    “That’s partially true...”

    “How could you possibly know what I…”

    “…I…I just…know. Now, you could go back out there into the blizzard. But you’ll be alien to everyone you see and everything you see will be alien to you.”

    Adrian walks over to the jukebox and peers into it seeing the last record that had been played: “Sentimental Journey” by Doris Day. Never heard of it. Other selections are: “Bésame Mucho” by Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra and “Dream” by The Pied Pipers.

    “I’m really…”

    “Confused?” Ozzie finishes. “You won’t be forever, Pal. While you can, stay here…with us, with Mack, where it’s safe.”

    “Safe? I haven’t felt safe in a long…”

    Out of this feeling of darkness, out of nowhere, Adrian hears a melody. The jukebox is not playing. The melody, he deduces is in his head. No! It’s in my…chest?  He hears the sound of silver change falling through mechanisms and then a melody chimes out of the jukebox. It is the same melody in his chest. No, not my chest…my soul? What does this mean?

    “The world out there?” Ozzie continues, “It’s not for you, Adrian. You can go out there and live out there for as long as you like. It’ll never be for you.”

    “So, when do I get to go to my world? I want that world out there to be the one I knew only minutes ago. I want that guy over there on that corner to be selling falafels not hot dogs.

    “You’ll have it—or something like it. You’ll have it soon enough.”

    “Something like it?”

Adrian tells Mack, the Counter Man. “You stole it, didn’t you…with your five-cent coffee and your…

    “Oh, that’s not up to him, Adrian.”

    “Listen, you! How do you know my name anyway?” Was it you then—who stole my world?

    “Stole is a very…accusatory word,” Ozzie complains. “Look, son, you were worried about what you read in that article you got there in your pocket.”

    “How did you…”

    “Never mind about that. You were worried about your friends, your family, what was gonna happen to…your little brother…”

    “But!”

    “These are typical feelings, understandable thoughts. These are the concerns of a reasonable man. But here…those concerns are all but gone. Truman saw to that…”

    “Yeah! Hero-SHEEMA!” Mack bellows.

    Adrian gives a flurry of glances from Ozzie to Mack and back again. He backs up toward the front door. The jukebox turns on—lights and the clatter of wax dropping inside.

Kiss me, Baby. Kiss me, Honey. Kiss me like you’ll miss me A long, long time. I’ll be a long time gone!

    “I never heard that one either!” Adrian wraps his fingers around the door handle.

    “Your choice. But if you go out there, you might get your world back. Or…you might get what you see out there now. Or you might just as easily find a vast, empty desert—littered with shattered fragments of unrecognizable artifacts.”

    The jukebox whirs to life. It is now more modern in style and finally Adrian hears something he knows: “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay. The string intro pulsates for eight measures then the jukebox peters out before the vocals begin—words he could have recited. Adrian turns back into the luncheonette. Inside, the décor has changed to something closer to post-modern. Mack straps on a bright green apron and a ballcap. Paintings rather than pop ads grace the walls. Adrian makes his way to and peers at one in particular. La Barque de Dante by Delacroix. He is familiar with this one but for the first time notices the ghoulish, partially covered face of a figure who is attempting to bring down or board the boat. As if in a gallery, Adrian sidles to the next one—a lithograph he’s never seen of what appears to be a woman in flight. Adrian can make out the clearly torn right edge of the portrait where it meets the frame. The next one stands out even more. A three paneled allegory by Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. To Adrian’s shock, it appears to be original, which confounds him because he believes it to be in a museum somewhere in Spain. Confusion grows when he realizes that most of it is marred by cuts and burn marks. Only the left panel survives intact.

    Ozzie interrupts Adrian’s viewing by closing the left and right panels in on the painting. This reveals to Adrian an aspect of the work he never knew existed. The hinges close to reveal two side-by-side panels that show a globe in the form of a bel jar like cover over a primordial, bucolic world before the arrival of fauna.

    “You are free to choose, Adrian. Don’t let the things you see here…or out there decide for you. Let your soul do that.”

    “I think I know what you’re trying to tell me. But why does this matter to you?”

    “I could take your place.”

    “Why would you do that?”

    Mack turns to Ozzie with what Adrian can tell is curiosity—a mutual desire to understand Ozzie.

    “We are both just…travelers.”

    “I see that now.”

    “In your world, you’d be revisiting an uncertain future—one you wouldn’t want to face anyway.”

    Adrian crumples the newspaper article which is now in the waist pocket of his overcoat.

    “I, on the other hand,” Ozzie continues, “…in your world…I could find people to accede—folks I could convince of my…ideas.” Ozzie seems to drift off briefly.  Then as if speaking only to himself. “Or…I could find something lost…or someone. A paradise I once knew that cherished me and whom I cherished.”

He seems to return from a serene solitary place. “Or I could reclaim those…ideas that were stolen from me.”

    “Stolen is a very accusatory word,” Adrian tells him.

    “One last caution, my friend…” Ozzie begins. “I’ve given you examples of what you might find if you walk out that door. But here’s one more. You might step through that threshold and find a brightness you could only imagine as unattainable. Or you might live in a darkness beyond darkness. A formless void that you would not wish upon anyone.”

    “I follow you. I’m bright. I’ve read Camus, Sartre, Coleridge, Shelley. I know we’re travelers and I even know where you’ve traveled—I see that now.” Adrian takes in a good breath. “I’ll take you up on your offer. I think it’s time I take my chances. As for you, I hope you get what you…feel you deserve.”

    A broad smile comes across Ozzie’s large face. Ozzie faces Mack with an unspoken goodbye. Mack raises a palm to Ozzie in a neutral “farewell.” Ozzie pulls the handle on the door. A few wisps of snow blow in and in a second, he’s gone.

    “Goodbye, my friend…once again.”

It’s not long before Mack seems oblivious to the parting. “Oh, look at the time. Almost noon. Say, Adrian how about a little something before the lunch crowd rumbles in?”

    “Good idea.”

    “How about a nice decaf Mocha-smoothie with a twist of chicory?”

    “Sounds good. Wait! No, I think I’ll just have a regular coffee.”

“Humongo?”

    “No, just in a plain cup and saucer.”

    “You got it!”

    Adrian darts to one of the pour-out sugar dispensers but then notices and bellies up to the jukebox. He speaks to it.

    “Hey, Selexa. Play the cover of ‘Stardust’ by…” He ponders. “Awe heck, play any one of the versions. Surprise me!”

    A string intro. Mack pantomimes playing a violin. The track moves into a heavy rock riff. Mack pantomimes jamming on a guitar. Adrian walks behind the counter and dons a green apron. He looks out onto the view outside. Through the glass he sees a world lit by a high sun, brighter than any he’s ever seen.

    “Hey Mack, I think I’ll fire up some roasted potatoes.”

    “Sounds good. Don’t forget the truffle oil.”

    Adrian ducks into the kitchen.

THE…END