Coffee, Crumbs, and Crisis

Someone had taken a bite out of his croissant. He was pretty sure he bought a whole one and there was no-one else at their usual table because Jess hadn’t arrived yet – because Jess was late, keeping her usual schedule – but he also didn’t remember taking a bite himself.

But he felt crumbs on his lips, between his teeth. Could he have done it? He decided to take another bite, thinking it might jog his memory. No, nothing. He felt his teeth tear the flaky pastry, felt its dough dissolve on his tongue, but it was utterly flavourless. Or rather, it all tasted like hazelnut, because hazelnut filled the air, because that’s all that anyone asked for here.

He set his croissant down and let out a ragged breath. Glanced at the door – couldn’t glance away from it. Where was she?

The din of the other patrons was getting to him. The indistinct mumbling of a crowd accented by the odd laugh, the clattering of spoons against ceramics, the occasional clack of a laptop keyboard – it all took on a syrupy quality. Like the blurry shrieks at an enclosed pool, the human noise became viscous. Threatened to drown him. He gasped, clutched at his throat, and his foot beneath the table hammered a drumline into the floor.

Where was she?

He startled when the other chair scraped against the tiles and, in a haze of almond-peach scent, Jess, in a mauve top, plopped down at the table.

“Oh. My. God.” She spoke, never once lifting her eyes from her phone. Her right hand typed a response to her silent conversation, and her left, somehow, managed to put her purse, her travel mug – containing a pint of Indonesian black, no sugar, no nothing – and a tiny plate with a quartered all-dressed bagel, all on the table, all at the same time, without spilling so much as a poppy seed.

“Jess–”

She raised a brow and an index finger, and then typed another response. Her eyes fluttered over what was probably a groupchat with Anita and Mona and the others, and the subtle twitches of her lips and cheeks betrayed a drama much more interesting than the blandity of real life.

Finally, she spared him a glance, and a sudden smile as sugary as her coffee was bitter.

“Hi Chris!”

“It’s Chrisis,” he muttered. “I told you, my artist name is–”

Again, the finger. She shook her head vigorously and typed a manic two-thumbed response. “No!” she said. Another response. “No she didn’t!”

Chrisis sighed. He took hold of his plate and spun it around. Once, twice, thrice – on the fourth time round, he spun too hard and the plate wobbled, spraying the table in crumbs.

“Don’t be messy,” Jess said, not looking away from her phone.

He wasn’t even sure it was meant for him, but he stopped playing with his plate and napkinned the crumbs. His throat had gone tight and dry, and he took a sip from his muddy brew. And he winced. Why had he bought hazelnut? He hated hazelnuts. And why had she recommended it, if she never drank anything but black?

The sudden appearance of her snapping fingers, right at the tip of his nose, startled him.

“A coffee date,” she said, beaming a wide smile, “in the middle of the work day! How nice.” She picked a sunflower seed off her bagel, with a pair of almond-shaped nails – not green nails, but peridot, which Chrisis knew the sparkly colour was called, which Chrisis hated that he knew.

“How interesting,” she continued, scrunching up her nose, “that you chose coffee, even though it’s my lunch half hour, and I’m super busy with the Mitsubishi campaign, and crazy stressed, and the sandwiches here are preassembled in a factory and reheated in a microwave, and Esposito’s – which you know I like – is just down the street and in fact closer to my office.”

“Um–”

She tapped her finger on his lips and grinned. “Shh, shh. Really, I don’t mind.” Her eyes drifted to her phone for a moment and she thumbed another message. “Really, I’m happy.” Her eyes lingered on the phone and then snapped to his. “Just happy you’re awake and dressed at 12 o’clock.”

Chrisis frowned. “Jess–”

Another lip tap. “No, no, I know. Artisting is hard. I know all about it. Debbie and Mark – I told you about them, right? Debbie and Mark are my creative leads for visuals and sound, and they both run tight teams, but gosh they do seem stressed sometimes. Lots of chasing the muse, of trying to figure out how to meet shifting client demands and still create something engaging, fresh, and with a soul. Hard work, definitely, very hard. Although, I suppose they did find a way to nine-to-five it. And to make a paycheque.”

His lips drew taut, and his breathing tight.

“But I’m not criticising,” she continued. “I know how important ‘the process’ is, even if that includes smoking all my weed and sleeping in every day.”

Chrisis willed her to stop talking. Willed himself to start.

She patted his cheek. “Seriously, I’m happy. It’s nice to spend some time with you. Oh, also!” She dug into her purse, pulled out a notepad, scribbled, and tore a sheet for him. Placed it on the table when he didn’t take it. “I need you to pick up my dry cleaning today, at Felice’s, before 4 o’clock. I hate to dump so much work on you, but I just cannot find the time, what with my full-time job, doing a grocery run, cooking our dinner tonight, visiting my grandfather in the hospital, fixing the tear in your pants, organizing the itinerary for your friend’s stag in Vegas, and finishing that bit of dry walling at the house.”

She picked another sunflower seed, with a trace of bagel dough, and ate it, and then turned her attention to her phone.

Chrisis drummed his hands on his thighs. He started to say something and then sputtered – three times. Each was prefixed by a louder inhalation, and each ended with an even more ragged wheeze. Finally, on the fourth gasp, he managed some words.

“I think we should see other people,” he whispered.

“What?” She swiped on her phone.

He cleared his throat. “I think we should see other people.”

Jess glanced at him. “What? Who?” Her brows furrowed and she scanned the place. “What people? Who are we looking at? Who is–” And then she gasped, covering her mouth with a fluttering hand as her eyes widened.

“Oh. My. God!” Jess whispered sharply. “Do you see what she’s wearing?” A grin tugged at her lips. “She cannot pull off mauve in this weather, but bless her for trying. Oh! But those shoes! They are adorable! I bet Anita would just die if she saw me in them.” She turned her attention back to him. “Good find, but Chris–”

“–Chrisis!–”

“–I don’t want you looking at women in mauve. I’ll overlook all the porn, but mauve’s a little close to home. That’s my thing.”

She turned her attention back to the phone, surreptitiously angling it to the mauve woman’s shoes, stealthing a photo. Her face lit up, probably after Anita’s response.

“I mean,” Chrisis said, sitting up tall with an inhale and then collapsing into his shoulders with an exhale, “we should break up.” He looked at the table as he spoke and his voice was small, and when Jess didn’t respond, didn’t stop her typing and didn’t interrupt her attention on the cell, he wondered if she’d heard him. Wondered if she’d ever heard him.

“Break… up… what?” she asked, finally. Her attention flitted through the gaps in her words. Then she lowered the device and looked at him. “Is that that new movie? Wait, another date? Two dates in one month?” Again, she donned that oversweet smile, the one with all the sharp teeth in the spotlight, and Chrisis glared at his own hands. “Hoowee! And they said romance was dead. Spoil me like this and a girl might get ideas.”

Chrisis ran the nails of his left hand over the top of his right. Pressed them in. Dug into the skin, plowed a furrow into the flesh. When he got to his knuckles, he raised his nails and brought them down at the base of his hand, and started another round. When he began his third pass at carving divots, Jess put her palm on his hands and he froze.

“It would be nice,” she said, her tone fainter, her smile softer. “I mean it. I could shuffle some things around, offload to Debbie, and we could do something tomorrow evening?”

Chrisis snorted, jerked his hands away. “I’m breaking up with you.”

It was subtle, but she actually rolled her eyes.

“I’m serious!”

“Yeah? Like last time? Or all the other times?”

“I mean it. I’m leaving you.”

She barked a laugh. “And going where? Move into that tiny one-bedroom with Rick and Danny and Moe? Live on the streets?” The smile soured. “Back to your dad’s?”

He snarled. “I don’t care!”

“I know you don’t. That’s your problem.”

He slapped his palms onto the table. “Well yours is you never listen!”

“Well yours is you never talk!”

Their shouting was loud enough the neighbouring tables noticed, and so they turned it down to a quiet stew, glaring at each other over the mountain of history between them.

Chrisis breathed deep. Felt his heart hammering, felt it struggling to get away. He’d come this far and freedom was within arm’s reach. And so, he continued with a hiss, “I hate–”

Jess’s face hardened even as her hands covered his, her fingers tense.

“I hate,” he said again, snatching his hands out from under hers, “this.” He breathed ragged, his face twisting ugly to match his words. She barely breathed at all. “I hate what we’ve become.”

Slowly, without looking at them, he placed his hands on hers. “We can’t go on like this.” When he squeezed, she squeezed back.

“I know.”

They sat in silence for the rest of the lunch break, the noise around them washing over them and past them, a river of meaningless human traffic. Neither looked at the other; neither looked at anything at all. Only their fingers moved, only their hands felt.

Finally, Jess’s phone signalled the end of her break. She let go of him and turned off the notification. “I’ve got to go.”

Nevertheless, it was Chrisis who rose. “We can’t go on like this.”

She nodded, still not looking at him.

Chrisis turned for the door, took a step, and then turned around. Before he left, he grabbed the sheet of paper with the dry cleaning details.