When The Toad Sings (And Other Tales of Love)

The robust aroma furled up from her cup of just served cappuccino. And just like she remembered it. She inhaled deeply. Steamed milk floating on top, murky cosmos of cinnamon sprinkles swirling into a golden spiral. The second inhale made her cough, forcing her to remember where she was and open her eyes. Her mind had wandered once again into a world that no longer existed.

She quickly put down the cup and wiped away the spilled coffee dripping from her fingers, wondering if anyone around her had noticed this nameless woman sitting alone, now and then murmuring to herself at a darkened table by the café’s indoor pond, noticed that she, too, had been staring in turn at each of their faces, recognizing some of them despite the years. She, however, was long used to the odd looks of others, especially the waiter -- now bald -- but just as no-nonsense and still on the job after all this time. Although then his look at her had been much different. She had always pretended never to notice. Now the invisibility of age and shadows suited her just fine.

Her sketchbook was open on the table beside her, a charcoal pencil in one hand and pastel crayons nearby in case there were comments that she was loitering and needed to order more or pay up and leave.

A perfectly passable little rendering of the pond had begun, although, obviously, something was missing in its center. The sketch was only moments old, but the strokes so natural and familiar to her fingers she could barely remember holding the pencil.

“Herman?” she asked, more thinking than saying. “Herman, are you there?”

The little pond in the middle of this late-night Upper West Side patisserie was famous, if only to New Yorkers. But that was plenty fame enough. Many a couple had fallen in love here, become engaged here, married here beside the pond with large brilliant golden and multi-colored koi slithering, cavorting among the rush of tall live cattails amidst a choir of frogs.

But most importantly there was Herman, a giant elderly toad who sometimes crawled out of the water onto a large beam of ocean driftwood to lounge under the glare of a hot spotlight. It had been installed to simulate the sun all year, not just for the beauty of the pond but for the warmth and comfort of its amphibian star entertainer, who, if he felt like it, would come out to the perch to sing.

This had gone on for a very long time, although to the great disappointment of his many fans Herman had inexplicably stopped singing years ago and now deigned only with great coaxing and bribery from management to occasionally make appearances.

When the unmistakable sigh of a large ripple undulated over the surface of the pond she smiled. They were old friends, she and the toad. And he remembered her, had sensed her presence once again nearby, had discreetly waddled out from his underwater cave to a little promontory perch on the driftwood to stare unwaveringly at her while she had been indulging in coffee and reverie. Waiting every night for decades for her to come back and feed him crickets on the sly as she had when they were both so much younger, before life forced them to part company. Millions of life miles since she could start the odyssey back to her beloved New York City and for this night in her favorite haunt, and there had not been a proper goodbye.

“I never forgot you, Herman,” she whispered as softly as possible from the table. She blinked back tears of joy so grateful to see him still alive she could have kissed him warts and all.

Still, the strange, haunted note of her voice carried far enough that the  young couple at a nearby booth looked up at her. They were very much in love, two young men holding hands across the table, legs entwined beneath it, as they planned their wedding here. They traded quizzical glances, shrugged, and looked away.

“Do you forgive me?” she continued. “Will you sing for me again? I'm home now to stay.”

Herman's ancient body shifted a bit on the perch, and he stared harder at her before his long, slow blink. Not moving too quickly herself these days, she went to the edge of the pond, leaned over the rail, and despite a prominently posted “please do not feed us” sign, emptied a small carton of live crickets as close as she could to the driftwood branch nearest his throne. Watching the transaction, the greatly entertained lovers grinned and discreetly sent her a thumbs-up hoping the waiter, who had worked here longer than the toad or either of them had been alive, would not see. She smiled and nodded back at them.

Meanwhile, Herman’s large mass didn't seem to move at all, but his almost indecently long tongue flicked in and out like lightning to scarf up the crickets. Exhausted and breathing heavily, she let the empty carton slide to the floor to make her way back to her chair and a now tepid cappuccino that had toppled over onto the sketchbook saturating her freshly drawn work.

She hardly noticed. Her mind was swirling. She was sitting in a chair by the pond near closing time, sketching a young toad the size of a large month-old puppy while he listened so attentively to the gamut of the most inane to serious details of her young life, commenting only with the occasional gurgle. The line of boyfriends, and despite them, the achievements of her paintings portfolio finally on exhibit, the successes when they went on to galleries, the sales, the reviews, the interviews. The magazine covers.

On a turn of a dime and the bad manager she famously married, descent into an obscurity of miserable jobs to pay the rent for a hovel, with miserable bosses at miserable pay, capitulation to miserable demands just to eat a meal; the evictions, the abortions, the liquid and other forms of mind-soothing anesthesia that became addictions. Herman had heard and watched it all. At least until the illness that ate away her insides forced her with shrieks of protest and leather restraints so very far from her home for so very long.

The toad, meanwhile, who had never stopped listening, whether she was there beside him or not, ate his fill while the neighbor frogs and fish converged to snatch up what he left behind. Some crickets who had escaped the carton on the floor began to chirp loudly and hop conspicuously across the restaurant carpet. The now alert waiter furiously rushed over to the table to admonish her then stopped suddenly in his tracks as Herman’s slurping abruptly ceased.

The bubble of the toad’s throat sac began to grow, to bulge into a balloon so large it almost dwarfed the rest of him, expanding greater than anyone, including the waiter, had ever seen before.

And Herman began to sing, and sing, and sing. He sang of his joy for the young lovers in the booth and for all those lovers who had gone before them. He sang of thanks for delicious crickets, his favorite kind from the pet shop down the street. For the warm light above him, and the kind humans who tended him. For his fellow pond dwellers who kept him from being lonely and told him all their stories of far away and made him family. And all the cattails to play hide-and-seek amongst in his youth, his joy that he would soon be free of his too old body. His joy of this -- his best audience ever. But most of all he sang of his joy to see his dear friend once again. It had been such a long wait, but he knew she had not forgotten. Every step of the way he had felt her cross the gates of hell to be here tonight.

She smiled through it all, her promise fulfilled, absolution granted, though now she knew she’d never needed to ask in the first place. “Thank you, Herman,” she murmured, the tears finally flowing unrestricted.

The waiter, forgetting to be stern, stood speechless. The couple’s mouths were similarly agape. The few patrons still in the cafe at this hour also went silent and listened in wonder until Herman’s croaks drifted into silence a few moments later.

After a lull, there was thunderous applause and shouts of “Encore!” all around. Someone had managed to video record it, where it had already gone viral on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. When quiet finally descended again, the waiter remembered he had been about to reprimand his errant old lady customer, who had, he realized, seemed very familiar. She was slumped, head lolled back with eyes closed. He saw the previously hidden hospital I.D. band on one wrist and an I.V. line still stuck in her elbow on the other. But a sublimely peaceful smile in her lined face seemed to be dropping years by the second.

Then his eyes went to an old magazine cover framed on the wall. He had even been on shift when the photo was taken there in the café of a beautiful young woman sketching Herman by the pond. He had served her so many times, had even been a little in love with her, maybe even more than just a little. But soon she would be famous and glamorous, with her pick of anyone, and he was, after all, just her waiter, with wife and children at home in Queens.

There was a splash from the pond behind him. The couple at the booth gasped simultaneously, leaped to their feet, and ran to the pond rail. One of them shouted for help. Both of them were crying, and then they were holding each other. The toad was lying belly up in the pond water, occasionally bumping against the driftwood beam by the force of ripples from his fall while the frogs and fish finished off the crickets around his still body until it drifted back into the cave and disappeared in the darkness.

The pandemonium began. Someone was shouting that Herman had been murdered by a crazy old lady at the back, someone else was calling 911, cell phone camera lights were flashing again. The manager at the cash register was frantically yelling for help to restore order, clear up and lock the doors.

Even as EMT arrived to take the woman’s body, and someone from the police none too happily stepped into the pond to fish out Herman, the waiter had hardly moved a muscle, his eyes were fixed on the coffee-stained sketch. What moments ago had been only the thin lines and strokes of a simple landscape had emerged out of the spiral-shaped stain – in full, joyous, glorious, impossible color -- into a portrait of a toad singing in a pond of cattails and the smoky silhouette of a young woman standing with canvas and easel in the background.

The waiter finally picked up the sketchbook and closed it. He paid the check for the cappuccino himself, and with tears running down his face and sketchbook still under his arm, asked for his paycheck, left the café and his job, never to return to it.

Despite the thorough search of the pond Herman’s body was never found.

THE END