Cream and Coffee

Finn had only two reasons for sitting in front of the floor-to-ceiling abstract painting every afternoon from 1-to-5 p.m. — Sarah and Edward. Sarah worked the museum’s pastry, coffee, and card shop, selling post-card reproductions of the museum’s most popular artwork, and Edward, her boss, who offered Finn the cold dregs of coffee and uneaten pastries as the shop closed at 5 p.m. each day. Edward hated to waste food and preferred to give it away rather than throw it away.

It wasn’t that Finn couldn’t afford to buy hot coffee and fresh pastries; it's just that he didn’t really like to spend the money if he didn’t have to.

“You think she’s pretty?” Edward asked Finn as he walked out into the gallery and handed him a bag of two-day-old Cheese Danish and a large coffee, black, with a handful of creamers and three packets of sugar.

“Who?” 

“Sarah.”

“Hmmm,” Finn murmured thoughtfully, his mouth full of pastry. Edward had microwaved it to make it less stale, but simply making it moist and stale instead of dry and stale.

He looked at Sarah more closely. Her broad hips swayed behind her apron. Her breasts were full, double-D’s for sure. She was motherly large, no. Rubenesqe large. 

He imagined himself navigating her round shoulders and soft breasts with a warm, wet tongue, coming to rest in a tiny ear hidden under a waterfall of her long, thick black hair.

She was Greek, with a nose and the cafe au lait skin to prove it. 

He rolled his tongue around the last of the Danish while he poured creamer into his coffee.

“Well?” Edward stood at the end of the bench, pretending to admire the large painting while he waited for Finn’s answer.

Four creamers, two packets of sugar.

“You forgot a stirrer.”

“Damnit.” Edward turned and shuffled back into the coffee shop. Finn watched him, swirling his coffee cup while he took in the man’s butt — or lack of one. Why did men lose their asses when they got older, he wondered. He thought about his own ass, flatter than a pancake. He thought about how his butt ached, sitting on that bench every day with no padding. He thought about Sarah and all the padding she offered, front and back. He thought about nestling his head between her breasts as he licked a bit of the remaining cream cheese and icing from his mouth.

“Here,” Edward offered him a stir stick and another brown bag bulging with pastries.

“Bear claws,” he grunted as Finn leaned back to look at him.

“Well, well, slow day?”

“Sarah thought you looked hungry.” 

The two men stared at each other.

“She’s pretty,” Finn confessed. “If I had to describe her to a stranger, I would say she’s pretty. Why do you ask?”

He looked at Edward, whose crotch was just barely at eye level from where he sat on the low bench.

The man ‘dressed left,’ but without underwear (Finn could tell); his junk swung from side to side as he walked. It wasn’t an unattractive motion in his baggy pants, and Finn presumed most women couldn’t tell unless they were looking, as he often did. Like most men, he surreptitiously compared himself to others.

Edward, he guessed from the sway in his pants, was a larger-than-average man, a large penis quietly nestling between his enormous testicles.

Finn stirred his coffee slowly, sipping it before looking up at Edward’s face.

“Why do you ask?” he said, dropping his eyes to his coffee.

Finn knew men asked such things for a variety of reasons — either they wanted to ask the woman out but were too shy and needed reassurance from another, or they wanted to fuck a woman but wanted to know if she was good-looking enough to count as a ‘notch’ on their bedpost before they did, or they were trying to set the woman up on a blind, or semi-blind date. Finn guessed it was the latter.

“She likes you,” Edward blurted. “Ask her out.”

Finn reached into the bag of bear claws, found one covered more with icing than the others, and took a bite.

“Well?”

“These are the best bear claws you two have made in a while. Who made them? You or Sarah?”

“Damnit, Finn, do you want to go out with her or not?”

“Let me think about it.” He bit into the bear claw again and looked around Edward to look at Sarah. To do so he had to look past Edward's pants, where his penis stirred lightly, possibly at the idea of Finn and Sarah, or possibly at the idea of Finn, or possibly at the idea of Sarah getting some kind of action from anyone. Finn couldn’t tell.

Finn could see Sarah blush behind the counter. She was wiping down the display shelves so they were clean for the next day’s pastries. The clang and bang of the coffee pot rang out as she turned to rinse it in the sink.

If men’s asses got smaller, women’s got larger. Finn admired her derriere for a long, slow moment, wishing his own member still swelled at the thoughts tripping through his mind. 

“Have you thought about it?” Edward asked. Finn finished his bear claw, thoughtfully and slowly wiping his mouth with the brown paper napkin he found in the bag.

“I mean, you’re out here every day, just sitting and staring at her,” Edward huffed, his massive shoulders shrugging as he glared at Finn.

Finn thought Edward, too, must be Greek. He glanced up at the thick, black head of hair, Roman nose, strong jawline, and barreled chest. His black polo shirt was stained with icing and crumbs, the detritus of a day’s pastry orders.

“I suppose I do,” he admitted. Sarah had finished wiping down the counters and cleaning the coffee pot. She stared at them, knowing, Finn knew, that they were talking about her. Her blush moved up her face, then down into her breasts, her large breasts straining at her top.

Finn imagined his penis miraculously worked again, and unconsciously moved his hand to cover himself, forgetting he hadn’t been able to have an erection for several years. He wasn’t about to tell Edward that. He wasn’t ready to tell Edward anything.

“Is she a virgin?” He asked, cleverly moving the conversation away from his dead penis.

“What?! How the hell would I know?” Edward’s temper flared immediately. “She’s a good girl, that’s what I know. You’d do well to take her out.” Sarah could hear him raise his voice, and he looked cautiously over his shoulder at her.

“Listen,” he hissed to Finn, “Either ask her out or stop sitting here every day. You’re breaking her heart. She really likes you.”

Finn nodded, reaching for the bag of bear claws. 

“I’ll ask her tomorrow,” he sighed. 

“Thank God!” Edward all but shouted, flinging his hands into the air. Finn stood up slowly, cautiously, his knees creaking, his back sore. He really should bring a pillow, maybe those things his son used to bring to football games for him.

“Here you go, pop,” he’d say, plopping a stadium seat down for him. No more. His son and his wife were both gone. 

“Do you like her?” Edward asked.

Dear God, what more did this man want? Was she pretty, did he like her? What's with all the questions?

“She’s close to your age. What are you, 70? She’s young, 50-something. Never married.”

“I don’t know if I like her. We’ve never talked.”

“You’ll like her. I know you’ll like her.” Edward stepped back and held out his hand as he watched Finn sway a bit as he stood up.

“Are you okay?”

Finn nodded. Maybe they would fall in love. Maybe he wouldn’t need to sit on the stadium cushion and wait for stale pastry and cold coffee warmed in a microwave. Maybe he would get hot coffee and fresh pastry. Maybe he would come in shortly after 3 p.m. when she would be taking out trays of hot doughnuts, bear claws, and Danish. 

“Here, my love. Fresh from the oven,” she’d smile. She’d hand him a hot coffee, fresh cream from the pitcher, half-and-half, not the little creamers in a cup, and stir it for him, sugary sweet and so smooth. His dead penis would spring to life, and he would know he was in love. He would fight to contain his excitement, the thought of her breasts, the idea of her hand reaching into his pants to touch him, to hold him, to love him. 

They would then sneak into a closet, into the back of the museum and they would rock, and bang, her wide hips on a steel pastry table, and she would take him away, if only for a moment. They would finish in a sweat and return, she to the counter, he to a table, like a real patron. He would relax into a chair, fiddle with the place mat, and act like nothing had happened while he waited for her to wait on him.

Sarah would smile coyly, seductively, then knowingly look at him, her face suddenly filled with compassion — his having told her of his loss, of his sadness, of his all-consuming grief. She would understand that he sat in front of the painting where he met his wife, where they were having pastries and coffees when they got the news of their son’s accident and his passing in the horrific crash.

It was where he’d come to grieve after learning his wife had taken her own life, unable to bear her own. It was where he came every day, so he wouldn’t do the same.

He would sip the coffee and look over the pastries, fresh and perfect in their crisp wax wrappers. He would point out the ones he wanted. His pain would ebb, and the darkness of the last thirty years would melt away as he fell in love again.

Was she pretty? Yes. Did he like her?

“I’m sorry, Edward. I’ve rethought it. I’m really in love with the pastries, and the coffee, and those little creamers. And I have nowhere to go in the afternoons, so I come to the museum. I hope you understand and will explain it to Sarah. She seems very nice.”