An Afternoon in Artesia

It was a quiet day in Artesia, and very warm at that. Cloudless, and enough wind to swish about that warmth so that a man could forget the winter and know that he would never be cold again.

John sat at a little rickety metal table outside, sandwiched just between two others and their occupants. Behind him, a young couple, just the same as he and Mary would look when she finally arrived, and ahead, an old man sipping an espresso. John stared ahead at the back of the old man’s head, at his wispy white hair and his sunburned scalp. Occasionally, John would glance down and read an entree or side written in flowered cursive, but mostly he just waited, hoping that Mary would show soon.

She was always late, it seemed. It was her lot in life, whether she was wandering the aisles of some store or walking back home in their sleepy little town, she would drag her feet. Not in any malicious way, she was too kind for that. It’s just that time slipped away from her, hours would spin away and leave her untouched as she stared down at a handbag or sat out under the stars.

John wished, more than most things, that he could’ve been like her. That within him he could find a way to sit there and be complacent, to be happy. But when Mary asked him to get coffee, he arrived five minutes early and tried not to blame her for leaving him to wait.

A waitress walked by, an old woman. White hair, thick black glasses, holding a coffee pot in one hand and a notepad in the other. Behind John, she refilled the couple’s glasses and exchanged pleasantries with them. Then she took another step and stood before John with a sweet but expectant look on her face.

“Coffee?”

“No, I’m waiting for someone. I should wait.”

“Water?”

“Sure,” John said. The waitress disappeared behind the glass front of the cafe, and John looked into the courtyard beyond the little restaurant. It was terracotta, orange, and sunbaked with a fountain at its center that wasn’t turned on. Mermaids and fishtails traced up its height, but the pursed mouths of those fish laid dry. A few children milled about, in a pack, as they do when they have many friends. One carried a ball and dropped it to the ground to kick it towards one farther ahead of the group. They laughed while they dribbled and played their makeshift game of soccer with no nets and no scores to ruin it. John heard footsteps near him, and he turned, smiling, hoping to see Mary. The waitress placed his plastic glass of iced water on the table.

“She stand you up?”

“No, she’s not like that.” John felt his face sag a little, but he tried to keep as much of his smile on as he could; he didn’t want his attendant to see him as bad-natured.

“Well, if she does, you could always have coffee with me.” The waitress batted her short eyelashes and laughed after a few seconds. John laughed as politely as he could. “Let me know if I can get you anything else, hon.”

She walked away, and John watched her disappear again before the glass. The chipped paint that spelled out the name of the cafe, “Lola’s Eatery,” was peeling and flaking its green-gold lead across the windowsill. Behind John, there was a commotion. The children had left, and a few students, perhaps near the end of high school or the earlier years of college, crossed quickly through the courtyard. One of them had caught their hip on a table and dragged it a few feet while their friends pointed and laughed at them. John chuckled to himself as well. It was hard to see others having fun and not join them, at least in spirit.

Bells sounded, the cafe’s door opened again, and a tall man with black hair stepped out. He wore an apron and that learned smile that all in the service industry fixed their faces to make. The young waiter approached the old man and spoke quickly to him. Then he stepped over to John’s table and clasped his hands before his stomach while he spoke.

“Hi, I’m Rudy. I’ll be taking over for Lola. It’s the end of her shift.”

“Great.”

“Anything I can get you?” Rudy asked. “A coffee?”

“No, just waiting for someone.”

“No problem. Just let me know.” Rudy’s cheeks bowed a little higher when he stopped speaking, and John watched the expression drop and repair itself again when he walked to the table behind him. The waiter said the same words, and John watched the old man stand from his table. He placed a few bills on the little silver tray and picked up his hat to place it atop his bald, sunscarred head. He turned once, before he left, to look John in the eyes. At least John assumed they were looking at each other; the old man wore dark sunglasses, and he nodded, just slightly, at the tabled man. The old man turned and walked out of the cafe, passing the bushes of the courtyard and watching the college students filter away from the canopy. When he had taken fifteen steps, he wobbled, catching himself hard on his left leg, and then falling simply to the ground like there were no muscles left in his body.

John leapt to his feet and ran towards the old man. He touched the black fabric of the man’s coat and spun him around so that they were face to face. The man did not breathe, his lungs were silent, his skin was still and greyed, its reddened blotches paled to a tone of death. John placed his fingers to the man’s throat, not really expecting a pulse but still feeling saddened by the fact that one did not appear. He looked afar and saw that the couple at the table had stood to look over at him. Rudy opened the door of the cafe and stood within it, watching. But the waiter’s face was odd, blemished, wrinkled where before it wasn’t. Same with the couple. John stood and looked down at the old man, his skin had flattened and blackened. John backed away, and as he did, between each fall of the man’s eyes needed to wet them, more of the old man decayed. His skin, his muscle, eventually he was bone, then nothing. Like he was never even there.

John walked back to his table on aching knees, and as he passed the cafe, he saw Rudy within it, hidden by the glass, and on the floor lay the body of Lola. That old woman had fallen, too, just the same as the man. John felt sick, and in that sickness, there was a chill that crept up and along each of his bones. When he reached his table again, he fell heavy into it, catching himself with a hand on his chair and on the length of his table. Weathered hands, wrinkled as leather and spotted with purple kidneys, and dots of cancer. John’s breath was shaking as he sat down.

Rudy walked out of the cafe and stood at the table. His hair had greyed and fallen out so that he had a widow's peak a few inches long atop a wrinkled scalp. His eyes were sharp in their marred sockets, and he smiled kindly then, not like how he had at first. He meant it then, now.

“I’ll have that coffee. And a scone. I don’t think she’s coming.”