The Gray World

The day the colors returned, the hot chocolate burned his hand through the paper cup. Green, blue, and gold moved through the line. Brown too, but only in her eyes. The hot chocolate was still gray.

The pain spread slowly while he looked at her, wondering why the green of her coat, the blue at her throat, and the gold in her earrings felt strange when it was stranger still that he remembered the names for those colors after so many years.

When he handed her the cup, she smiled and thanked him. She had already turned away when she looked back, once, then again, as if something about him had not quite settled.

“Tony!”

His wife stared at him in a thousand shades of gray, her jaw slack, one fist on her hip, the metal tongs suspended in her other hand as if she could not decide whether to laugh or scold him.

“Tony!” she said again when she saw the blister rising on his hand. “Step aside and take care of that. We need to serve these people before the churro line goes into the library and comes back out again.”

She swatted the back of his head as he passed in front of her. He flinched but kept going. She frowned after him for a moment, then took over the stand as a sigh moved through the gray line. He rubbed aloe cream carefully around the blister, then covered it with a Band-Aid. By the time he returned to the stand, he had nearly persuaded himself that last night’s dinner was to blame.

The line gradually dissolved, and his wife left to do the shopping. He would stay through the rest of the morning, now that exams had made the campus library the busiest place around.

For almost an hour, nothing happened. He served churros, coffee, and hot chocolate to gray students with gray backpacks and gray phones. His gray hand sent small spikes of pain through him with everything he touched. Still, he served the customers with an easy smile, meeting their eyes, exchanging jokes when there was room for it.

Until blue and green blurred in the corner of his eye. This time he set the paper cup down as he turned. All around him, people shouted.

“Call an ambulance,” someone called out from behind the wall of students gathered in front of his stand. He locked the cashbox and pushed his way close enough to see, looking for the colors before he saw what had happened. A student lay on the floor, her body jerking. Then the shaking stopped. He recognized her only when the colors left. Gold first, then the rest. She was gray now, her head tilted to one side. His heart kicked hard in his chest. When the ambulance left, he did too. The colors had not returned.

Tony climbed the stairs to their apartment with a weight he was not carrying. As he reached the third floor, panting, Martha’s door opened.

“Tony. Would you mind helping me out with a little something? Alexa isn’t answering.”

Martha waited by the door in her gray flowered housecoat, leaning on her walker. She had always been nice to him, though they had barely exchanged more than a few words at the neighbors’ meetings. Tony breathed in and nodded. Martha let him in and had him sit at the kitchen table.

“Let me bring her over.”

“Alexa. Alexa, where are you?” she said as she walked out.

“I’m here, and my head is in the clouds.”

That sounded exactly like Alexa, Tony thought.

Martha turned around, guiding her walker, a sly grin crossing her face. “I guess she decided to make me look like a silly old woman.”

Tony stood up. “I—“

“Ah, no. No way. You’re not going anywhere, Tony. You came to help and you can’t turn down a cup of tea. Alexa has already let me down enough for today.”

Tony sat down again. Martha brought him a cup of tea and some homemade ginger cookies.

“These are dangerous,” he said, waving one of the cookies in the air. She talked for a while, but he stayed mostly silent. When he left, she insisted on pressing more cookies into his hands.

For a few days, as his hand healed, Tony looked up from the stand now and then, as if the colors might surprise him at any moment. His wife jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow whenever she caught him in a daze. Every day, he passed the third floor, panting, and every day Martha opened the door just as he set foot on the landing. He began to look forward to the tea, the cookies, and the small permission to say nothing.

Before the colors went away, Tony could tell when the churros were ready by looking at them. Now he knew by the smell of the oil, by the crisp sound they made when the scissors cut through them, by their weight in the tongs. When the sugar struck their crust, he was sure. Everyone had learned to trust other things. The names of colors no longer meant much, except for those that had survived by naming something else: rose, violet, lavender.

Then, one day, orange arrived. And red too. His first thought was that those two didn’t go together. His second was that his wife had said exactly that years ago. That was when the alarm went off. The boy, barely old enough to be a college student, wore a red varsity jacket and his orange hair fell in curls over his shoulders. A captain, no doubt. He was surrounded by eight or ten football players, all gray, their jackets dull in the colorless morning sun.

Tony dropped the tongs, untied his apron, and left the stand without looking back, right in the middle of the morning rush.

“Tony, what the hell are you doing?”

His wife called after him, sharp enough for half of the line to turn. He didn’t turn. She called again, but in the end she had to handle the stand alone. He followed the boy. He learned his name and stayed close, telling himself he only wanted to be there if something happened. Nothing did. The boys just hung around for a while, wasting time in ways that, somehow, he no longer found meaningless.

Tony realized he couldn’t follow him everywhere, so after a while he returned to the stand. To his wife’s blazing stare. She said nothing. Instead, she threw her apron at him, took her bag, and left without a word. None that he could understand. He didn’t dare to say anything either. After a minute, she returned and kissed him softly. He jerked when she took his blistered hand.

“Don’t get that infected,” she said, though she was already walking to the car.

Tony didn’t tell anyone about the colors. Not his wife, not Martha, not anyone. He still could not tell whether the colors belonged to the world or only to him. He wore the same quiet grin. He kept his words for the customers.

The next day, when his wife had already gone to run errands, the boy appeared again. Still orange. Still red. Then the day after. Every time he did, Tony hung the ‘I’ll be right back’ sign and followed them.

Until he realized that, now and then, one boy or another turned to look at him.

“That’s the churro guy again,” someone said.

“Dude, I can smell him from here,” another replied. After a while, the looks came more often, and the words stopped sounding like words.

“You following us, man?”

Several of the boys gathered behind the one who had spoken. Big as he was, Tony kept his arms out and his gaze low.

“Guys, I’m just trying to help.”

“Help?” the boy said. “Help who?”

“Sounds like stalker talk to me,” another one said through his teeth.

The boys closed around him, all shoulders and gray jackets, their voices rising over one another. He heard the red-haired boy’s name again when someone shouted. The group turned. The boy lay on the ground, one hand clenched against his neck, his red jacket bright against the gray pavement. The boys pushed Tony away, but the last time he turned, he saw the orange draining into dullness.

That day, Tony climbed the stairs more slowly than he used to. He didn’t stop at the third floor. Still, Martha opened her door.

“No tea today?”

Tony turned.

“No, Martha. Not today.”

He climbed one more step.

“What about a chat on the stairs?”

Tony sat right where he was, resting his arms on his knees. He breathed loudly. Martha joined him on the stairs, accepting his hand as she lowered herself beside him. She produced a cookie out of nowhere. This time, she listened while a tear ran down his cheek.

At one point she asked what the boy had been like. Tony looked at the cookie in his hand.

“Orange,” he said, before he could stop himself. “And red.”

Martha did not ask him to explain. She only set her hand over his wrist.

When a tear reached his lip, Tony wiped it away and pressed his mouth shut.

“I can go with you to the service, if you want.”

Tony nodded and disappeared up the stairs.

The service was for family members only. Tony would have felt out of place anyway. A memorial was organized instead, since the boy had turned out to be some kind of college football star. Martha and Tony went together. His wife didn’t see why he wanted to go, but Tony held on to the fact that the boy had been one of their customers.

The college stadium was packed to the brim. From their seats, the crowd in the stands opposite flickered and trembled like white noise on an old TV screen. On the field, the players stood in stripes and checks. No team trusted color anymore. White was only for referees; black, for coaches and substitutes.

There were speeches and hymns, prayers and oaths, but it was only near the end that Tony’s jaw loosened. His eyes watered. Against the blurred mass of the crowd, specks of color began to break through. Pink and green here, blue and violet there. Another fifty or so bright flecks scattered across the stands. His eyes moved from one fleck to another, but there was no way to take them all in at once. Above and below. Across the field. Beside him too. Tony pressed one hand to his chest while Martha held the other between hers.

“Did you see that?” Tony asked.

Martha was above him now. Her mouth faltered for a second. Then she smiled for him and nodded once.

Tony looked past her, up into the sky. His body loosened.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

“I ,” Martha whispered.