After the Shattering

Once, there was a café that was always abuzz with life and chatter. In its storefront was a large window and this window’s favorite pastime was to eavesdrop on the crowds that filled the café.

There was always a wide array of characters and topics to choose from: woes from a girl confiding in her friend how she caught her boyfriend sharing a sucker with a girl at a football game, a man in a rumpled suit and bloodshot eyes admitting to his mother he had been out of a job for over a month now, and mountains upon mountains of gossip of petty matters from petty people.

The Café Window drank all these discussions up like the delicious drinks the baristas brewed for their customers. It was as if these coffees and teas loosened peoples’ tongues so that all misfortunes and vicious gripes came spilling out of them in an uncontrollable stream. It was delightful entertainment. What better way was there to pass the time than listening to strangers’ miseries?

Well, not all windows felt the same.

The window in the old bar across the street always warned the Café Window that reveling in people’s hardships was sure to bring hardships on itself. The Café Window often ignored the Bar Window, thinking it a troublesome and irritating presence easily ignored.

And so, everything continued in this manner for a number of years, with an ever-flowing procession of conversations cycling in and out—an unceasing source of amusement for the Café Window. For this window, everything was perfect.

That is, until the shattering.

It was a truly unfortunate accident. One of the Bar Window’s customers had too much to drink one night, and after a violent battle of fumbling to fit his key into the ignition, he slammed his car into reverse and rocketed backwards across the street.

The Café Window was, as always, enjoying the evening’s offerings of mumbled troubles and problems. Just as it was in the middle of listening to a particularly juicy tale of an heiress’s feud with her cheating husband, the car crashed through the glass.

How does one describe their entire being and existence suddenly shattering into millions of glittering fragments? It was so sudden, so staggeringly destructive, that the window could do nothing else but faint.

I have no idea how it’s done, ask a window.

By the time the window came back around, it was aware of the gaping hole in its face. Cold air, once kept at a safe distance, was now crawling all over the jagged edges of broken glass still in the window’s frame, dancing and hissing as it barged its way into the café. The people were gone, vacated most likely.

The window wished it was raining so it could cry.

The next day, a burly man with his sleeves rolled up and a cigar in his mouth came to the Café. He measured the window lengthwise and heightwise. He wrote down several things on a clipboard then talked to the café’s manager. While he was doing this, an employee began sweeping up the glass. The window watched as the broom gathered all those broken pieces into neat shimmering piles. Then those piles were swept into a dustbin and thrown into the trash. The crunch and tinkle of the glass hitting other pieces of garbage seemed to echo louder in the empty café.

Not long after that, the window’s jagged edges were plucked out, and a shiny new pane of glass was fitted into the frame. The café quickly filled with people again. They brought with them all their familiar gripes and complaints. They chatted and laughed and grumbled and drank. Many glanced at the window and commented about the shattering. But that mainly served as a conversation starter, before segueing into whatever new gossip the people had that day. If anyone had stared a little harder at the window, they might have noticed the glass shaking in its frame.

The Café Window was fixed, but it didn’t feel fixed one bit. In fact, it felt wrong to have its glass pane replaced. It was still mourning its lost pieces. Was the window still the same window with brand new glass? This glass was unfamiliar, manufactured differently. It felt foreign. It felt wrong.

Never before had the window desired to be able to talk to the customers, but now it wanted to shout at them. It wanted to shake them and yell, something is wrong! All my broken pieces are swept up and gone and I don’t know who I am anymore with this new glass, and I’m afraid I’ll be shattered again!

But the people inside the café were busy with their own problems and did not think of the window. All it could do was watch and listen. This however, did not hold the same appeal as it had before; the more the window listened, the more sickened it became. It eventually cast its attention outside.

A snowstorm was growing, billowing and showering curtains of snowflakes upon the streets. The window had never paid much attention to the outside side of its glass, but now even the whistling wind was a comfort compared to the murmur of voices inside. As the storm raged on with more severity, the café began to empty due to people being concerned about being snowed in. They hurried out, becoming nothing more than scurrying coats and umbrellas against a world of white.

It was just nearing dusk before there was a break in the snowfall, and the snowflakes began to spiral down lazier and slower, until the storm came to a standstill. Snow painted the outside in a glittering white blanket, covering cars and sidewalks in a cocoon of quiet cold.

With the clearing of the storm, there came an unsteady peace that washed over the Café Window. It was strange to find solace in the outdoors and the silence, where the shattering had originated from.

Maybe there would be another shattering.

The window became agitated. Why was it so delicate in the first place? Why couldn’t it be like one of those cars on the street? Steely and hard, impossible to break. Dark thoughts like these plagued the window, and it spiraled deeper and deeper into an isolating self-loathing depression.

It took a long time before it was aware of anything else besides its bitter existence. When the window finally drifted out of the haze enshrouding it, it noticed the Bar Window from across the street yelling at it.

“Hey Café window! Are you okay?”

“I’m excellent,” the Café Window snapped. In a rush of embarrassment, it realized what a spectacle it must have made with the shattering. Now the Bar Window probably wanted to laugh at the Café Window and how it had been right about its prediction of misfortune. So the Café Window puffed itself up as much a window could and said, “My glass is much brighter and better now that my old glass is gone.”

“Oh…” There was a long pause, and the Café Window braced itself for an onslaught of ridicule. “Well I’m so glad to hear that. The first break can be difficult.”

The Café Window wavered in its resolve. “First… break?”

“Yeah. I remember when I had my first break. That was about 15 years ago. Some door-to-door roof salesman was so miserable with his lot in life, he got drunk and stumbled right into me. Crashed his head right through. Poor guy needed stitches.”

“Poor guy? What about you? You ended up broken because of him.”

“Yeah, it was pretty terrible for a long time afterwards. They had to tape a blanket to me just to keep out the cold before replacing my glass. But then I got shiny new glass, just like you.”

“How long were you broken before they fixed you?”

“I would say… about a month.” The Bar Window laughed. “Things move slow over here. Unlike your café; things move at the speed of light over there. Your glass was repaired within a week!”

“Yes, it was very fast…” The Café Window trailed off. “What happened to the salesman?”

“He yelled at his boss, got fired, went to trade school, and got a better job as an electrician.”

“Well… Good for him.”

“Yeah,” There was a touch of pride in the Bar Window’s voice. “Now whenever he comes to my bar, it’s always for a happy occasion.”

The two windows sat in silence for a long while, listening to a stray birdsong here and there, and the crunching footfalls of those bundled few who ventured out into the cold. The Bar Window’s comments had been a strange mix of reassurance and dread. It had been broken more than once, and maybe it would be again. Yet, it appeared that even though it had been broken multiple times, it remained confident in its identity as the Bar Window.

Shattered, but unshaken.

Streetlights flickered to life—pinpricks against dark indigo. Light within both the café and the bar took on a more golden hue as night fell.

“Bar Window,” the Café Window called softly. It spoke so quietly, it wondered if the Bar Window even heard it. But the Bar Window answered almost instantly.

“Yes?”

“Can you tell me another happy story? About one of your customers?”

There was a pause. A breeze swept by, scattering swirls of snowflakes across the white streets. With it, the Café Window could have sworn it carried with it the sound of a chuckle.

“Of course.” The Bar Window said.