BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS AMY D’AGNANO

After Lunch

“More coffee, Alan?”

The boy raised his eyes on the wrought iron table. “Sure, why not” he said, before getting lost in lazy thoughts –the seagulls flew low and the garden was starting to wither. Aunt Grace and his guest had said empty words during lunch and now they were suffering the heat in the garden, drinking a short and very bitter coffee in Aunt Grace’s little Chinese cups.

The old man dipped a dry biscuit in his coffee and, satisfied, stretched his legs under the table.

“So, Gracie; what about your sister, what is she up to?”

An awkward silence followed, and Alan could hear the cicadas croaking softly. Even they seemed tired in the late summer sun.

“So hot, isn’t it?” Aunt Grace said at last, as she adjusted the over-opened, sweet smelling roses in the glass vase. The old man shook his head thoughtfully, and the answer came only after another biscuit. “What you can do about it, Grace? It’s the lagoon. It’s damp, that’s what it is. Humid. Feels like we’re in our own grave, doesn’t it, Alan?”

The remark jarred with the delicate pain of things withering in late summer; something had broken and Alan nodded reluctantly in the direction of the old man, who was light years away from him.

A violin began to play an old song on the other side of the street, beyond the oleander bushes, and Aunt Grace started to sing quietly in her hoarse, smoker’s voice. She was still beautiful under the brutal sun.

Alan’s gaze fell on his aunt’s cigarette. He followed the swirls of lead-grey smoke as they disappeared into the still sky, and saw Aunt Grace’s hand fanning, waving with nervous movements; pouring more coffee, holding the cigarette, taking a biscuit. The spoon rattled furiously in the cup and then landed on the saucer; but it was too much for the sleepy sultriness of the lagoon and Aunt Grace slumped back in her chair, wiping the sweat on her forehead with her hand.