10 minute read
WAITING FOR COFFEE AS A MEASUREMENT OF TIME by Mike Austin
Waiting for Coffee as a Measurement of Time by Mike Austin
You wake at midnight and again at one. It’s been three months since you’ve slept the whole night through. The pain in your hip has only gotten worse in that time. Now it’s New Year’s Morning and you have another seven weeks of waiting until your hip gets replaced.
But whether it’s seven weeks or seven months doesn’t matter any longer. Time has lost any meaning so that you barely recognize morning from evening. Like now. It’s one in the morning but you want to make coffee. That would be a good way to ring in the New Year, with a cup of coffee in the wee small hours.
Instead you get dressed. You move just a little easier after those few hours of sleep. But it’s still a grindingly slow and groaning process of moving, of bending your leg to pull on pants, socks and shoes. In between each item of clothing you sit and stare and wonder if the effort is worth it. It isn’t, but you get dressed anyway.
You pull on your heavy parka. It feels like a comforter. Maybe you can curl up on a park bench and take a nap. All you have to do is close your eyes to drift off again.
The taverns nearby are still busy. The sidewalk here is cluttered with people, individuals and groups walking between bars or to their cars or just walking for air. One couple is arguing about driving or calling a cab. They stop when you limp past. When you smile and nod, they look away. They’re arguing again as soon as you pass.
It hurts to walk. It hurts to lie in bed. It hurts to stand and it hurts to sit. It hurts in your short hours of sleep and keeps hurting when you wake. Seven more weeks. There is no meaning to those words. Time is immeasurable. The only time that matters right now is coffee time.
You don’t know why you keep going. It’s not even a proper walk. You give up on using your left leg to walk with. It’s more of a prop to hold you upright while your right foot propels you forward.
It seems that people look away when they see you coming. Nobody wants to watch the show of a broken man, a man who looks like he might ask for money.
On the next block you’re alone under the scant scattering of streetlights. You’re further away from the New Year’s celebrations. It’s quiet here, and the only thing moving is your shadow as it lurches and drags before you, growing longer, then fading as the street light recedes behind you. When you turn to look down the block, it looks like a dark forever distance. You’re in a walking waking dream in which the terrain and the neighborhood are even the city are strange. You wonder if there’s a place nearby that serves coffee at this hour.
There’s a saxophone being played somewhere up ahead and brings you awake in your own neighborhood where nobody is serving coffee. The music sounds like it’s up by the river. The sax runs up and down the scales and then does a few slow jazzy riffs. You smile at the cliché of a sad sax in the darkness. You turn up your collar and pull down your hat. You shamble to the river and the footpath that leads along the narrow river to the lake a mile away. You can picture the lake at night, rolling into blackness beyond the small reflections of homes along the shore. You won’t be able to walk there tonight.
The path is well lit. The light from overhead dances yellow in the ripples of the dark slow river. There are traffic noises up ahead but the night feels quiet, as if the noise is more a sensation than sound. It’s background to the sax that’s growing louder with each step you take.
The musician is a woman. She’s playing under the heavy concrete bridge of a busy thoroughfare. She’s across the river from you, between the feet of two concrete arches. She’s flanked by a couple of musicians, two guys who stare at her adoringly. One is slapping on his bongos. The other is plucking an upright bass. They’re both being drowned out by the sax, but don’t seem to care. She’s their star while she makes the sax wail “Harlem Nocturne” slow and sad. It echoes past you and off the concrete abutment behind you, then back across the river.
The musicians notice you standing across the river from them. The men stop playing. Their gaze seems hostile. The woman’s playing falters as if she’s suddenly self-conscious of her audience of one.
You turn away toward a bench that’s under a light. “Harlem Nocturn” slides into “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.” It’s a sad and sleepy lullaby that makes your eyelids even heavier.
You pull up your hood and the music is muffled, along with the traffic noise, in the pillowed quilting of the parka. If you can just get to the bench you could close your eyes. Ten minutes of sleep under the dim stars will clear your mind. It’s good to have a goal. Sit. Nap. Limp home, a few yards at a time. Why did you come this far? If you ever get home, you’ll make coffee. You’ll make it as strong as you want. A thick black cup of coffee to greet the New Year. While everyone else is going to bed, you’ll be waiting for daylight, so many hours away.
While you look at the bench under the light, a sudden thump and rustle beside you makes you realize how alone you are here at night. Alone and vulnerable and almost too tired to care. You barely move at the sight of something tumbling like a black sack of garbage down the concrete stairs from the street above. It stops beside you at the foot of the steps. It’s a young man. His face is chipped and bloodied from the fall. His head is backwards, looking at you from over his coat collar. There’s a spark in his eyes. Fear? Warning? Whatever it is, it’s fading fast.
You look up and see a shadow standing at the top of the stairs. A shadow wearing a heavy parka, the hood up and drawn tight looks down at you before it steps from view.
You look down again. There’s no spark left in the eyes of the man at your feet. Maybe it had never been there.
The thing at your feet is suddenly not worth your attention. It has nothing to offer you. It didn’t bring coffee. It didn’t bring relief from this sleepless incomprehensible world you’re in. It might not even be real. You look at the park bench. The bench is real. You desperately want to sit there with your hood pulled up and drawn tightly. Just ten minutes.
But when you reach the bench, it doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel safe. There’s something nearby that you don’t want near you. You’ll be better off at home. You shamble back toward the underpass, keeping your eyes on the river, away from the untidy bundle at the foot of the stairs.
You don’t look at the musicians either. You keep walking, dragging your bad leg along and moaning softly. If you could only twist things in the right way it might pop back to where it belongs. It might stop hurting. But it doesn’t.
You try to keep track of the music, to listen as you get further away and closer to home until the music fades far away, comes back lightly on a breeze like a distant siren and then is gone for good.
You’re back among people again. You’re the only one who’s alone. You feel like a ghost limping a few steps at a time and sometimes groaning among the living until you finally reach your stairs. You drag yourself up onto the porch, good leg first, bad leg dragging behind until you’re inside the house. You lock the door and draw the quilted insulated curtain across the doorway. It’s safe to talk out loud to yourself now.
“Let’s get this coat off. There we go. That wasn’t so bad. How about those shoes? Come on, it won’t be so bad. Oh. No, no. It is bad. We can do this. Holy hell that hurts. So much. There we go. Now for some sweat pants. Oh. You’re already wearing them, aren’t you? Don’t you know only losers wear sweat pants in public? Get those slippers on, loser. You want some coffee? Oh yes, coffee would be lovely. Let’s ring in the New Year with a cup of coffee. Maybe we could whiskey it up a little. Yes, whiskey can be a verb. Don’t be pedantic, just make the damn coffee and whiskey it up. Let’s do this. Can you make it? Well, I guess I have to, don’t I? Then maybe we can sit. Maybe. If the old leg will bend. Yeah. A little coffee, a little whiskey, a little nap. It’s all so far away.”
You forget whether it’s morning or evening. It’s dark out. It could be either. The clock on the stove says it’s three o’clock. It must be morning. Ray Bradbury wrote, “…three in the morn, full wide-eyed and staring, is living death!” Yeah, ol’ Ray knew.
You grind the coffee beans and set up the coffee maker. While the coffee drips, you hum to match the pitch of the compressor of your old refrigerator. The harmonics clash when you change your pitch. It’s a small joy, but you take what you can get. You carry a coffee mug and a bottle of Jim Beam to the living room and set them on the table beside your easy chair. Then you drag yourself back for the coffee. You pour it into a thermos. You’re practically falling when you reach your chair again. You turn to sit, but your hip won’t bend. You start to crouch just a little, sweating while your hip grinds and pops until something breaks loose and drags you groaning to finally sit. You laugh/sob at the sudden relief. The long walk has faded like a dream.
You’re finally able to reach over and pour your coffee. Only half a mug full, topped with whiskey. You breathe in the warm sweet aroma of evaporating whiskey. You take a long swallow and close your eyes. In an instant you’re back beside the river, looking up the stairs while the shadow above you limps and drags itself out of sight.
