Evening Coffee

I step out for a walk this evening; amidst the drizzle and the fresh smell of autumn, I make my way across the streets; the sky turning darker as every moment passes, the cool breeze lapping against my face like two friends meeting after years of separation. With my eyes closed, I take in deep breaths of the cold around me, and the clouds above gather together and turn darker. It is going to rain heavily tonight – I should make my way back home before it gets rainier. But right now, the weather is perfect, and every step that I take reminds me of stories with those who I walked with, long lost friends and strangers.

As the rain picks up in intensity, I make my way into the corner coffee shop. A bell rings as I enter, and the owner of the store, Abdul, comes out from one of the bigger shelves in the back of the store. “Hello,” he says, “Fine weather to have a coffee?” I pay for two coffees, and offer him one. He looks at me, surprised. “You know I can drink for free right? It is my store, after all.”  I smile at him, and he smiles back. Then he pulls a chair and sits down beside me, looking at his store through the eyes of a customer.

As I quietly sip on my coffee, he takes stock of his day. Abdul is an avid talker. He can talk for hours without needing a response. He tells me about the regulars at his store. He mentions that once a regular customer did not come in for three days, and that he went to their home to check in on them because he feared that something had happened to the old man who would never start his day without his coffee. Turned out he was under the weather and would recover soon, so he left a bag of coffee beans at his place so he could drink Abdul’s coffee. As he tells me the story, his eyes well up with pride on his coffee. Not a lot of people are successful in this area of town he says, with all the big cafés opening with their many amenities.

But the ones who come to his store do not come in for the amenities. They come here for his smile, and his genial conversations that he can strike up with anyone anytime. He is also the weatherman, news reporter, confidant, and financial advisor for a lot of his customers, though many a time he admits, his customers lose more money than they make. Still, it is hard to be upset with him, he jokes.

“Another coffee? Refills free today”, he says. “Need to finish the coffee before I close the store or have to throw it away”. I look at the time, and decide it would be a bad idea to drink another coffee; he looks at me kindly, and I say yes anyway. There goes my two hours of sleep at night, but who cares. He comes back with two cups of coffee, but doesn’t sit with me anymore. Instead, he begins cleaning up the store to prepare for closing. I sit there for a little longer, waiting for the rain to slow down. Finally, after a while, it slows down to a drizzle.

“Gotta go,” I say. “See you tomorrow,” he says, not looking back at me. And so it is, that I will see him tomorrow again. I cross the street and start heading back home. A few more people have now come out of their houses for their evening walks, or to walk their dogs. When you have a dog, it does not really matter how much it rains. You still need to come out for your daily walks. A few of the faces are familiar and they smile at me. I smile back at them, but do not stop to make more conversation. As I keep walking, I see her. I wish she would look at me, but tonight, she intentionally looks through me as though I do not exist. It’s alright, she will come around. Some other day, I think to myself. And then I make my way back home. By the time I enter the house, it has started raining heavily again, and I end up standing at the window for a while longer to breathe in the cool air.

And that was how I spent my evening today.

Letter on a Saturday

It is Saturday again. As I wake up to the chirping of the birds, there is a sense of calm around me. No noise. It is still early in the morning, though later in the day, this silence will be broken by the lawn mowers and garbage collection trucks that are invariably going to make their way into the alley, where right now, only a cat sleeps on top of the trash box. Hidden behind the thick curtain of clouds, the sun tries to shine, not strong enough to light up the window, but its rays make a faint shadow of the window on my floor, marking the beginning of my day.

I look around my room, and there is a pile of mail on my table. The mail came in late yesterday, and I did not get a chance to filter through those. It is always the same: a pile of advertisements, cheap clothes, cheap food, a pizza flyer, and some insurance deals. Today however,  a particular envelope catches my attention. It is addressed to me by name, and is written with a pen. I recognize the handwriting as familiar, but cannot place it. At the bottom right, I see her name. The wandering squirrel.

It was the pen name she used for her blog. We had collaborated for some posts many years ago, when blogs were still a thing. I look her up on the internet; the website has since been discontinued, the posts we wrote, the stories we weaved, all vanished from the internet like the clouds that were now disappearing from the sky, bringing in the blue of the sky and the brightness of the sun to my window. A generator that had been running for the past few hours stops, and it makes me realize that I had completely ignored that noise and had assumed it was just a part of my world. I look out the window, and the sun now glistens onto the river. It is a weird place, this house. On the west, there are the high-rises, some of the tallest buildings in this city, obstructing everything beyond it and making it feel like a box of buildings stacked up, neatly arranged to optimize for the most people in the least space, and feels like a page out of a dystopian novel. And on the east, where my eyes frequently rest on mornings like these, the river flows with its ebb and tide, the boats ferrying people to and from the dock, a mixture of tourists, workers, laborers, and high tech engineers.

What could she be writing about? I try to guess as I carefully slide my finger inside the envelope to tear it with the least damage possible. When did she move to this country? It had been almost five years since she moved here, so I must have met her around seven years ago, in a different land, in a different world. Was that the last time I met her? I try to think about that evening, my brain short-circuiting the details and filling in the pieces, adding bits of inaccuracy throughout my story. It was a cold evening, so it had probably been one late in the Fall, maybe October. As I think about the evening we met, my eyes scan the letter, trying to summarize it. I would probably read this a couple more times during the day to make more sense of it, to read between the lines, but for now, a summary is all I need.

“Hey”, she writes. She goes on to explain some of the current stuff in her life that I skim through. As she moves into the second paragraph, she introduces the main theme of her letter. She is getting married in November, and would like for me to attend her wedding. I try to imagine her in a white dress. Pictures of our graduation float up in the air in front of me, then vanish into thin air and my eyes gaze into the wall ahead, a white wall with some picture frames, of which none have her picture. I try to count the years it has been since I last saw her. It was probably six years ago, she was walking across the street from me. I did not muster up the courage to walk up to her, so I let it be. So much time has passed; I wonder where she got my address, though it would not be difficult to guess; we have only two common friends here in the States, both of whom know my address.

I open my phone and try to look her up on Instagram, hoping I will catch a picture of how she looks now. I try to imagine but the only pictures that come to me are from seven years ago; much must have changed since then. I hit a dead end with her private profile, and so I let it be. It was probably best I kept away from all of this. I get out of the bed and put a pot of coffee to boil. The trees on the west have almost turned red. The smell of fall mixes with the aroma of coffee and I am transported to a world where she and I sit together under a bench, in the autumn of a different country, sipping our coffees and interlocking our hands; she looks into my eyes and smiles, then rests her head on my shoulders. So much could have been different.