The Dark Morning Coffee Shop | Theland E. Thomas

Another day passing, and I drag through it like an ant struggling through sickly sweet caramel flavored syrup, more drowning than persevering. The warm, inviting smell of coffee becomes an oppressive stench if you inhale it eight hours per day. It’s not the worst job, but it’s ultimately just something to get the rent paid. And no matter how busy this place gets, no one wants coffee at 2 pm. I’ve wiped down the counters and tables at least five times. Not that the wash rag really does anything but smear the mess across the table in shining circles. Even that guy who always spends all day in here reading newspapers and books and never talks to us except to order his small, black coffee that he sips on periodically and must be ice cold after so many hours obliged me by moving to another table. I turn to Derrick, who stands, hand on counter, staring out the large windows at the overcast sky.

He looks at me. “It’ll pick up again soon when all the kids are out of school.”

“Where do they get all the money to spend on coffee anyway?”

Derrick shrugs. “I dunno. When I was a kid, I wasted my money on all kinds of stuff. Still do, I guess… just make room for the things you love.” He settles into a self-assured smile. I envy him for that trait, that easy-going, nonchalant confidence. He lives life by the day, having fun, doing what he wants while I watch, cautious, fretting, doubting, and uneasy. I too stare out the window, seeing my grey apartment in the grey clouds, thinking of countless nights clicking through pages of Internet jokes, laughing, then immediately forgetting what was so funny.

Ding. I look up and turn face the door, straightening my posture and inflating a smile in the same Pavlovian routine I’ve performed thousands of times. In walks a young lady, authentic, glowing smile making mine more real. “Hi,” she waves as she approaches the counter. Her brown hair is tied back a little sloppily, she wears a professional-looking blouse and slacks, and her light blue eyes reflect the warm shop lights and point them back at me.

I know I have to talk now, but the words seem held up in my brain. Finally, I sputter, “Hi. Uh, welcome to uh, The Dark Morning Coffee Shop.” I could feel Derrick staring daggers into my back. I’ve already been talked to about the greeting. It’s supposed to be, A Dark Morning to ya, and any variation of what can I brew for you today. It’s stupid, it doesn’t even flow when you say it, it’s like the owner of this stupid franchise just decided he wants to make sure every single customer hears this not-even-funny pun.

The girl holds up a sticky note. “So, my coworkers sent me out to get some coffee for everyone…”

“Yeah?”

“But, their notes stink. It’s all abbreviations and chicken scratch. Can you read this?” She hands me the sticky note, and our fingers graze as I grab it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know what these are, I think.”

She chuckles, “Well, if you make a mistake, I’ll just tell them it’s their fault for having bad handwriting.”

I smile again as I start mixing the first drink, “Well, I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, don’t worry, I won’t throw you under the bus. That wouldn’t be very nice.”

I don’t know what to say, so I look to Derrick, who starts preparing the second drink. He’s usually the first to jump into conversations, usually rescuing me from putting my foot too far in my mouth, but now his odd silence leaves me floundering in an unfamiliar sea. “Well, I’m already working here, I mean, how much worse can it get?” Heat blooms in my cheeks as Derrick shoots me a quick glance and a nearly imperceptible shake of the head.

But the girl laughs. “Oh, I’m sure it couldn’t be that bad.”

“Oh, it is, ask Derrick.” This is your cue, man, help me out.

But Derrick only offers a muffled, “Yep,” as he passes the drink to me.

The whirring of the coffee machine whips the fatty smell of cream into the air and beats back an uncomfortable lull in the conversation. “Uh,” I start, “so where are you working?”

“Oh, just at that bank across the street.”

She points in its general direction, but there’s a different bank on all four corners of the intersection, and I don’t really want to ask her which one, so I say something even stupider. “Aren’t you a little young to be working at a bank?”

I see Derrick look over again, this time smirking, and I know he’s just going to tear into me as soon as she leaves.

“No, actually,” she says, still smiling at me, God, she’s gorgeous, “They hire at 16, apparently.”

“Wow,” I said, wishing I could stop the neverending stream of stupid words coming out of my mouth, “you’re quite the achiever.”

Derrick finally brings over the last drink, unfolds a cardboard carrier, and places the three drinks inside. “Alrighty, here you go, thanks for stopping in today.”

“Thank you,” she waves, balancing the lopsided carrier, “see you guys later.”

She walks out, and the coffee shop returns to relative silence. Derrick goes to wash out the blender cups, and I clean the brewers, and soon there is nothing left to do again. My gut twists as I hear Derrick’s slip-resistant shoes pad from the back room.

“Dude,” he says.

I stare at the brown, granite countertops. “What?”

“You… are such an idiot.”

Cringing, I face his incredulous grin. “What do you mean?”

“That girl was totally into you.”

“What? No.”

“Yeah. She was.”

“Whatever.” I don’t have anything else to say, so I just say that.

“She was, man, and you were just like ‘hurr durr, you’re quite the overachiever.’ I mean, what the hell, man?”

I throw my hands up, “I didn’t know what else to say!”

He continues mocking me. “She’s all trying to talk to you, batting her eyelashes, and you’re all oblivious like ‘aren’t you a little young-’” he messes his face up into an angry caricature - “aren’t you a little young to be working at a bank?’ Oh, my God, dude…” he trails off in a fit of laughter.

The flashing sound of a page turn reminds me of the man in the corner. He doesn’t have to talk to anyone. He just sits in the corner every day and does his thing, quietly reading, reading, and reading. Sometimes I wonder if his brain ever hurts from all the information he stuffs in, a new book, cover-to-cover, every single day received by tiny, spectacled eyes.

Derrick enters my field of vision again. “So, are you going to ask her out?”

The question catches me off guard, and my heart jumps. “Uh. No. Why would I do that?”

“Well, do you like her?”

“I mean, yeah, I-”

“Then that’s why!”

Familiar pain swelled in my chest. “I don’t think… I mean, cause you remember with Autumn.” I can barely get the words out of my mouth. I’m ashamed. Ashamed that Autumn still affects me like this. Ashamed at my stupidity and naivete. Ashamed I pursued her in the first place.

The chuckling stops, and Derrick frowns. “Dude, I know that was really hard on you, but you have to get over it eventually. That was almost a year ago.”

“Yeah.” But inside me feels as cold and grey as the clouds past the window and as dense as a brick of lead. Soon, the kids from school flood in and socialize, and the adults from work come in and unwind, and there meetings formal and casual, and the shop grows noisey with conversation and brewers brewing and blenders whirring, and tired, enthusiastic, complacent faces, and night creeps until the warm, yellow lights are the only ones left, beating back the dark outside. And, eventually, the man in the corner packs his books into a satchel and leaves without saying a word. Then, I’m back in my grey apartment, on my grey laptop, wasting my life.

It’s been a while, but Autumn’s memory still floats in the back of my mind. That warm feeling her smile always made me feel, now stained with ripping hurt. I was in love, but… maybe I didn’t show it enough? Maybe I wasn’t the one she wanted after all? Maybe I wasn’t adventurous enough or handsome enough or maybe she never loved me in the first place. I fall into a sick, spiraling cavern of thought until not even the sterile glow of the computer screen can reach me.

Then, it’s another day passing, with another replay of people with the same orders and the man in the corner turning the pages in another story. At least the sun’s out today.

Derrick sits on a stool, staring out the window at the snow-capped mountains, tapping out a beat with a pen. He’s already exhausted all the tales of the crazy stuff he got into last night, and I wonder how he has time to do all of this and sleep as I stare at the coffee-brown counter tops. “Dude, you know that girl from yesterday?”

I cringe. I’d been hoping he wouldn’t bring it up again. Allying with this hope, I play dumb and say, “The banker, you mean?”

“Yeah, you know you didn’t ask her name? You’re supposed to get a name for every order.” Silently, I point to the man in the corner. We don’t know his name, and he’s here every day. Derrick waves his hand, “That’s different. That’s been happening since before I got here.”

“Well, what does it matter?”

“Because she’s going to come back in today.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she likes you!”

I purse my lips, counterpoints invalidating that argument flood my head. “How do you know?”

“Because I know these things.”

“See, that’s not a good reason to-”

“Well, speak of the devil!”

Ding. I stand and see the same girl from yesterday, for some reason still surprised when Derrick is right. Her blue eyes meet mine, and she smiles saying, “Hi.”

I swallow as she approaches, and my lips part, but no words come out.

“A Dark Morning to ya,” Derrick steps in, “He can help you.”

She slides a sticky note onto the counter. “They sent me with the same order as last time, I think.”

I reach across the counter, closer to her, to grab the paper, the fluttering in my chest disproportionate to such a mundane activity. “Well,” I say, “looks like it.” I place the note in between myself and Derrick, and we both get started on the drinks, blenders working loudly.

“So,” her voice cuts through the machine noise, “how’s the day been?”

“Oh, just… the same as yesterday, actually.”

“But, the same is good, right? It’s better than worse than yesterday.”

She’s right. “I suppose so. So, uh, how’s your day going?”

“Pretty fun actually!” Her already bright eyes glow even brighter, “We get paid to volunteer, so I spent all day playing with puppies!”

“Wow, that sounds awesome. I wish I could do that!”

“You should volunteer. They’re so cute - they just run around you and want to play all the time!”

As I finish up the second coffee, Derrick muttered something. I turned, “Hmm?”

“Name!”

A flash of heat. I fumble to get a sharpie from the pen-holder. “Oh, uh, what’s your name?”

“It’s Carin. What’s yours?”

I pause. “It’s actually just so I can write it down on the…” She’s looking at me expectantly. I glance at Derrick, who seems to be stifling laughter. “Uh, Daniel. Dan.”

“You know, I’ve always liked the name Daniel. I’ll call you that.”

I chuckle. “That’s what my mom calls me.”

A sudden laugh startles both of us, and we both look at Derrick, who struggles to maintain his composure. He waves his hands in front of his face. “I’m sorry, just thought of an inside joke, that’s all.”

Carin smirks, leaning on the counter, and looking from me to him. “Sounds funny. Is it the kind of joke you can share?” I’m trying not to visibly cringe.

“Unfortunately not. Friend confidentiality, you know.”

She nods sympathetically, and I step in with my sharpie ready, “Okay, so which one is yours?”

“Actually, none of them. I’m just the errand-girl, getting coffee for everyone else.”

Derrick prepares the drink holder and slides it across the counter. “Do you at least get a tip?” he asks.

“Just seeing your smiling faces.” She takes the drinks. “Thanks guys, see you later.”

“Yeah, see ya.”

The door opens with a ding and swings shut. She’s barely out before Derrick exclaims, “Dude!”

Here we go. I swing around. “Okay, shut up.”

He grins from ear to ear, but a malicious kind of grin - at my expense.

“She’s totally into you. How can you not see that?”

I frown. “I don’t know, maybe you’re reading into this too much.”

“I’m not. She asked your name. No one cares about our names, that’s why you never get busted for not wearing your nametag. But, you’re all like-” He contorts his face and voice to mock me - “‘Hold it! Hold it! It’s just for the coffee.’ She’s all asking your name, and you’re like, ‘Nope, I actually just want to write it down.’” His cackling laughter echoes from the walls of the shop. “‘Uh, you don’t, uhhhhh, you don’t get my name, lady, I get yours.’”

I roll my eyes, hoping he’s done, but instead he simply continues pointing at me. “And you totally like her too! I saw you. You’re all spilling the pens everywhere, and you’re bright red. Look at you, you’re still bright red, ha-ha!”

I throw my hands in the air. “Okay, so what if I like her. How do you know she likes me? She probably doesn’t. I’m not interesting.”

“I agree, but who knows. Haven’t you heard of visceral attraction?”

“I… don’t believe in that.”

“Okay”, this time he throws his hands up before him, “You don’t have to man, but please, just do us all a favor and ask her out already.”

The thought twists my gut when he says it, but it remains in my head for the rest of the day and preoccupies me throughout the night. Instead being bleached by the neverending emptiness of Internet memes, my mind is full a tumultuous battleground of vibrant hopes and paralyzing fears, soaring possibilities and limiting doubts. I can barely picture myself taking the first step to asking Carin out, but I can picture a million rejections with stunning clarity: A polite but debilitating decline, a crushing absolutely not, a disgusted face, laughter, and worst of all, a yes that leads to the inevitable end where fleeting joy always plunges into eternal sorrow.

That night, I have a dream that I’m finally going to meet Autumn and reconcile. I’m walking from a grass field onto the blacktop of a vast, empty parking lot, the wind brushing past just quickly enough to bring a chill. My feet slap the pavement as I approach the red car in the middle of the lot, but, with every step, my apprehension grows until my stomach is clenched into knots, and my hands are clenched in my pockets, and my teeth are clenched together. I stop halfway to the car. Despite the wind, there’s a disturbing lack of movement, as if the entire world is focusing on that blood-red vehicle, and then Autumn steps out, her dark blonde hair blowing sideways in the wind. I gulp, tears welling in my eyes. She didn’t even break up with me face to face - it was over a text. The cold, heartless words burning through me, shattering me, slowing time to an airless still, each one registering individually like long, arching blows to the chest: “I’ve been seeing someone else.”

It’s like it’s happening all over again, the pain welling up within me bursting forth from that barely stitched wound, bitter acid flooding my chest, my throat tight, and pressure in my face from tears held back. The now freezing wind whips up, clouds covering the sun, and I take more tentative steps forward, and I look up. Instead of her face, all I see is blackness. Everything else is there, but behind her flashing hair hangs only a terrifying shadow that seems like both the entrance to hell and my own reflection. The blowing wind is now a frenzied roar that drowns out my throat-shredding scream as I stumble backward and fall, and suddenly, the darkness expands from Autumn’s face, tearing across the entire landscape until I’m in my pitch black room, bolt upright and drenched in sweat.

That day, like the previous days, Carin comes in shortly after two, lighting up the shop with her smile. “Hi guys.”

“Hey,” I say, completely ignoring the formal greeting. “The usual?”

“Yeah, we’re just going to do the uge today. Did you memorize it already?”

“Well, it’s only three drinks.”

“Oh, that’s really thoughtful. Do you memorize everyone’s drinks?” Carin looks earnestly at me, her blue eyes big and enveloping.

Derrick interjects, “Nah, I’m pretty sure that was just for you.”

My face burns as she goes along with the joke. “For me?” She feigns flattery, “Oh, my, next thing you know we’ll be going steady.”

I give a nervous laugh and speak utter nonsense as I mix the first drink. “Yeah, that would be quite the thing.”

“Hey, you seem like a nice enough guy.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Yeah…” she trails off. “You know it’s always good to pay a compliment when you can. That doesn’t happen enough in the world.”

“You know, you’re right,” I agree, “I couldn’t tell you the last time I got a compliment in here. Or even gave one.”

Derrick stares at me, unsmiling. “Yeah, I mean, I give compliments all the time, but no one ever compliments me back.”

“Well, maybe you can be the first to start a chain reaction and change the world,” Carin says.

“Maybe.” He puts the three drinks in the cardboard carrier and slides it across the counter. “Here you are.”

“Alrighty, thanks again guys. Bye.”

“Bye,” I say.

I watch her leave, and as soon as she does Derrick starts in.

“Dude, why didn’t you ask her out? She obviously wanted you to ask her out!”

“Well, I don’t want to,” I say.

Derrick sits in his stool. “Why not?”

“Well, because… I don’t think… I’m just not ready for a relationship right now.” My chest is heavy.

“C’mon, man. You and I both know that’s just fear.”

“No,” I say, feeling a slight indignation, “it’s logic. Why should I let you pressure me into a relationship that’s just going to end eventually? Everything always ends.”

“You’re right, man, everything ends. I mean, friendships end, relationships end, and, eventually, everybody dies, but that shouldn’t let that stop you. Life is so much more than that.”

I mutter, “I don’t think you get it.”

Derrick shakes his head. “No. I do get it. You’re the one who doesn’t get it. I used to be the same way, you know. I thought love was pointless. But, then I realized, I don’t have to live a depressing loveless life. In fact, I deserve more than that, and you do too. Because, underneath everybody’s hurts and scars, are people. And people need each other.”

I’m speechless. Partly because I’ve never expected more than surface-level conversation from him, but more because he’s cut straight to the truth of what I’m feeling. All I can do is stare at the man sitting with his back to the window, sunlight illuminating his book. Softly, I say, “I guess you’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

“Well, what should I do?”

“You should ask her on a date tomorrow. I mean, the thing worst she can do is say no.”

Already, the idea is growing on me again. “Okay, but what should we do? How should I ask her?”

“Honestly I usually tell my friends to take all first dates to coffee shops, but that would really suck, wouldn’t it? Just don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” I make up my mind to ask Carin out when she comes in tomorrow. I go through what I’m going to say in my head, testing a million different possibilities and formulating something to say for each one. I replay it over and over, tweaking and modifying. Sound natural. Sound suave, no, just be yourself, add an uh, or a so somewhere. Or, if the topic presents itself, just pivot into it. I imagine her face as I ask her. Surprise lighting those bright, blue eyes. A gleaming smile? Or maybe a furrowed brow as she rejects me. That’s okay too. Will we exchange numbers? Duh. Should I have my phone on hand or just write her number down? Call, don’t text, texts can be ignored. What if it’s busy when she come in? No, that never happens.

By the next day, I’m filled with anticipation, completely prepared for every possible contingency. It’s slow, as usual, and Derrick sits, phone on the counter. I stare out the window, hearing the man gently turn the page in his reading. I’m checking the door every five seconds just to make sure I didn’t miss the ding, but the next time it does ding, it’s not her. It’s just the usual crowd of kids, signaling that the afternoon lull is over. Oh, well, it’s not big deal. I guess I’ll see her tomorrow. But I don’t see her tomorrow. I wait all day with the same anticipation, but she doesn’t come. This repeats again and again until clinging hope becomes despondent disappointment. She never comes back. Instead, every day is just another day passing, vanishing like my line of sight over the snow-capped mountains, past the man in the corner turning another page in another book.

Untowards | Alexander T. Damle

                We’ve moved into the post-everything age: a post-modern, post-colonial, post-racial, post-humanist, post-pubescent age. Me? I’m post-intellectual. If intellectualism is all about smart people knowing everything about everything and always talking and thinking about all of it, I’m all about knowing nothing about anything, and never thinking about any of it.

                These thoughts stroll leisurely through my mind, as I roll out of bed. They then slam the door on the way out as I feel the piercing buzz of last night’s hangover. I look to my dirty window, layers of grime and dead insects caked up over years of this place being inhabited solely by alcoholics and other wastes of oxygen, writers and artists all trying to re-enact Hemingway without the shotgun finish.

                Outside the window is Tangiers, a city well past its prime, architecture largely unchanged for hundreds of years, the whole place straining at its ropes, buildings beginning to crumble, streets and alleyways narrow and claustrophobic, people routed around, rats in a maze. It’s a city of tourists and expats, where all the real people hide themselves away, oppressive sub-tropical air, thick with the broad unease of a future lost to the mythic past.

                Bars and nightclubs fizzle and burn against all the old architecture and older culture, stars in a tar black sky, places where the booze flows and people are as liberated as in any global city. It’s a tense liberation though, a malaise hanging about in furtive glances, drinks poured carefully, voices all a little too low or a little too loud. I make my money off these places, tourists shown around to a bit of the city’s “real” nightlife, every item on the itinerary premeditated by money slipped across sticky bar tops.

                I’m good at this job - I have the basic understanding of how to herd a group of drunks such that no one gets lost, plus the global tourists like getting led around by an American ex-patriot. Everyone’s read Hemingway, or at least everyone who chooses to come to this shit hole.

                Eventually, realizing it’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon, and I’ve now managed to waste a good part of my day rotting in bed and drinking, I pick up a t-shirt off the floor, pull it over my head, and start downstairs. I live right above a bar, which can be useful, given my profession.

                I sit down on a barstool, and the bartender ambles over to me. He doesn’t even need to ask what I’m having because, the way my nights usually go.

                “You look like shit.”

                “Thanks man, that’s always good to hear.”

                “You know me.” I drink down the water and my head swims, that waking dream in whence you feel like if you don’t figure out where you are soon, you’re going to up and float away. Like that waking dream, with the addition of a piercing headache.

                I stumble out of the bar into the afternoon light. We’re not far from the sea here, and I have a good view of the water sparkling in a warm blue, stark contrast to Tangiers’ white and tan architecture. I appreciate the heat and sun for a few moments, before the simple pleasure of the beautiful weather turns into a piercing headache. A few doors down from my place is a kebab shop, from which I get my breakfast/lunch/it may actually be now late enough to call this dinner.

                I stroll down to the beach, sit at water’s edge, take off my sandals, and let the waves lick at my toes. It’s warm and comforting. Clean. I lay my head down in the sand, feel myself sink a few inches. I stare up at the sapphire sky, feel the warmth of the summer burrow deep inside me and threaten to take another few waking hours.  

               

                As the sun sinks low in the sky, I find myself on my tour route a little early, it being an hour still till I need to meet tonight’s shambling horde. I wander into a nightclub called “The Bittersweet Life,” or something approximating that, printed in French in a curling font, colonial ghosts mixed into the mortar.

                The furniture, the wallpaper, even the carpet, it’s all luscious and beautifully old, out of a 1950s Hollywood film, right when color was new and still thought of as something luxurious, to be revered. She stands on the stage and croons into a microphone in Spanish. This place is a contradiction of nations, a Mexican singer in a French club in a Moroccan city. She’s not much different than me, lost in this world but for her passport, transience as an excuse against the static rigidity of waking life. She was one of the first people I met when I moved here. She’s beautiful, tanned and tall, long dark hair and delicate cheekbones, hazel eyes reaching deep into the dark heart of my memories, some girl I left behind when I got bored of wherever I was living way back when.

                She smiles at me, but goes on singing. I’ll bring whoever’s signed up for tonight’s bullshit back here later, but I like to hear her when its just me and a few locals, in before the tourists show up. It feels like it means something that it never does when the walls are quivering and the carpet is crawling with the multitude of drinks and excess of people.

                I meet my charge for the night at a little restaurant on a square dating from the French occupation. The architecture is trying to be Paris because, afterall, this is Tangiers, where everything living is masquerading as something long dead. It’s the usual collection of young couples looking for something a little more exciting than the standard tourist attractions. I notice a guy, maybe late twenties, looks American, maybe German, standing off on his own at the edge of the group.

I introduce myself to the crowd, hoping my constant exhaustion doesn’t wear through. Or maybe not, maybe I want it heard, maybe I want people to complain, maybe I want to get fired. It’s time to move on again, time to find another city, another country. Another singer in another nightclub to pine over. Another sea to stare at longingly. Another squeaky bed, mouldy carpet, peeling wallpaper shit hole. Another life. Every few years from now since then on to infinity or death, whichever comes first, always another life.

                As we walk under the phosphorescent lights of the city, our faces and shadows cut at weird angles, illuminated with a certain kind of privilege, I look to all the young couples, the way they hang on each other, as their everythings, all in ignorance of the sea and the distance, in utter rejection of the drift and flow, the natural falling in and out of that which we dream of in terms like love.

                The first bar of the night is an old school jazz joint. The man singing on the stage is short of stature, and rather pale for a Moroccan, but there is a throaty, confrontational intensity to his voice, such that it fills every nook and cranny of the room, demanding attention. I give my speech about the place’s imagined history, then go to the bar, and I’m poured a drink without hardly asking. The whiskey burns its way down my throat, thermite through a cell door. I swirl the glass slightly, watch the pale auburn liquid float about with a heavy, hazy disregard for the night. I notice again the guy standing on his own, and I wander over to him. Misery loves company, I suppose.

                “Hey, how’s your night going?” He makes a noise in my direction that a more optimistic man might term a grunt. “You enjoying the tour?”

                “Sure man. Whatever.” He’s American, and clearly in no mood to talk. I give him space.

                Our second stop of the night is the sort of trendy, hedonistic, hell hole you can find in any city, beautiful young hipsters spouting armchair philosophy and unsolicited advice, drinking drinks in colours I don’t know the names of. The whole place is lit up with a throbbingly bright white light, obfuscating any attempt at reason or thought. Here I drink a double and without even a moment of hesitation or consideration order a second. Music plays at a volume I’m not sure whether to term altogether too loud or too quiet, built as it is of an endless baseline, with none of the requisite soprano contrast. The American is standing a few feet away from me, pressed up against the bar, looking out straight ahead, his eyes spotlights against the darkness, seeking out... something. I order him a drink, and he turns to look at me.

                His eyes are furrowed in on themselves, and though he meets my gaze, I can tell the light bouncing off his corneas isn’t making its way any deeper, he isn’t seeing or hearing any of it, no, I can see reflected off the water’s surface images of a life that could have been, bounced off his ear drums the sound of a woman’s saccharine voice, the promise of children’s laughter.

                “Hey man, you doing okay?” He stares at me for a time that edges my mind into recollection of 80s horror movies.

                “No. No, not really.”

                “Well, uh...” I’m a tour guide for fuck’s sake.

                “I wasn’t supposed to be alone tonight. I wasn’t supposed to be alone, period, I guess. I wasn’t this morning.” I order him another drink, and he looks into the glass of liquid just a little too clear, the harsh chemical smell of good vodka drifting up from the glass and passing unfiltered into his head, with a near imperceptible curl of his nose. He drinks it down anyway, and he cringes ever so slightly. He’s not me, then. He’s not yet learned to embrace the pain in the name of killing the hurt.

                The third stop is familiar already in my brain’s immediate consciousness, the woman on stage needing no further introduction. As expected, the thick red carpet is crawling like ants up my wavering vision. I push back the scene’s encroaching sibilation with another drink or two, the burn of the whiskey now a slick honey sliding reassuring down my throat.

                For the fourth time tonight, I notice my single charge. He’s staring longingly at the girl on the stage, and I feel an edging annoyance at his internalized presumption, being as it is a mirror onto my own dark night of the soul. Still, though, the thought has a surprising lucidity in amongst the hazy, smoky air, my drunken stumble, and that salted caramel voice playing loud like Nancy Sinatra. I try to push it back into the recesses of long and oft forgotten self-knowledge.

                I order two drinks and bring one over to the man who’s name I still don’t know. He stares at it for a long moment of eyes crashing down out the bottom of the glass into the pit of his own misery, before looking up to me. He sips quickly, and I can tell he doesn’t really know how to drink whiskey either. No, this is the sort of man who hasn’t drunk anything but beer and wine since he graduated college a decade and ten million miles ago.

                “I don’t think I caught your name?” He looks like he may not bother with my hanging question, but in the end he decides to take my hook and run it out to the fifty yard line.

                “Jonathon. Never Johnny. You know, I booked this tour for both of us? At the end of the night, I was going to propose to her, find some pretty spot overlooking the city and the ocean and... you know, somewhere romantic. And then I was going to ask her to marry me. This morning, she found the ring in my bag. I came out of the shower and she was just... looking at it, you know? Like she’d found... I don’t know... drugs or something. She looked up at me and it was just like... it was like she was scared. Her beautiful blue eyes... they were terrified. Wouldn’t even talk to me. She just packed her clothes and left, without a word. She’s ignored all my texts and emails and phone calls and... Jesus Christ.”

I order him another drink, and at the bottom of the glass I see refracted in golden brown a life lived out long towards old age, kids and a dog and a big suburban home, first words, first steps, college, retirement, but in the end all I see is lying alone in a hospital bed,  computers quietly beeping out the death notice.

I’ve no response to this man I hardly know, in the midst of what will likely be the great personal tragedy of his life. I’ve built an existence on running away from pain, and in his eyes, the shake in his hands, the tired tremor hovering just at the edge of his voice, I’m reminded why. It’s hard to have your heart broken when you never love in a distance longer than minutes.

In the midst of all this, with a tired sort or irony that lives in the very atmosphere of places like this, the woman on stage begins to croon out “My Baby Shot me Down,” and I decide it’s time to move on to our last stop of the night. This hell hole is at serious risk of being the death of at least one of us, going off the thousand yard stare Jonathan is cutting through Sunny Bono’s eulogy to the left behind.

The final stop of the night, the easy one, is a nightclub no different from a million others all the world over, a hundred, two hundred young people blissed out on booze and sometimes pills, listening to the simplest distillation of the noise of the time, holding on to each other for fear that, should they let go, they’ll fall backwards and pitch long into the void of non-existence and irrelevance. I bid a good night to the group, for here I let them on their own and make my way off to whatever bar will still let me in, to drown out the rest of the night with five drinks too many.

Tonight though is different, as all tonights are. Jonathan stares listlessly over the crowd, at the blissed ecstasy of perfected group thought, at dozens of pretty women and handsome men, all clinging desperately to one another, and I see reflected in him myself before I stopped caring, when I still believed I could be a part of all this, I see it and I want to help him because the worst fate you can wish upon another is that they become you, for we all know our own shit is the worst.

I walk over to him and he stares listlessly at me, the look of a dead man.

“You don’t want to be here man, not now.” I tell him, not totally confident in that particular assertion.

“Where, then?”

“It’s a big world, plenty of options.”

“Most of them closed.”

“Says who?”

“I’m an American. We’re ill suited to movement.”

“I figured it out.”

“Did you?”

               

                Eventually I get him out of the club. The sticky, sweaty air was starting to creep up on me, threatening to suck me into the dancers like I still had a hope for that kind of thoughtless joy. The salty, spicy Moroccan air is a welcome contrast, signs of real life already beginning to stir in amongst the early morning - bakers and butchers and all the rest of the mechanisations of this place, seeping out of the woodwork in these few hours safe from the expat wastrels and lost tourists. In this life I see hope, the simple beauty of normal, routine existence, if not for me, then for Jonathan.

                Now, though, he just looks tired and dazed and a little drunk. Despite my best attempts to the contrary, I’m already feeling a little sober, and I really wish I wasn’t. I steer Jonathan down to the beach, hoping the lapping of the waves can offer him the same freedom and release as it offers me.

                In the night, with the backlight of the city, the sea looks black and endless, but it is onto that which we cannot see that we write hope. Jonathan takes his shoes off with a surprising amount of care, socks too, and walks out a few yards, until the water pushes and pulses at the bottom of his bermuda shorts. He stretches his arms out and the image of Christ is more than subtle.

                “I could just keep walking, you know?” He sounds happy as he says it.

                “You could. I did.”

                “And you didn’t drown?”

                “Every night, only to awaken the next day my hurts all the stronger.”

                “So what do you suggest I do, then?”

                “Go home. Back to your job, back to your life.”

                “What about her?”

                “What about you?”

                There he stands for hours, arms now at his sides, watching the sea, me on the sands behind him, trying to keep my eyes open, in the off chance I have to play Hasselhoff, or try to, rather. The sun stretches and yawns up slowly above the distant horizon, the sky illuminated in brilliant blood and orange and gold, light reflecting off the water with a glittering wit, and behind us the city languorously awakens, the sounds of people beginning another day in the endless saga of repetition, day in, day out, on and on, that which we call life. As I watch Jonathan, I consider I’ve had enough of Tangiers. I need another city, another promise of a life worth holding on to. Maybe Sao Paulo or Cape Town, somewhere far away, a new language, a new culture, new people and bars and restaurants, a new job, a new girl in a new nightclub. As my mind ponders life in Brazil, I hear the ringing of a phone. I check mine, and it’s silent. I look to Jonathan. He takes his phone out of his pocket, hesitantly, looks at the screen.

                “It’s her.”

                He lets his hand come to rest by his hip, turns his eyes back towards the sun, it now just over the line of the blue horizon, then, all at once, he raises his hand behind his head, twists his body, then, in a violent flash of movement, wrenches his arm forward, relaxing his grip as he does so.