SoMa Literary Review

Absolution

By Peter Zottolo

She looked outside the window and her eyes squinted. The sun was shining strong and it reflected off the building windows and off the cars and off the sidewalk. Her etiolated skin was not accustomed, was never accustomed, to this, and she didn't like it. There was no escape. At least not today. But something told her to go and be out in the open despite her natural desire to remain in her familiar, comfortable surroundings, and so she left.

She put her sunglasses on, but they didn’t help any. After ten minutes she was feeling her flesh burn. Looking around for shelter she caught sight of a coffee shop she had seen before but had never visited. That looks cool, she thought, because the shop tried hard to resemble an Italian bistro and didn't do a bad job so she thought she might as well.

She went in and looked at the menu and ordered a cappuccino. The inside of the shop felt nice. She sat down at the window while she waited for her order and looked out and laughed at people.

A man came in and ordered a coffee, black. She didn’t notice him at first but turned around when she heard his voice because she liked the way it sounded. She quickly surveyed him in that way that most people do and found she was attracted to him. He was wearing black boots, black pants, a black shirt, a black trench coat, and a black beret. None of that seemed odd to her at all.

She couldn't see his face because he was still facing the counter but wasn't too interested anyway.

The woman at the counter finished making her cappuccino and set it on the counter. She didn't give the man his coffee yet, and he then realized there was another customer. He turned around and saw her at the window.

"Hi."

"Hi!" She said this heartily with her eyes wide and her mouth smiling but without really thinking. It was one of those automatic responses she blurted out of a habit she had formed years ago. She was looking at his face now and did not notice her cappuccino.

He picked up his coffee from the counter and walked over and put it down on the table where she was sitting. He then sat down across from her and looked squarely at her. This made her a bit uneasy and her face changed from looking interested and complaisant to interested and anxious. She waited for him to say something.

"I like you,” he said blankly.

"Really? Ha!” Now she was extremely disturbed and at the same time engrossed because this man that she had never met was being so forward and this is odd people don't act like this she was thinking but here was a very attractive man who knew exactly what he wanted and it was her and she was flattered and liked him too and she admired his gall but didn't want to admit it. So she said nothing. Instead she chuckled they way she did when she was nervous and leaned back and tilted her head languidly for show and looked away from his penetrating stare and caught sight of her cappuccino and thought about getting it but did not.

He then burst out laughing, and this unnerved her even more. She leaned back and surveyed him again, this time focusing on his face as if she missed something the first time but found nothing telling. After a while he slowed down and finally stopped and sighed heavily. He looked at her face and met her eyes. She was starting to feel exposed.

"You try very hard to conceal yourself, don't you?" He was looking at her very sharply now, the way that your mom or dad or best friend does when you're lying, and it gave her an involuntary blinking spasm for a few moments like it always did.

"Sorry?" She said quizzically, craning her neck forward. Then she sat back and forced a chortle, knowing it was a feeble attempt. "Ha! Okay, now, I don't know you," she said, trying to avoid his eyes, "but you're wierding me out. What is your deal, anyway?" She finally looked at him with her mouth open after saying the last word, not conscious enough to close it but instead concentrating on what the stranger was going to say next. She was not aware of this, but instead stood naked and unmasked and not hiding anything anymore.

"You need to be like me," he said.

"Ha!" Again with the nervous laugh. "How? Crazy?"

He smiled. "Yes. Do something crazy." He had said this slowly, looking at her eyes solidly and firmly and deliberately. She didn't like was he was saying because he made it sound like she was lacking in some way, and yet she could not ignore him, but looked at him again and continued to listen.

"Do something crazy and not care. Do something crazy that other people have done and you made fun of but secretly admired. Do something crazy that will change your life and widen your viewpoint and possibly pinch you just a little bit but will force you to grow and become enriched and a better person." And she was nodding while he was speaking and did not know it.

"Listen closely to what I will now say to you, to the beginning and end of every sentence, and you might get something out of it." And he did not smile sardonically or wryly or conceitedly. He kept the same penetrating gaze into her face, reading her like an open book, now that her cover was off. She noticed that the door was now shut and that there was no one in the store besides her and him. The coffee was untouched, black and hot, clear and dense, and there was the steam of freshness that carried the scent of a land far away to her nose. The notes to the song playing in the cafe floated softly but still liminally into her ears, and for a moment she was distracted. "I have run, I have crawled..."

"It’s a funny thing, you coming here now, to drink coffee and sit and stare and laugh and do whatever else it is you do," he began. "Time made it happen so that you would face that which you fear and hide, to have yourself filleted and open. To look behind at what made you what you are now and to look ahead at what you might be, your future self, your life to be, your.…” And he waved his right hand in the air, forward, toward the window.

"Leave the weak explanations, the bleaty complaints; uncover your eyes. This environment," and now he shifted his eyes from hers to the world around her, "is not where you want to be in, nor where you want to go to," he said, waving his arms demonstratively. "Well, yes, I’m still running..."

"Place yourself elsewhere, move to another area, do something daring, and you will find that those you mock and sneer at are infinitely more cool or hip or whatever you want to call it, and you know what?"

Now he got up out of his seat bent and over close to her face and talked in a low whisper and motioned toward the people outside the protective glass.

"All of them are seeing the exact same thing that I am, the exact same you." He stopped moving and stood upright, motionless and grave. "Ready or not, they know who you are."

With that he finished. Her eyes followed him as he made for the door, walking slowly and purposefully. Before he exited he looked at her and met her gaze. He smiled.

"Gotta go." And he was gone.

Still nodding, she turned to look at the place where he was just a moment ago, eyes dry from not blinking, at the coffee, which he had left and was still hot. She heard the door of the café slowly close and felt the vacuous hole of what had just been gorged out of her, so raw and piercing and torturous, and then she felt wind. She felt the breeze of the outside world come inside with all its wonderful smells and memories and laughter and it touched her wan skin underneath the sleeves of her shirt, and it felt nice. She then turned toward the window and gazed at all the world, at the enthusiasm and curiousness and sometimes risk but always variety, and then noticed, for the first time, that she could see herself in the glass. "You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains..."

"Yes," she said softly to the man, "I do, too."

Peter experienced firsthand the boom and bust of SoMa's tech bubble. Apparently that wasn't enough drama. Now he's off to Italy to teach English!