THE COZY CORNER

THE COZY CORNER

There are two coffee shops in town.  One is called The Cup and Saucer and the other The Cozy Corner.  The one is a bright, cheery, well lighted place of generous proportions, where good looking middle-class ladies sport their fashions and nothing much happens to challenge its gabby visitors; the other, lacking the large windows of the first that front the street and admit full sunlight in the day and the bright halogen whiteness of the street lamp at night, is dim and deeply shadowed and downright gloomy.  These places appeal to a clientele as different as their interiors—the socially gregarious, the chess-playing competitors, the conversationalists, and the music lovers—rosy cheeked practicioners of daily exercise and haters of tobacco—all frequent the first of these establishments; the secretive, heart-hurt, furtive, and loner types, relishing the shadowed illicitness of their smoke-enshrouded tables, frequent the second.  The one place is the Perkins facsimile of coffee houses, the other the reality; the one the Barnes and Knoble supermart—where the Sweet-‘n’-Low set stir and taste the epiphenomenal airy foam of modern life; the other the cluttered musty-dusty 2^nd Avenue trade-and-buy bookstore.  But all agree who know the profounder comforts of The Cozy Corner that it smells the best.  Every cup freshly brewed invades the Corner’s dusky atmosphere and fills the crabbed spaces with a fragrance that makes its throbbing couples, its seated plotters, and newspaper- or book-reading isolatoes, leaning into the small lamps that cast their concentrated sheen over their tables, inwardly sigh, and gladdens their hearts. 

     There is something to be said for contrasts.  They stimulate our imaginations and provoke our buried parts to blink from their graves. Contrasts subdued advance the cause of civilization; who can doubt it?  But contrasts vividly pronounced and evocative, especially of the spiritual side of our long-evolved psyches, can be powerfully disruptive of the complacent proprieties of civilized life. 

Such contrasts abound in The Cozy Corner—nothing there of the equalizing effects of bright light, where the scrutinizing social eye represses our individuality and locks us up inside ourselves.  Ours is a time of bright lights and scrutinizing eyes—the peering T.V. camera overlooks the busy intersections of our lives, records our faces at ATM machines, and secretly observes us from a thousand corners we barely think about.  We are herded into our restaurants and town halls, our shopping malls and senate chambers, scintillatingly illuminated by artfully generated photons cascading from our ceilings.  We shouldn’t wonder that, in this pervasively peering world of ours, we breed so many rebels—the anti-establishment types of both left and right.         

The Cozy Corner’s drifting shags of bluish smoke and obscuring darkness, by contrast, soothingly lap at the complicated psyches of its small-town denizens, among whom, not so long ago, was one who spent a comfortable evening there two or three nights a week reading a book.  He was a four-eyed stutterer in his late twenties, pale and balding, thin almost to railness, who had a heart as great and pounding as any Achilles on the battlefield.

Mention should be made, also, before we peer uninvited into the heart of this young man, that those who frequent the coffee shops, specifically The Cozy Corner, in the later hours of the evening are a different species of mankind than the frequenters of those other late-night establishments, the Cactus Bars and the Longhorns, the Karaoke-squeeling Jackpots, where tyros of all sorts vie for a moment’s glory center stage and make a rollicking bunch of fools of themselves and their drunken auditors. The Cozy Corner types differ in kind, as well, from the well-healed yuppie class who frolic at the Depot, where meals and pitchers and shapely legs and fifty-dollar bills circulate like the miniature smoke-chugging engine pulling a veritable Burlington Railroad round and round the outer walls, passing on its way handmade replicas of those red brick, steep-gabled buildings that sprang up along the tracks from Chicago and St. Louis to the Rockies.

They who spend the hours of nightplay stubbornly forlorn and alone, or in whispering pairs or triplets, smoking and sipping their dark, unsweetened brew in The Cozy Corner are thinkers, sympathizers, and imaginers; plotters all who, in other times, might have been our Spinozas and Hart Cranes, our visionary Trotskys and Lenins, or our disreputable Francois Villons, recording with stubby pencil on the backs of envelops and on scraps of napkin this our age’s Testament for all tomorrow’s truth-seekers.  They are those souls for whom society at large has no place and, transfixed by the global buzz before its glowing monitors, conceives itself as having no need, and thus ignores, as though they were all in exile in some foreign land—which is, in fact, not far from the truth, for The Cozy Corner is as foreign a place to the typical man on the streets as a teahouse on the banks of the Yangtze River.

On the night in question, our young man, sitting alone in a favorite corner, was sipping his espresso and, leaning into the small hooded lamp that sat upon his table, was reading a thick volume of close-printed pages—was it Dostoevsky this night? or Balzac? or Being and Time?—it was impossible to tell.  He was, however, absorbed.  So much absorbed that for a long time he had not noticed who had taken the table next to his.  This person was a diminuative woman, as thin as our young man, and younger than him by some five years.  She had taken her table in silence and in silence stared at the top of it.  The lamp there was turned off when she sat, and so she continued, preferring anonymity.  Her hair was wirey and short, and it was uncombed, so that she had, had anyone concentrated a gaze in her direction, a look of mild madness about her.  She wore a black raincoat and black shoes.  In the dimness of her corner, she seemed more a felt presence than a visible one.

Now, in The Cozy Corner, such anonymity was profoundly respected, so much so, that the owner, who worked the place alone, dared not approach a table unless called by a wave or a glance and nod.  Standing amid his burnished machines and glinting urns in the center of the little room, he cast his eyes upon his new patron unobtrusively now and then, waiting for a sign she was ready to order.  But no sign was forthcoming.  After a decent interval allowed and not recognizing her as one of his regulars, he approached, suspecting she was unfamiliar with the ways of his establishment.

“Would you like to order, miss?” he said gently, barely above a whisper.

It was then our young man turned his attention from his book to the room at large, taking in the proprietor and the woman.  Expecting her to respond, he paused till she had ordered before returning to his page.  But the woman sat staring at the table, unresponsive.  Her passivity suddenly became a thing of interest to him.  The proprietor asked again, and getting no response returned to his station at the center of the room.  Our young man continued to examine his neighbor, and it was clear she felt his eyes, for she wrapped her arms around herself and sank into her coat.  She had a look of inexpressable sadness, then, a look which provoked our young man’s interest even further.  He could not return to his book.

In the bright light of day we cross paths with hundreds of strangers every day, never caring what is taking place in their hearts, or who among them are decent folk and who would freeze our own hearts if we only knew their stories.  The strangers we pass smile and acknowledge us, some say their hellos as they pass us by, or they stare ahead stonily, unresponsive, wrapped in their own thoughts, pacing quickly to some appointment or to complete some errand, or they wander aimlessly on the sidewalks for fear of being alone, always distant whoever they are, but in the repressive public eye, observant of the customs by which we establish our right to be amid the jarring masses.

The anonymity of The Cozy Corner, resting as it does upon the principle that each of us is a thinking being entitled to his or her solitude, is quite a different thing from the anonymity of the streets.  There is first and foremost among its patrons the assumption of each other’s personhood.  Thus, our young man, sensing desperation in the young woman, and the probabilty that here was one in pain in need of some balm, rose from his isolation and sat across from her.

She lifted her eyes and looked at him before he spoke, and in those eyes he thought he saw a bottomless misery.  His words caught in his throat and refused to be uttered.  It was she who spoke first.

“Do you know the story of Abraham and Isaac?” she whispered, looking into his eyes.

“Y-Y-Yes,” he responded with his usual difficulty, halting, waiting for her to explain, looking back into those wells of misery and getting lost in them, in the sheer mystery of them.

“That’s the story of a father who was gonna kill his son because of a dream, not for any hard and fast reason, I mean, like, somebody holdin’ a gun on him and forcin’ him.”

“It w-was an-n angel, n-not a d-dream.”

     “What’s that, an angel?” she responded, her eyes widening as the young man struggled to speak.     

     “Ain’t nothin’ but a dream.  You ever see an Angel?” she threw at him, assuming an air of knowingness.

     “N-No,” he said, “n-n-never d-dreamed one, either.”

     “Anyway, it’s not Abraham I’m talking about.  It’s Isaac’s old mother.  She let him, the old man, take their son.  She just let him take the boy away, up that mountain.  What d’you think about her?  She didn’t see no angel.  What    d’you think about her?”

“I d-d-don’t n-n-know, I n-never th-th-thought ab-bout it.”  He was getting excited, or roused, by her questioning, and his stammering was impairing his conversation.  The more he tried to control it, the worse it got. 

“Th-the p-p-patriarch d-d-didn’t t-t-tell-t-tell her…”

“Oh, bull!  You think that ol’ beard’d go off and not tell his ol’lady where he was goin’?  If he did it would be worse, would make it all the worse,” she said.  Her eyes were moist and she looked the very stuff and soul of misery.

“W-Why?  Why do you ask?”

“Think of her, an’ see what I mean.  She had that boy in her belly, she felt him swim ‘round in there, kick and struggle, an’ all that.  Then she birthed him.  And after that she held him to her breast.  She rocked him.  She looked down at him and he looked up at her, rollin’ his eyes up in his head, like babies do when they’re suckin’.  Then Abraham, he come along and says what he’s gonna do.  And he does it, he takes that boy away and goes up that mountain.”

“B-But m-m-mayb-be he d-d-doesn-n’t s-s-say,” he struggled to get out his counter version, the version he knew from his own reading, but the more he wanted to correct her story, the harder it was for him to speak.  She endured his strain, waiting patiently, the liquidness of her eyes drying in the meantime and a certain look of compassion rounding them as she looked across the table at him.

“He d-doesn’t k-k-kill his-s-son.  He c-comes b-back with him, r-remember?  Isn’t th-that – h-how th-the s-story goes?”  He was trying to reassure her, to set up what he thought she was missing in the idea of the story.  The last words came more easily, and he began to relax, and as the tension lessened in his forehead and jaw, the words flowed more freely, though still not without the jerkingness of stammer.

“Oh, shi-it!” she ejaculated angrily,  “That’s not my meanin’.  That’s not what I’m tryin’ to tell you.  I’m tellin’ you about that woman!  The old woman who had only the one child.  Did she know why the old man took the boy up that mountain?  Damn right she did.  The story don’t tell nothin’ ‘bout her.  But don’t you think she knew, when she saw them trekkin’ through the scrub to that mountain, kickin’ up the dust, gettin’ smaller and smaller?  And she didn’t take a log to that old man’s head when she had a chance?  She just sat in that there tent and watched him take her beautiful little boy?  What d’you think about her?”

Her voice was agitated and her face began to shine, as though she had a fever.  She turned those eyes on him accusingly now, though they never lost the look of misery.  He wondered what possessed her, for, clearly, she was grieved and this story figured in some way in that grief.  Perhaps she saw something of herself in old Sarah, or perhaps it was her own mother that she saw in that story.  He wanted her to talk, to get it all out.  But she would say no more.  She sank back into her coat, and her eyes once more filled with wetness and that look of misery.  He asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee, and she shook her head.  Then, after a while, he asked her if she was hungry, and again she shook her head.  So, he sat there, looking across the table at her as she seemed to fall asleep, pondering the passion with which she talked about the biblical story—two people, as distant from each other as the earth and moon, and as silent.

The dim familiarity and coziness of the shop began to drift into strangeness, and he felt queerly and confusedly a pang of alien hurts; he couldn’t comprehend the mystery of her.  But his heart reached out to the misery he saw in the eyes of so fragile a woman now sunken in her seat.  He thought what to do or what to say, but nothing came to him.  He looked at the table where he had been sitting when she came in and at the book, face down on the table, opened to the place where he had left off reading, and at his half-finished espresso, and at the empty chair, and all these provoked in him a feeling of his own absence.

The question didn’t pose itself in words so much as a feeling, “Where am I?”  The eyes of the woman rose to meet his and in them was a look of recognition, as though the question had been put and she was about to answer.  She leaned forward then and touched his hand.

“Nothin’s gonna bring back the dead,” she said.  “You just gotta get over it.”

And without stammering, he said, “I don’t understand.”

With her hand on his she looked at him, her eyes almost global with misery.

“I thought you did.  From the way you looked, I thought you did.”

“Who’s dead?” he asked. “Did you lose a baby?”

She paused a long time looking at him, her hand resting on his.  Her face had grown ashen while she sat, and now her voice came weakly. 

”Ain’t none o’ my troubles yours.”

She rested back into her chair again.  Then she raised her hurt eyes.

“I come here just to get a place to sit.  Like you,” she looked towards his table. 

“Do you need money?” he asked, ready to help her out that way if she needed it.

“No,” she replied with a smile, the first he had seen since he began talking with her.

“It won’t be long now.  I won’t need money nor nothin’ else then.”

He thought long about what she had just said, looking at her in silence and finally growing alarmed at what he understood.

“Don’t,” she said, trying to sit up straight.  “Not if you got any mercy.  Just sit with me a while longer.”

She nested back into the chair.

“I don’t believe in nothin’,” she said, speaking into her lap.  “There’s no fairness in the folks I know, in the folks I don’t know, too, though I don’t know them and shouldn’t say it.  But it’s true, anyway.  What’s to believe?  Either we get our way or we don’t.  That’s what people want.  Them that don’t don’t.  So what?  We all end up the same.  That’s what I think.”

Her head was rolling from side to side as she spoke the last words and her eyes were closed.  Her breathing now began to come in short quick gasps.  She gulped in air and tried to talk again, but the words only half came out.

  “What he did to. . .my baby. . .first one. . .I was twelve . . .put it in the incinerator. . .after. . .you shouldn’t know these things. . .hellfire. . .I don’t believe. . .no. . .don’t.”

She trailed off into silence and he looked at her, dumbly, as though uncomprehending. 

“Who?  Who did that to your baby?”  Her face had gone white.  He reached across the table to touch her.

She was sunk into her coat and slouched, so that her slender shoulders sloped on both sides towards the floor.  Her chin sat on her chest.  He got up, went around the table and sat beside her, putting his arm around her shoulders and hugging her to him tightly.  She moaned and uttered something unintelligible.  He put his mouth to her ear and whispered a few words, whereupon she opened her eyes and turned her face towards him.  But she was too far gone.  He leaned her forwards onto the table, so that she looked asleep there, and he thought what he should do.  He patted and rubbed her back and sat beside her.  Finally, he leaned back into his chair, breathed deeply, and moaned for both of them a long drawn shameless moan of a moan, and then he closed his eyes.

Darkness enfolded them, the shadow and the man—a darkness punctuated by the little domes that sofly lit the cheeks and eyes of the whisperers about.  No one upped from their tables to see what grief was afoot as that sunken sound came pouring from the corner.  The Cozy Corner held them all.  It was a place accustomed to moaning, though it was not unaccustomed to laughter, to, sometimes—even—the strange bitter laughter of men and women who, having nothing to lose, laugh the heart’s own relief to the utter bursting of the soul.