I Made a Friend

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I made a friend.

It feels a sad thing to admit now that I’ve written it down, but the fact is that I’ve usually struggled whenever meeting someone new.
I should say that I’m not a total basket case, despite my rambling ruining the argument; It’s just that words are hard, they’re a tangle of lagging thoughts that you’ve already begun to trip over when you start and then when you’re finished they’ve been wrapped with a pang of regret wound twice over. I’m bad at words, speaking them.

I work in a coffee shop, strange, but conversations there are easy. No one asks, ‘how are you?’ and means it enough to want a reply; even if they do, all I say, ‘hello, sure, thank-you,’ and they go away.
I mean, occasionally a polite person asks something about the weather or a football-thing, and I forge ahead with years of failed small talk to support me. It’s when they actually ask something requiring a concerted thought that I freeze. What can I do? An entire dictionary of words to pick from and the only thing that ever forms is the ability to stutter.

So yeah, I made a friend.

It was a quiet day in the shop and the aimlessness of pushing a half-damp dishcloth over the counter had begun to lose its sense of achievement. The regulars had come and gone, and the afternoon was waning just enough that there wasn’t much chance of someone wanting a coffee.
Three poets in the corner chatted away, each too poor to be anywhere else, and looked to be nearing a point in their afternoon where the looping arguments of gallimaufry had reached a mark where they could be picked up tomorrow. Sensing it was time to close, I began to look at what stock needed refreshing before the morning: the muffin tray looked sad, it always looked sad.

There was something harsh about afternoons in the shop. The bright afternoon sun was beaten into a glare that overwhelmed the limited output of our three incandescent globes and made the foggy light that came out from the drinks fridge seem limpid. The dark recesses of every corner became illuminated, and dust had nowhere to hide.  
It wasn’t dingy though, the coffee shop where I worked. It was a simple four-brick & walled nook that had a few tables scattered about and a wooden floor that gave the impression there was a basement underneath. I had always thought that it looked to be more like an apartment than a shop, it felt like a warm place without the burden of effort put into its presentation.
It’s like it had always existed and would continue to do so after I leave.

If I ever leave.    

Even the green door that served as the entrance was typical of a building that had always existed. It needed painting though, cracked leaves of winding flake that clung on for the sake of stubbornness as a patch had been polished bare by the people who pushed against the door, electing to not use the doorhandle. It suddenly struck me as strange why the door was hinged to open toward the street outside. Hands full, how many people had bumbled their way out from the shop using only a free elbow? How often had a cyclist become unseated by a bystander laden with coffee?     

I don’t really recall the other side of the door, four years I had worked here, and I still couldn’t identify the shop front? Usually entering through the alley behind, I’d lost count of how many times that I had walked along the street and failed to notice what shop it was that I actually worked in; we were called Monty’s? Montegut’s? 

In dreaming thought I was to be surprised by the ring of a small bell that would usually announce the arrival of a customer: them usually thinking that the shop was a bar or minimalist bookshop at this hour.
I smiled at the person and they smiled back with the wide eyes of a snake charmer, a visible energy of wanting to reach up and throw their face at me if it were possible. I felt myself withdraw.

They were pretty–in an intense kind of way–with a vast mop of curled hair that looked untamed by brush or by worry. Striding to the counter I heard the quiet pad of unshod feet.
‘Hello friend,’ they accused at me, almost leaping over the counter, and shaking my hand with barely restrained enthusiasm, ‘what’s the good word of his day that we have been so graced by?’
I was thrown by this coil of positive projection had suddenly exploded into my quite hour of rumination. I couldn’t speak, even the regular fall back of, ‘can I help you,’ was stolen, leaving me to a strangled, ‘Gah-elcome’

‘You look like a person who knows about the light of one thousand faces,’ the person spoke at me, unconcerned that I had taken several steps back as they leaned over the counter and threatened to consume me with their personality alone.
‘A powerless creature, like all of us, who would revel in the chance to be destroyed by the light that cannot be withstood!’ Drawing the reality of space toward themselves I could not help but feel as if the room were growing smaller, that my existence was compressing.

‘The who?’ I managed to stammer, knowing that this was the invitation into an inescapable monologue that began with the phrase, alternative worship of destructive forces…
I knew that Marla would talk about this kind of thing sometimes, she was a mopey sort that ordered coffee as black as possible and usually looked to be seconds away from being caught in a rainstorm, but this person was different. They had an aura about them that felt like a pair of idle hands standing next to a gas main with a lighter.

‘Oh silly,’ they laughed while holding my gaze for entirely too long, ‘that above us which scorches the land and burns through the lies of darkness. Surely you’ve heard of them!?’
Rolling their fingers across the countertop in staccato I noticed how muddy their hands were, their rumpled linen shirt and sensible jeans likewise flecked with dried pieces of dirt, not dirty but engrained with dirt all the same. I was struck by the thought that they were a kind of gardener despite having no evidence for this to be fact.  
Realising that they were still talking, my attention returned with horrific vividity.

‘And the vile were driven into ash.’ they clapped their palm against the counter and twisted it to the side so an imaginary ill-doer was further crushed.
‘But leader Nyall knows more about these things, you’ll love the leader when you meet him next week.’

Entranced by their ever-widening eyes, the last part of their sentence found its way through the fog and I managed to glimmer its meaning.
‘Meet?’ I stammered, trying to reel back and remember if I had just agreed to anything.

Clapping, the buoyancy of the customer’s plastic friendliness seemed to double as they smiled wider than an imaginary a snake might if it had a mouth of teeth.
‘Oh you must,’ they said with a strange inflection on the word must, ‘He is so wise and the festival of the sun is on Tuesday. Oh! Tuesday, you’ll visit the commune on Tuesday. The joy of one million candles will burn my heart if you attend.’
The sentence was difficult to entangle, did they just say burn in/at my heart, or was it burn my heart?
I nodded dumbly and managed to curse myself with a should be good.

I’m not good with people or new situations, a rather pretty person barging into my work, rambling about evil and then inviting me to their commune is an occurrence that I could never be prepared for. My only response seemed to be to lay down and let the tide take me. I wasn’t sad, something about the cordial nature of this person felt friendly in a friend-like way. Had I just made a friend?

Gulping, I saw that they were waiting for a response.
‘Um-I love hiking, that sounds gratastic,’ I said merging the words great and fantastic as I was too terrified to decide which seemed more normal.            

‘You’ll be perfect!’ They smiled at me with that vacant kind of happiness again that you don’t often see from people who frequent coffee shops, ‘I’ll see you at the maypole hidden within Balendup forest then. We’re starting on Tuesday, so bring a knife and some good running shoes.’

As they turned to leave, they paused for a moment and looked to the roof. Standing bolt still, my new friend looked almost torn between having already said good-bye and a need to say one final thing; I knew that look well.  
‘Don’t worry if you can’t find the maypole though, we always go looking for anyone who hasn’t arrived. Be seeing you, or…be finding you. Bye!’

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J. McCray
2022