Short Story: A Cup of Coffee

         This time I’m alone. It hasn’t been like that for ages. And although so many years have passed this place is still the same. The small couches look a bit older and the metal tables - a bit rusty and the big windows - a bit dirtier, but otherwise it’s all the same. Even Clarisse the waitress still works here. Man, she’s old! Maybe she and her many wrinkles make the only visible difference here and show obviously that some time has passed.

         I can’t quite recall the last time I came here, but I know for certain it was sixteen years ago. I sat at this same table with a cup of green tea in front of me looking at the pitch black eyes of my twin-brother. We were so alike even though his hair was longer than mine. He smiled less and thought more, he was the smart one, the one with bright future and big dreams and great expectations. And who was I? I was the disappointment. Our mother would always say, “Why can’t you more like your brother?”

         It’s funny she hasn’t said that lately.

         Back then we’d spend every Saturday morning in that cafeteria, him drinking black coffee and green tea for me. But I couldn’t know that day was the last time I’d ever see him.

         I remember the way he smiled on his way out. As if he knew what was about to happen. And he’d accepted that. He had moved on. To where?

         I still wonder.

         He left without saying goodbye. That smile was all I got.

         And then, just outside the cafeteria, while he was crossing the street he stopped and looked at me. I saw his face, and I first thought he’d forgotten something. But then he went all white, and his eyes were blind, and he was no more looking at me, for he was looking at air itself and trying to get some into his body. But couldn’t. I caught this particular moment when he realized he couldn’t do anything to help himself – he couldn’t scream; he couldn’t wave; he couldn’t even cross the street to get to its other end. He just stood there, in the middle, and cars were going by him without paying much attention to what was going on.

         I jumped on my feet. For a second I didn’t know should I run and try to help him, or should I just stay. For there was nothing I could do. And then I realized I couldn’t move either. For my soul had long left the cafeteria and had gone to him and had held him straight, helping him not to fall down and get hit by a car. But one soul cannot bare such a weight alone. And his was gone.

         It all happened very quickly afterwards – a sudden blink and a loss of control, of balance; a step aside and then falling; cool asphalt against the face and the smell of car fuel; darkness. A woman cried. A driver stopped in the middle of the street to prevent him from being run over. An ambulance was called.

         But it was too late. I knew it. I felt it. And all I could do was watch.

         He was sent into a hospital but I didn’t bother going there. The diagnosis did not interest me. I didn’t mind the reason; all that was important was the result. And the result was that my brother was gone.

         I left the cafeteria as a stranger. Everybody was the same, but then I wasn’t, so everyone seemed different to me.

         And I hadn’t come back here for sixteen years, for that was his… our age then. But it is time for a change… once every sixteen years. And as a beginning I’m going to drink a cup of coffee, for I’ve always hated coffee and loved tea.