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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone / prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone
Darren stamps the snow off his boots and brushes it from his shoulders before he pulls the door to the café open. Jingle bells chime merrily and warm air blasts him in the face, making his frozen nose and cheeks tingle. He’d been walking outside for a while before deciding to stop for something warm and delicious; he hadn’t realized how cold he’d gotten, despite his heavy layers. His lips twitch at the familiar scent coffee and sugar and low burning candles. The heat of the café slips under his clothes even as the door closes behind him, cutting off the flow of wintry air from outside.
It’s still early in the morning and there aren’t too many people there yet. The girl behind the counter nods at him and Darren lifts a gloved hand in quiet response. A man he thinks he should remember from years ago is sitting a table with a laptop and a half-eaten scone. He doesn’t look up and Darren is glad. He doesn’t want to talk today. He doesn’t want to fake anything. Darren winds through the café and snags an old, familiar table in the back near a window, where he can see everyone inside and watch them pass by outside.
Darren tugs his snow-wet gloves and beanie off, hanging them over another chair to dry. Unzipping his jacket, Darren pulls a book out from where he’d tucked it against his chest, not wanting the pages to get damp. His cell phone is in his pocket and he pulls that out too, but only to turn it off. He’s a got a few texts, a handful of emails, and a couple missed calls. He blinks slowly as the screen goes black and puts the phone away.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / bring out the coffin, let the mourners come
There’s only one other person in line when Darren gets to the counter and he spends the short wait staring blankly at the pastry case. Nothing has changed in the café since Darren first pushed through the front door, seeking refuge from the biting Midwest winter in the cozy warmth of the shop. The tables and chairs are mismatched and the walls are covered in pieces for sale by local artists. The only real difference from the last time Darren was here are the festive decorations hanging in the windows and along the counter. A sweet little tree is set up at the end of the counter and Darren can smell the fresh pine.
An old, beat up piano sits in the corner of the café and that hasn’t changed either. Darren’s fingers remember the worn, smooth keys and his feet remember the way the pedals always stuck when the weather got cold.
Darren doesn’t hear the front door open, but he feels the rush of cold air against his legs and the way it curls like dead fingers around the back of his neck. He shudders. A little kid breaks free of his dad’s hand and runs straight over to the piano, pressing his fat hands down hard on the keys. Discordant notes ring out, just left of a major chord, and Darren’s eyes close.
Memory shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t make him sway on his feet to the remnants of a rhythm he’s tried so hard to forget. When Darren was little, his mom told him that the memories of his life would fill him up, like water in a glass. She never said anything about the way they could also make him feel hollowed out and empty, carved down to his backbone. She never said anything about the way he would feel like a vacant coffin, waiting for the heavy weight of a body that would never lay to rest.
The father pulls his kid back in line with a gentle reprimand to not touch things that aren’t his without asking. The kid is grinning brightly from beneath a wool hat and babbling to his father about the piano. With a few random keys he may have sparked something in himself that will never die. Darren’s fingers twitch against his thigh.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead / Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead
Darren is on his second cup of hot cocoa and halfway through a cheese Danish, but only a few chapters into the book he’d brought with him. He’s been sitting long enough, still enough, that his legs are getting restless.
It had been an impulse to pull it off the shelf at the library. He’d been drawn by the thick, intricate cover and the way it felt under his fingertips when he’d touched the spine. Heavy, solid, real. A book of old fairytales hadn’t been his intention for a day of quiet reading, but suddenly it had become the only choice along the rows and rows of shelves.
But he can’t focus on the words. It’s not like he doesn’t know the tales, he does. He knows them better than most. But the minutes tick by and the ink blurs in front of his eyes and he’s turning pages without taking in a single word.
It doesn’t matter how many times he reads them, the stories always go the same. A princess pricks her finger every time. The hungry witch is burned to death. A little boy is turned to stew. The world is dark and full of creatures that can’t be kept back by hope and twinkling Christmas lights, Darren knows.
Once, there was a different kind of fairytale. Once. But that story ended too.
The jingle bells on the door chime as someone comes or goes and Darren flips back to the beginning of the book.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves / Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves
The café fills as the dreary afternoon wears on. Men and women, couples and families, come in from the cold, drawn in by the warm light glowing from the windows and the promise of steaming drinks for shivering bodies. The chance to rest their boot-laden feet and dry their coats on the backs of chairs is just a bonus.
Someone passes by close to Darren, a black blur of a winter jacket, but Darren pays no mind until they clear their throat, drawing his attention.
Darren looks up from his book and his Panini to see a broad-shouldered man with an upturned nose holding out a pair of gloves – Darren’s gloves. They must have fallen to the floor at some point.
And it doesn’t matter how dissimilar the man’s features are overall. The one thing – the one touch of same, of him – is enough. Darren swallows around a thousand words and thanks the man with two.
Outside, the snow is piling up on the sidewalks and it swirls past the windows in complicated patterns. Darren’s lunch grows cold at his elbow.
He was my North, my South, my East and my West / my working week and my Sunday rest
And suddenly he is everywhere.
In the girl with the ice blue eyes trying to get the attention of another girl with purple-streaked hair. He is in the boy behind the counter with a dimple in his chin. He lives in the narrow hips of the person passing the window with a hat pulled low over their face to protect from the snow. He is hidden the cadence of the speech from an older gentleman bundled up tight in a long pea coat and a jaunty cap a few tables away. Darren doesn’t want to eavesdrop, but he can’t help it. The rhythm of the man’s voice is already in his blood.
Darren’s life has been made of the pieces of him for so long now he hardly remembers who he was before. Sometimes he can feel the old him, when the weather is cold and there’s wood smoke in the air. It rises to the surface when he walks the streets of New York in the fall when the leaves are beginning the change and a million people bustle past without a single glance in his direction. The remnants of the life he once had bubble up when the music is low and the lights are too and the chatter of old friends leads him through the winding pathways of fading memories.
And somehow he is even there too.
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; / I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong.
Love does last. But it ebbs and flows. And sometimes the tide of it rises up too fast and surges and pulls him under and why? It’s just a guy wearing a scarf. That’s all. He doesn’t look familiar; none of his features tug at Darren’s gut. The fabric isn’t pulled from memory either. But the easy way the man wrap the scarf around his throat, letting the ends rest against his leather jacket instead of tucking them in; the way the edges flutter gently, as though caught in a breeze while they slip through the streets of London has the tide grasping at Darren’s ankles and pulling him down and he can’t even breathe for fear of drawing saltwater too deep into his lungs.
The man leaves the café in a swirl of winter air and Darren can breathe again. His lungs burn anyway. There is no ocean, no tide. Only a café and a man with a scarf walking away.
And love does last.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; / Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Sometimes he thinks about up and leaving. Selling his house and getting the hell out, getting as far away as he can.
He makes it to Michigan.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood / for nothing now can ever come to any good
It’s grown dark and Darren knows the café is getting ready to close up for the night. He closes the book, not bothering to mark his place even though he hasn’t finished it. He’ll take it back to the library tomorrow anyway. They’re just old stories, after all.
He stands from the table and tugs his jacket on. The soft inside is pleasantly warmed and he revels in the heat that seeps into him. His beanie is dry too and he tugs it on. He’s got a long walk back and the snow has never stopped falling. Around him, a few other patrons are slowly gathering up their belongings, bussing their dishes back to the counter, and getting ready to venture back out into the evening cold.
Darren is pulling on his gloves when a figure passes by on the sidewalk, shadowed and hunched against the wind. The man looks inside, face highlighted by the light of the café pouring through the window, and Darren freezes. The tide is at this throat and rising.
Love does last.
The bell above the door jingles as the clock ticks to closed.