Rye Rolls and Sticky Buns

A bespectacled woman sat at her laptop in a yellow painted cafe. She was drinking milky coffee from a large blue mug and picking at a rye roll so densely packed with raisins that it had the consistency of cake. It was early morning, and all the tables in the cafe were taken. There was a line out the door.

A young man approached, "Is anyone sitting here?" He gestured to the chair opposite her, the last available one in the cafe.

She smiled, nodded her head and shifted her computer closer towards her to make room for him. He was sun-tanned, so much so that SPF 15 was almost needed just to be in the same room as him. His scruffy hair, streaked with blond, and his clothes, light and baggy, looked as if they could do with some cleaning. He placed his pecan sticky bun and mug of green tea on the table. The scents of tea and coffee mingled. She continued to type.

"Whatcha doing?" She briefly glanced over her computer and then continued typing

"I'm writing."

"Like, stuff for school? Stuff for work?"

"Stories for myself, actually."

"That's cool. What about?" She pushed the top of her laptop to about 45 degrees and took a loving gulp of coffee.

"I am writing a blog about break ups and old love affairs."

"Is it true stuff or fiction?"

"It's fiction"

"Sure its fiction."

"It is fiction."

"I have a story about a love affair. Want to hear it?" He took an enormous bite of the pecan bun. His cheeks swelled up with food. She shut the laptop and waited for him to swallow. The bite took many chews and three swallows. He had an unusually large adam's apple. When he opened his mouth, streams of saliva spun from his top teeth to the bottom ones and there was a pecan stuck onto his left canine tooth. He ran his tongue over his teeth and then began.

"When I was twelve, I fell in love with an eleven year old from down the street. She used to babysit for my younger brother and sister. She was flat chested and wore big pink plastic glasses. We watched Batman together. The old Batman, with Adam West and we'd joke about it. Sometimes we'd reenact scenes when she babysat. She'd be Robin, and I'd be Batman, and my siblings would be the baddies.

Once we went on a long walk in June alone together. It was upstate New York in the summer. It was too hot and humid to walk in the sun, so she took me into the woods behind the neighborhood. She led me past a dry waterfall, through a grove of maple trees to a dark damp mossy area near the stream. There were hundreds of boulders of different sizes all covered in this velvety vibrant green. We lay on the moss and stared up at small patches of blue sky through the densely packed canopy of the trees. We didn't talk much, but that was ok.

That was the summer the first Tim Burton Batman came out. I wanted her to come with me. So I walked over to her house and spoke to her mother. I asked if she could come with me to see the movie. Her mom said she would ask her. I walked back with a pounding heart, listening to the cicadas screaming but too excited to notice the mosquitos. I fell asleep that night itchy and wondering if I could hold her hand.

I never got any response. She stopped coming over to babysit. My mother told me she had gone away to camp. Towards the end of the summer I was mowing the lawn when she rode by on her bicycle. She was riding down to the circle at the end of the block, her t-shirt clung to her body. I knew she'd be coming back past my house again and positioned myself where our grass met the street. When she rode by she was so close I could smell her sweat. I stuck out my arm and pushed her. She flew over the handlebars and skidded onto her face.

I quickly pushed the lawnmower back up into the garage and went into the living room and started playing with my sister. Again my heart thumped and again I didn't hear any response.

On the first day of school, I got on the school bus knowing she'd get on at the next stop. She climbed on and half of her face was covered in purple scabs. She sat in the seat behind the bus drive and didn't turn around to look at anyone. Later that day I heard people calling her Scarface. I felt confused.

That November my family moved to West Virginia and I never said goodbye to her.

Of course, that isn't the end of the story, otherwise I wouldn't tell it. When I went to college I saw her at an Elliot Smith show in a basement in Boston. It was a couple of years before he died. She was sitting in the back, leaning against a much older guy. I was relieved to see her face had no scars. I went over to say hi. We exchanged numbers and I called and invited her out for coffee.

We met in a cafe on the top floor of a tall skyscraper. I liked it because it was full of lawyers and there was a great view; I usually went there to study. She drank coffee. She told me that the first time she had drunk coffee had been at my house. My mother had told her to start drinking it with lots of milk and sugar and she had. Now she preferred it black. At the end of the meeting I kissed her forehead and she squeezed me goodbye.

We started dating. We only spoke about my having pushed her off the bike once. We were drunk in a snowy alley. It was late, after some show. We were making a punk snowman, but we could barely see cause there was no streetlight. We found a soggy cigarette butt on the pavement and hung it from the snowman's mouth. She asked me if I had really pushed her and I said yes and that I was sorry. She laughed and said it didn't matter. I asked why she hadn't gone to the movie with me, and she said that when her mother had told her she had panicked and cried. She said she had been too young.

We broke up a few months later, but I don't want to talk about that. Wow. I haven't thought about any of that in years. You kind of look like her. That is my story of a love affair. Do you want to use it in your blog?"

"I liked your story, but you should be the one to write it down. I have to get to work now." By this time her blue mug was empty and all that remained of the roll was a solitary crumb. She put the computer back into her bag and got up to leave. She stopped next to him as she was leaving, and after pushing the hair from his face, kissed his forehead goodbye.