Leaving the Comfort Cafe (16 page)

“It’s amazing,” Blythe said as she walked down the stone steps and toward the front.

“I always liked it here. It’s quiet. It’s beautiful. You feel like you’re whisked away to some Greek island where they have statues of the gods and goddesses they used to worship.”

“You know, the Greeks believed you couldn’t really act the part.” Blythe’s nimble feet jumped on to the apron of the stage. “That’s why they had masks. They believed you could only look like you were happy or sad, that you couldn’t actually act that.”

“Well, I guess people really haven’t changed that much,” he added.

“This is so amazing. I love it.” She smiled at Austin, who had taken a seat in the front row.

“Yeah. I took a class here. Acting for non-majors.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No. I took the class on a dare from Kerry.” It was the first time he was able to say her name without the vowels creating a sharp cinnamon sting on his tongue.

“No way. You are making this up. There is no way my clean-shaven, clean-cut, son-of-Mr.-Clean Austin ever dared go on stage. Not my Austin.”

He liked hearing her say my Austin.

“Seriously, though, I enjoyed it,” he said.

“Were you good?”

“I was terrible.”

She giggled and twirled around the stage. “Guess you were smart to keep your day job.”

“I remember one night, we were practicing for a performance at the Student Union, and it was the coldest night of the year. I didn’t have a car at the time, so I asked my roommate—the ever-endearing Luke—to pick me up.”

“Let me guess, he stood you up.”

“He had good intentions. He started driving over here when something with huge breasts distracted him, and he decided to offer her a ride instead. Meantime, it’s late, all the buildings are locked up and I’m freezing. Finally, some Goth gal on a motor bike comes up and offers me a ride.”

“A biker babe?”

“Well, more or less. Black lipstick and a pierced tongue.”

“How did you know about the tongue?” she asked.

“She showed me.”

“Sounds like your type.”

“Well, it was either freeze to death on the long walk to my dorm or hitch a ride with Miss Born-to-be-Wild.”

“Let me guess, you froze to death?”

Austin found himself gurgling one of those milk-through-the-nose-laughs that he hadn’t experienced since second grade. He jumped onstage, feeling somewhat intoxicated, though he had only one beer all evening. His thinning hair, widening girth and vacant ring finger mattered less. He no longer wanted to be an ancient Greek statue and to be mistaken for someone important. He was important, even if only to Blythe.

And that was enough.

His arms found the courage to wrap around her waist, and they moved in tune to an orchestra only they could hear. Austin started softly singing “Embraceable You.”

“You sing, too?” she asked.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Your singing sucks.” She smiled at him, as if it were an odd compliment.

“You know, they’re doing Othello in a couple of weeks. If you’d like, we could catch it some time.”

“I have a lot of friends who do community theatre, and it seems that something always goes wrong during a production of Othello. Out of all the plays in the world, the worst disasters seem to take place when Othello hits the spotlight. If I were a professional actress, I wouldn’t take a role in Othello if my life depended upon it.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have to perform. Just watch,” he said.

“Well, I guess that means I wouldn’t have to wear a Greek mask, then.”

“You’re very good at wearing masks.”

“Come again?”

“I saw the newspaper clippings in your living room.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up.”

“Then why did you leave them there for me to find?”

She started to turn away, but he gently placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.

“You didn’t like Cornell?” he asked. “Did you get suspended or something?”

“I wish it were that simple. Actually, I never went.”

Austin wanted to ask her why, but she needed a few moments time to gather her thoughts.

“I know, I know,” she continued without him having to ask the question. “I was the first one in my family to go for a four-year degree. And it was the Ivy League. When I first went to visit the campus, it was so dream-like I almost cried. There are these beautiful waterfalls and gorges, right on the campus. Despite this killer hill in the middle of campus, the architecture is amazing. Neoclassical, Gothic, Renaissance Revival…but I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.”

“Did you lose your scholarship?”

“No.”

“Did you get sick or something?”

“No.”

“So you just gave up on your dream?”

“I didn’t give up on my dream. I just woke up.”

“Why do you work at the Comfort Café?” he asked.

“Cornell has a vet school there—and an equine research center. I think they examined the way horses gallop or something like that. They have these giant treadmills for horses. Treadmills for horses. I never thought there was such a thing.”

“It was a real honor to be accepted there,” Austin said. He sensed Blythe was heading down some path she had desperately been trying to forget. He was afraid if he pushed her down that path he wouldn’t be able to pull her out.

“I got in lots of places. Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia. After a while, they just get to be names. Besides, if I went to Cornell, Mom would have complained about having to pay for plane tickets for me to come visit. Which is exactly why I would never have come home to visit. Too complicated.” She pursed her lips together as if she were blowing smoke from an imaginary cigarette.

Austin examined her silhouette in the moonlight. If he were a Greek statute, then she was a Greek goddess. “What would you have studied?” he asked.

“Does it matter? Literature. Definitely some photography classes. And definitely photographing horses. They’re so regal. Maybe I would have studied English. Maybe art. Just something pretty. I think I would have liked to have studied something pretty. Something where you could imagine scenes in your head.”

“College made me think I could change the world,” Austin said. “Then one day, I woke up, and I realized the world had changed me.”

“That’s the problem with dreams. You always wake up.”

“What caused you to wake up?”

“I had a falling out with my family. A bad one.”

“Tried to patch things up?”

“Oh they forgave me. So they say. They forgave me.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You know, Austin, I’ve learned that when it comes right down to it, none of us are going to win the Pulitzer Prize. We’re not going to be the NBA basketball star. We’re not even going to have the mythical house with the white picket fence. We have to realize that it’s okay to leave dishes in the sink and have a bad dye job and be late for work because you took an extra five minutes to enjoy your morning coffee. The Bible says we’re supposed to be princes. Children of the king. I feel more like a thief. Like I’ve got to suck everything from this world I can. People like to tell you there’s grace and forgiveness in the world. But all too soon, you realize it’s meant for everyone but you.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

“What? You hardly know me. You think you can wine me and dine me and expect to learn everything there is to know about me.”

“I don’t think I know anything about you,” he said. “But I do know you’re the woman who isn’t afraid to jiggle the electric tree lights with a pocketknife. I know you help the mayor treat everyone in town to dessert. I know you are one of the few people who makes me feel alive.”

She turned to him. “You sound like an old man.”

“I’m having my mid-life crisis early.”

Austin took a deep breath, leaned in and kissed her gently. Beneath his lips, he could feel her mouth curve into a smile as she responded, first with caution, then with relief.

When he pulled away, he felt he’d let go of some horrible burden he had been carrying his whole life. She looked at him as if she knew exactly what that burden was. But she was still carrying hers. And wasn’t ready to tell him about it.

He placed his arm around her shoulders as they walked off the stage and exited the amphitheater.

“Strange…” She looked over her shoulder at the moon-drenched stage. “Strange that I felt so at home on that stage.”

“No,” he said. “I think it’s quite appropriate.

The more Blythe trickled into his life, the more the Comfort Café became one of his regular hangouts. After he had sampled all the desserts of the restaurant, Blythe started to make him some of her own concoctions, including this decadent chocolate cake she simply called “Robert Redford.” Austin found strange inspiration in the rattling melody of the small town. He even practiced his elementary Spanish with some of the migrant workers. His second drawer sketchbook came alive with bold colors and superhero characters that were desperate to escape from the ordinary. He almost had enough material to start another graphic novel featuring his redheaded waitress heroine. He called her Shelley. He wasn’t ready for Blythe to see her artistic alter ego. He certainly wasn’t ready for the mayor to see his character—a manipulative mind-reader who disguised himself as a grandfatherly Southern patriarch of tradition and value, but in actuality was an evil marionette master who controlled the destinies of the ignorant and uninformed, causing them to do his bidding, even murdering his enemies.

Blythe’s melody still sustained him through the broken symphony of Conyers. During meetings with the mayor, Austin’s mind retreated to the moonlight serenade of Blythe’s lips, her curvaceous body and her refreshing quirkiness. It was a music that transformed Austin’s gray-flannel world. Having someone to share things with, even if it was as simple as a cup of coffee or a favorite song, made even the dull existence of small-town life spark with a kind of magic Austin never knew existed. Suddenly, everything was unique and special.

He had breakfast, lunch and dinner at the Comfort Café. Often, he even came by when he knew Blythe would be closing, and they’d finish off the last cup of coffee together in the empty restaurant. She never spoke about Cornell. Austin only got pieces of the story now and then. The puzzle was still unfinished, and he didn’t want to push her.

For some reason, he thought it was less scandalous for his truck to been seen outside of Blythe’s house than for her to be caught at his place. Maybe it was because her nosy neighbors and would be less likely to confront her, especially after the showdown with the cashier at the Mega Shoppe. On Saturday evenings when she got off work, they would go to her apartment and she would make him green tea with lemon and honey although he always told her he didn’t like honey. She always smiled and told him it was good for his allergies.

Austin usually kept his collection of classical music CDs hidden in his truck’s glove compartment, since the strains of Beethoven were sure to bring stares from the honky-tonk population of Conyers. But when Blythe mentioned her brother was a musician, Austin brought over his collection, and they played it on her old, yet functional, CD player, which Austin was sure was also the property of the Suffolk County Library at one time.

“What does your brother play?” he asked.

“Viola. He was in the Asheville Symphony’s production of The Nutcracker four years running. Of course, he’s quit that now.”

“What’s he do now?”

“Well, he’s dead. So that kind of limits the prospects.”

“I’m sorry. How did it happen?”

“What kind of question is that? It doesn’t matter. Some things just die away, and we can’t get them back.” She stretched across the couch, putting her head in his lap. “He quit the symphony and started playing some sensitive, silly new-age stuff in bars. Then he died.”

Austin intertwined his fingers through her hair, meeting resistance thanks to her 24-hour-superhold hairspray. She kept her hair that specialty shade of deep black she wore at the reunion. Austin liked to think she kept it that shade to remind her of their evening together. Blythe shifted her weight so her elbows were resting uncomfortably on Austin’s knee. He rubbed her shoulders and eventually her elbows released, and she let her fingers run down his legs to caress his calves. Things were always comfortable around Blythe.

“Did you used to play soccer?” she asked him.

“No. Why?”

“You have soccer-player legs.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means your calf is disproportionately larger than the rest of your leg.”

Austin had no idea what that meant, but he took it as a compliment. “I’m afraid I never had a knack for sports. I was one of the last kids to get picked in dodge ball.”

“Sports are overrated,” Blythe said, her voice rising. “I mean, who cares if a kid can’t swing a bat or throw a spit ball, or whatever? Kids can be so stupidly cruel at that age. Makes me want to slap one of them.”

Austin wasn’t sure where this aggression came from. He eased off rubbing her shoulders and let her settle comfortably with her head against his chest.

“Do you still have those newspaper articles?” he asked.

“What articles?”

“The ones about your getting a perfect score on the SAT.”

“Oh, those articles.” She groaned.

“What’s wrong? If I got a perfect score, I’d get a tattoo. What? Did you cheat or something?”

“Getting a perfect score on the SAT really isn’t that big a deal.”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “It’s a very big deal.”

“I mean, it doesn’t measure how smart you are. Half of it is just dumb luck. A good score doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smart.” She said it like she was reciting it from a textbook somewhere.

There was something about Blythe that was larger than the SATs, larger than the café, and even larger than Cornell. He leaned back and held her at arm’s length, as if he were a painter getting a good look at her complexion in the ambient light. He formed his words, deliberately, carefully, “Blythe, who hurt you?”

After all, she had to be hurt, didn’t she?