The Boulevard Cafe

“This reminds me of Puerto Vallarta.”, he said to the woman sitting across from him.
“The bustling traffic, the store signs in Spanish, all we need is some mariachi, a beach, and we’d be back there”

They were sitting at an outdoor table of a Cuban café in the Spanish section of town. The sweltering Mid-Western heat had broken and it was a glorious afternoon. The kind you wanted bottle up and break out on demand. It was a complete turnaround from the violent storms of the day before.

“Can I bring you something from the bar?” asked the waiter, “Perhaps an ice-cold Dos Equis or a margarita?”

He contemplated the decision for several seconds. It had been over a week since he had a drink, ever since the operation. In that time his mental clarity seemed to have sharpened, as if a whet stone was applied to the edges of his perceptions. Before that, he couldn’t remember the last day he had not had a drink. The first couple of days were hard as hell. The car wheel wanted to turn into the parking lot of the liquor store, almost out of its own accord. He had to grip the wheel hard with both hands, which were shaking, forcing it to stay straight. And then, a half block down they stopped shaking and the desire for a drink had passed.

“No thanks, just ice coffee.”
She looked at him, mildly surprised. “That’s not like you to pass up a drink.”
“It’s the post-operative antibiotics I’m taking. At least, that’s as good a reason as any.”

Two large cups of iced coffee were brought out, the waiter took their lunch order and left.

“It looks like your hair is starting to grey. I guess Father Time is starting to finally catch up with you.” She said.
“Actually, it started turning grey many years ago. I just quit coloring it recently.”
“That’s going to cut into your chances of scoring with the younger chicks, won’t it?” She asked with a hint of sarcasm.

He just smiled without answering. He hiked his leg up which had a think bandage wrapped around the knee onto the extra chair. He was a lean and well-muscled man with the tawny look of someone who worked out hard and long in the sun.

“How is the knee? Will you be able to compete again?”
“It depends on which doctor you ask. The first one I saw didn’t sound too optimistic. But the second one, the one who performed the surgery said that I might be as good as before in a few months.”
“That must be hard for you. I know that competing was everything to you.”

The prospect of not being able to compete again didn’t bother him as much as he thought it would. It was almost a relief. Like some intervening hand to let him know it was time for a change. He had even starting working with a young prospect, a beautiful Cherokee woman. He knew she had talent the second he saw her jogging on a track. She was tall and lean her muscles perfectly formed under her brown skin. She epitomized youth and vigor. Soon, he had her doing intervals and pushing herself hard. A few weeks later, she had won her first race, and he had shared in her exuberance. He felt more joy than if he had won the race himself.

“It’s nice to see you again”, he said.
She just gave a faint smile and then turned away lifting her face to the warm sun.
It had been two-months since their last break-up. She had a temper, this woman. But he always liked a woman with spirit. Being with her was like shooting the rapids, treacherous, but oh, so exciting. The last fight was about one of his “indiscretions”, even though, technically, they weren’t together at the time. But, just like that turbulent river, if you made a mistake, you paid the price.

He looked at her while reflecting on their past. She still looked good for a woman rounding the corner of forty, with youthful skin, a head of long thick reddish-brown hair and a tom-boy ruggedness about her. She could easily transition from the professional manager she now was, to the carefree hippy girl of her youth. Some of the best memories he ever had were experienced with this woman, and they started rushing by him…

He saw them together riding mountain bikes on the cobble-stoned streets of Puerto Vallarta in the old part of town, they dined on seviciy from a street-side vender, conversing casually with the locals then heading off into the Mexican countryside passing dogs sitting lazily in the middle of the road, up the dusty roads climbing higher and higher up into the green-covered mountains, reaching the misty peak and then rambling back down at break-neck speed, finally finishing off with a cool dip in a stream with large round river rocks and boulders. Later, they dined at a fine French restaurant on a terrace high over the town its beautiful bay spread before them. Large seabirds flew in disorganized flocks off in the distance. They toasted another red-gold sunset. Then they were walking along the boardwalk next to the beach taking turns swigging fine tequila straight from the bottle. They stopped and listened to the strains of a classical guitar strummed masterfully, the singer singing a sad Spanish love song. They found a lively bar, the band playing classic rock and roll but were soon thrown out for “dirty dancing” on the dance floor. Laughing, they headed back to their hotel room. Hand-in-hand t hey lay in their cabanas the next day watching group of young men, skillfully playing a game of soccer on the beach. His head hurt, but he smiled as he closed his eyes and again heard the crisp notes of the classical guitar from the night before.

And now, she was looking as if at something indistinguishable, off into the distance. He had seen the blank, empty look before and it never bode well. Stealing a line from a Rolling Stone song, she had what he called far-away eyes. She was the girl with the far-away eyes.

Still looking into the distance, she spoke. “During the storm yesterday I stepped out of my house and looked up into the sky and directly overhead was a cloud rotation. The warning sirens were blaring in all different directions. The rotation just stalled right there over my house for what seemed like an eternity. It looked like the water spinning around in the toilet bowel after you flush, only upside down and in the sky. Smaller, low-level clouds would pass by and then all of a sudden be sucked straight up through it like a vacuum cleaner. The center looked like an eye staring down at me. I just kept looking up at the spinning clouds, mesmerized. Then I started to wish that it would come down and take me. I wanted it to suck me up so that I could be with my Mother and Sister. I willed it to come down and then a funnel started to develop and curl down toward me. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped and retracted, and the rotating clouds moved off to the East. The sirens stopped and it got very dark. Lightening was flashing all around with deafening thunder. My neighbor touched my arm asking if I was all right and that snapped me out of my trance.”

He was quite a moment. Was she slipping into another depression?
“Have you been taking your Zoloft?”
“Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I forget if I’ve forgotten. Sometimes I don’t care.”

Again, a moment of silence, then she turned to him and looked directly into his eyes.
“Honey Buns, I don’t love you”
“What you feel for me doesn’t matter that much, it’s what I feel for you that counts”
“You don’t love me either. You are too much in love with yourself, all self-absorbed in your endless pursuit at beating men half your age, at bedding as many different women as you can”
“You think you know me so well, but you actually don’t know me at all”
“That’s because you’ve never let me in, never granted access to your inner thoughts. “That room was locked like a vault, like a padlocked diary.”

He knew exactly what she was talking about. Ever since he was a boy, he had kept his thoughts and emotions to himself. Over the years, he had built a wall around himself brick by brick until he a self-contained world. And it was a nice place, like a secret garden, protected from the outside world by the carefully constructed brick wall. Every once in a while he would let people in to sit with him and enjoy his garden, but, inevitably he would treat them like a visitor who had overstayed their welcome. Yes, it was a nice, but sometimes lonely world that he had made for himself.

“I don’t know why I get that way. I didn’t exactly have a ‘Leave it to Beaver’ childhood. There were so many of us jammed in that little house. Then, my dad started his drinking. He’d come in after bender and the shouting, fighting, and screaming would start. Being the youngest, I would go off and just shut it all out. I guess I’ve been shutting people out ever since.”
“I’m sorry you had a rough time, but that was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter now. Anyway, you never did love me.”
“Just because I didn’t say ‘I love you’ ten times a day doesn’t mean I didn’t. When I was with Yolanda I was required to say it all the time, ‘Good bye, I love you.’ ‘Hello, I love you.’, during lovemaking, ‘I love you’ had to be whispered in her ear. I hated being forced to say it all the time!”

She looked up into his eyes again, her face expressionless. “Just once would have been nice”

He didn’t have an answer.
He had retreated to his secluded world again. He heard her softly calling his name from the other side of the wall. He slowly walked to the wall and started to climb, struggling to get a finger hold in the mortar between the bricks. He was breathing hard now as he reached the top. He pulled himself up and stood precariously on the edge. The other side was nothing but water, a calm ocean glistening in the sunlight. She below, looking up at him, silently beckoning him to join her. Her fair skin and breasts were looking so inviting. She was slowly swimming away with long sweeping backstrokes. She was almost out of sight now in the reflection of the sun. He wanted to jump in and swim frantically after her. But he hesitated, ‘What if there are rocks just below the surface?’ ‘What if there is a stingray underneath waiting to stab him in the heart with his serrated barb on the end of his tail, the sharks lurking nearby to finish him off. She was completely out of sight now. He was going to lose her forever. He looked back down at the water. All the tension and fear left his body as he resigned himself to fate. He stepped off the edge and plunged into the waters below.

“Baby, I love you. I love you so much”

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Recovering from the injury I had a lot more time to do other things, like read. I've been reading some Hemingway so I thought I would experiment using his style.

Any resemblence of the characters to actual people or events is strictly coincedental. I realize that many of the elements need to be more fully developed to be a real short story. Think of it more like an abridged Reader's Digest version.