by Ciaran Hodgers

In this shopping centre café burnt coffee fumigates the air as ghosts of steam race for the roof, dissipating in their sport. Maroon pinstripes and cream name tags shuffle behind counters, rooting for sweet pastries. One finds a crumbling gingerbread man; his icing smile makes him look like a cartoon my mother once put on our fridge. My table shows a drunken reflection in the polish, a forehead washed with the cloths easy brush stroke. I grab my leather satchel from my side and throw it onto the seat next to me, preparing my makeshift workplace as I wait for my order. The pen has found its way to a hidden recess of this bag and I shuffle to find it behind the notebook. A sturdy child of mine, this book plays host to jotted ideas and half used metaphors like orphaned little words. My pen stays quietly in its sheath, tapping away at the edge of the table. It is aware of what beasts lay within the pages: beasts in the form of characters that are, by fault, ill formed. They need restructuring, they need electricity. They need Dr. Frankenstein for crying out loud! 

 

I watch as an assistant, possibly foreign, makes a coffee. Her eyes have a slightly eastern European slat, a bubble-like iris that boasts of a distant origin. Perched atop her cheekbones it seems as if one blink would op them. Smooth skin was painted inches thick in some cosmetic; her hair is also a bottled hue. Auburn, and tied in a hasty bun with wisps of it breaking free and diving in half-curls for her neck. This slim trunk holds her head, and moves it about in eagle accurate ways to find things, held by the loose lover of her open buttoned collar. She has long hands and slim arms, but a happy smile that will speak from her eyes as if she were conceived with a blue summer light. Her delicate, labouring fingers juggle will the coffee grinder which makes a short thud, slap and click as she prepares it. Neither the heat nor the mess around her disturbs her rhythm, and she grasps at things with a sense of organised chaos. With these tools in her hands, she evokes the barista alchemist, in mine; I would make better noise than coffee. The other assistants are like her in function only as they thoughtlessly manoeuvre themselves. One steps aside holding a fresh cup of steaming milk as another one carries a toasted panini to the cutting board. No words of nicety are spoken for this is no favour: this is protocol. It is a synchrony formed from familiarity. It’s amusing how a prosaic routine can do this; takes the commonplace and makes them so habitual to be nearly invisible. So familiar is our environment, our movements and our tasks that they become autonomic motions. As a child I used to near shout the verses of prayer in my pew making sure each word was pronounced clearly and loudly. As I grew older the words became memorable, the natural rhythm of consonants and vowels fell on me; I now join the mass mumble. Those who are new and unsure are like Bambi on the frozen lake, however once this monotony settles, you instantly become something else to the onlookers. Not necessarily more, but something that which you were not a moment ago to them. You cease the current job and begin a charade; simple because you no longer look like Bambi. You are now a fantasy to the wandering eye. I think of this as plates and cups are passed in a juggled way between assistants as the need proclaims. The meditations here reveal something much like a dance.

 

My pen ‘taptaptaps’ the table, commanding my imagination to deliver a reformation of thought. To salvage this character from his utter monochrome dullness; or to even remind me of the job at hand. I feel that I am discussing the weather when writing him. I desired thunder and sandstorms but could only muster that miscreant kind of rain that makes you just damp enough to want to be DRENCHED! I find that I am Moses, parting a gold-fish bowl. I must be mad for choosing a literary life; days spent wooing myself around characters and plot lines, only to scrap it for a half ejaculated idea a week later. It is terrible, for half writing a story is as much a sin as half reading one. The monogamy of the pages is something sacred: pages are years and both take time to understand what it is they are telling you; and you should love each of them for precisely the same reason.

 

It is days like these, spent in the company of this hazardously boring character I am writing, that make a book. It’s not the days in which I am inspired and write workable poetry. It is these strained, stretched days, which truly tempers my ability, any ability. It makes the sword of my pen convicted and stronger. I look at my pen, bought as a birthday present, engraved on it is the word ‘Excalibur’, but I fail to witness any mythology or heroism. Inspiration stimulates because that is its purpose. Only a few conclude in a story worth telling and it is those who entrust pieces of their soul into their works that should be telling such stories. They are never bored with the routine, never tired by the sex of it. I’ve heard the same said about couples; that a wedding does not make a marriage. That secret lies somewhere between “how was your day?” and “can we watch the soaps after the footy?”. Mediocrity makes myth. Weddings and honey-moons make couples fall in love all over again, which is necessary for longevity, for what would a life, or a marriage, be without those little Shakespeare moments? I recommend a little of this Shakespeare in everything.

 

There is romance here too in choreography I see streaming out of the routines, a fantasy form the sidelines. The equipment I cannot work and the procedures that come with working here I do not know. To me, this place is a circus. I, like a young boy awaiting the pink moustache of candyfloss, look about in a new eager hunger. The ‘Recession Busters’ vie for the eye like floodlights in a cloudy sky. Trendy music bounces out of the distant stereos like a broadcast, “Roll up! Roll up!” Suddenly the dim autumn of this centre has exploded into vivacious carnelians and rich amethysts. The tea cups and hearty sandwiches have transformed into paper cups of soda and salty buckets of crunchy popcorn. The woman in the corner of my eye becomes a Gypsy, her head banded with a black bandana and silver trinkets tied into her hair. Greyed hair falls from her forehead as bony fingers clasp at a cup of tea, her shopping bags look like wooden cases filled with Voodoo dolls and Love Potion #9’s. She looks into the end of her cup as she finishes it off. I imagine she sees an acorn or lightning bolt formed in the leaves. Shocked or elated by her prediction(I cannot tell), she grabs her bags and makes way for home, taking with her the smell of sandalwood and dirt. Cigarette smoke rises from behind the silhouette of a frumpy man in over worn slacks and tweed, his frame hunches over the table with fatigue. The assistants know he’s added more than milk and sugar to his drink, but out of kindness, allow him the solitude to pour himself a top-up from the silver flask. Get a clown on his day off and he’ll tell you things worse than his jokes.

 

The queue builds up as the long awaited hour approaches; lunch time, but the show in the café must go on. I see them now as fantasy assistants as they greet customers in sequined and feathered show-gowns. The mysterious working of behind the scenes continue in a process which, like a different dialect, shows only rare familiarity to me; a violet shade of red-tape. The ring master supervises. His decision to not wear a company uniform is his own vermillion tail-coat and top-hat. His badge glistens like golden buttons; the words ‘Manager’, like a leather whip, tame his retinue of beasts. The young fashionistas; the leopards, walk fluidly about obtaining their condiments as spoils of the lunch-break hunt. Like the recognisable spots of their imaginary counterparts, their heels clack with stylish flair and expensive clothing sways like taut feline muscle. One particularly tall pair of black stilettos is lined on the underside with spotted print; a knock-off fur for a knock-off kitty-cat. One granny bear crawls across the glass display case due to her progressing deafness, she recognises the price and tries to dig up copper change out her little purse. Her rheumatic bones, like claws, make this look like that machine claw game that costs £1 on holidays; the bugger always slipping at the last minute.

 

I see that the show-girl assistant with bubble eyes glances my way and I sweat like a spot-light Goth: all awkward and sweaty in black leather. Don’t move or she’ll think you just farted! I suddenly became the circus Colossus, feeling very obvious. Sure, everyone was looking at you, you grumpy fool. What mattered really though, was that she was looking at me. She sat on a silver ring descending from the smoky ceilings beyond. Her hips made me want to hold her. Cherry blossom heels decorated the end of the smooth legs. Fishnet tights exploded from them and criss-crossed her supple thighs as they eventually reached the top of her legs. Her brink pink leotard curved over her skin and glittered thread contoured the corset beneath. If I were to touch you, I would hear the crrunncch of a fresh green apple being bitten into, the sound would reverberate throughout both our bones and we would fall in love instantly. She moved to bring her foot to the floor as she landed. She carried with her a tray in one hand, the elbow resting on the waist like a 50’s pin-up model. Her other arm hung by her side, swung the manicured nails past her hip. They would almost touch her skin as she walked; so almost that I could feel their closeness breathing down my naked back, creating trenches of skin. The tall feathers pinned to the small of her back moved as her pelvis bopped left and right; a yacht in lazy waters. Her neck was adorned with a large crystal necklace which spanned out across her chest. It left diamonds of skin exposed to the rose air and the soft caress of her now plump curls: the jewellery mimicked beads of tempting sweat. Her face was fresh and in her eyes I could see a smirk that would sweeten the bitterest coffee. She was a thousand voltage, red honey butterfly. Fickle, thick with passion and dangerous. This force from the anima of all men was now standing beside me. Lifting a white off the tray; she offered it to my table.

 

THUD! Blinked. The feathers and sequins vanished, the inch of make-up returned and my show-girl smiled a half smile: an even more practised and unnatural movement then making coffee. ‘Latte’? Smiling in childlike glee, perhaps I seemed a little too happy to have received it. She turned. My senses reawakened. The conditioned air lost the smell of candy and returned to drying out my skin; the light lost it fluorescence and hummed annoyingly. I sighed, and revisited the Gods of mediocrity on my page. I moved the cup to my right hand so my working hand was free. I stirred the iceberg of froth and it spunspunspun. I took a gulp of the warm creamy milk with its chocolate-forlorn top layer and realised I’d ordered a Cappuccino.