A snippet from "Greta"

Theo wiped down the lunch counter, grumbling to himself. Helen had called in sick, and he was stuck playing waitress for the day. He looked up when Greta walked in, her hair slightly curled and damp at the edges as she walked in from the humid outdoors.
“How ya doing, Greta?” he greeted.
“Hi, Theo.”
She sat down at the counter and he handed her a menu.
“Late lunch, huh?”
“Um, yes, I have some things to do today,” Greta said. She looked over the lunch specials. “I think that I’ll just have the minestrone soup.”
He might be wrinkled, brusque and demanding, but he had a soft spot for Greta. He’d known since she was little, when she and her mother would come in the after mass on Sundays. She’d acted the perfect little lady, demure and almost afraid to speak in the presence of her mother. Her mother didn’t like him, he knew, but he didn’t give a hoot’s ass what she thought. To him she was a stuck-up snob and he didn’t like how she treated her daughter.
He poured Greta a cup of coffee, setting a fresh container of cream next to her. She was a big coffee drinker. Maybe she needed to cut back a little, seeing as she was already the nervous type.
“You make the best coffee, Theo.”
“Yeah, I know – you say that every time you come in.”
“It’s true. So, what’s your secret?”
“And you ask me that every time, too.”
They laughed over their standing joke.
“Alright, I’ll tell ya.” He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “The secret is — a little salt in the coffee grinds.”

***

In the office of Richie’s Auto Repair, Richard tended to the coffee machine. He poured the old coffee into the sink, then added fresh water to the coffee pot. He threw the old filter of grinds in the trash bin and added a new fresh filter, scooping coffee into the new one. He always added a little extra because he needed that extra kick in order to get through the work day. Already lined up were three cars that needed work, and he hadn’t even had his first cup of coffee.
He headed into the shop carrying two mugs of coffee, handing one to Nick before sitting down on one of the stools at the work table. Nick came over to sit with him.
“I met a girl,” the younger man said.
Richard raised a brow as he scrutinized his employee. “I see,” he said, blowing gently into his cup before he took a sip.
“Yeah, so then I helped her get home,” Nick continued. “Her and her little dog. Cute thing.”
“The dog or the girl?”
Nick rolled his eyes. “I was talking about the dog.”
“I thought we were talking about the girl.”
Nick laughed. “Yeah, I thought we were too.”

Mr. Chang's Tomatoes

 

 

 

Happy Father’s Day, John.

 

---

 

Mr. Li Chang peeked out the kitchen window of  his son’s apartment at the next door neighbor. The fellow was middle-aged, at least twenty years younger than himself. Mr. Chang smiled as he watched the man watering his tomato plants. There were five of them, swaying on an overhanging shelf just outside of his basement door. It was obvious that the man had done this before, but his method, Mr. Chang thought, was a bit amateurish. So typical for Americans. Americans did everything so large and complicated, when all that was really needed was to use the methods that farmers like himself had done for centuries back in China.

Mr. Chang’s eyes misted over as he thought about his homeland. He probably would never see it again. His beloved Wen had passed on two years ago, and his son had arranged for him to come to America to live with him and his wife, and their daughters. Oh, he was happy to be near his son and to see his two granddaughters raised up well, but he did not like America. For one thing, there was not enough green for someone who had been raised in the countryside of Beihai, in the Guangxi province. He missed the flow of the River Li in the mornings as he would awaken before dark in order to be down at the river before sunrise.

Mr. Chang breathed in deeply until the memories passed. He turned his attention back to the man tending his tomato plants. Mr. Chang turned away from the window and on a whim, looked around t he room for something to draw on. He spied his granddaughter’s school notebook and he picked it up, along with a black ink pen. He opened the notebook to a blank page and sat down at the kitchen table.

Back in China, when he was young, he’d been a fair artist, had wanted to travel to Shanghai to become famous. Then he met Wen. They married and made plans to escape their small existence in Behai. But Wen became pregnant, and their hopes to travel down the mountain to the big city were lost.

Mr. Chang looked down at the notebook. He filled in the details of the plant he was drawing. An hour later, he had completed the drawing, and satisfied, he carefully removed the page from the notebook. He headed to the front door and walked across the courtyard to the man’s apartment.

The man looked up when he saw him, and Mr. Chang made a slight bow in greeting. He extended his arm, holding out the drawing.

He watched the man wrinkle his brow in puzzlement as he looked down at the drawing. His face brightened as he recognized the plant in the picture.

Mr. Chang had drawn very detailed tomato plants, describing pictorially how to prune and tie them in order to yield the best fruit.

The man looked down at Mr. Chang with a big smile, saying something, speaking very rapidly, but Mr. Chang could not understand. He only spoke the Cantonese dialect of his homeland, and English was a very difficult language to learn. He was too old and weary to learn something new, and he did not like this country enough to put forth much of an effort. His son and wife spoke enough English to get by, and his granddaughters were fluent in the language.

But he knew that the man was pleased, and it made him very happy. He bowed again to the man, and turned, heading back to his son’s apartment.

The next morning, Mr. Chang was at the kitchen window, watching the man as he hurriedly watered the tomato plants before jumping in his truck to go to work. Once he left, Mr. Chang walked across the courtyard to examine the man’s plants. He started in surprise as he glanced at the wall of the building.

On the wall was the drawing that he had made, encased in a black frame. Mr. Chang’s throat tightened as he looked at the picture. He stood there a while, remembering his dream to become an artist when he was a young man in China. There was more than one way to achieve a dream, Mr. Chang realized.

He took one more look at his artwork, then turned to the man’s tomato plants and started to prune them, humming as he worked.

4:30 AM on a Tuesday

MCM has pledged to write 1,000 short stories this summer. Send him a line, an idea, a concept, and he will write a story. My request was "The truth is, I don't want to die alone." His story follows.

4:30 AM on a Tuesday

He saw her by the fading light of the old refrigerator, standing against the door frame, light t-shirt clinging her to moist skin. She was watching him, the quietest thing in the room, bare feet soaking up the cold from the tile floor.

“You’re up,” he said, voice croaking, but left the door open. He needed the cool air.

“I heard you leave,” she said. “Are you hungry?”

He smiled, swung the fridge open more to get a better look at his options. Nothing seemed right. Milk, beer, yoghurt.

“I was,” he said. “Until I got here. Now, not so much. How about you? Are you hungry at all? Help me choose?”

“I’m okay,” she said, and slid up beside him, wrapping an arm around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder. “Come back to bed?”

“I’m not tired yet,” he sighed.

“You don’t need to be tired,” she smiled, and pulled herself closer. It caught him by surprise, and he almost missed her mouth, probing at his chin, his neck. He returned the kiss, and she wrapped herself around him, arms locked over his shoulders, legs pulling herself up.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said between breaths, hands running down her hips, under the shirt, up again.

“Done what?” she purred.

“A one-night stand,” he said, turning her around and setting her on the edge of the counter.

“It doesn’t have to be just the one night,” she said. “Good things have… oh… good things have strange beginnings…”

He laughed, pulled her shirt over her head, kissed her neck, down to the scar in the middle of her chest. He’d seen it earlier, but the booze and the passion and the excitement had made him forget it. Long and clean, lit up by the fridge. He traced it with his finger and she moaned.

“What happened?” he asked softly, and she took his hand and put it over her left breast, whispered in his ear.

“A hole in my heart,” she said. He felt the beating beneath his fingers, racing with every breath. Her blue eyes, half-open and delirious with want, kept locked with his. “Unfixable, like the rest of me.”

He kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around him, helped him forget for a moment, but then she shuddered, and he drew back, thumb brushing the hair from her face.

“Is it dangerous?” he asked.

She smiled, half-shrugged, and tugged at his shorts, an effort that trailed off when she realized his hesitation.

“It’ll kill me,” she admitted. “Some day.”

“How?” he asked, stepping back.

“I’ll tell you when I get there,” she smiled, and tried to carry on. He didn’t move.

“What is this?” he asked, picking her shirt off the ground. Her heels wrapped around his waist and pulled him back, but he didn’t accept her embrace. He pushed the shirt to her chest. “What are we doing?”

“Forgetting fate for a bit,” she said, dropping the shirt back on the ground. “One night at a time. There’s a hole in my heart, and one day, a beat will go wrong and I’ll die. But I’m not going to live in fear of that day. I’m not afraid of dying. Dying is easy.”

He shook his head, unlocked her legs, stepped back, closed the fridge door. It was cold, suddenly. He needed his shirt. He felt exposed.

“I won’t help you kill yourself.”

She caught his arm as he tried to leave. He tried not to look at her, but the moonlight on her back drew him in. Her eyes were shimmering with tears.

“You can’t kill me,” she said. “My heart’s on its own schedule. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m really not. The truth is, I don’t want to die alone. I’m deathly afraid of dying alone.”

She let go of his arm, her hand brushing his cheek, pulling away. She slumped, staring at the floor, suddenly frail.

“What do you want from me?” he said, a gulf between them, filled with hated desires and unspoken thoughts.

“Keep me company until you can’t anymore,” she whispered. “One night or a thousand. And when I go, just carry on, because I was happy.”

He looked at her, said nothing for a moment. He took her hand in his, and their fingers entwined, and he stepped into her embrace, her face resting on his chest.

“How can I know that?” he asked. “How can I know you were happy?”

“Because,” she said softly, “I have nothing else to feel.”