The Back Door

If I were to write a story, I would write about the safé on the corner of Lupus and Flitcroft Street. It probably has an actual name but I don’t know what it is. I don’t like it all that much. Its walls are of a sickly lime green colour and the chairs are hard, modern and white. I also don’t drink coffee, but if I did, I certainly wouldn’t drink it there. They always buy the cheapest brand and then the whole café stinks like someone died in there. But no one really cares. I usually drink orange juice. The oranges are good; they get them from a nearby market, so it’s not some cheap stuff out of a box.

They tried to decorate the place somewhat tastefully, but this abstract modern art simply doesn’t do it for me. The painting across from the table I always sit at scares the shit out of me. Splashes of vibrant red on a black background with some puking green. Suicide, here I come. The perfect portrait of the state of our society.

I don’t like that table all that much either. It’s right next to the back door which is always left open, even in the middle of the winter when the temperature plummets and the pigeons freeze to the poles. That’s why, every winter, I wake up with a runny nose, sore throat and a bloody headache. But I always come to the café, just to annoy the waiters. After all, it’s their fault I’m sick. If they’d only close the bloody back door.

No, I really don’t like the café very much.

But if I were to write a story, I would write about the café on the corner of Lupus and Flitcroft Street.

Now, I wouldn’t talk about the café itself or about the building it’s in or even about the owners. Especially not about the owners — greedy multinational chain not worth mentioning, that’s what they are. I would tell you about the people. They are the reason I freeze my ass off every winter… apart from the fact that I have nothing better to do. But I could waste my time somewhere else just as well, if it weren’t for the people. They fascinate me — they may be the most annoying unimportant little creatures and yet they puzzle me, intrigue me.

I would sure like to tell you about celebrities drinking coffee. But there are none. Just ordinary people, the stars of their own miserable, pointless lives. But aren’t we all? I could, for instance, tell you about this girl. She was one of those quiet studious mouse-like beings that practically live off green tea and books. That’s all she did, all day long. Drink green tea and stick her nose into some book or another. But not the popular, shitty types of books; she read the great ones, Ulysses, The Forsyte Saga, The Catcher in the Rye, she read them all. And she could not be fourteen yet, for Christ’s sake! But there’s another thing I truly admired in her: her courage. I mean, to go and read in a cyber café, you sure need some nerve to do that.

Yes, it’s a cyber café, and that fact alone gets me ranting for about a century. I’m the only one without a computer there. Out of principle. I don’t need a machine to tell me what the weather is like or how our society is slowly decomposing. It’s obvious enough. You just need ears, eyes and brains that function. Not that my rebellion doesn’t earn me some sideways glances… At least the girl had a computer in front of her, just to keep up the appearance — but then again, I’m not the one reading. In a cyber café. Sometimes I wondered whether she had a home at all. She was there almost every time I came, and that statement speaks for itself.

If I wanted to shock you, I would probably tell you about the phone call. And I would have to make this great speech all about how now comes the very important moment, crucial for the development of the story, and similar lousy tricks the authors pull. I don’t like that kind of thing, so I wouldn’t do it. I’d just tell you that about a month ago, the waiter came to the girl’s table.

“Miss? I’m sorry, Miss? Miss? Sorry to interrupt but… Miss!?”

And so it went for the next few minutes. By then I was immensely enjoying the waiter’s apparent despair and annoyance that grew with every second. What made it even more hilarious was that the girl really didn’t want to be rude at all. She was just reading. But people nowadays don’t respect reading anymore. Or thinking. Or anything, as a matter of fact.

Anyway, I was enjoying myself — I had long been convinced that that polite penguin of a waiter had it in for me. It wasn’t my fault that he had caught the flu from me last winter! Should’ve closed the back door, that’s the thing. The penguin eventually lost it and tapped the poor girl on the shoulder; rather violently—she almost jumped out of her skin, the fragile creature she was.

“Miss.”

“Yes…”

Her voice was so tiny.

“Phone call for you.”

“Oh…”

She took the call behind the counter.

“Yes?”

There was some blabbering on the other side.

“Speaking.”

More blabbering. The girl’s face changed colors. Red. White. Green.

“No, no, no. Must be a mistake. No. You’ve just confused them with somebody else. No. Not them. Just not them.”

I somehow caught the word sorry coming out of the phone. People use it so often these days. And that person on the other side of the line sure loved it.

“Where? GIVE ME THE ADDRESS for Heaven’s sake!”

For such a tiny thing, she really had one hell of a screech.

CLICK. The phone was back on the hook. And she was gone. I never saw her again. She even left her book, The Time of Indifference, just lying there on the table. She didn’t pay either — annoyed the hell out of the waiter, but he kept quiet and showed some human decency.

I thought of taking the book with me and then giving it to her, somehow, but the penguin took it away. Probably to burn it or use it as a supporter for a shaky table. All the tables in the café shake. It’s always an earthquake there. But I probably wouldn’t find the girl anyway so it doesn’t make much difference. The idea was nice, though.

I never saw her again. But I couldn’t seem to erase that incomprehensive look on her face or that crazy screech out of my brain. That’s what fascinates me about people — you never know they have it in them until it comes down to it. That’s why I watch. Because I don’t want to miss that revelation, when they come from behind that stupid shell called appropriate behaviour and for a change act natural. And every face, smiling or in a sneer, beautiful as a Greek goddess or ugly as a baboon’s butt, every single one has a story. A story worth noticing. It’s just that nobody looks anymore.

That’s why I wanted to be a writer once. But my teacher said that my writing didn’t have a concept. What she really meant was that I don’t have a concept. I am conceptless. But if I were to write a story, it would without doubt be a great one. Like, I could tell you about the iPod guy. He was Black but that never really mattered to me.

“Can I plug in?”

That’s when I first noticed him. Plug in.

“Of course, sir. After all, it is a cyber café.”

That day, the waiter must have started the day off on the wrong foot. I think he even put salt in my orange juice.

But the guy wouldn’t be bothered. He was already sitting, pulling a mass of cables out of his bag, the computer safely positioned on the table.

“Gosh! You’ve got an awesome wireless around here!”

Then he connected his ears with his beloved iPod, which he gently took out of a special box covered in leather, and plunged himself into the world where little zeros and ones make up a universe on their own. That’s how far my extensive knowledge of computers goes, right up to the zeros and ones. They tried to force it into my brain many times but it has a mind on its own, my brain. Stubborn as hell. Not that I regret not knowing where the ON button on a laptop is. I was never one for the technology stuff anyway. I like to think of that as some sort of rebellion against the consumeristic money-driven brainwashed majority dictated by the media. We’re all their soldiers, marching to their beat. I sometimes like to step out of the line, just to piss them off. Although I think it would be kind of groovy to Google myself.

Anyway, the iPod guy kept on coming during every lunch break and his cables with him. He was an interesting type of a humanoid. So painfully personality-less that it became a character trait of his. As if he transferred his whole existence into that computer. He thought through it, breathed through it, lived through it, and, if the technology allowed, probably even loved through it.

“The same as usual?”

“Yes, please.”

These were the only words he uttered when he was there, in the café. And yet he said much more. The usual consisted of a cup of coffee without milk and without sugar, and a plain croissant. Plain. Without taste and without smell. Well, sometimes the coffee had that funny, dead-man smell again. But nobody cared.

Then, one day, he wasn’t there. I didn’t pay much attention to that fact, to tell the truth. It was February and I had been sneezing for a week. He didn’t show up the next day or the day after that. It was some time later that I heard about his dismissal.

“Say, is it true what they say about that Black young man that used to come here?”

“What, that he was pompously fired, his wife committed suicide and his twelve-year-old daughter ran away?”

“Oh, yes, I heard that, too. Terrible, terrible. These families, nowadays… As if it were so hard to lead a respectable, normal life. But then again, he was Black.”

The last part was whispered. One does not talk of such things aloud. Someone might hear and think it’s racism. After I heard that I almost felt sorry for the iPod guy and somehow even understood his decision to live through a machine. But only somehow.

Around that time I started wondering what was the point of all this. So many stories where the main character was killed, hanged, or denounced in the end. Or there was no ending at all, just silence. Empty space. Like me. Sometimes I wonder whether anyone notices me at all, sitting in a corner of the café, sipping orange juice and just looking. I think not. The one who notices is never noticed because he could be potentially dangerous and therefore must be avoided at all costs. That, or people just don’t care. Either way, it makes me sick.

Lately, fewer and fewer people have been coming into the café. I think it’s something about a new cyber café opening a few blocks down the street with an even faster internet connection. It has become quieter. I think I just might check out the new place — I’m lacking people to look at.

And I’m sure not going to miss the café, although the waiter has started acting nice all of the sudden and the back door is closed. But I’m not going to miss it. The sickly green walls, the suicidal picture and the hard, white chairs. No, nothing to miss there. But if I were to write a story, I would tell you about the café on the corner of Lupus and Flitcroft Street. Yes, that’s exactly what I’d do.