Coffee and Sugar, C. Sean McGee [highly recommended books txt] 📗

and alert, seeing the patrons passing through the doors but seeing them more as a heavy wind, brushing past his window for they all moved about in sight, but without form and without face, the effect of their being and their passing seen in the filling of cups, the moving of chairs and like that strong breeze blowing about fallen leaves and loose brush, the creating of mess as papers, napkins and wrappers piled up on the floor and then moved from place to place, kicked about by busied feet. And so he continued to stare at the blurring lines of colour and shade.

“Wakey, wakey” spoke a girl’s voice, a soothing girl’s voice, clicking her fingers in front of his eyes and summoning him into wake.

It was Charity and she stood before him smiling, her hands pressed against the counter and she, bouncing up and down on her heels while her head tilted slightly to one side. Her hair was tied back in a little ponytail and she looked cute and with her fringe pulled away from her eyes, her face looking so young and amiable.

The way she smiled it was near impossible to smile back.

“Charity. How are you? I missed you? I mean…” he said stuttering over his words, realising that for that moment he sounded silly and desperate as if he had been waiting day and night to see her again and had been collecting the seconds that passed as a heavy longing and yearning in his heart that threatened to topple him over whenever he thought of her; which of course he had and was completely true, but he didn’t want her to know that.

“I mean, it’s nice to see you, again. You look, great” he said, pausing to find the right adjective, seeing how the swelling in her eye had vanished and the bruises along the line of her face had gone from dark purple when he last saw her, to non-existent, so that the only colour was the light in her eye as she smiled.

“Hey what time’s your break” she asked.

“Well it’s nearly over” Joao said.

“Hey Fatts,” she yelled to the back of the café, ‘let me have this cutey here for an hour. Don’t make me have to fight you” she said playfully.

Fatts shook his head and huffed loudly.

“I gotta business to run here you know, it’s not a god damned social club. The afternoon rush’s happening soon. No funny business. Go, have fun. Half an hour, not a second later” he said sternly shaking his giant finger.

“Oh come on Fatts. One hour” pleaded Charity, pulling on Joao’s arm and dragging him from around the counter.

“Thirty minutes” yelled Fatts.

Joao’s heart was beating loud. It sounded; to him, like a silverback, pounding its giant fists against its chest in rising protest and he felt a heavy sickness in his stomach as his veins flooded with flight inspired drugs, commanded by his overwhelmed mind, unsure how to deal with this approximation to desire, want and love.

“Your hand is sweaty” said Charity.

Joao said nothing.

He swallowed a lump in his throat and fidgeted in his shoes and wished for a second that he could dissolve into a bead of his sweat and escape from this embarrassing truth, but he said nothing.

“Are you nervous?” asked Charity.

Joao said nothing.

As they walked along the street; she holding his hand tightly and he, feeling every bead of sweat drip from his pores and onto her delicate, soft hand, they pushed through swarms of workers dressed in cheap suits rushing from cafés and restaurants along the busy avenue, their minds pestered and petulant, thinking only of their obligations and their desire to return unto them, seeing every step and every space in front as an opportunity that they must steal as if the passage of commute were practice for the ethos of their lives, to abandon the pursuit of politeness and take every advantage that has yet to be divulged, pushing and shoving and kicking and screaming and biting and shouting and cursing and defeating every single person regardless of age or sex or colour or deficiency, thinking only of the opportunity; the space before them and with their eyes blinded to their own effect, diving into every single space, taking every theft as some measurable gain.

Joao was too kindly in this jungle environment and would be brushed this way and that; thrown around like a dangling fringe. But at the extension of his hand was a beautiful girl with the force and will of a maniacal tyrant and she pointed her elbow forwards, creating a part in the human traffic, cutting straight through the centre and laughing out loud as men, women and children of all ages cursed and yelped at her parting of their flux with reverent biblical grace.

“Are we going to your special place?” asked Joao, his voice gurgling at first as he swallowed a lump in his throat and sounding more like a concerned Muppet than an excited lover.

Joao had been thinking about this for days and weeks, imagining; every time his mind drifted, the sight of Charity’s kind face lifting back the thick brush and scrub with her gentle hand and inviting him away from the grey concrete jungle and into the dark passage where the rest of her body waited, somewhere in the shadows behind the expanse of green, away from the world where he could lay with her, away from this city, away from his family, away from god whose servants of morality; drunk on cheap, foul cachaça, had, for so many years, bruised his skin and tampered with his soul.

He wanted so much to be away from himself and just to be with her for her knew that that must be heaven.

“Not today” she said.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“I want you to meet someone” she said.

“Are they famous?” asked Joao intrigued.

“Yep” said Charity, skipping down the street with Joao dancing behind in tow, gripping onto her soft, delicate hand, the sweat that once poured now dried by the wave of animated electricity that surged through his every being.

He had never met a famous person before. His father was the only famous person he knew. Many people had travelled from very far away every week to hear his father deliver his sermon and to give them guidance in the way of the lord. He had always thought of that as special, peeping through the cracks in the barn doors while his siblings, his mother and the travellers all sat in stupendous awe of his father who stood on his podium with his hands waving fanatically high like molecular antennae, tuned to the divine radio of Jesus Christ.

Charity giggled as she darted from the path and ran up a massive fleet of stairs with Joao stumbling after her, watching his feet so he didn’t tumble over himself.

They burst through a set of doors.

“Shhh’ ordered a thousand tongues as a thousand angry faces turned towards them with their index fingers clenched against their lips.

Charity giggled again as the doors slammed shut behind them. The minister at the front of the church cleared his throat and continued his sermon and all the people turned their snubbed noses back around to attend his speech.

The two entered through another set of doors.

“Joao, I’d like you to meet The 13th Apostle” said Charity.

Joao was deafened with delight.

He heard nothing of what she said after that. His mind echoed with the word apostle and he couldn’t believe that he was in the same room as the man who was regarded as the closest descendant of Christ, one of the holiest men on this planet outside of the incestuous Roman molesters who hid their depravity and disturbance under long cloaks.

In front of him sat that very man and though his back was turned, Joao knew exactly whom he was admiring having seen this momentous frame pacing around his TV set for years, always holding in his hands, a microphone that looked more like a toothpick held daintily in his trunk like fingers while his massive arms swung wide like a fisherman’s net, pulling in saddened and disparaged parishioners, gathering them in one sweep and pulling them tight against his Christian bosom, pressing their faces against his mucky and sweaty chest like a child with their favourite teddy bear.

“So you must be Joao. Charity has told me all about you. Everybody is talking about you” said The 13th Apostle.

Joao sank into his stomach. His head went dizzy. He smiled and fell stupid, unable to say a word.

“He makes the most divine coffee you will ever taste. People come from all over town to drink it. Isn’t that right cutey?” said Charity.

Joao said nothing.

He wanted to say so many things though even in the safety of his mind, he couldn’t imagine what those things might have been. He had never been good at anything and could sell neither a slither of barbequed meat to a starving carnivore nor a kind word about his own talent to a stranger, to his father or even as it seemed, to himself. He saw his gift; as it were, as merely something he did where he stopped trying to think as he thought others wanted him to think and instead just, was; whatever that should mean.

Joao’s nerves surmounted.

He gulped some fetched air.

His stomach whined.

His cheeks clenched.

His stomach sank.

Charity squeezed his hand.

He farted.

He blushed.

He started to cry.

“My boy. Come here and dry those tears on my chest. There aint nothin dirty or wrong or awkward or even uncomfortable about a bit of wind. You don’t think Jesus ever passed some gas?” said The 13th Apostle.

“He’s real excited to meet you Apostle. He’s been watching your show for years. That and what was it?” asked Charity.

“The Carriage of my Heart” said Joao.

“That’s it. The Carriage of my Heart” said Charity.

“I do love television,” said The 13th Apostle, “you know we’re about to buy our third network here for the world church? It’s the work of Jesus Christ it is, ensuring our prayers are heard twenty four hours a day, nationally on three open networks. There’s a lot of the devil’s work going on some of those channels. The sex, the drugs, the violence, the corruption. You know I do believe that violence begets violence. You want peace and love in this world; you need to see Jesus everywhere you look. He’s there you know; healing every wound, sweeping up the filth off the streets, being born from every womb, raining down at the end of every summer’s day. He’s in every home, in every heart. He’s on every billboard and he’s in every war; you can’t always see him right away. Sometimes you really got look hard, but you can find him and when you do, you’ll lay down your arms next to your open heart and be glad for having an enemy as having someone that you can learn to love for Jesus loves everyone, even the Muslims and the gays” said The 13th Apostle.

“Is Jesus on the hill?” asked Joao.

The air fell still, the Apostle, silent, the bounce in his voice flattened.

“There aint nothin up there that Jesus can save” he said.

“I live there. My father and I. We have a church. My father, he is a bishop and he wants to be just like you. We’re, well, he, is trying to save the people; the prostitutes, the drug dealers, the drug addicts and especially some of the people who live there at the top with us” said Joao.

An uncomfortable silence addressed the room, broken nervously by Charity.

“I’ve seen his church, it’s nice” she said.

“Really, you’ve seen it?” asked Joao.

“I’ve told you Charity that you shouldn’t be going up there no more. You know I have a place for you here in the church. You can work with me; you don’t need to go near that hill again” said The 13th Apostle.

“You know I can’t do that” she said.

The 13th Apostle kept in his chair looking direct at his own reflection while Charity and Joao stood behind him and to his left and right, a team of girls brushed at his face with powder and makeup, getting him ready for the taping of his sermon any moment. He was angry, but he didn’t show it, though Charity knew; she felt it, she was no stranger to the message in his cryptic stares.

“So do I get to try one of these divine coffees or yours Joao?” asked The 13th Apostle.

“Yes sir” he said, managing to utter two simple syllables and restrain himself from excitedly tripping over a thousand words and sounding foolish and excusable.

“At the back of the room there, just in the corner” said The 13th Apostle, swinging his giant crank like arm back around to the right, pointing to the far end of his dressing room where there sat a small kettle, a jar of rich textured coffee powder; the beans no doubt crushed by the kindness in his heart,