from The Last Song

1999

The café was unobtrusive and small, wedged between a laundromat and a hardware store, shyly stating its presence in painted white letters. No neon. There was nothing flashy here; all the signs were hard to read, and the dingy place with dusty windows spoke the most softly of everything. It seemed to coo words of invisibility to everyone except bored blue collar workers on lunch break or the occasional ignorant tourist.

The business inside the café was as smooth as each vanilla shake they served. Customers moved slowly in and out in a steady trickle, some middle aged men in suits, others parents dragging toddlers by the arm. It was never busy enough to be interesting but never empty enough to be boring. People inside were tired but animated, hefting their exhausted limbs in rhythms. A clock on the white wall ticked in time to the movement.

Today, however, the restaurant’s subtle atmosphere had changed. The pace of things had somehow been interrupted, although it was barely noticeable to most. The cheap cash registers still lined up neatly in their little duck rows. Two napkin dispensers, one empty, one far too full to let anything go, still sat side by side next to the ketchup and plastic sporks. A normal clerk on his regular shift drummed his fingers on the counter, visibly aching with boredom. Prices had been the same for a while. Some typical customers sat perched on stools or sagging in small chairs. It might have been like any other stale day.

Except that the man was slumped in a corner booth, staring at nothing, cradling a styrofoam lidded coffee cup between two hands like a prayer.

He didn’t belong in this café at this time. He wasn’t a regular, and obviously not a tourist. He put a hole in the quiet restaurant. Things were strange.

And he had been there for an hour.



There is no spring joy for a March Los Angeles. The desert-like California climate does not have to claw its way from the recesses of winter like in many cities; any change in the weather is usually registered with dread, as the knowledge of another unbearably hot summer makes itself known with a slight increase in warmth. Instead of heavy, honey-wet thunderstorms appearing out of the snow, any occasional pitters of drizzle making their way through the smog have ended for the dry season. Flowers and palms continue to wave greenly without hesitation. The only thing coming back to life is the early season traffic, cars honking like migrating geese, lights changing to yellow, then red, like a late spring sunset.

The soul of the season is the same as it is all year long – moods and minorities spread across the valley like a giant green-and-concrete coffee shop. Unlike New York, things aren’t cramped or crushed together like cement sardines. Metropolitan Los Angeles yawns lazily across Southern California, biding its time, stretching for miles. Space and size each take their toll.

In the suburban area snuggled to the north, Hollywood Hills, the houses can become abnormally huge. Some of them look like something a kid might draw for his dream mansion in a fantasy game. Fountains display themselves pompously in some front yards; in others, white stone patios reflect the clouded sun. Stardom is not a novelty for these residents, and the limits of privacy are explored to the extreme. Often large cement walls block unsolicited viewers.

Further away from the city, through seas of crumbling peaks and eventually into the Valley, the houses become steadily less bombastic, less intimidating. Property is well kept but not overly decorated, and pastel pinks and ivories give way to understated tans and browns. Kids can walk through neighbourhoods without feeling like unwanted trespassers, and famous residences are regarded with wonder.

A stucco house, large but not noticeably so, sits far back from the road, behind gates hidden by rows of palm trees. The gardens haven't been tended, and it looks like any number of creatures might be nestling in the tall swaying fronds. The window blinds are always pulled.

Neighbours like to mention that a star lives there, someone well-known and worth remembering. But if anyone pushes further, they never can bring to mind who it is.



The ceiling fans themselves seemed to have noticed the man’s presence in the café, having changed their light humming to a low buzz of concern. Unusual customers weren’t a big deal, but he had barely touched his expensive latte, which had stopped steaming ages ago. At first glance he seemed to be staring at the cup, but a closer look would note that the line of sight ended at a random point on the booth table, which was clean and empty of books or magazines.

He was alone; he was contemplative; that much was clear, but there was nothing deliberate in his facial expression. Dark sunglasses gave the impression that he had no desire to be in a lonely restaurant on the south side of town; rather, he looked lost, as if recently awakened from a coma to find himself sitting in a corner booth with a coffee between his hands.

He looked as if once, he might have had things to love, people to care about. He seemed to have been someone – someone significant with a special kind of spark. Now a mist of forget hung about him, pressing at his shoulders, making them hunch.



Josh rides his bike through this part of the valley every day. When he first moved here, he had a hard time dodging the people and palm trees along his route home. Recently he’s learned how to weave a narrow way between the suburb’s inhabitants and its principal source of greenery, having made up a video game that gives him a point for every palm bark ring he grazes with either hand. He’s still trying to break his standing record of fifty-six palm points.

Today he’s sure he’s going to make it, with fifty-four and still a whole block of trees to go. He rounds the last corner and takes a break from the handlebars to slap a ring on his left. Fifty-five. A wide loop around a brick mailbox and then a ring on the right. He can spot his next target already, the last of a long string of them, sticking out far enough to touch.

But a glance through the gate at his neighbour’s driveway causes him to glide right past the tree, missing it completely and keeping his high score right where it was before.

Something is not right. Josh can’t place the difference in his mind straight away; his brain only tells him that the expected has been thrown off balance.

Then he figures it out. There’s no car in the driveway.

There has been the same car there every single day he’s ridden home this way, every time he’s ever bothered to look. A dark blue sedan with tinted windows. Now it isn’t there, and the driveway looks desolate.

Josh turns into his own garage and applies the brakes with a screeching of rubber. He tries to pass off the car’s absence. People in L.A. are weird, he tells himself.

He hitches up his backpack as he enters the small door to the kitchen, where a familiar bobbed haircut going grey is visible just over the rim of the refrigerator door. “Hey Mom,” Josh throws out automatically. She closes the fridge door and looks up, and then he adds, “That guy next door did something with his car. It’s not there.”

His mother appears only vaguely interested. “Hi honey. Who’s car?” She reopens the fridge.

“That guy... the famous dude who lives next door. Who is he, anyway?”

Putting a small tupperware on the counter, she answers, “Oh... well, I don’t really remember. I’m sure he wants to be anonymous.” She peels the lid off. “And I’m always so bad with names.”



He was the only black object in an expanse of white walls and grey tables, standing in stark relief as a scene changer caught onstage when the lights go up. No flashy makeup, no flamboyant costumes like the rest of the actors – just the rough, dark shade of a man. Limp black hair, looking like a bucket of cheap paint had been used to dye it, hung in strands around a blank expression that might have been sad, indifferent, waiting. At least unconcerned with its surroundings.

He didn’t seem to notice that a four year old came over and poked him in the arm repeatedly until her mother came, didn’t seem to care when the mother apologised and ushered her daughter sternly out the door. He didn’t even look up when an enormous mob of people, likely all relatives, swung themselves into the eatery and out again with their orders. He didn’t seem agitated by the fact that the boy behind the open cash register was staring at him quizzically. Not passing him off as mentally disturbed or homeless, but with eyes that were genuinely interested.

Another half hour passed. The clock and the sky ticked slowly towards sunset. The record that had been emanating softly from a stereo behind the clerk’s head reached the end of its playlist.

A dark blue sedan with tinted windows sat in the lot just outside the café’s rear entrance.



On the opposite side of the city from Josh’s house, at the south end of the central city, there are much fewer palms trees and more neglected bricks. The houses stand closer together and hold their heads a little lower, feeling the distance from the rich pomp of Hollywood and Beverly Hills. The area borders a slum and offers clusters of apartments every few blocks.

Inside one of the smaller clusters, a boy has gotten out of the shower and is standing in his tiny living room in a towel, trying to find his work uniform amongst the heap of clothes and debris. He really doesn’t want to go to work today. Last night he broke up with his girlfriend over the phone, but his mind is being treacherous – trying to turn a month of hell into something meaningful. The rest of him is doing its best not to listen. He doesn’t think he can deal with a bunch of boring people yelling about their orders all day.

He’s pretty close to calling in sick when he spots his latest bank statement nagging at him from one of the sofa’s armrests. I’m starving, says his checking account. Feed me before your landlord evicts you, dumbass. In an appalling coincidence, he finally spots his white uniform shirt sleeve taunting him from underneath the sofa curtain.

With a bowl of cereal and the Calendar section of the newspaper, he’s grabbing his car keys. He picks up a few CDs for the stereo at work on his way out.



The boy behind the counter broke his gaze on the motionless man to shuffle through a stack of CD cases behind the stereo. The sterile feeling given by only the clock ticking out its rhythm on the wall deadened the café’s atmosphere to the quality of a morgue. The boy performing the autopsy on the corpse in the corner resumed his examination after selecting a disc and pressing the play button.

A thunderstorm sound effect swept through the restaurant. A few stray customers actually glanced out the window, surprised, not expecting rain this time of year. One smiled in recognition and closed his eyes. Those remaining rolled theirs. A recorded voice began to sing.

The man moved.

He scooted his coffee cup away from him to the middle of the table. He lifted one hand to tuck a stray strand of hair behind his ear. His lips parted slightly, and a neck turned and craned to see behind the glass panel of desserts.

The boy there was still looking at him, not seeming phased in the least by the strange customer’s movement, but showing the slightest hint of a smile around the corners of his mouth, as though the boy had been counting on such a reaction from the beginning.

“Moving along to the hollow, everyone wishing for glory,” the voice on the album rasped. “Next blue beauty boy’s lining up to hear the story… ”

The song fogged around the heads of clerk and customer as they looked at each other across an expanse of white floor and grey mica tables. This beauty boy stood behind a pile of desserts; he wondered and guessed. This hollow glory sat behind sunglasses; he couldn’t stop knowing, couldn’t forget. A group of people lined up in front of the cash register, pointing and talking.

The first song ended.


© 2002 by morganlight.

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