CAFÉ

by

Walter R. Milton

When I first saw her step into the café, I knew that she was supernatural, but she could not be an angel, because her hair was dark. She may have possessed the beauty of an angel, but with those envious green eyes blazing like emeralds in her tawny face, she could not have possessed the soul of an angel. This woman, whom I had never met, I knew to be the embodiment of evil.

Yet I could not resist her allure. She, in her black too tight tank top and black too tight jeans, was a study of grace in motion. Not a movement was wasted as she performed the otherwise mundane task of moving to a table, seating herself and ordering a meager breakfast of coffee and a bagel from the prompt yet strangely unaffected waitress. Every incremental change in her body’s position was meant to elicit a reaction from those males huddled over our own meager breakfasts, and each movement was a success. We could hardly do anything other than watch – and wonder: what did this woman want? Moreover, did she want it from me?

I could hardly be surprised when her eyes, so much like jade, caught mine, because I was sitting merely one table away, facing her, staring at her. Ever so used to the stares of men, she ignored me and seemed to be looking straight through me, yet as I started to turn to see what a man lucky enough to be the object of her eyes could possibly look like, her eyes flashed and said clearly and unmistakably: you. Gawking, nearly choking on the tightness of my own throat, I stabbed my index finger to my chest and almost put a hole through it: me?? Her smile and the subtle toss of her hair said: yes.

My breakfast forgotten, I was at her table in an instant. It was almost as if I were in the presence of someone who had just come in from arctic temperatures, for she drew my heat toward her, and I found myself shivering. Or was that just my nerves, now that I was staring at the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen and finding myself truly intimidated by her presence?

I do not remember her name, although I remember her speaking it, and she wondered, as her ice-cold hand grasped mine, if she could be the woman of my dreams. Her voice, low and sultry, bore into my mind, in much the same way that her eyes carved into my soul. I could only manage to ask one question before I consented that, yes, she could be that woman if she really wanted to be, and that question was: why would such a beautiful, worldly woman be interested in a plain, common fellow that I am?

For the umpteenth consecutive night since meeting her, I have awoke in stark terror, the night barely begun, and her answer to my question hammering me into deathly resignation for being the fool that I am. She said that a man without dreams is a man without hope and a man cannot survive without hope. And a common man has greater dreams than a man of greatness does, because a common man has dreams of fulfillment that a man of greatness has already attained.

So now, every night that I dream, this woman with greenest eyes and darkest hair invades my dreams, thwarting my every achievement, and always, ultimately, leaving me at her mercy, of which she has none. Each great dream that I have is an even greater victory for her as she snatches away any hope of achievement that I might have, relishing in my defeat. And as she said, a man cannot survive without hope. Thus, every night I die as I dream of being rid of her, and every day I know that when I lie down to sleep, I shall die in my dreams, bereft of hope at her hands and cruel green-eyed sneer. Being awake is no escape from the woman of my dreams.