Chapter 4 Griffin
FOUR
GRIFFIN
The coffee shop has a new pastry case. That’s the first thing I notice when I walk in on Friday morning.
The case has been swapped out — the old one was square and the new one is curved.
The curved one fits better in the corner where it sits.
Someone made a decision. Someone replaced a thing.
The line is short. Two people. Liana isn’t working today.
The guy at the register has a beard and a stud in his ear.
He writes my name correctly the first time, which I notice and then immediately stop noticing because there’s no reason to notice it.
I order, move down the bar, and wait. The shop is busier than usual for a Friday — there’s a lecture this morning that pulls a crowd, something about climate policy, and people are coming in clumps before it starts.
I don’t look at any of them. I look at my phone, which has nothing on it; at the menu board, which I have already read; at the back of the barista’s neck where a piece of his hair is sticking out from under his cap.
Someone behind me laughs. It’s a short laugh, low, a single sound: ha.
My body knows it before I do. I don’t turn around.
That’s the first thing. I don’t turn around.
There’s a second of suspended nothing where my hand is on the edge of the bar and I am holding very still.
The espresso machine is hissing. Someone is saying something about a muffin.
I think don’t. I don’t. It’s not him. It can’t be him.
It’s a laugh. People laugh. I take a breath that is too obviously a breath.
I look at the pastry case. The curved one.
The new one. There’s a cinnamon roll in the front row and the icing has slid down one side because someone left it near the window.
I look at it. I count the rotations of the spiral, which is a thing I’ve never done before in my life.
I do it. I am still not turning around. The barista calls my name.
I step forward. I take the cup. I do not look at the line.
I walk out. Outside the air hits and I don’t feel it.
I walk two blocks before I realize I’m walking the wrong way, away from Hartwell, away from where I’m supposed to be.
I stop on the corner and stand there with the cup in my hand and I don’t know what I’m doing.
It wasn’t him. I say it like a sentence.
It wasn’t him. I say it again. There’s a part of my brain running a list of all the reasons it wasn’t him, calmly, like it has been waiting for this assignment.
He is dead. He died two years ago. You went to the funeral.
You wrote the eulogy. You stood up and said the words.
His mother sat in the front row. The cousin was angry.
The typo. The chairs. The hand on the shoulder.
He is dead. The list runs. I let it run.
I stand on the corner. A woman with a stroller goes around me.
The kid in the stroller is looking at me upside down because he’s tilted back.
His face is very serious. I look at him and he looks at me.
Then his mother is past and he is gone. I turn around.
I don’t decide to. I just do it. I turn around and walk back toward the coffee shop.
I am moving faster than I usually move. The coffee is too hot through the cup.
My hand is shaking a little, which I notice.
I keep walking. I get back to the shop. I look through the window.
He’s at a table by the wall. He’s sitting with two other people, a girl and a guy I don’t know.
They are talking. He is laughing again, the short one, the ha.
He is leaning back in the chair the way he used to lean back, with one arm hooked over the top rail.
His hair is shorter. There’s something different about his face that I can’t place from here.
He is alive. The girl at the table says something and he turns to answer her.
I see his face from a different angle and it is him.
The scar above his left eyebrow. I can’t see it from here.
I can’t possibly see it from here. But I know where it is.
I am looking at the place where it is. The place where it is is on his face.
The conversation in the shop has gone underwater.
I can see the door chime move when the door opens behind a woman coming out, but I can’t hear it.
I should move. I am standing in the middle of the sidewalk and people are going around me.
Someone says excuse me. I move. I’m not in the same place anymore.
I’m leaning against the side of the building next to the window, out of view, with one hand flat on the brick.
I focus on that. There’s a piece of gum stuck near my thumb, dried gray, old.
I buried him. The sentence arrives. It arrives the way the squirrel thought arrived yesterday, whole, queued up.
I buried him. I stood up and I said the words.
His mother sat in the front row and didn’t look at me.
His cousin cried angry. The program had a typo.
He is sitting at a table eight feet from me drinking coffee.
The coffee in my hand is shaking. I put it down on the windowsill because I am going to drop it.
I put it down carefully. I straighten up.
I take my hand off the brick. I walk away from the window.
I walk past the door. I do not look in. I walk.
I don’t know how long. The streets I’m on are not the ones I usually take.
Then they are. Then they aren’t again. I pass a hardware store I have never noticed.
I pass a dog tied to a bench whose owner is nowhere and who watches me go past without barking.
I pass the same crosswalk twice, I think, although I’m not sure.
The light is yellow and then it’s red and then it’s yellow again and I am still standing at it.
At some point I’m at Hartwell. I stand outside it and I look up at the third floor where the radiator hisses and I do not go in.
I go home instead. I walk the long way. I take the path.
I let my shoes get wet. When I get to the apartment I sit on the floor in the kitchen with my back against the cabinet.
I put my hands flat on the linoleum, palms down.
I sit there for a long time. I buried him.
I gave the eulogy. I said the words. I don’t remember which words. I buried him.