Our Conversation

They treat it with irreverence, these people who don’t see the importance, the sacredness, the holiness. If they only knew everything was on the line.

“Decaf, black, side of toast and butter” the preacher asks the barista in his cream-coloured suit, his nametag reading: Adam.

Sitting on the frictionless stool at the frictionless counter of the frictionless diner on another frictionless day - sopping wet and steaming, he sits waiting for his warm bread and drink, another day of the same frictionless request.

If one was to walk in on this scene, they’d surely notice him – standing out in demeanour and wardrobe – his shadowy and unkept appearance contrasting the cream walls, cream floors, cream ceiling, cream everything. They never come close. Though steadfast in desire to work on his own terms, he has found himself on the right side of this cream world’s homogeneous gatekeepers, fitting into the seat as if it were carved out over time by the weight of his habitual complacency and the promise of his ritualistic outline. This was his watch tower, and he’d be damned if someone else got his front row seat before he did.

Tick, Tock – Tick, Tock – Tick, Tock

The clock on the wall masking his thoughts as they would surely be heard if not for its deafening metronome.

Adam comes back with his coffee and toast, almost simultaneously, the preacher pulls a flask from his inside coat pocket and pours in a healthy dose into his coffee. For a moment, everything is promised. Hot crunchy bread and caffeinated water acting as a substitute for body and blood, but what good is communion if not shared?

“Bullshit, we know what we’re doing. You come and have our conversation.” He mutters to himself, his eyes shifting between his empty cup and plate, smooth-surfaced, eerily indefinite, as if the sacrament never existed.

You could tell just by looking at him that he was disturbed by others, or rather, the production line of lives that seemed to be falling from the conveyor belt straight into the furnace – as if their creation was just for the sake of their undoing, to be made into another carbon copy of the last. It was the lack of urgency to notice the good message that disturbed him.

“Have you ever thought of getting out of here, just breaking out?” With welled-eyes and running nose, he asks Adam.

They sit in silence, Adam’s back facing him; their hands both busy, Adam’s with dishes, the preacher’s with the corner of the napkin he had been tearing at since he sat down. It had been months since he had heard one of them speak, and even then, he could have been sure it was a dream. How could he blame them, though? They were just trying to make a living, get the work done, get home to sleep – it wasn’t Adam’s fault he was born.

He stared into the back of Adam’s occupied body, his eyes with small hands reaching as if to wrap his shadow around him entirely – the kind of longing that makes your chest hurt, trapped like steam under a glass lid. He needed to know everything about him, more than there was. Sometimes he thought about what would happen if he were to muster up the courage and jump over the counter and do it, crossing the water without a life preserver and giving hope the opportunity to swim. Just more toast, more coffee, more flasked medicine for now.

“I am certain there is only us.”