Story About a Boy

Another day and I’m sitting outside the café with Monty. But it’s not like all those other times.

His hair is too long and needs a good wash and his eyes are glazed over, maybe like he’s tired, or maybe like he’s holding back tears that he has too much pride to reveal. Barely noticeable wisps trailing across his jaw line say he needs to shave but doesn’t really care. His skin is pale and grainy like paper. He coughs lightly and his body twitches forward, spasmodic, unhealthy. He’s sort of thin and delicate, but still in a masculine way. Mostly he just looks sick and tired. I’ve never been close enough to him to notice his imperfections. Neither have I ever found him so attractive.

He doesn’t look at me and maybe he doesn’t notice me looking at him. He just talks and talks. His words are quiet and the street corner is bustling with conversation and traffic, but I can hear him. It’s like you can always hear familiar voices in a crowd, I hear Monty, naturally. As if I know him. As if he knows me. His lips are chapped and I know, it must be literally painful for him to be telling me all this, but he is. As he moves them, the dry, dead skin puckers and folds.

Moments like these are when I just can’t get over how strange life is.

The first time I saw Monty was a little over a year ago, right in the same place we’re sitting now. Almost every day since then I’ve seen him and never once have I said hello to him, or even met his eyes. Isn’t that ridiculous? I only know his name from other people saying it.

He sits in the sun here with a guitar and he plays, and I’m pretty sure he thinks that no one listens. He drinks coffee and pigeons strut across the cobblestones at his feet, waiting for him to throw crumbs at them. He always does. He’ll pull out a baggie full of bits of bread and casually scour the pieces on the ground while he sits there, drinking his coffee and just playing for the sake of it.

And while he sits there, I sit off to the side, at a table under an umbrella and drink a cold drink or read the paper or scribble in a notebook. And even though Monty is no one to me and I’m no one to him, I know him just from sitting here all those days. But I’ve never once talked to him. Until today.

He came late and he was upset about something. You know how you can always tell. The tilt of the shoulders and the swollen face. The eyes, sunken in their sockets. These are all tells.

He’s here before me every day, so in a way it’s strange to have him walk by me. I look up and he’s looking at me. Everything starts going as he comes closer. My heart is going and the wind is going and the people on the streets are going, going, going to wherever they’re going and not minding us at all, just like always, and we are in our own little world and Monty has green eyes. I didn’t know that.

“Hello,” he says to me, and I just stare for a minute before I can manage a response. His hand is on the chair across from me and I motion for him to sit, trying to act nonchalant. He sits and says to me, “I see you here all the time but I’ve never thought to say hi. I feel kind of rude.”

I don’t even know how to respond to that, so I just say “It’s ok,” and we kind of both just sit there. My brain is sending these weird impulses to my muscles to wake UP do SOMETHING and so finally I splutter out “can I buy you a drink or something?” and he smiles, standing.

“Sure.”

I smile too, but those impulses keep shooting up my arms and as I try to stand, I nearly knock over the chair. I see Monty’s lips twitch up, but there’s still a tightness in his face like there’s something wrong, he can’t relax.

We go in and he orders coffee so I do too.

I follow Monty back outside and he doesn’t go back to the table we were at, I guess out of habit, he sits down on the bench outside the door of the café. He sits kind of in the middle, making it impossible for me to keep space between us. He feels so close.

So we’re drinking, and the sun is pouring down on us and there are people on the street, just everywhere, and I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here when suddenly I turn to this complete stranger and look him dead in the eyes green eyes Monty has green eyes and I’m asking him, like I know him or something, “is everything okay?”

And of course he looks at me like I’ve grown a third arm and stands up, disgusted that I should ask such a personal question, and just walks away, just like that.

Except for he doesn’t. For a minute he does nothing, and I’m afraid that he might, but then he just turns to me and looks at me, deeply. I feel like he’s looking for something inside my eyes. I just hold his gaze there as the question lingers like an echo, all I can hear. Then he blinks and the street fills up with noise again.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he says, and takes another sip of his coffee. “Thanks for asking.”

“Yeah,”

There’s a pressure behind my eyes that’s maybe like tears, but I guess it’s just street noise. I’m looking at Monty and he’s looking down, his elbows resting on his knees while he studies the cobble stone and his lips are pressed together. Then they part.

“Actually, you know, my sister,” his voice cracks and he swallows. “My sister passed away last night.”
All sounds of the city just disappear and I’m left with this white-noise reverb of Monty’s voice in my head and a feeling that’s just like, oh my God, oh my God.

And then he’s telling me this story, this long, complicated story about how for all this time his sister has been in the hospital with cancer, and how she was always happy even through the worst times, and how he saw her every day and how he’d write songs for her. He’d sit here outside the café, here where I’d listen to him every day, and write songs for his sister who was laying in a hospital bed with cancer and now she was dead and he was sitting here with me on the same bench where he sat alone every day with a guitar and suddenly the pressure explodes and I'm crying, and he's crying, and nothing has ever been so strange or so right.

And I reach over to him, because it’s not really that far to reach, and we cry. As if I know him. As if he knows me.

So I’m sitting outside the café with Monty, but it’s not like all the other times. Because this time Monty is less of an entity and more of a person, and this time I really do know him, and he’s not just a person but in that moment he’s a friend. Just because he was late today. Just because today I decided to look up and meet his eyes.

We just sit like that until our coffees get cold. The people keep walking by and the birds keep flying in the sky and cars go by on the streets but all I hear are hitching breaths as we cry together and it feels like nothing will ever be whole again. Yet in a strange way, everything is okay.

Moments like these are when I just can’t get over how strange life is.