Thursday Morning, 4am

Personal Memoir. I'll have you know that this story has become one of the ceiling tiles that I mention in the story.

The Alley cat was a small café that sat between the downtown and the college campus in Fort Collins and every Thursday, at four in the morning, we climbed from our beds and went there. Old friend, do you remember how hard it was to wake up on those mornings? How the alarm screamed, how the blankets seemed softer than they had ever been? I always leapt from my bed and raced out the door right away so I wouldn’t be tempted back into the warmth of my covers. I somehow managed to grab a coat, a pair of pants, and my wallet on my way out the door. Getting up in the mornings has always been hell for me, but on those Thursday mornings it was less of a hell, which was ironic because we woke two hours earlier than on a normal weekday. I always remember it as being winter. I don't know why. You know as well as I do that we made the trip year round through all the seasons. But for whatever reason I always remember it as winter with snow falling outside my window, the heater in my bedroom humming and those brutal, freezing, Colorado winds howling outside.

 

Sometimes my brother, who is two years younger than me, would wake and follow me out the front door. When he came, he brought an old fashioned goblet with Celtic runes carved into the side. He had it filled with hot chocolate at the coffee shop. The baristas at the Alley Cat addressed him as “the chalice guy.” My brother often stayed up late the night before, finishing some fantasy novel. My brother has read more fantasy than anyone I know, and he has the names of all the cities and lords of Middle Earth memorized.

 

A rotating cast of friends met us outside our front door. The cast rotated because only a couple of people managed to get up this early each week. We would have needed several cars had everyone woken and showed up at once. Our friends never rang the doorbell for they knew that my family was still asleep. It was, after all, four in the morning. Sometimes they would tap on my window impatiently if they had been waiting too long or if I had accidently fallen back asleep. The small crowd outside of my home was always clad in thick, heavy duty, wool coats. The coats came from the car of one of our friends who was an avid backpacker. His trunk was always filled with piles and piles of camping gear. He was prepared to go to the mountains at the drop of a hat and he always had a warm coat for anyone who had forgotten theirs.

 

The first thing we did after starting the car was turn up the heater all the way. We also turned the radio to 88.9 which was the local station. Our favorite radio show hadn’t started yet but it would soon. As the car blasted cold air from its vents, we made a few last minute stops picking up friends who hadn’t been able to get a ride to my house. It took about ten minutes to do that and by the time we had pulled onto the interstate the air in the car had finally warmed up. We never took long to wake up. In hardly any time at all, we were shouting and joking and drawing crude things on the fogged windows of the car.

 

One of us who always sat quietly in the back, never wore shoes. Even if it was snowing he would be barefoot. If you had asked him why he was barefoot he would have informed you that it was because he was a ginger and he didn’t have any soles. His remarks often go missed because he speaks them quietly and because nobody is listening closely enough, but they are incredibly witty. He makes puns like no person I know. His twin brother came also, and often brought a guitar. He held it at an angle and twisted his body around it so that he could play it while sitting in his seat. When the radio show started we had to yell at him to be quiet. Subdued and hurt, he would sit quietly and ever so softly, strum along with whatever chords were being played on the radio. He could pick up the chord progression of a song in seconds.

 

Our favorite radio show played old folk tunes: songs so old that you could hear the static of the recording behind every sound. The songs were clunky and sloppy but the words were carefully crafted and the singer sang them with such honesty that it didn't matter if he sang them well, which he usually didn’t. The words are always what matters with folk music. We discovered the words of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, among many others, on those rides. We could never tell if we were listening to a verse or a chorus or a bridge. It was always the same melody repeated over and over, with new words each time. It could have been any of them. But in spite of this, each song managed to be unique. Some were jokes. Some were stories. Some were traveling songs. Some were love songs. Some were political protest. Some were just about alcohol. Do you remember what those songs meant to us, Old Friend? Do you remember how it felt to speed down that icy, deserted highway and to listen to those beautiful lyrics for the first time?

 

But that's not to say that we always listened. That kind of music isn’t for everyone and even though most of us loved it, there were a few of us who couldn’t take it. One of us in particular would often switch the station when nobody was guarding the radio. She never seemed to sit still and if she wasn’t listening to loud pop music she wasn’t happy. She had so much energy that we used to call her “the squirrel” as a joke, and on the weeks that she slept in, our trips weren’t half as lively.

 

By the time we arrived at the Alley Cat the car was like a furnace. It was hard to step back into the cold, but we did it anyways. Sharp winds whipped around us as we hurried down a long cobblestoned alley and ascended a set of rickety wooden stairs that wrapped around the corner of an old building. Streetlamps lit both sides of the narrow alley and sometimes snow could be seen falling through yellow beams of light. From the outside we could already smell espresso, tea, and the fruity vapors that came from the hookah bar on the first floor. At the start of the staircase there was a sign which read, “The Alley Cat: Always Open”, and at the top of the stairs there was a door. Passing through that door was like crossing into another world.

 

The first thing that you noticed when you stepped into the Alley Cat was the ceiling. It was like a patchwork quilt and it spread in colorful disarray above the entire café. Each ceiling tile was painted and though the ceiling must have been completely white at one time, I never saw a blank tile in all my trips there. Each tile featured the work of a different artist, and because of this each was it’s own unique creation. Some were bright. Some were dark. Some were light hearted. Some were adult. Some were abstract. Some were decorative. Some were achingly realistic. Some were actually sculptures, with rocks and feathers and dangling pieces glued to the surface. But they were all masterpieces. From any location in the shop it was impossible to keep from looking up. I’m not sure if it was the ceiling or the looking up that made you feel like a child again. Perhaps it was both.

 

One of us was an equal to the artists who painted the ceiling, but she was quiet about it. She never spoke of, or showcased her art. If you were lucky enough to see one of her paintings then you realized immediately that her visible plainness and quietness was nothing less than a humble, steadfast devotion to things greater than herself. A devotion that, when glimpsed, showed itself in glorious beauty and light.

 

Beneath the ceiling, and connected to it by walls and windows and the occasional pillar, was the rest of the Café. It was square shaped and in the center of the room there was another square, formed of four counters, and inside of it were several baristas tripping over one another as they took orders, poured milk, released clouds of steam from the espresso machines and called out the names of drinks that had been completed. Do you remember that first morning, that first Thursday at four AM when we hesitantly opened that creaky door for the first time? Inside, It was mostly empty. It always was at this time of morning. There was only the occasional bum and a couple of scattered college students pulling all-nighters. As we approached the baristas at the counter, to order our drinks, they spoke.

“We’ll be with you in just a moment,” said a barista who was shorter and had gauges in his ears.

“Actually,” said the other one who was black and had dreadlocks, “It might be a little more than a moment.”

The man with gauges smiled. “We’ll do our best, but it’s hard to say exactly when we’ll get around to taking your orders.”

“If we get around to taking them at all.”

“It’s because we’re on the second floor. Once you get up this high things get batshit crazy. Time moves differently up here.” There was silence then, and we must have looked puzzled because he continued, “You know. Because time is relative to gravity. It's basic physics. Rabbi John can tell you all about it.” He pointed to a short bearded man in a suit who was dozing in and out of sleep in front of a laptop. He sat a few tables away. He started when he heard his name and he looked up.

“I beg your pardon?” He spoke with a British accent. His eyes were droopy and red.

“These kids don’t know their basic laws of physics. Can you explain to them about time being relative to gravity?”

“Ah, yes.” The man called Rabbi John cleared his throat. “So it goes like this…” And for the next few minutes we stood and listened while he muttered about properties of physics and various experiments that he had conducted at the university. None of it made much sense but we smiled politely and nodded politely and eventually he seemed satisfied that we understood and he turned back to his computer.

“So,” came the voice of the dreadlocked barista from behind the counter. “What do you scientifically ignorant kids want to drink?”

 

The baristas were quick, both at making drinks and at playing with words. Listening to them banter was one of the best parts of those mornings. There was only one person I knew who was quick enough to keep up with them. On his first trip with us to the alley cat he wore a pro gun rights shirt in the hopes of offending all the liberals. Once, he was chased out of the café for disrupting a feminist coffee group. He can banter for hours and never miss a beat. He is the funniest person I know.

 

The rest of the space inside the café was filled with tables and chairs. They were crammed into every spot where there was enough room, but mostly they were lined along the outer windows and walls of the café. In the far corner, in the farthest possible spot from the main counter, was an enormous booth that easily sat eight people. Do you remember that table, old friend? That was our table. It was always where we sat.

 

At our table in the corner we would play Jenga and cards while we drank our coffee. We played for the sake of playing and we disregarded the rules. Our Jenga set (which we brought with us) was missing more than a few blocks. The blocks that we had managed to hold onto were chipped and dented and stained, but there were enough of them to justify a tower and a game. Each of us played the game differently; some carefully, some quickly, some carelessly. And when we stacked the blocks on top of the tower we stacked them diagonally, vertically and at all angles. We stacked them in every way that we weren’t supposed to stack them. Blocks were leaned against each other and placed on top of each other and were sometimes set dangling precariously over the edge. It was as though the little wooden tower was Babel and we were the architects that had taken over after the language split. Our crooked cattywampus games never lasted very long. One of us would always push the tower over when his turn came. But this was just as well, for it wasn’t until the wooden blocks had come crashing to the table, that the real games began.

 

Between games, we graffitied the blocks with markers. Each little piece of wood became a canvas, and we scribbled whatever we wanted onto it. That old, battered Jenga set sits in my room now, unused, and I am looking at it as I write this. Each block is filled with quotes and inside jokes and scribbles and drawings and vulgarities and hearts with initials next to them and messages in morse code. Some blocks were elaborate pictures that could only be viewed when you had placed three of them next to each other, side by side. Some were conversations that took place over several weeks. (A statement written one thursday, a comment on the statement the next, a comment on the comment on the week after that.) Some are food and coffee stained. One has drops of blood on it. Several are covered with song quotes, written by one of us who could tell you the names of all the members of Pink Floyd, The Who, Neil Young, as well as the dates of their albums, and the tracklists from each. Thanks to him, one of these blocks holds an entire Jethro Tull song. Another is written in German by a friend who was fluent in the language. Sitting here, alone, I am looking at them and I can see that there are very few blocks left untouched. They are almost completely covered with the things that we left on them. I can still picture them sitting on our table in the corner, amidst our scattered coffee cups and plates of food, arranged by our hands into an insane tower of words and pictures.

We graffitied the playing cards too, drawing beards on the Queens, red eyes on the jacks and blackening the faces of the kings. We scribbled notes between the diamonds, clubs, spades, and hearts that decorated the fronts of the cards. I still have that old deck. Our deck of mismatched cards; pulled together from different decks, all of them different colors and styles. It sits, unused and gathering dust. Some of the cards are dirty and torn and ripped, some are new and shiny, some are nylon coated, and some are paper. But all of them were abused as we slammed them onto the table loudly, stole from each other’s hands, drew from the bottom of the deck, and made up our own rules. One of us who was very well trained in the sophistications and traditions of card playing would make sure that we held our hands properly and bluffed well and allowed him to be the dealer. He was a true to form Italian, and his hair was always slicked back beneath his fedora. He never seemed to mind our cheating, so long as we cheated with style.

 

When the games had all been played and our drinks had been finished we would sit and talk. And that was the best part of those mornings. For together we were something so much better than we were separately. Together we were like that radio show, and that ceiling above us, and those cards and blocks that we wrote all over. We bounced our differences and our personalities off of one another’s and the result was more wonderful than I can ever hope to describe. I remember sitting at that table with you, old friend, and being overcome with feelings of disbelief and joy. I couldn’t believe that I had the company of such friends. I could believe my own joy.

 

When it started to get light outside, we deposited our empty mugs and plates into the tub under the counter. The baristas wondered aloud what a bunch of high schoolers were doing here at this hour every Thursday.

“It’s just for kicks,” I would tell them. “It's just something crazy and fun to do.”

“Something doesn’t add up,” they would say. And I suppose they were right. None of it added up. It was all insanity. But the best things in life don’t add up. They don’t make sense. The best things in life are gifts. The best things in life are miracles. They are meant to be accepted and cherished for whatever they are, and they cannot be explained.

 

By the time that we had climbed back into the car the folk hour was over. We played our own music instead. We drove east and into the sunrise, with the rest of our days before us and the road stretching endlessly ahead of us. It rose upwards and upwards and we were taking it home, but we could have taken it anywhere at all.

 

Old friend, do you remember? I remember. I remember you telling me, on one of those trips, that it's easier to die for someone than it is to live for someone. And I don’t know if you knew how right you were. For as time passed, we each moved on. To our own separate lives, our own separate passions, our own separate stories. And this is as it should be. We have changed, we have moved on, and we will never again be who we were on that day. I myself, have moved to a different state to put words on paper. And it used to seem so important. It used to seem that being where I am now would make everything complete. But now I can see this for what it is. It’s just words. It's only words that I’m putting down on paper. And if there was ever a worthwhile thing I did, it was to insist that we woke at that insane hour and made that crusade to the Alley Cat. Old friend, I remember us, and I remember those Thursday mornings. And as I move farther and farther away from those times, I need them more than ever. So although this world may continue to pull me in both directions; forwards and backwards, towards past and future, leaving my present thin and empty, still I will refuse to forget. You will not go forgotten by me, old friend. Though you are undoubtedly changed, though you are a stranger to me, still I love you. And though I follow my own path, though I move endlessly away from that moment, still I live for it. Still I live for you, old friend. And if you ever needed me, I would be there.

Reviews

[David M. Marek]

is it me or does "review" seem a tad bit pretentious? anyway, enjoyed your story
[Thursday, 4 AM], and found it well-written. espec. the narrator, whom I found
not only compelling but compassionate.