Sketch of Seafret at the Café Olay
A tale of a boy and a girl's drum-like foot // In my headphones: Fiona Apple—The Way Things Are (1999)
Seafret sat aside the side-top table. It was meant for three, but he sat for one. A red glare emanated from the smoking light above his cellophane chair as he caressed the table leg with his jogging slipper. He eyed the painting on the diner wall and pondered what made the artist sell. When a girl his height walked by with fresh, clean glasses, he hardly noticed her even glances. He steepled his fingers and caressed the table leg. He kept his limbs close to his chest and every so often twitched the spiraled whiteness upon his head.
He’d studied at the school downtown. It hadn’t surprised him. He’d done it for Eliza. He’d readily admit it to anyone, though the next who asked would be the first. She’d made mention of it, and he’d complied. He’d liked seeing her in the hallways. She always looked at him sideways, but he didn’t mind.
After reading two paragraphs on the Mysteries of Udolpho, he raised his glass mechanically up toward his lips and put it down again, taking care to line up the ring-stain to the cup-circumference exactly. Of course, he didn’t drink his water. He just touched it to his lips and licked them while staring at the painting of the woman on the wall until his pupil disappeared inside its socket.
He found the Café Olay appealing for the marked absence of Eliza here. It wasn’t that she made him nervous; he just wanted some peace and quiet. Besides, it was the only one he knew uptown. If he looked at the color chips on the painting long enough, he could see her pointing him to the very table at which he sat three months ago. She’d asked him to come to say hello to her male artistic friend, so he’d laced up his sturdiest walking shoes and made the trek in the crackling winter. Then, he’d sat at the table and drawn graphs on the napkins. Now he thought of Northanger Abbey.
They played a sort of pop-y blues at the Café Olay, even though it was a corner diner. He found it respectful; they played it softly. He hadn’t been sleeping the way he’d wanted to. He tapped his left foot to the music, only an eighth note off-beat. Actually, the first beating foot he’d noticed was Eliza’s. They’d been at a bar somewhere, meeting her bartending friend. She hadn’t commented on the music, but he’d seen her poking the bar below the bar with her big toe as she dragged the speared olive across the surface of her drink back and forth, compulsively. She never moved in circles. Seafret had sipped his drink, not liking the taste of it at all. He’d blinked, transfixed, at her drum-like foot.
Eliza lived on the east side of town. He didn’t know why she liked it so. Her posters were all crooked on the walls. She didn’t frequent this counter diner so much anymore. “I guess my qualm is it makes me squirm,” she’d said after he’d asked. He could see how the Café Olay could make someone squirm. It certainly made him squirm—that’s why he came here. What muddled him was how it got to making Eliza squirm. But he didn’t think too hard on it. He massaged his pointer finger pad with the unbound corner of his book’s back cover and disappeared his eyeball into its socket.
Anyway, his backpack on the floor had extra back-support. She’d always made fun of him for it, since it was way too expensive for what he could afford, but he liked the way it sat on his hips. He especially liked the chest strap it came with; he liked the fact that you could blow through it and whistle. He knew you could do that because of its shape. Though he’d never tried it; she wouldn’t have liked him to. He stared at anywhere but her with his telescope. Oh Eliza, with your charcoal mane, when are you coming back again?
On his way home, he stuck to the picket fences in the snow, clinging to the inside curb as the sidewalk pulled away from the dusty, frozen-over river. A woman stopped him.
“Did you hear they’re killing all the ducks?” she’d said. No, he hadn’t heard. He didn’t much like the news these days, so he didn’t read it.
“They’re killing them by the thousands. Don’t you care?”
Seafret walked down Powder Lane, still seeing something of Eliza in all who passed his way. He spied a tall man, hair dripping wet, who’d come from the sauna; her flowered kaftan sprinted unbidden away. He perceived her in the curving bronze sun on the neighbor’s garage. He fancied her hard-straw eyes in the trees. He wanted to blow his whistle. He felt he ought to tap his feet. Then he saw Eliza in the woodchips, and he blew them all away. He was in no position to read the shape of what he’d done.
