The steam rises from the coffee like a gray-white smell defying gravity, fogging my glasses. Nearby, conversation murmurs over glasses clinking, silverware scraping porcelain plates. Short order cooks scurry in random directions, waitresses bark out orders in encrypted phrases, and I notice the laughing and mouths moving around me. All of it penetrates my ear, but falls short of recognition. Instead the sound fades into a cycled hum, activity reduces to a pin prick of excitement, and I return somewhere behind the eye to be away from it and alone with the pain.

She came to me on a crisp August day, August 19 to be exact. Belton High School had awakened from its summer slumber, and the halls reverberated with nervous giggles and macho football talk. I had just sat down with my coffee, ruminating on the speech I’d made that morning to the new students when a girl appeared at my door.

Linda, the Guidance Department secretary, was behind her and coursing through her “Mr. Calcovani, isn’t to be disturbed. If you’ll have a seat, I’ll inform him. . .” speech. Even after three month’s rest, it still possessed the monotone of a recording. I nodded that it was okay and directed my visitor to the rocking chair beside my desk.

She pointed to my “Unmarried and Over the Hill” cup as she sat down and said, “I’ll have whatever you’re drinking.”

“Coffee?”

“Yeah, you mind if I have a cup?” She motioned with her eyes to my small coffee maker in the corner of the room.

Completely caught off guard, I said the only thing I could think of. “How do you take it?”

“No cream, no sugar, and no love, please,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. It was nothing.”

“You can call me Mr. Calcovani. And you are?”

“I am Cynthia Burke Hoffmann. I’m new to the 12th grade this year.”

I poured her coffee into a styrofoam cup, discreetly watching. A black leather coat fell loosely around her slumped shoulders; a black skirt ended just above her knees. Her legs were opalescent and white, a small shaving cut on her left shin. Her dyed black hair framed brown eyes and a child-like lopsided smile, rimmed with gloss.

“You like your coffee black?”

“No, I said no cream and no sugar.”

Nodding, I handed her the cup of coffee, black. She winked at me, then raised the cup to her lips. “So, what may I do for you this morning?” Getting down to business was the best way to avoid her inappropriate ease with me.

Blowing on the hot liquid, she said, “I listened to your speech this morning, and I felt I needed to express my opinion.”

“I see.”

“No, actually you don’t see.” She shifted posture, putting down the coffee, and assumed a professional poise—legs crossed, hands neatly folded, block-heeled shoe bobbing. “Now, you mentioned that writing is a skill that every person from this school learns before graduating, right? You seem fairly confident of this.”

“Yes. It’s something we pride ourselves on,” I said. I started to clean my glasses with my tie. I felt self-conscious now, as she used the phrase “fairly confident,” one I had uttered several times during my speech that morning. Linda said I was always using oxymorons and empty phrases when I spoke. Her favorite of mine was “if you will.” “If I will what?” she’d say.

“But you can’t teach writing, Mr. C,” my visitor intoned. “Writing is something that comes from inside.” She opened her jacket to reveal a black scoop neck shirt, and I put my glasses back on my face.

Pressing her hands against her chest, she said, “It comes from here.” Then she pointed to her head. “Goes here.” Then she smirked. “And you’re gonna teach me how to get it from there to the paper. I don’t think so, Walter.” She half-smiled, smug in her victory, and sat back in the rocker.

“It’s a fair point, I guess.” I tried not to look at her. Her face was innocent, her body small and thinnish under that leather jacket, and I felt a swell inside my chest. I wanted to hug this child, tell her such curiosity and sweetness would serve her well some day.

“That analytical crap is for guys in lab coats and college professors. Or maybe guys like you.”
I did look at her now, searched those brown eyes for some clue she was snowing me. There was none. Her first mistake of the day came next when she uncrossed her legs, and flashed a wisp of white panties as she stood. I blushed, but stood quickly so she wouldn’t know I’d seen.

“You think I’m crazy don’t you?” she said.

“No, Cynthia. I do not,” I said much quieter, hoping she’d take the hint to lower her voice. I could feel the heat of Linda eavesdropping from her desk.

Cynthia fiddled with zipper on her jacket, her lips tightening and her eyes squinting at the corners.

“Well, okay. Thanks for the coffee, sir. Have a day. You decide.”

“Come back any time,” I said.

I sat and swiveled in my chair as she walked out the door, thinking how I’d just witnessed an audition of some kind. I poured what was left from her coffee into my own cup, watching the brown liquid as it returned to its original black state. “No cream, no sugar, and no love,” I repeated. So grown up, so much the child.

A woman at the check out counter is arguing with the hostess about her bill. I can only hear brief snip-its from the conversation, but apparently she was charged twice for her iced tea and is quite angry. Had it not been for her vehement display, I would’ve tuned out, but her histrionics are attracting most eyes in the place.

I drift back and can feel the intimacy of oneness, the hindsight of mistakes and the sting of calm comes over me again; it’s the feeling Judas must have felt counting his silver. I reach across to smooth the two pages of wrinkled notes sitting under the sugar. They are her tribute, and I have crumpled them four times over two cups of coffee. When the tears start, the queasiness returns hot like a stomach cramp. All I can do is crumple them again, and clean my glasses on the tip of my conservative red tie; it’s my reflex, the comfort of habit, a way of focusing on nothing. As a waitress refills my coffee, my eyes blur to the white cup as the light brown swirls black.

I was in my office one afternoon in October, looking over applications for the Honor Society when I heard a ruckus outside my office.

“Just leave me alone, damnit!”

“You cannot just—”

Cynthia burst into my office with Linda, red-faced, and right behind her. Swiveling in my chair to face them, I said calmly, “Hello, Ladies.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Calcovani. I tried to tell her to wait,” Linda said.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Young,” I said. “Have a seat, Cynthia.”

I looked at Linida, furrowed my eyebrows, and nodded, hoping she would understand.

“Does she have to be in here?” Cynthia asked, pointing. Cynthia wore a pair of sunglasses so big they engulfed her face. As usual, she donned her all-black wardrobe complete with leather jacket and block-heeled shoes. In the first month of school, several teachers had come to me wondering about her clothes and the unusually dark writing she was turning in. I kept having her in for talks, but at my invitation, she would sit without speaking until I allowed her to leave. This was the first time since August she’d come to me with something to say.

“No, she was just leaving,” I said perhaps too eagerly, motioning Linda out with my eyes. She muttered something I couldn’t hear and slammed the door.

“I want to be transferred out of English right away,” she said, flinging her black book bag onto the floor.

“Transferred?”

“Why do you always repeat what people say? Is that what they teach you in shrink school?”

“I’m a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. Why don’t you tell me what happened today.”

“Well, let’s see. I got up this morning and got dressed.”

“About Mrs. Wood’s class?”

“I walked in, sat in the back, kissed Jack Higgin’s left ear lobe.” She was facing me with two mirrored eyes and an expressionless face, as if she were being cross examined. “He’s asked me out, you know.”

“Cynthia, what happened?”

“You’re getting angry aren’t you?” she said with a slight smile.

“I am not getting angry.”

“Could you please refer to me as Cynthia Burke? I’d like to be called by that name from now on.”

“Okay, Cynthia Burke. Why don’t you tell me what happened in English class,” I said, starting over again. “Is there a reason why you’re wearing sunglasses?”

“Mighty bright today, Mr. C.”

I glanced out my window into the overcast sky. “Blinding.”

“I thought psychologists weren’t supposed to use sarcasm with their patients.”

“We’re not,” I said without expression.

The honest answer caught her attention. She tilted her head. “Mrs. Woods and I are not educationally compatible,” she said flatly.

“Educationally compatible?”

“There you go again, with the repeating thing.”

“Tell me why you two are not compatible,” I said, sighing.

“Mrs. Woods asked us to keep a personal journal for her class.”

“And?”

“Well, I already have a personal journal.”

“Well, then what’s the problem?”

“Except she says she’s going to take up the journals every three weeks. I told her I don’t let anyone read my journal. It’s personal. And she told me I would get a zero if I didn’t turn it in, so that’s when I walked out.”

“You walked out of her class?”

“Yeah. I shouldn’t have to put up with such a totalitarian attitude. This isn’t a communist society. I’ve read Orwell. And besides,” she said, fiddling with her zipper, “she doesn’t have any right to see what I write in there. It’s none of her business.”

“Do you think walking out of her class was the right response?”

She stood up. “I find it the completely right reponse. The only way to treat oppression is with a change of venue. Smart guy like you, I figure you’d know that.”

“We aren’t talking about me, Cynthia,” I said calmly, but I the tension in my voice rimmed the words.

Finally, as if she sensed her limit with me, she conceded quietly. “All right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have walked out. I thought you would understand, that’s all.”

“Maybe you could keep a separate journal. One for class, and another for yourself.”

“Why should I have to keep two separate journals? That’s a stupid idea.”

“Cynthia Burke, will you try it?”

She thought for a moment and then sighed. “Yeah, I’ll try it, but I still think it’s stupid.” She leaned down to pick her book bag off the floor when her glasses fell off. Her left eye was black and almost swollen shut.

“Oh my God!” I said, forgetting myself. I leaned forward in my chair, my hands outstretched, but I didn’t touch her. She leaned back into the chair, her head tilted down. She then met my gaze, an uncanny emptiness in the deep brown of her irises.

“Cynthia, who did this to you?”

Standing up suddenly, she grabbed her bag, squinted, and looked just past my shoulder. “You know, your walls are just like Jerry’s. If you squint, they look purple. Do you know what purple is symbolic of?” She wiped a tear that had escaped from her eye.

I shook my head in disbelief. “Cynthia, I—”

“It represents fidelity, Mr. C. Have a day.” And in a black blur, she was gone.

Linda immediately came to my door. “Why do you let her just waltz right on in here without knocking, without checking with me? What makes her so special?”

I was standing now in the middle of the floor with my mouth slightly open. I turned and faced the wall, ignoring her question.

“Walter, are you okay?” she said.

“No, we’re not.”

I am watching a couple across the crowded room who are sitting by the large glass window. “Our booth,” I say to myself. They are holding hands across the table, and coffee steam is rising from the cups sitting below their faces. He is trying to say something difficult, and she keeps nodding her head like a puppet on repeat. Finally, giving up, he smiles, looks out the window, then back at her, out the window, and then down into his coffee cup. She puts her other hand on top of his, and they both laugh in a nervous release.

“Walter?”

I look up. It’s Art Young, my good friend and principal of Belton High School. “Good morning,” I say, sipping my coffee and looking over towards the young couple again.

“Well, it’s morning,” he responds, sliding into booth.

“I’m glad you could make it,” I say.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to try this place.”

“Great coffee here,” I mutter.

“You guys used to come here, didn’t you?”

I nod and squint my eyes at the wall.

At Jerry’s, I sat in a booth near the window, and I observed the blood red of an autumn sky, The stars clustered at the hood of the sky, stared down like millions of little eyes, the eyes of angels or perhaps lost friends. I wondered if they could see the mistakes I was making, how after fifteen years in counseling, a person like me was so susceptible to the desperation of a young girl in need.

“You know, coffee is no basis for a lasting relationship.”

"New Hand For Mary" Oil on Masonite by Don Swartzentruber

I looked up into the eyes of a gaunt girl in a black leather jacket. She gave me the rare smile I’d come to desire and I felt the landslide of her sway overtaking me again. The bruise around her eye was healed now, and no longer served as a reminder that I’d willingly accepted and perpetuated her lie about slipping in the shower.

“Hello, Cynthia.”

“How’s it going, Walter. I can call you Walter, can’t I—you know since we’re not in school and all.”

I made no expression as if I hadn’t heard her.

“Okay, I won’t call you Walter.” She slid into the book opposite me, and our knees touched for a moment. She laughed, and I tried not to squirm.

“I would just prefer you call me Mr. Calcovani,” I said dryly.

“Well, Mr. C, I would prefer you call me Cynthia Burke. Especially since we’re operating on a professional level here.”

A roundfaced, pudgy waitress approached our table, and Cynthia Burke ordered us two French Roast coffees. She said the same line about no cream, no sugar, and no love, but the waitress didn’t catch it.

“Why do you say that?” I asked her.

“I like my coffee without cream and sugar. I can see my reflection in it that way.”

“Why do you say that thing about no love?”

“I don’t believe in love. It’s the greatest misconception of this century. I’ve read Hemingway, too. Did you know he was married four times before pulling the trigger of a shotgun with his toes?”

“Okay,” I said, cutting past the filler. “Why are we here? What is so urgent?”

“I’m sorry for calling you at home. I hope your wife doesn’t mind.”

“I’m not married,” I said matter-of-factly. She mistook my words as an entree to more vital statistics about my life.

“Why aren’t you married? Were you married?”

“No.”

“Like I said, love is an illusion.”

“Okay, Cynthia Burke, I really think I should go. I don’t know why—”

“Hey,” she said, grabbing my hand as I was getting out of the booth. Her hand was unusually rough and cold and her touch surprised me. She said, “At least try the coffee.”

Reluctantly, I sat again. The waitress brought our coffees in white mugs, and Cynthia watched as I put