I followed Kat to Portland. She landed in Charleston because it was as far from her parents as she could get without leaving the country, she said, and she needed space to sort out a few things, decide what she wanted to do with her life. Her brother was an engineer at the Navy base. I asked him once what he did over there, and he said, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.” He said this deadpan, then walked away. I don’t think he liked me very much. I met Kat at a party, a house on Ladson, south of Broad. She was huddled in a corner with Ginny Wheaton, whispering conspiratorially while they passed a joint back and forth. I crashed the conversation, stumbled into her in the process. She grabbed my arm to keep her balance, told me I had an odd way of introducing myself. Ginny wandered off. We were inseparable, me and Kathleen, for the six weeks she was around after that. Before she flew home at the end of July, she said we’d find a way to work things out, made me promise to write at least. A couple of weeks after she left, I bought a bus ticket and headed west. Four days on a Greyhound. Farthest I’d been before that was Macon, Georgia. I didn’t think about what I was doing. We barely knew each other. Barely knew anything, really. I called her from a pay phone in Fargo, North Dakota, told her I was on the way, and when I finally arrived, she met me at the station, wrapped her arms around me so tight you’d think I’d just returned from a moon landing. We found a cheap apartment and shacked up for a month before she decided she’d had enough and went home to her parents and their cookie-cuttered three-two ranch in Maywood. I’m in the apartment still, a grungy studio near the northwest entrance to Washington Park. Jobs are scarce. The economy is pretty bad. I’m trying to squirrel enough money away to get out, but it’s difficult. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and all that. Six months and all I have to show for it is forty-three bucks stashed under a loose floorboard in the kitchen. At this rate, I’ll be here forever.
I work in a sandwich shop downtown, a lunch place mainly. People come for the hoagies, but we open early for what the owner refers to as a continental breakfast—a small assortment of pastries from Rose’s Bakery, delivered just before we open; and coffee, freshly brewed and consumed almost entirely by mid-morning. We close at seven p.m., earlier if we run out of meatballs. The meatballs are the main draw. They’re gold, the owner says. He allows us to eat anything we want in lieu of better wages. Anything, that is, except the meatballs. His mother makes them at home every morning and drops them off, still warm, in time for the lunch rush. I don’t know that farming out food preparation like this is entirely aboveboard, but no one’s complaining, so we just let that slide. I’m on my feet most of the day, but I do get a short break before the noon rush and a longer one after. The afternoons can be pretty slow. The neighborhood is a little rough around the edges, but lately I see more suits, mostly lawyers and accountants setting up shop in reclaimed buildings that were graffitied derelicts just a few years back. We occupy a storefront on the ground floor of one of these buildings, across the street from the Oregon Bank. A steady stream of transplanted professionals floods us at lunchtime, a line of people out the door, very few of them up to any funny business.
There is this one particular guy, though. Roger. Built like a scarecrow, tall and loose-jointed. Wild eyes framed by black horn-rimmed glasses. Wavy blond bedhead hair, combed and parted to little effect. Rumpled suit, sky blue, coat sleeves a little too short and high-water pants a little too tight. White Oxford shirt, missing a button on the collar. Red, white, and blue repp necktie, knot slightly off-kilter. Wingtips, beat to hell. Everything but the wingtips slept in, I’d say. A character straight out of an R. Crumb comic.
Portland has a reputation for keeping things weird, and I deal every day with a broad sample of human peculiarities. I’m accustomed to dealing with addicts, transients, and a host of other less fortunate souls. The owner gives me plenty of room to maneuver. “No point getting maimed over half a sandwich,” he says. Word usually gets around when you give stuff away, but I’m only a little less desperate than anyone else down here. The way I see it, we’re all, every one of us, a part of the lunatic fringe, all just a step or two ahead of or away from something. At the moment, I occupy a spot on this side of the counter, buoyed by a job that pays just enough to keep me here, one degree of separation between me and the street. I’m inured to fortune’s obvious randomness, accustomed to its ebb and flow, people drifting back and forth across the line. I’m rarely spooked by any of the people I see on a regular basis, but there is something unnerving about Roger. His dark eyes hint at a darker interior. They shift chaotically, consume the light, driven by some arcane inner mechanism. I’m afraid, when he’s around, that I’ll be swept into the void.
He comes in every morning, a little before eight, for coffee and an apple tart. I’m in the back, prepping for the lunch rush, when I hear the door open in the front of the store, followed by a palpable silence. I stop what I’m doing, wash my hands, and walk out front. Roger sits in a booth, his large hands before him, palms pressed flat on the table, fingers spread very wide. I take my position behind the counter, clear my throat, and wait. I could just pour the coffee and grab the pastry, but I know if I did he’d ask for something else instead. Two beats, always, before he stands and approaches me. “A c-c-c-cup of coffee and one of th-th-those.” He points at the pastries, then quickly returns to his booth, apparently anxious to re-secure his spot. I pour the coffee, stuff a tart and a napkin into a small paper bag, and let him know his order is ready. I say, “That’ll be $2.15.” And he replies, “R-roger.” I don’t know how or where he gets his money. Actually, I’m surprised that he is able to function well enough to hold down a job, particularly one that requires the wearing of a suit. He produces a well-worn coin purse and extracts a random assortment of coins. Lots of pennies. He metes the payment out precisely, one coin at a time, then sweeps the pile back into his purse and repeats the procedure. I’m told this kind of behavior is symptomatic of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I’m no shrink, and I’m hesitant to suggest a diagnosis that might underestimate Roger’s general state of mind. I ring him up, and he takes the styrofoam cup and paper bag to his booth. I return to the back to complete prepping for the day.
After a few minutes, I hear a noise. It’s not loud, not recognizable as anything that might be linked directly to another human being. The noise is always the same. It never takes less than a minute nor more than five for the noise to occur. I stop what I’m doing, wash up, and walk out front. Spilt coffee is spreading across Roger’s table and onto the floor next to his booth. Most mornings, the dark puddle is still expanding away from him as I emerge. He sits quietly, as though nothing has happened, nibbling at his pastry. His empty coffee cup sits upright on the table. I go into the back, retrieve a mop and a handful of paper towels. I wipe down the table and mop the floor. He never says a word, never offers any sort of explanation. To be fair, he does not scowl or turn away in agitation either. Expressionless, he stares and chews, his hair a halo of disarray. His eyes dart madly. I leave him there, return to my work. When I’m done, around 8:30, I walk out front, and Roger is gone.
This is our routine. We could just as well be rehearsing a play, all the blocking and dialogue worked out and committed to memory, practiced to the point where elevation from unremarkable two-step to artful pas de deux might be within reach, if either of us were so inclined. We’re not. I am simply doing a job. I have no idea what Roger is doing.
One morning, still reeling from whatever it was I consumed for recreational purposes the previous evening, followed by whatever I thought I needed to consume to negate its effects at least enough to make it into work, I come out front, having heard the noise, feeling a little less charitable than usual. Coffee is spreading slowly across the table and floor. I break protocol and come out from behind the counter. I put one hand on Roger’s table, disturbing the warm amber pool. I lean in close to Roger’s ear and whisper, in my most menacing voice, “Goddamit, Roger. Would you stop pouring your goddam coffee all over the goddam place?” I raise myself to my full height, cross my arms, and await his response. He says nothing. Doesn’t even flinch. He does pause, very briefly, his nibbling, though. “Oh, for Chrissake,” I say. I retrieve a towel and mop from the back, wipe down the table, mop the floor, and return, disgusted, to prepping. When I come back out front, he is gone.
The following day, Roger comes in at the usual time, places his order in the usual way, sits in his booth, staring off into the distance as he sips his coffee and eats his pastry. I return to the back as I usually do, but on this morning, I don’t hear the noise. At first, I think my sense of time must be off. After ten minutes, I’m convinced that something is amiss. I wash up quickly and walk out front. No one is there. Not a drop of coffee is spilled on the table or floor. I’m puzzled, but I’m also thinking, “Hah, I fixed him,” as I head back to finish my prep work. “Maybe I should have said something to him months ago.”
Roger never spills another drop. It never occurs to me to ask him why. It never occurs to me to ask him anything at all. Or to strike up any kind of conversation. Apart from this welcome modification, our routine is unchanged. A couple of weeks pass. My uneasiness around Roger dissipates.
The first time he fails to show is a cold and rainy Monday. I attribute his absence to the winter weather, but he doesn’t show the next day either. Or the next. I talk to my friend Kelly about his sudden disappearance, tell her about losing my temper and how I thought that maybe I’d fixed him, and how, in retrospect, I regretted not asking him anything about it. She listens carefully, her expression grim, and says you always think everything’s all about you. I open my mouth to respond, but before I can get in a word, she waves me off and says what if Roger wasn’t looking to be fixed, what if he doesn’t need fixing. She says what if he just needs someone to talk to, what if the coffee thing is his best idea for getting your attention. She says what if he’s working out some serious business that’s more than a little overwhelming. She says what if you hurt his feelings. She says what if he turned out to be Jesus, what about that. There is a trace of venom in her tone as she says all these things. I’m a little surprised she’s so unsympathetic towards me, surprised she’s taken Roger’s side so quickly. I suppose she and I aren’t as close as I imagined. We did sleep together the one time, more out of curiosity than anything else, but still.
I look for Roger on the streets around the shop for a few weeks, but I’m stuck inside for much of the day, so the likelihood of running into him is infinitesimally small. Practically non-existent. I don’t really know anything about him, so I have no basis for guessing where he might have gone. When my search strategy fails to produce even a sighting and I begin to repeat the pattern, it occurs to me that I may never see him again. I never do. I haven’t seen Kelly lately, either.
I’ve tried, but I’m unable to reproduce the noise. That’s beginning to bug me.
Frank Bourne grew up in the South Carolina Low Country and currently resides in Florida with his wife, Anna. “Roger” is his first published story.
