T.K

I am in a coffee shop.

It is a coffee shop that plays the news on one of those twenty four hour news channels. I don’t like that very much, feels like the world is trying to get in my way when I all I want is to get away from it. I walked here this morning from my house, headphones plugged in playing music loud into my ears so I couldn’t hear the traffic. I didn’t always look when I crossed the roads down towards the sea either. I don’t know why. I was feeling sort of lucky I guess.

I order eggs, over easy, and a pot of peppermint tea which both come pretty quickly. I am the only one here save for the coffee barista and a guy in a beige t-shirt who I take to be the chef. They’re talking about hog roasts and the tenderest meat on the hog. They say it’s the cheek. It is 8.45am and it seems a little early for all of that. I find myself wondering about the tongue. Is that even a meat? I take a small book from my bag, one about a love that spans a lifetime and a continent, and stir the tea.

An hour passes.

A boy walks in. Twenty seven maybe. He has on a rucksack and a denim shirt that looks bleached by the sun but was probably bought that way, his hair swept backwards by the wind outside. It is cold and I think to myself that he should have worn a coat, a vestige leftover from my childhood being told the same thing once, twice, a thousand times.

I watch as he sits at the table just inside the window and beneath his denim shirt, rolled up to his elbow, I see two letters, etched onto his skin, black, architectural in their accuracy.

“T.K”

I take a sip of the second pot of peppermint tea I have ordered, concerned as I was that the barista would ask me to leave. The café has started to fill up with families, children in hats that cover their ears and the tops of their eyes.

The boy notices my gaze at his arm and, with what I suppose is at least a little self consciousness, strokes it with his left hand.

I put my cup of peppermint tea back on the table, wipe my mouth with the tips of my fingers, cough a cough I don’t really need to cough and look out of the window beyond his face to the young family outside. He in a coat that reminds me of my father, she saying something to the young girl, the young girl dressed in a Princess dress, all purple sequins and glitter; she is laughing back, pink hearts painted at the corners of her eyes. For a second I swear I hear it through the door but the barista starts grinding coffee beans behind me, the sound chasing away her laugh like birds.

I remember the boy now, eyes deep inside a book whose title I can’t read, and I think again of those initials on his arm and just for a minute allow myself to believe it’s a sign of something; because those initials are my initials. The ones drawn on the outside of his bicep belong to me.  Me, a man now, carving out a somewhere to be, gathering sticks, making a nest, and those initials are at my beginning. They are the start of all that has come since. They are mine.

 And then, with a confidence that surprises me, I lean forward in my chair towards his and I say

“Excuse me,” my voice like a stranger.

He looks up from his book.

“Your arm.” I say, “The tattoo on your arm.”

I point to the tattoo on his arm.

My name.

The beginning.  

He hardly reacts, turning slightly in my direction.

And as clear as I know I shouldn’t ask what I am about to ask I know too that I must, the question already bubbling up inside of me, a volcano no longer dormant. Waiting.

“Why do you have it?” I say.

He looks at his arm again and then at me, the black letters are whispering my name. The barista grinds more coffee beans and the whisper is silenced.

The boy puts his book down cover side up onto the table. The guy I took to be the chef comes over and puts a tall cup of coffee on the boys table next to his book. The boy smiles a thank you. The chef smiles back.

“They use it in copywriting.” he says in an easy sort of way that implies we’ve grown up together, that we’ve shared some sort of history. I even question the possibility of it for a second but am sure I would remember something like that.

“It is for when there’s more to come” he continues.

“It means that there are words yet to be written.”

And then “I’m a writer. It seemed to make sense.”

I say “I thought there would be a story behind it” and then I thank him and say I hope he enjoys his coffee. I don’t say anything else and he picks up his book and starts reading again.

Then I remember something I said once to my friend Marissa.

“I’ve always been tied to something, Marissa.” I said and she laughed and then I listed them until her laughter stopped. I didn’t need to think, I had carried them all like rocks in my pockets since I could walk, each getting heavier as the years added up. Dense as asteroids by the time adult life started happening around me to the kids I was a kid with too.

“I’m too frightened to run.” I said.

Marissa looked at me with eyes that said she understood. She took my face in her hands.

“There will always be something,” she said.

She smoothed my beard and smiled.

“And then there will be something worth running to. You just don’t know it yet.”