it is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves

08/21/2004 -- Details

Sofiya, Bulgaria
15:30

“Do you need anything else, sir?”

Her words had marked the third time in the hour that one of the younger waitresses had approached his small table, inquiring as to whether or not the silent man was satisfied with the coffee he had ordered. She was petite, no older than her late teens, blonde and Bulgarian.

The young man could tell the latter from her accent; her English was weak, and he felt tempted to start speaking to the woman in her assumed native tongue. Watching her neutrally with his hazel eyes, and sitting down the pen in his hand, he instead insisted that the coffee was fine.

He was partially lying. A fact she was also keen to but spoke nothing about. The man had not touched the coffee since he had asked for it an hour ago. The look on her face was slightly perturbed as she left. The customers in the small, roadside café were few and far in between, fading in and out of the bar like shadows cast by the lighting of diminutive shop in the night.

Her voice itself had a story to tell, the strained anxiousness in her tone when she spoke to him, pink lips carefully producing each word with a most subtle grace, and an impeccable sense of manners. The virtually imperceptible tremble of her upper lip during her last visit suggested she had almost been inclined to start a true conversation with him – though her body language already had.

The dark haired man looked back at his small yellow notepad, situated next to his cup of coffee – which he usually took black, with the occasional packet of sugar or two, and he began to write. Every few moments or so he’d glance back over to the waitress, then to his passport and the variety of previously crumpled papers and photographs also sprawled on the table top.

Random notes of the areas he had been, a crudely drawn map of his destination, and train schedules had found themselves onto the paper via his difficult-to-read handwriting. His penmanship was not bad at all – but what was put on these pages were of no use to anyone else anyway.

He had time to spare. He leaned back in his chair and reached into the pocket of his coat, searching for a cigarette. In the back of his mind he hoped the waitress would not mind the smoke.

If it was a problem, he would put it out without much thought. Smoking for him was never a necessity. It kept him awake during the moments when he didn’t need to sleep.

Striking a match, lighting it, shaking the flame from the match and taking in his first draw in the last few hours, he made eye contact with a new woman from across the room, just now entering the café.

The other patrons had come and gone like shadows, but she was different; pale and modestly tall with blonde hair and imperceptible eyes. He took an extended period of time to take in her features. She was beautiful. She was also accompanied by a man, not much taller than she, who stood close by her. Both of them looked out of place.

The thin plume of cigarette smoke veiled her like grain on an aging film, and she quickly averted her eyes. From the glimpse that the young man had gotten of her, he could not tell her age; a simple fact that bothered him ever so slightly. He chose not to dwell on it too long, though. He was never mindful of his staring.

The time spent at the quiet, almost bucolic European café was rather relaxing. Running a hand through his short, under-combed hair, he eventually ordered a warm cup of coffee (actually drinking it this time), while rereading the letter that had stayed put in his right coat pocket for the near entirety of his trip thus far. It was somewhat strange knowing that in the same coffee bar just weeks prior, she had penned it.

Skye was close. He would find her.

17:00

Quickly gathering his things, the man left his seat. In his wake: a used napkin, an empty coffee cup, and a sketch of the waitress who served him, that was done when she was attending to something behind the counter. His name was written at the bottom.

He was leaving the café, briskly, and soon, pushed through the door in exit. From this action, above the door, there was a chime. It was not the only noise he heard – the young woman whose eyes had met his earlier, was at the counter, conversing with an older man, and inquiring about the no-longer-existent airways.

The streets here were cold, foreign, and wet. It showed signs that it had rained earlier – even thought he wasn’t present in town for too long. The smoking man knew exactly where he was going, but that wasn’t why he was following the ground with his eyes as he walked. The sidewalks weren’t exactly the cleanest, and he liked his boots clean. They were logo-less; faux recreations of American footwear that he had scored alongside various other paraphernalia in Moscow.

By his side was a leather trunk, swaying back and forth with each step in complete sync with his coat. Its contents, unique and important, but it’s exterior, no different from that of the instrument case of a musician. He was not a musician.

He turned his head to the side, looking between the bars of a gate like barrier as he passed by it. He saw the station and the people standing around it in strobe, the effect seemingly slowing down time. Seconds later, he stepped up onto the train platform.

He had already purchased his ticket before he had even gone to the café. Until then, he had been traveling non-stop for the last few days. The break was long overdue. He had once heard a theory on jet-lag that intrigued him; that souls were not particularly fast and that they needed time to catch up after the person reaches his destination. The young, dark haired man didn’t know how fast his soul was, but the pause was nice.

Onto the train, into his seat, head against the window, and a sigh. He pulled out a cigarette and looked at it in his hand, carefully, for just a second. The man wondered how many he had smoked that evening. He couldn’t remember, though it couldn’t have been more than a few. Looking at it stirred from the dark a happy memory with an old friend. The reprieve of the moment was strange for two reasons. The memory was the last time they had kissed, and her lips tasted like cigarettes, though it did not hamper her kissing technique. It was also sad, because she was gone. But it made him smile, thinking about it.

The train shifted and the hiss of smoke and the churning of machinery and steel against the tracks broke him from the moment, almost as if he had fallen away from the woman again, hitting the ground of reality hard, but alive, all over again. He put the cigarette to his lips and lit it quickly.

He exhaled. And he stared. And he was quiet. Those same eyes from the café were looking elsewhere, her head slowly coming to rest against the shoulder of her companion. Now they were looking at him.

2:00

The man sat up slowly, abandoning this pointless parody of sleep. The unlit-cigarette that had been between his lips fell silently against the sheets. He groped around for his coat in the dark, which lay half on the bed, half astray down its side. It was nowhere to be found.

Coughing quietly in the shadows and running a hand through his messy hair, he pondered for a moment. He was still thinking about them, and her. He regretted leaving. It wasn’t his false – it was circumstance. It was an accident that had changed his life, for better or worse. The young man was never really sure. But even if he didn’t quite regret the change, there would always be compunction towards the woman who was left behind, and what it must have put her through.

He reached over blindly to the bedside table in the room. He turned on the Italian lamp, after finding it. The switch felt foreign. In every room, in every country, they held back a different voltage. The sound was different. Never as memorable as home – and even stranger, that such a sound could be so distinct in one’s mind, even though it’s hardly ever directly thought about.

Knowing he’d need room and board for the evening, he got off the train outside of Prague, checking in at the ‘Avalon Inn’, an aging and not-too-frequently occupied hotel. The room in the inn was small, burgundy like the train, and slightly unclean, but he didn’t pay, nor ask, for much anyway. There were no suites of any kind outside of places like Prague. Just hotels like these – where he could tell the earlier occupants were a 40-something man and a 20-something women just by the smell and the items they left behind.

He could see his book of matches now. The small, folded paper was on the floor; discarded. He had used them all and forgot.

Turned off the light, fell back into the pillows, reached into his lap, and took hold of the cigarette. Noah Maxwell put the bent, worn, and unlit cigarette between his lips. He told himself he didn’t need to smoke, and maybe he didn’t. Or maybe he just didn’t want to remind himself of her.

He always left them. The ones he loved.

‘Sorry Dom… Forgive me, someday.’

It was going to be a long night.

-------

May I introduce to you, Noah Maxwell, everyone.

Special thanks to April for setting this up so, so long ago. We can't wait to have ya back. :D

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