"Black Faux Fur Coat at Caffé Trieste" by Dylan Brie Ducey
Originally published in Pearl Noir! in 2013
You: Brunette, about 35, no wedding ring, high cheekbones, blue eyes, black faux fur coat. Cappuccino. You’re sitting by the window with your friend (thin man in blue jeans, glasses, no wedding ring). There is a manuscript on the table, maybe one hundred pages.
Me: 45, 5’9”, brown hair thinning on top. Brown eyes. Sitting alone with a cup of black coffee and a copy of “Story” by Robert McKee. My relationship status is complicated. I don’t like children. I hope that you don’t like them. My sister has three. She’s crazy now. She wasn’t before. I don’t care for her children, and they know it.
I should be reading “Story” by Robert McKee but I don’t even bother to open it. Jean gave it to me. She said I should use this time productively and try to write a screenplay. I have never been interested in screenplays. I mentioned to her that I was interested in writing, but what I meant was fiction or poetry. I didn’t mean that I would try to write something and sell it. But as far as Jean is concerned, it’s all about money. She doesn’t understand that some people do things just for enjoyment. Not that I’m one of those people anymore, but still. I could be. Maybe one of these days I will be again.
I try to catch your eye but you are involved in your conversation with the thin guy. I think that you are talking about Keats, because I distinctly heard you say “Alone and palely loitering.” Is this possible? Maybe I was having some sort of aural hallucination. Can I tell you something personal? I know that poem. “La Belle Dame sans Merci.” I took a poetry class in college. I wanted to major in English, but my parents said they wouldn’t pay for a useless degree. I had to do something practical, they said, so I majored in accounting. I stashed my poetry books behind my accounting textbooks so my roommate wouldn’t see them.
I do not like the thin man because I think you are sleeping with him. He is not offensive, not wearing an NRA t-shirt or anything like that. I just assumed because you’re here with him in the morning. You’ve probably just made love with him on his futon on the floor in his sparsely furnished poet’s apartment. I’m seething with jealousy and tracing the outlines of your breasts with my eyes. Your breasts are small. They might be larger if you weighed more. I noticed that with Jean: When she gained weight, it went straight to her breasts. Don’t get me wrong, though; I actually prefer small breasts.
If you’re wondering, I did not meet Jean in college. I met her at work, several jobs ago. She is an accountant, like me.
You are wearing a black shirt, it might be wool, it might be a sweater. It’s a little tight. You are very thin. I’m a little concerned about this, and you have not eaten anything. I think you should go up to the counter and get a pastry, maybe several pastries. Black wool sweater, tight jeans, black coat. You look European, the way you are dressed, sort of casually glamorous. I am desperately attracted to you and you’ve glanced at me twice, maybe three times. But I know you are going to leave with the thin man and I won’t have the nerve to speak to you, you will walk out of the Trieste and out of my life forever, etc. I’ve been watching you for thirty five minutes. I wonder do you dress that way at home, do you go around in tight jeans and a faux fur coat or maybe just the coat with nothing underneath.
My relationship status is complicated. Technically, I am single. Meaning I am not married. I have commitment issues. That’s what Jean said. Then she threw my jacket out the window, she was so angry. Jean is a serious woman, a good woman. But she doesn’t look like you. She doesn’t wear her clothes like you do. She doesn’t read Keats. But, Jean has said that one of the things she likes about me is that I took that poetry class. I am different, she says. She may be right, but it doesn’t matter because I look the same as all the other accountants: I wear a suit to work, I get regular haircuts, I don’t have any tattoos. I look like a normal guy. I always wanted to get a tattoo, though. I did get one of my ears pierced when I was seventeen. My girlfriend and one of her friends did it with a needle and an ice cube. It hurt like hell, during and after. Then I came home past my curfew and my father was sitting in the dark living room waiting for me. He flipped on a light and saw the earring and told me to turn right around and get out of his house. My father was a Green Beret in Korea. I wasn’t inclined to argue with him, so I went back to my girlfriend’s house and knocked on her bedroom window. The next day I took the earring out. It healed pretty fast. Now you can’t see any evidence that my ear was ever pierced. It was, though. I had my rebellious moment.
The thin guy is standing up. This is exciting. Is he leaving? He didn’t say goodbye to you. Maybe he’s going to the bathroom. I don’t want to turn around to see what he’s doing; that would be too obvious. You’re sitting alone. You’re looking out the window at the fog and I want to talk to you. I want to pass you a note, write down my number, write down your number, look down your shirt. Oh god, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that, I wouldn’t really look down your shirt. I like women, I respect them. God, who am I kidding. I’m 45 and unmarried, my mother has written me off and thanks my sister every day for her grandchildren. Obviously I’ll never come through for her.
Remember I mentioned before about my argument with Jean and she threw my jacket out the window? Well, we were arguing about children, the fact that I don’t want to have them and the fact that Jean does. We argued first about the children and then about marriage. Since we’re not married. I haven’t asked Jean to marry me. She wants me to, of course. Everyone at her company (it’s not my company anymore since they laid me off) kids her that she’s “shacked up” with me. Anyway I told her that I don’t like children because they’re messy and loud and I just don’t see the point. Look at my sister, I told her. She is barely recognizable anymore. She has huge circles under her eyes, and she’s fat, and always, always in a bad mood. It’s to the point where she’s permanently in a bad mood, which means she’s crazy. She had three children two years apart and she and her husband never have enough money and they discuss this everywhere they go. Invite them to dinner – they’ll talk about how they’re broke. Go with them to the grocery store – they’ll engage the clerk in discussions about how they’re broke. Like the clerk cares, and I’m pretty sure they have more money than he does anyway.
*
I’m starting to think you don’t care about the thin guy. You nod when he speaks, you look him in the eyes but you’re not beaming at him. I read that somewhere, in a short story. “She beamed at him.” The beaming meant that she had fallen for him and was unable to conceal it or didn’t want to. She didn’t care if he knew. Anyway you are not beaming at the thin guy. Maybe he’s the one who wants you. That would make sense, you’re the attractive one. He’s…whatever. He’s thin, he wears glasses.
Me, I’m beneath your notice, you can’t be bothered. The thin guy is funny. I think you’ve known him for a long time. I really should open the Robert McKee book but I don’t care. It was Jean’s idea, she bought it for me after I lost my job. She said now you can write that screenplay you’ve been talking about for the past two years. I can’t seem to write it though, and I can’t get through the book. That’s why I came here to the Trieste, to get out of my apartment and try to break through this writers block. Which is a curse, by the way. And I think you understand that, especially given the manuscript on your table, bound by a big pink rubber band. I noticed that when I sat down at this table.
I should add that I sat down at this table because it was close to yours. There were other tables. But I was emboldened when you looked at me for a few seconds as though you recognized me or knew me from somewhere. And just as I began to feel hopeful with that rushing feeling of hope or lust or whatever it is, craziness, then you shifted your eyes back to the thin guy. And I realized with a thud that you hadn’t noticed me at all, you were looking through me, or at someone else. I just don’t find Jean exciting. I suppose I never did. She’s an accountant, you know. It’s really boring, what she does. She doesn’t bring it home, she doesn’t talk about it much, but still, it eats at me. She is fundamentally dull.
Jean is supporting me. I probably haven’t mentioned that until now. She’s been supporting me since I was laid off, and she has never griped about it or pressured me. She knows how bad it is out there, there aren’t any jobs. And I don’t really want to live with Jean, but I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t love her but there it is, there’s the situation. I have someone who loves me and I should appreciate that. I should. It’s just that all that goes right out the window when I look at you in your black coat and your earrings, your tight black shirt, I feel so strongly about you though I’ve only known you for forty five minutes. You’ve said some things about writing, I’ve been eavesdropping desperately. I sort of wonder what you think about Robert McKee, I’d like to ask you. Or the thin guy, though I have a feeling he wouldn’t be sympathetic. He’d think I’m some kind of nut.
I won’t have the nerve to talk to you and you’re going to leave soon.
Dylan Brie Ducey's work appears, or is forthcoming in Superstition Review, Gargoyle, Truffle, Sou'wester, and other places. She received the Carlisle Family Scholarship to the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, and her MFA from San Francisco State University. Links to some of her published work may be found at https://www.dylanbrieducey.com.
@dylanbrieducey
