Coffee with Felicity

Felicity died three years ago, and Paul buried her next to her parents in the beautiful old Sacramento Cemetery.  Next to her, an empty plot waited for him because he belonged nowhere else more than with her.

Paul remembered Felicity sitting at the kitchen table after she had been diagnosed with cancer.

“I love you dearly, Paul.  After I’m gone, don’t be afraid to love again.”  In front of her, Paul had bowed his head and cried.

“You ready for a second cup?” the waitress asked, one hand on her hip.  Paul looked up from his paper into the woman’s brown eyes, the color of dark honey.  As always when he looked at her, a quiver entered his chest and buried itself deep in his center.  Gena was beautiful, a beauty that emanated from the calmness of her eyes and her relaxed smile.

“I’m ready,” he said, his mouth turning up on one side, his face flushing.

Paul was perched at the counter of the Owl Café, where he came every morning after he walked around the lake for his daily constitution.  He had woken up at the first beep of the 7 o’clock alarm on his cell phone that was plugged in on the counter right outside his bedroom door.  He had stretched out his arms and legs into familiar yoga positions and pulled on his sweats.  Looking into the mirror, he’d combed his steel-gray hair back with his fingers. 

Sixty-six years old, and he still had a full head while all his golf buddies were carefully combing their strands of white across a bald center. 

Paul had begun his walk toward the lake with a strong stride and covered the three-mile circumference in forty-five minutes.  Not bad for an old geezer.  Then he had joined the Tai-chi performers in the block-sized park, stretching his arms up and around in a circle, breathing new life into his chest and separating the vertebra in his back.  At the end, he’d inhaled and exhaled widely and deeply. 

Afterwards, he had walked briskly to the Owl Café.

Gena’s coffee reminded him of relaxed breakfasts overlooking the garden where he had lived with Felicity.  He thought of the spring mornings when he had planted inpatients under the mulberry trees in the back yard.  Felicity had brought such richness to his life with her strength and vibrancy. 

He read his paper contently as if she was sitting right beside him. 

Only Gena reminded him that Felicity wasn’t there.

“I’m retiring,” Gena said.  “You wouldn’t believe it, but I’m now a senior citizen and eligible for Social Security.”  She winked a brown eye and sparkles appeared in her irises. 

All of a sudden, Paul’s chest tightened.  His heart pumped so hard that he thought everyone would see his chest moving, so he covered it with his open newspaper.  His face felt warm.  He raked his fingers through his hair to compose himself. 

“What will you do?” he asked.

“I have a little cottage in East Oakland.  Have lived there for thirty years, when my husband was alive up to now.  Mortgage is paid off.  I’m going to spend mornings pruning flowers in my garden, afternoons reading on the porch.  Since I started working here eight years ago, I haven’t done much gardening or reading.”

He would miss Gena when she left.  All of a sudden, he realized that he came to the cafe every day just to see her.  To smell her coffee.  To feel her calmness. 

Now, she was turning the wheel of her life in a new direction, one that he didn’t share.  A lump formed in his throat.  He swallowed and asked, “Will you travel?”

“Maybe I’ll visit my daughter Maria in Colleyville, Texas.  I haven’t been there for eight years either.”  Gena walked away when the bell from the kitchen rang.

Paul mused.  Gena’s complexion looked as smooth as an unwrapped toffee.  Felicity had had a beautiful completion, too.  He still remembered how he felt on their first date over forty years ago.  He was sweating when he arrived at her front door.

“Are you O.K.?” Felicity had asked.

“I’m so nervous.”

“Whatever for?”

“Being on a date with such a beautiful woman,” he had told her.

She had laughed at him and looked even more beautiful; when she laughed, her face lit up like a lit candle.  He had loved her from that moment on.

They had made love on the lawn in the backyard of Felicity’s rented duplex on beach towels laid over the spent needles of the pine trees.  He remembered the curves of her breasts, the way they swelled over her taut ribcage—the tightness of her buttocks.  When they made love, he felt like he was wrapped up in a warm blanket, snug and comforted.

Gena was serving big plates of bacon, eggs, and hash browns to the people at the counter next to him.  She laughed at something he didn’t hear, and her laugh tinkled through the café like notes hammered out quickly on a xylophone. 

Was this her last day at work? His hands felt clammy and his chest tightened, again.  He raised the newspaper to hide his flushed face.

“Are you going to sit there all morning?”

He lowered the paper so just his eyes could see her.  He had been sitting there for over an hour, dawdling with the newspaper, eating his breakfast in stages, and now wondering how to find out when her last day was.  His hash browns were cold. 

He felt a sharp pang of loss envelope him again.  Thinking of Felicity.  Wanting Felicity to be sitting next to him so Gena didn’t matter.  Imagining Felicity’s breath on his arm, her arms around his shoulders as he read.  Slowly he lowered his newspaper to the counter.

That smile.  One of Gena’s hands was poised on her hip, while she held the coffee pot in the other.  “Well, how long do you plan to bother me about this coffee?” she asked.

“I’d like to invite you out to dinner,” he whispered more than spoke, crushing the edges of the newspaper in his hands. 

A flicker of light appeared in Gena’s eyes.  Her smiled brightened.  “I’d like that,” she whispered back to him, leaning so close that he could smell her perfume.  Honeysuckle in a breeze.

Silently, Paul spoke to Felicity.  He repeated her last sentence as they had sat together at that kitchen table.  “Don’t be afraid to love again.”

Raising only his eyes to look up at Gena, Paul smiled and asked, “How about tonight?”