Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala

Author:Uzodinma Iweala
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

8

My new life begins with coffee. That is what Damien and I decided when I finally dialed the number on the receipt. I sat beneath the flying buttress holding my phone. It took three tries entering the ten digits on my Nokia with trembling hands before the voice in my head saying stop was drowned out by the parade of young mothers and nannies in SUVs picking up their squeaking little ones from school. Carpe diem bitches, Adam liked to say ever since we read Romeo and Juliet. I pressed send.

He sounded like he had just woken up and I imagined him laid out on white sheets in a white room with sunlight streaming in through large windows, white curtains billowing in the breeze. Then he sneezed. It’s me Niru. Oh right, Niru. What’s up. I just thought I’d call to—Thanks for calling. I thought maybe I got it really wrong. I held my breath and said nothing as an irate mother honked at another mother to please move. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for the shoes, they’re perfect. That’s cool. I said, cool, watching a lone kid with an oversized backpack shuffle the sidewalk a few paces ahead of his anxious father. Stay with me, Peter, the father yelled. Okay, well I guess, I’ll talk to you later, he said. Can I see you, I said without warning, without thinking, surprising myself. He said, yeah sure, tomorrow, like around now? He asked, have you been to Tryst, you’ll like Tryst.

Now I stand across Eighteenth Street from my future staring up at large brown letters boldly painted on a cream-colored pediment. The sun shines so customers spill through sliding doors to sidewalk tables set beneath large red umbrellas. They pretend to work at laptops but pay more attention to people walking up and down the sidewalk. Carpe diem, I say and step into the street.

Inside there are people everywhere, clustered together at communal tables, facing each other on mismatched chairs and sunk comfortably into sagging couches removed from living rooms and basements. The college students study each other and the street over their laptop screens and textbooks. They raise their phones to text every other minute. Other customer tribes claim the cafe’s different quarters. There are Ethiopians at the round tables and hard benches near the bathrooms and young mothers in the paired easy chairs with space enough between them to fit a stroller. The couches are full of young single people hoping to brush an attractive stranger accidentally on purpose while reaching down to the floor sockets to plug in their laptops or phones. And there is Damien at the far end of the coffee bar that runs the length of the café. He sits on his hands hunched over a book laid flat on the counter, between a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie and a glass of milk. He sees me in the mirror above the bar and smiles. He wears jeans with holes at the knees.

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