Lines

His hands were grey; hairs seemed large and protruding and some were growing out from the normal pattern of hand-hair, wanting to attach themselves to some imaginary veranda on his skin, like vines.  He pulled the dirty, black collar of his over coat tighter up over his neck when the draft swept through the cafe, and sipping a large gulp of his black coffee, he breathed in the deep, soft steam of the double roasted arabian aroma - tingling where his nose canal opened into his brain, filling the underside of his forehead with rushing blood and warmth as his eyes closed.  Glancing at the empty page, the piercingly straight lines bullied and mocked him.  They were still, cool, and silent as he swept his wrinkled fingers through his stringy hair - dark black at the roots, becoming dingy as it frizzed into ripped cotton balls, floating wildly in every direction, framing his face in a sun-burst of grey.

  "Do you see these lines?!"

He had a deep voice with an edge of grinding, like a Stone Age wheel traveling an ancient dirt path, slowly, heavy; taking time to crush every rock in its path, and yet an overtone of innocence sung over the deep, calculating growl like the high pitch of the axle squeaking within the wheel.

"Too perfect, too perfect!"

His bewildered blue eyes flashed around the cafe as if to demand an agreement.  But only forks and knives clanking against white ceramic plates, cutting through syrup, omelets, and the monotone murmur of mixed conversations.  Two or three guests sitting near him at their tables of ones and twos impulsively glanced up to the back of his bulging, hunched figure at the bar; his black coat streaming down heavily just short of the floor, half of his wrinkled, whiskered  face appearing behind his collar; the guests now saw only one melancholy blue eye surveying the restaurant with ferocity.  Flushes of red swelled up over their faces as they couldn't help feeling embarrassed.  In their minds they pinned him with imaginary judgments;  one by one sticking them into the flesh of his back with tack and paper, flying to him by paper-airplane, unfolding automatically as they approached his back, soaring straight and perfect over heads and tables quickly, effortlessly - a majestic scene of paper archery.  And then a sudden turn to their breakfast as if nothing had happened; they forgot of him altogether and tried to remember where in their conversation they had been interrupted.  

Turning back to his coffee and lines in front of him, he mumbled softly, "Perfect...hmmmf!  Hughmmf..."  He leaned his face close to the paper, eyes half squinting, scanning the empty page back and forth with vehement intensity as if reading an article about an outbreak of war near one's neighborhood.  

"Phinehas..."  A gentle voice broke the swelling of his anxious inner dialogue, and a hand landed on his shoulder, gliding back and forth over dirt particles on his coat, causing a subtle massage of peace into the stiff, black fabric.  The voice spoke again as if awakening him out of a dream, "Hi Phinehas!  How are you?"

His eyes tried to focus as they followed the thin, slightly muscular male arm, to a rolled up white sleeve of a buttoned, collared shirt, to a thin, light body, to a sunken olive face and large grey eyes magnified through thick bottle glasses with black plastic frames of a man standing behind the dark wood counter of the bar.  The eyes melted Phinehas with so much happiness, comfort, familiarity, and peace that his throat rolled into a bulging lump.  But with a slow swallow, he shoved it back down from whence it came, and keeping with his bewilderment he squirmed his face into even harsher wrinkles of disgust and blurted out, 

"In heaven's name, can you even believe the perfection?!  Well, of course you can't!  You're too young and disgustingly perfect yourself.  All of us are that way when we're young, don't worry, it's nothing, nothing at all - natural you know....  And perfect!  All were perfect until....  I say!  Have you ever seen anything like it?!  Well you can't until... you can't until you've seen, I'm telling you!  And I'm telling you truth upon truth!  If they would just splatter and spill... but of course they will not be written upon.  And they mock me!  Do you see?"  With this he waved the paper in front of the man wildly.  

Releasing a breath and sigh, the innocence of his voice shimmering through as the wheel slowly came to a halt, he asked,  "Well how are you anyway...I'm horrible and ugly."  The ringing tone of voice suddenly changed the atmosphere of the cafe.        

"Not as fine as you're doing this morning."  The man's eyes shone bright through his glasses, the skin under his temples wrinkling as he smiled and slowly scrunched his eyes into a grey brightness that seemed to make them even larger than before, totally overwhelming Phinehas with a contagious joy springing up and splattering on the back side of his chest and rib cage; then it quickly disappeared, running off his flesh and organs, leaving no residue.

"Cohen, please leave me...I'm writing, do you understand?"  He spoke now in a monotone.  His shoulders relaxed; he shifted his weight on the bar stool.

Cohen quickly took his hand off of Phinehas's shoulder, slowly stripped a white towel from his waist belt and began drying and polishing a bar glass.  After a few moments of peaceful, releasing silence that echoed back and forth between the two of them, Cohen looked up from his work and with almost the exact same smiling expression as he had looked at Phinehas just a few moments before said, 

"It is good to see you Phinehas!"  

His face kept beaming, and this time the brightness never stopped bursting forth from his huge eyes.  The wrinkles, the smile, the eyes were held in a suspension that seemed to stop time and the murmur of the cafe and the clanking sounds of silverware - a suspended hold of tension almost falling into resolve so beautiful that to just stay in the tension would be peace and beauty and life, and to resolve would be the going about the stuff of everyday after death.  Phinehas, without even looking up from his paper, felt the impact of the magnified eyes like two beams of lead smashing his shoulders into the back of his chair, holding them back as to force him to raise his head and look directly into the eyes for the first time.

Phinehas waged war within himself.  His entire insides were caught a blaze with fire, licking, burning for him to raise his head from his page of empty lines.  His pumping red heart was loosing strength as it pumped coldness like sonar, pushing back the beating heat - one after the other:  pump... pump... (and burning rage of softness)... pump... pump....  Even while he was fighting, even while he thought he was winning, pushing his head down further and further as it hung low, he felt a tingling warmth of the fires raging within him manifest itself in a tiny ring under his blue eyes.  He closed them tight (underneath his eyelids the blue shined like aqua emeralds, casting marbled designs of the freckles in his eyes onto the dark backside of his eyelids like an over-head projector - making constellations - making a universe of tiny silent majesty), and from the far edge of his eyelid, there appeared a clear substance, streaking slowly across his eye, rolling over each eyelash as speed bumps.  It made its way to the inside crevice of Phinehas's eye; up against his nose it curled into a glimmering tear and suddenly changing its slow pace, glided down his cheek bone with darting swiftness, slowed through his thick whiskers, and stretching itself from the end of his chin into a dramatic pose as a sleek, slender olympic diver, it fell into weightlessness - suspension - joy... and splattered sacrificially on the empty page of lines... perfect lines.