Luke Louchheim

In the parking lot, high wind whips dead leaves from faraway trees into little twisters. Cars sometimes trundle over the speed bumps. A few errant leaves wander into their path, lodging in the grates of the cars or crinkling under their weight. Daniel sat and watched through the window. 

He was tucked along the edge of a large café that itself was tucked in the elbow of a strip-mall. It had tall booths and three registers and tables with rounded sides to limit the pain of corners. His now-empty food-tray sat centered and perpendicular. He ate already because he was meeting a woman for coffee, and when they telephoned the day prior, after colliding in the frozen aisle of the grocer’s, she said she did not often eat lunch. He did, so he arrived early. They had known each other as children, and re-met intermittently, happenstantially, since. He admired her—she was pretty, and her brown eyes glimmered orange with an awe towards the world. His watch, resting on the table with its strap flush with the tray, indicated nine minutes until she arrived. He would bring up his tray before then, but for now, he waited and read a book about God. It was the sort of book that made him wonder if he had a soul, if he was condemned to his nature, if he might have been a different man had he known God when he was a child. 

As Daniel wondered, the past decided to flicker into his periphery. He glanced up from his reading and saw a child’s face pop over the booth-wall. The boy had a floppy mop of beach-blonde hair. Blue eyes that darted about with that bare joy of uncertain mischief. Little brown polka-dotted boots and blue elastic-waisted pants and a grey sweatshirt with dinosaurs all over. As if Daniel stared at some image that wandered from his memory into his eyes, superimposing this café with another, this little boy with another with the same face. This boy stood, and his head barely crested the booth. Then he walked, dragging his chin on the smooth wood. His mother called for him to stop, but his mischief surmounted his obedience. He reached the booth’s end, and trembled at the two-foot drop, only just now realizing the length of his legs and the solidity of his feet. His mother called for him to stop again, and stood, and Daniel saw his mother. The boy scooted off the booth. He ran to the edge of the carpet and looked back, and wheeled his arms, and looked around, right into Daniel’s eyes. He waved, but the boy did not register, and wheeled his arms and turned back to his mother. 

Daniel wondered what she was thinking: was this regular? Did she come to the café and anticipate her boy to run around, to crawl under empty tables and hang on their edges like monkeybars, as he did now? Or did she hope he would just sit and eat and glance around and learn? 

Anticipation and hope often coexist. Daniel’s  mother knew this. She knew he was a rascal. She protected him from everything. He first met doorways as marred by complicated white gates. He spent hours trying to decipher them. A button loomed in the top corner, but he could only reach it if he stood on his Hess firetruck. But its bells and ladders hurt his feet, and his mother saw him once and told him never again. She opened the gates with such ease. It seemed that button was magic.

Or she was. When he was born he learned that walls had streaks and air smelled of turpentine; his mother was deep amidst repainting. The white walls were becoming blue, the same blue as on the bathroom sign at preschool, a blue lighter than the sky ever was, lighter than oceans or blue jays. But when she was finished, the wall had a little dot of grey. He thought it was a polka-dot, like on his brown winter boots. But, once, he saw his mother remove the polka-dot, leaving in its wake three little holes. One round, two rectangles, stacked like a face surprised. He ran to the holes to see what lurked inside, but his mother stuck in the pointy end of the vacuum-cord and they disappeared. He did not like the vacuum so he went to the opposite corner of the living room and crouched and covered his ears. When she finished and the thundering passed, he turned around and just saw the polka-dot. 

Later he learned that it was a stopper, and that the holes held electric power, and he was shocked. With his fingernail, he pried the stopper to the floor, where it landed on its back like a very sad insect. His forefinger wormed into the face’s mouth and got bit, then his arm got bit, then his shoulder and torso and legs and feet all got bit. His eyes blurred and seemed to drown; his mother rushed in, hooked her arms under his, and carried him away. Only when she laid him into the tub, sloshing with lukewarm and cooling water, did he stop drowning and notice her eyes quiver and gleam in fear and self-anger. He submitted and let her wash the tingling off his skin. That day for lunch they went to the café, and he ate in silence. Daniel remembered wanting to stand on the booth-cushion, wanting to run and explore around the counter, wanting to stack his fries like logs, but his mother’s eyes still quivered and gleamed such that he did not know what she would think, so he just sat and ate and glanced around and learned. 

This boy hopped off the booth-cushion as his mother brought their trays up to the refuse podium. She let him throw the receipts in the trash. He ran back to the table; his mother went to use the restroom, walking past the register and leaving the boy with the other woman, an older woman, maybe his grandmother. Daniel did not remember his Grandma being there that day, but here she was.

As Grandma stood by and watched, he ran around once more. He hopped from floor-tile to floor-tile and shouted, “Ribbit!” His voice bursted with the light joy of knowledge. Daniel wondered when he learned about frogs.

He hopped and shouted “Ribbit!” again and another family entered. A mother pushed a stroller, and behind her walked a little girl with brown hair and a flower-jacket. Her eyes glimmered orange with sunlight and awe. His mother came back from the restroom; the boy ran to her; the new family approached the register; they all collided as a matter of chance, of the simple alignment of movements through time. But chance can be curbed into destiny with love and retrospect. Lives emerge when movements align: people float and intersect and sometimes converge, run parallel for some length. 

The blonde boy and flower-jacketed girl stared at each other. They both stopped moving; they stared at each other, locked eyes, registered the other as a peer or compatriot. She clutched her jacket, with pride and uncertainty, it seemed. His little brown polka-dotted boots did not stomp, nor trudge nor hop. She faced Daniel, and he saw her smile, and imagined he smiled too. When she smiled she seemed to age a dozen years; her smile inhabited the calm of a woman confronted with some inevitable but nonetheless surprising encounter, like she knew all this was going to occur but did not know quite when. And it was now. 

But his mother ushered him along, and his arm outstretched as he walked away. The girl’s mother grabbed her paper bag and cup of coffee and they exited. The boy did not turn to watch.

Neither may remember this. Neither child may remember the other. Their eyes sparked with destiny as they saw each other, but any present-tense bursts with destiny: moments come and they go. These children may grow older and remeet, neither knowing that once they registered destiny in the other. Or, maybe they will not. Maybe it only emerges in retrospect, a manner of replacing the clear-eyed gasp of the present with florid recollection.

The boy and his mother and grandmother all left as well. As they walked through the swirling leaves, the boy tried to catch one, releasing himself from his mother’s hand and twisting himself dizzy. She allowed this, grabbed him before he fell, and snatched a leaf for him. He took it gently and held it tight in one hand, lost in its details as they walked to the car; his other hand clutched his mother’s. It still tingled, either with electric shock or destiny. Children do not know of such things. 

Daniel watched them leave. His book nearly dropped from his grip; his tray sat perfectly aligned; his watch had spun itself thirty-five minutes. But he did notice.