by Connla Stokes (bio after article)
I got that mixed up before. The young man was in fact sitting in a café at about nine or ten p.m. He sat, as I said before, innocently enough. A fleeting glance would just take him for a man drinking a coffee in a café at nine or ten p.m. For that is what he was.
A closer glance might perhaps give more. His coffee was long finished. The cup cold. Yet he held it in his right hand. A paper lay in front of him. Unopened. He stared blankly in to air. An observer might think he was in mid-thought. Melancholic, or distracted by the memory of an incomplete romance.
The waitress behind the counter didn’t bother looking at him much, she had a life of her own he supposed. So unexamined and alone there he sat. He looked at her; she didn’t suspect a thing. Even when she answered the phone and caught his glance he didn’t stoop to paranoia. She probably thought him to be just a man who likes a late evening coffee or a harmless prowler.
There is a certain amount of arrogance in paranoia anyway, he had decided, jumping to the conclusion that everyone is thinking about you. He was pragmatic enough. Face the facts. Nobody could be bothered thinking about him. So contentedly there he sat. Sat like a humble man, not a murderer. Which is, I should say, what he had just become.
Two hours previously he stood with a candlestick in his hand and a dead body below him. The blood pooling out. A life ending. He stood blankly, still holding the candlestick in the air, as if the body might still be alive, or might spit out some dying words worth remembering.
The whole action had been comical. The doctor’s cheeky remark and the smirk of arrogance across his face. The thoughtless action of clumping him on the head with, of all things, a candlestick. The dull thud of a sound. The dispersing of life. The wound appearing gradually, widening and dripping. The fact that their conversation could now not continue and that he hadn’t said thanks for the dinner.
And still he stood staring down at the dead man like a child who has accidentally smashed a window but can’t think to run. He looked at the candlestick as if it might have a sharp edge that could explain the fact that it had proved to be such an effective murder weapon. Then he put it down in its right place, wiped it for prints and then also his thighs, with his palms. He straightened his jacket, washed his hands and knocked back a quick brandy before letting himself out.
Homewards he strolled, stopping at the café for an hour or so. His home he found to be still there as normal. No fanfare, stakeouts or ghosts. His key worked. The door opened. Everything was in its rightful place. He went straight to his bed and changed in silence. After he washed his teeth he hopped naked into his bed with the bedside light on only. There he lay in the dim light with his hands behind his head and he whispered to himself, as if there might be an eavesdropper, “I’m a murderer.” The expression on his face said ‘Fancy that!’
Soon enough he tried to get to sleep but it didn’t come on request. He sighed as he tossed sleeplessly. He fidgeted and turned and fluffed his pillow and cursed insomnia.
‘Perhaps’ he mused, “I shouldn’t have had that last coffee.”
Copyright © 2002 + © Connla Stokes. All Rights Reserved.
About Connla Stokes
I’m from Dublin, Ireland. I have been travelling and working abroad since 1997. I used to serve coffees on Polk St. in San Francisco in a cafe called Quetzal. Then I tried Belgium for a while but now I am living in Ha Noi, Viet Nam. This is where I have been teaching, writing and learning to eat things like eel for 3 years. Not to forget the coffee, which believe me is old school, grainy and lip smackingly good. It also costs about 20 cents. For struggling artists and impoverished writers it can’t be any better.
