A View From Above

            by Nadia Brunner-Velasquez

 

 Every morning I like to walk over to the Coffee Shop on McGregor Way and order a cup of coffee with a blueberry scone.  I sit at the counter that presses against the window so that I can watch everything outside.  I sit and eat, watch and sip slowly.  The sidewalk is usually busy at that time of the morning.  People knock into each other regularly because the sidewalk is so narrow.  There aren’t many cars, though.  A few Toyotas and Volvos, that’s all.  The people here are conscious of the smog, I guess. Shuffling feet walk and scurry in every direction – you would wonder where all these people are going.  I guess you could say they are all going to work, but they’re not wearing pinstriped business suits, and they don’t wear polished leather shoes.  No.  They’re all just a bunch of Berkeley hippies.  They don’t like to be called that, and they’re not really considered “hippies” anymore.  But they wear ragged linen and Birkenstocks.  I like to look at their shoes.  Shoes can tell a lot about a person; mine do, at least.  I wear my steel-toed boots from time to time.  I like to think they’re casual and durable.  You might think I’m weird to notice such detail.  I don’t care.

“The same old blend for you this morning, sir,” she’ll say.

“Yes please.”

She’s cute, the cashier that is.  Short and stout with choppy bangs and a stylish black bob.  She works at the coffee shop nearly every morning, or at least at the times I am there – which is always.  Her name is Caren, which matches her bland personality perfectly. 

“Gunther! Tall regular house blend!”  The barista shouts my name.  I walk over to the end of the shop and pick up my drink while I clench the paper bag with the scone inside in my left hand.  There’s usually a seat at the counter next to the window for me because not many people like the coffee at this shop.  Peet’s is more popular, I guess.  But I prefer the Coffee Shop because its never nearly as crowded as Peet’s is in the morning.  I don’t like being near so many people at the same time, especially not in the morning.  I get tense. 

 

Across McGregor Way is a small decrepit flower stand with a rusting placard on the front top, reading “Liese’s Flowers”.  She owns it and its all hers.  Its been there for years actually.  I always watch it.  Pedestrians always seem to find exactly what they want there, even though it doesn’t look so appealing from the outside.  There’s always an air of impatience surrounding the stand; the customers are always picky and rushed, and usually don’t know what they’re doing when they try to arrange their own bouquet.   I guess that is always the case when people find that the perfect last-minute gift is a bouquet of flowers.  I feel sorry for her sometimes because she has to deal with such irritated people, their tongues hurried and harsh.  But she doesn’t seem to mind at all because she loves her job, and the flowers.  The flowers, of course, give her joy in life.  She can put all her concentration and effort into her stand, although I don’t think she makes much money.  Its enough for her to survive.  Who knows, maybe she has a boyfriend who can give her the occasional financial comfort.  Probably asks him to take her out for dinner every night, sleeps with him, and takes his money.  What do I care.

 

Tuesday morning was just the same as all other mornings.  I woke up and showered.  Groggy and sleep-deprived, I managed to carry myself to the coffee shop down the street.  Yet another sleepless night behind me, I quivered with my first sip of caffienated coffee.  I shoved the crumby scone down my throat and opened up the Daily Planet to side two.  I distinctly remember reading something about how some maniac over in Ohio had roamed the country, going from state to state, in search of his long-lost wife.  She ran away and so he killed a woman after picking her up at a bar, thinking she was his wife.  The typical murder and the typical case.  Its always a crazy man.  Some messed-up insomniac who eventually goes schizo.  The Doctors tried to explain it as some “chemical imbalance” or “alteration” in the brain.  I think its bullshit.  Whatever it was that I read, I, for some reason, remembered it.  Anyways, it was the same as always: I sat at the counter and looked out the window at Liese’s Flowers.

 

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            Liese reached behind her waist and gently tied the apron’s strings together.  She bent over to pick up a bucket of old flower water from the day before and poured it into the street’s gutter.  As she stood up, she looked across the street at the window of the Coffee Shop.  Usually the glass was sleek enough to show her reflection, and although it was far away and across the street she would look at herself at various points in the day.  She liked to fix her hair, straighten her apron and pat down the folds of her clothes, using the window as a mirror.  It hadn’t been cleaned that day, so she could see right through its smudges.  She quickly turned back around and walked into her stand to avoid his stare.  She didn’t like the way he looked at her; the way he sat there every morning and watched her as she hauled flowers around all day long.  His eyes were murky and glazed, and the dark shadows below his lower lids seemed as if tattooed on with greyish ink.  His forehead was almost always clenched.  The taut muscles on his neck were long and seemed to extend his chin far away from his shoulders.  His shoulders were broad and stiff and below them hung long and sinewy arms.  She remembered what it was like to be held in his arms.  He used to hold her in a tender embrace, an embrace she liked a lot.  But that was until things began to get odd.  Now he had a vile glint in his eyes.

            “Ms., I would like to purchase some of those sunflowers over there.  Do you see the ones I mean?”  A solid older woman with ash-grey hair and a brazen voice to match stood behind the ordering counter.  Liese could not see her, as the woman’s darting eyes could barely look above the notepad that lay on the counter. 

            “Oh yes.  Those ones are beautiful, aren’t they?”  Liese smiled brightly.  She turned around and slowly stepped around the buckets on the floor so that she could reach the bucket of sunflowers.  Then she brought it back to the counter and cautiously pulled a few out from the bundle.  “How many would you like?”

            “Let’s see…how about two.  Well, maybe three would be better.  No…no let’s go with two.”  The old woman scratched her weathered throat and adjusted the pin that so tightly held her bun in place.  “You know, three is a lucky number, and its one of my favorite numbers.  But, two will just have to do for today.  I ain’t feelin’ so lucky!”  She reached into her handbag to pull out a leather wallet.  “Now, how much will that be?”

            “Two?  That’ll be three dollars, please,” Liese replied as she wrapped the sunflowers in blue paper.  She tied it loosely with a fray of a string and handed the bouquet over the counter to the woman.  “I hope these sunflowers bring luck into your day.”  Always having the right effect on people, she briefly smiled again after seeing a slight lift in the woman’s face before she turned and walked away.

 

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            I didn’t expect to see what I did, but it caught me off guard.  How was I supposed to react?  She was cutting some flowers, and the next thing I saw was some guy standing behind her, ready to grab her from behind.  She turned to look at him and squealed – the way she always tends to do when she gets excited.  She kissed him.  I guessed it was her boyfriend, because she wasn’t married yet.  No, she wouldn’t get married so soon after what happened between us.  After they talked for a while on the street, he walked away, got into his car and drove off.  Liese was still smiling after he’d left.  She was even smiling while she continued cutting the flowers.  She never did that with me.

 

            I decided it was time for me to stand up and breathe a little.  I left my empty cup on the counter and threw the crumpled paper bag into the trash on my way out the Coffee Shop.  I wasn’t sure whether or not it was the right time, but I remember looking at my watch and figuring I had a good amount of time left on my hands.  So, I hesitantly walked down the street a little, until I reached the corner.

 

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            She saw him approaching her side of the street.  Slow and steady, he walked along the crosswalk.  What is he doing, she thought to herself.  His eyes darted shadily from one direction to the next, as if he didn’t have enough confidence to walk across the street.  Liese quickly stepped into her stand, hidden in the shade, and turned her back to the man approaching her.  She pretended as if he weren’t standing right behind her and busied herself with the tools in the shed.  The tools made clinking sounds as she carelessly emptied them out of a box, and attempted to clean every one of them one by one.  Now he stood still and looked down at her hunched back.

            “Liese.”

            She did not answer, but instead pretended as if her humming had drowned his voice so that she could not hear him.  She quickly stood back up and rested one hand on her hip, while the other scratched her head, as if in deep thought.  The humming didn’t stop.

            “Liese.”

            Then she stopped.  She dropped her hands and froze. 

            “Talk to me, Liese.  I’m here.”

            She slowly shuffled around on the ball of her foot, so as not to come in any physical contact with him, because the steam from his breath lashed the back of her neck.  He was very close to her.

            “Hi, Gunther.”  There was not even a faint smile, or a hint of brightness in her eyes, as she pronounced every syllable of those two words through clenched teeth.  The words sounded lifeless and leaden, as they did not roll off her tongue easily. 

            “Its been a long time, hasn’t it?” he said.  His eyes wandered down her body, inspecting every small detail – the stray hair on her head, her thick eyelashes that didn’t blink once, her lips, her small breasts beneath the layers of shirts and the apron she wore, her not-so curvy waist and hips, the tights on her thin legs…and her shoes.  She wore little black ballet slippers with rubber soles.   He looked at her as if it were the first time he had ever seen her so up close.

 

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            I couldn’t help but notice her flats.  They were perfect for her, fitting so snuggly around her delicate feet.  She never liked her toes.  She always wore close-toed shoes.  Aren’t you surprised that I notice such little things?

 

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            His eyes paused at her shoes for a moment, until he looked back into her eyes again.

            “Yea, its been a while,” Liese finally replied.  She avoided eye contact.  “Why do you watch me?”

            “I don’t know…” he said defensively.  “Maybe its because I haven’t seen you or talked to you in such a long time…I mean, come on.  Liese, both you and I know that this isn’t the way things should be!”  He grabbed her left shoulder and gripped the fabric with his long fingers. 

            “And you and I both know that I’m not just talking about today…you watch me every day!  Every morning!  Don’t deny it, because it’s true!  You sit there behind the window every single morning, and you lurk around…and you watch me!”  She tore away from his grip, “Leave me the fuck alone!”

            “I still have feelings for you, Liese.  I watch you because…I…I need to.”

            “And what do you mean by that?” her face flushed and teeth clenched harder.

            “I just need to.  I can’t stand seeing some other guy kissing you, or even touching you…Don’t deny that you love me, Liese!”

            “You’re a creep.”  She turned and walked into the stand, arms folded tightly.

 

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And that was that.  She called me a bloody creep. I followed her into the stand.  The flower stand is not just any ordinary flower stand.  From the outside it looks small and dilapidated, but when you walk inside, it extends into a seven by six foot room.  It smells like molding soil and oxidizing metal in there.  There’s no light, except for the slithers of sunlight that make their way through the cracks in the tin roof.

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            He closed the door behind him and the room went dim.  He slowly stepped towards her, while Liese began inching backwards, pressing her back firmly into a rack of tools on the wall.  She could feel her temples throbbing faster, her hands gripped harder until white was visible on her knuckles.  Afraid. She could see his jawbones gliding beneath thin and leathery skin…and the long muscles in his neck shortened and strained.  He bent down and untied the laces of his right boot.  He wasn’t looking at Liese for the moment, so she quietly reached for a pair of garden scissors behind her back.  He didn’t notice.  Slowly and surely, she raised them up in front of her body for protection.  The scissors pointed straight at Gunther, obviously imposing a threat if he planned to get any closer. 

He steadily looked up to meet her determined gaze. 

                       

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She knew I would follow her inside.  It was only obvious because she was standing there with some garden scissors in her left hand.  She is left-handed, you know.  I knew that she was going to use her strength for something.

 

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            Gunther opened the door of the little shack, and gently closed it behind him.  He continued his way back up the street, smiling at the customer’s around the flower stand on the way.   He arrived at the corner, but the signal hadn’t yet turned green, so he paused and looked down at his boots.  There was a glistening smear of crimson on the tip, the steel tip.