The Night

Part 1

The Night

By Omar Essa

After dusk, the temperature drops quickly on the Monterey Bay Peninsula. It is mostly warm and tropical in the daylight. At night the humidity remains stiff and suffocating in the air, no longer influenced by the sun, but rendered stagnant. It carries a lifeless chill though the streets. It is not uncommon for nights to be windy with a senseless violence.

The town of Monterey is built in tiers. From the beach, each street adds a level parallel to the last up the steep incline of a statuesque hill. The peak is a handful of difficult miles from the coast. On a ship in the bay, all of this could be compared to a Sicilian fishing town with colorful houses, erratically sized. There are few large, commercial buildings. An Army post is nestled atop the highest part of Monterey. This enclosure is mostly a coastal forest with clearings in the trees for buildings at intervals along thin streets like the blue webs of arteries underneath the skin. The deer and raccoons are as populous as the soldiers, and they've learned to cohabitate.

On cool evenings, chain-smoking at the top of the hill, I look out over the lights of the town below and the vast darkness of the bay beyond. I am taken back to the cold weeknights in New York, when we walked in the dark through the trees and snow to sit above our stream and get stoned. Under the ice, the water flowed, and we listened as it tripped over the stones of the streambed beneath our moments of loving carelessness. We were sincerely impersonal then, lying through our lips about our weakness for each other. Those nights in the beginning were so simple. I could drink towards incoherence and it was all the same to her, perhaps because I did not fully belong to her. Now, after a year and a half and three thousand miles, I reflect on those late nights into the sunrise, the drinks, and the flickering moments of joy and brutality. I lament on the irreparable remnants of who I was.

What remains is the sunset over the bay, the view from the top of the hill at night, and the last cigarette before I go to sleep. I find some pleasure in silence and the smell of freshly brewed coffee. The taste of whiskey only reminds me of my mistakes and the sound of a feminine laugh or the depth of her eyes reminds me of something I once cared for intensely.

Tonight, I lay stretched out on a wooden bench under a willow. It is short, unkempt, and it is probably not a willow but I think it looks like one. It canopies the bench in a net-like embrace. My head is settled in a young woman's lap, and my feet extend past the end of the bench. Her name is Victoria, and she is very beautiful. She has a share of all the features that qualify a woman to be beautiful: well defined legs; a shapely ass that curves into her hips and the small of her back; confident breasts; a sculpted collar bone; whispers of freckles on her cheeks; large, crystalline, brown eyes; and long, dark hair. I have promised to marry her soon.

We share a whisper of breath, silent in the reprieve of darkness. I take long drags of my cigarette every few seconds. I no longer find gratification in smoking, it is a chore. The smoke hangs over me, suspended in the heavy air, and I must be cautious to keep it from rolling into Victoria's space. She caresses tufts of my hair with her fingers and admires the night around us. There is a mist wherein we survive together. I know she is absorbing everything with each of her senses. She feels the coolness of the night, smells the salty bay, listens to the breeze, tastes the lingering remnants of my lips on her own, and watches the deer that trot through the grass in the fogged moonlight. One can see all the thoughts weaving together on her face in these moments.

I wander similarly in the periods of silence we share. My thoughts are disorganized. She constructs webs. Mine float in front of my face like wisps of the cigarette smoke that stings my eyes. I do not dare to violate the silence until my thoughts come slower and more cautiously. Eventually, I just say, “I love you.”

“I know.” I inhale from deep in my lungs and hold onto the smoke for a few seconds, then I release it gently through my nostrils. Victoria strokes the bristles of hair on the side of my face and clasps my free hand into her own. Quietly, unexpectedly, she asks me, “Have you ever loved anyone else?” I take another long drag.

“Yes. Haven’t you?”

“Of course I have, Babe.” She squeezes my hand tighter and says, “But that doesn’t matter to me. The past will not matter as long as we are together. Whoever you had to love to find me doesn’t matter now. They were practice.” She smiles and kisses me softly once on my bottom lip, then lingers above my mouth, locking her eyes with mine. I can feel her soul being pulled closer to mine in a very physical way. There is a shared warmth circulating us. It is the thermal power of our love emanating from our individual hearts.

“Do you want me to tell you about her?”

“No.”

“No?” She is quiet for a moment, then leans down and kisses me again, straightens her posture, and says with a gentle smile,

“Of course I do,” she says. She is careful and closed now, but I will speak anyway. It is selfish of me. The truth has been holding me back from fully loving her. I want her to understand that who I am now is not who I was; that all people change constantly; that the man who loves her at this moment will dissolve, but our love is not guaranteed to die with him.

“Whenever I am in nature after dark, I am reminded of what I have done in the night. People are different once the sun has set, just as we change in the rain or snow. I have been unforgivable in the night.” I pause here to light another cigarette. Victoria has taken her hand away from mine. My thoughts are wisps again so I waste time smoking as I collect each of them. She wants to speak but she has nothing to say. Eventually, I look up at her and say, "I don't even know where to begin. I haven't told you a thing about my teenage years. I have some spectacular stories, but I'm ashamed of them when I'm with you."

With pity, she takes my hand again and smiles. She says, "Just imagine you're reading me one of your stories that I Iove."

“Okay. When I was a junior in High School, I thought I fell in love. I worked in a small cafe. It was a quiet, calm place called Mochalisa's. It was owned by Italians from the city. The owner’s wife would bring us pasta and marina in large tupperwares for dinner while we worked the evening shifts. His son was my age and worked with me. I loathed him.

The café was always dimly lit. There was just enough light that customers could read comfortably, but it was dark enough to hide coffee stains on the floors and accumulated dust in the higher corners and tops of shelves. The largest wall, opposite the bar, depicted a nondescript Italian farm in gentle browns and shallow greens. When people entered, the aroma of fresh espresso filled them. Inside it was warm and pleasant. I thought it was the best job a sixteen-year-old could possibly have. Since my preteens I had taken up an unconventional passion for coffee, and I became an exceptional barista. Soon after I was hired, most of the senior employees left and I was promoted. The owner gave me a key. When I went in early on the weekends to brew the first pots of coffee, I would take some time before the cafe opened to sit outside in the brisk morning air and smoke with a cappuccino.

My father hated that I worked. I think it was because he had worked from a young age himself out of necessity. Now that he was so successful, had come to America for Egypt and made a name for himself, he didn't want me to work. He wanted me to focus on academics. I was supposed to go to college and become successful myself. When my grades suffered he would demand I quit, but I never did.

"Mochalisa's was in an outdoor mall. The stores and restaurants were connected in a square around a large parking lot. To the left of the café was a successful hibachi restaurant and to the right was a failing barbecue joint. It never had a line of customers. It was often desolate when I would visit during breaks. The manager was short and fat, poorly groomed, and foul. He only hired attractive teenage girls. He would put his hand on their shoulder and grin at them with crooked, dirty teeth. When he taught them how to cut meat with certain knives, or perform other tasks in the kitchen, he would put his hand on their own and move it to demonstrate the motion.

Three of the girls he’d hired went to my school. They were all gorgeous, and befriended me. They would call the cafe, ask specifically for me, and order drinks. I would bring them next door on my smoke breaks and flirt with the girls. They would give me pounds of meat to take home after they closed at night because it would be thrown out.

"In Autumn, Nicole was hired at the barbeque restaurant. I was captivated by her. Her hair was long and fire-red. She had emerald eyes, freckles as if Seurat had finished her cheeks, and the body of a varsity volleyball player. She would come into the cafe to order coffee before her shift. I couldn’t even flirt with her when she was in front of me. I was still young, but had confidence. Somehow she made me into a shy boy. She held reservations. She would wear a sly smile on her face with one corner of her lips curved slightly upward. She carried herself with insecurity but spoke with an intelligence beyond her appearance. She was breathtaking.

'The night she gave me her phone number, I traded a cupcake for it. She had always admired the pastries we had on display. The cupcakes were made hand-made by a retired grandmother named Patti. She would call everyone sweetheart or sugar and treat each employee like family. It was mid-October when Nicole came in to buy her coffee before work. I noticed her attraction to a seasonal pumpkin cupcake. I bought it for her with the condition that she wrote her phone number on the back of the receipt.

That night, we talked for hours and she sent my dirty photos. I didn't stand a chance. She already had me.

We communicated every day after that, but for the first time since she was hired it seemed none of our shifts aligned. Nicole lived in the neighboring town and went to a different high school, so we would only spend time together when she was already in my town for work. After a very impatient week, we had a night when we both worked. The s*x was implied, and I was very nervous.

"When I worked at Mochalisa's, many of my coworkers would buy me alcohol. I had a stash of liquor in the back storage room, hidden behind a shelf of boxes. Usually, I kept scotch, rye, and gin on hand. I would always have some sort of drink with me, hidden behind the espresso machine. I was rarely blind drunk while working. There were only a handful of times in two years working there that I neared any consequence. That night, in the few hours before I met with Nicole, I drank three gins and four shots of Scotch, fretfully trying to calm my nerves.

Thirty minutes before my shift ended my head was spinning. I splashed cold water on my face, drew an espresso shot, and stood in the autumn cold to smoke. I was trying to sober up a bit, with little effect. As I stood on the sidewalk in the dim glow of the lights from inside the cafe, a cigarette in one frozen numb hand and a small glass of espresso in the other, it began to snow for the first time that season. It was still only a quiet presence in the air, barely evident as white glistening in the beams of the streetlamps. Standing within it, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I was shaking.

"We drove to an empty parking lot. I had barely said anything the entire drive. Out the window in the darkness, the snow had become a flurry. She parked facing the road, away from the building, the lot elevated on a hill above the street. Bright orange lights of cars passed every few seconds. Behind us, I saw in the reflection of the side mirror a neon blue cross glowing through the snow in a field of frosted grass. I started to laugh. She was confused and awkwardly laughed with me. I tried to stop to explain but I couldn't. I was becoming hysterical and my sides hurt. Eventually I caught my breath and wiped tears from my eyes, then said, ‘This is my mother's church. We’re in the parking lot of my mother's church right now.’

She stared at me for a moment, then laughed harder than I had. When she gathered herself, she placed both her hands on my. They were warm and soft on my skin, and all my tension began to subside. She was smiling affectionately, studying the details of my face and looking for poetry in my eyes. The snow outside had become a blizzard. She pulled my face to her lips. Mine were meticulous and tense, but she broke through them. Everything she did and everything I did to her felt natural and beautiful."

“Was that when you fell in love with her?”

I smile disdainfully. “Yes,” I lie.