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"Coffee, black."
"Whatever you say sugar."
"Black, no sugar."
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Drip, Drip, Drip. The plaster ceiling tiles have separated in one spot letting the slosh of the outside rain trickle down into the foyer of the diner at 128 Redding. It's quiet this morning, aside from the slow hum of the record machine habituated in the left corner of the restaurant. The southern woman moves behind the counter, setting plates, and brewing a fresh pot of coffee. She makes the best omelets, a bit salty, but that's how everything is these days.
Alex walks in drenched. She's forgot her umbrella again, like always, and the woman behind the counter is barking at her for getting the floor wet. She doesn't care. She makes her way over to the record machine and pops in "Some Nights"
"Wake up and dance!" She yells to the sky, "I don't have time to wait for you to live! Give me your eyes." She turns around in an echoed frenzy. Passionate and forthcoming. The world has stopped for her and she causes it to spin.
Rich trounces in, "What the hell is this!"
"Music. Now dance!" She takes his hands and away they go whirling around the restaurant. Up and down, up and down they run and leap in succession. She leads him, because he is too afraid. He begins to cry. It's probably the drugs, because he's having the time of his life.
Danielle runs in, unhinging the glass door, and joins the fray screaming and hollering at the top of her lungs. Its a riot, more and more people file into the crowded diner and suddenly it's a full on rave, and we're all having the time of our lives.
Chase walks in. He is consolidated, alone from what is real. He stumbles his way over to a booth and takes a seat, the extravagance in infatuation behind him, he removes a notebook and procures an iPod from his pocket. Shoving the tiny ear-buds into their canals he begins to write. His mind scrawls out a list of things he likes.
Red Cardigans
Indie Bands
Beto's
Friends
Rockets shot his bedside table once and he hasn't been the same since. I sit next to him in the booth, and tell him that he is by far one of my greatest friends. He looks me straight in the eyes. "Lets dance."
"I put one foot in front of the other one. I don't need a new love or a new life, just a better place to die." They all chant in unison. Everyone we know is there, and it makes me so happy.
We flutter
We strive
We jive
We take all the lives we were given.
We hide
We rejoice
We conjunct
We sing as long as our lungs hold our own breath.
As the party moves, I catch glances of peoples eyes. Danielle is hallowed. Chase is ecstatic. Jacob and Hen, are euphoric. Bas is free. Rich and John are bewildered. Charlotte is insane. And Alex, is no longer thinking. She's feeling.
I step out of the scene and take in the mosh, and it's beautiful to see my friends all here again, and I begin to cry, for all the world is now our stage. We own our lives, our countenance firm, and we are unimpeded by the torment of the outside world, whatever it may be.
We aren't Bricks. Well not anymore at least.
+++
The thing about 128 Redding St. is that it is, in a way, a sanctuary for me; and I keep coming back because I feel like I haven't found what I'm looking for.
People enter and exit. They circle. They visit me, keep me company. I am their Brick, dragging down their souls and making them innate. But when the residents of my mind are all gone, punctuated in the late hours of the night. I feel more like myself than ever before. And I can't even fathom a Brick. Someone may trickle in to share with me a tender moment -- a unselfish ingratiation -- and in that moment, I give to them my whole in spirit. My true self.
And I hold to that feeling, in every second.
Love,
Sarah
