A Strong Coffee and a Cigarette

He had a blind date at 8pm that night.

He woke at some ungodly hour with a feeling of floating anxiety that he could not identify. After a minute, he remembered his night out with the lads the previous Thursday. He had, in his drunken merriment, agreed to meet Maureen, a friend of Gerry’s sister whose marriage had fallen apart rather spectacularly.

The inadvisability of this bold move and the disquiet it had generated had lain mostly dormant over the days since, except perhaps for moments when he was alone, snuggled up to the smiling photographed face of Lizzie; his recently deceased wife.

          ‘You don’t mind, do you, love?’ he had asked her when his conscience jabbed at him. ‘You wouldn’t want me to spend the rest of my life alone, would you?’

She always smiled back at him so benignly. He tended to forget it was only two months since he had buried her.

The alcohol and weed had come quickly after the funeral and had benumbed him enough to allow him carry on with his life without the grieving process but he ached for company, for the tenderness of a woman to warm his cold and overlarge bed. He had leapt at the chance to meet Maureen, now that her husband had been jailed for ABH.

This morning he found himself lamenting his impetuous decision. He had no appetite for breakfast and made do with a strong coffee and a cigarette.

His drive to work was gruelling, as the schools had just reopened after the summer. The neurotic parents blocked the roads in an attempt to deliver their precious cargoes to their places of learning, so defying the paedophiles and abductors that they believed lurked in every gateway along their children’s paths.

The Tuesday Morning Shop Meeting only served to increase his mental agitation. There was talk of auditors and redundancies, even the closure of the entire shop.

He had no appetite for lunch. Despite the gloom that hung over the workplace, his mind was preoccupied inventing witty and charming lines of conversations that might woo Mrs Maureen McKeever that evening over dinner at the exclusive restaurant he had booked for them. He felt sure that she would be impressed with his choice. He settled for a strong coffee and a cigarette.

An unpleasant incident with a dissatisfied customer in the afternoon left him feeling tired, emotional, and precariously close to the edge. His supervisor had told him that he ought to have handled the situation better. He was given a written warning and he found himself doubting his ability to communicate properly.

The rush hour traffic plagued him and he thought of all those individuals scurrying home to their loved ones and the open, welcoming arms of their tired but happy children. He thought again of Maureen and if he played it correctly, how he might have someone to welcome him home once again. The thought calmed him a little but he was ever aware of his churning stomach, racing heart and his palms in their state of permanent dampness struggling to keep a grip on the steering wheel.

As he finally entered his house, he had no appetite for a strong coffee or a cigarette and as for Lizzie; he could not even bring himself to look at her.

He fumbled and juggled with the soap in the shower and the shampoo got into his eyes, stinging them with the ferocity of forty angry hornets. His hands shook so violently that he could hardly dry himself and the razor slipped and cut his top lip as he was shaving. After he had dressed himself with the ineptitude of a toddler, he thought that a strong coffee and a cigarette might soothe his fractious nerves. They only made him feel sick and gave him a thundering headache.

What was he doing? Surely, he should abort this crazy mission. See what it was doing to him! He found the crumpled paper with Maureen’s mobile number on it and reached out for his phone. His eyes sought Lizzie’s photo for reassurance that he was doing the right thing. Alas, she seemed to be telling him that it was too late to cancel. Maureen would have spent the day preparing for their date; planning what to wear and even now would be carefully arranging her hair and applying her make-up. She would be so disappointed.

He bemoaned the fact that he needed to stay focussed and lucid when all he wanted was a large whiskey and a spliff. He settled for a strong coffee and a cigarette that could not touch his overwhelming apprehension.

He misplaced his car keys and turned the place over in order to find them, creating more chaos in his usually neat and orderly life. When he eventually found them, lying right in front of him, he was running ten minutes late. Sweating and shaking, palpitations and breathlessness seizing him, he drove like a demented bluebottle to the restaurant in its lavish surroundings. He arrived at precisely eight o’clock.

Breathing hard and struggling to rectify his dishevelled appearance, he glanced nervously around trying to seek out Mrs McKeever. Thankfully, she had not arrived yet. He was shown to his table and promptly ordered a strong coffee, which he took outside with him and had a cigarette.

At nine o’clock, he ordered another and at ten, he stood with the overfed smokers on the street whilst they enjoyed their post-repast cigarettes. At half past ten, the embarrassed waiter came to ask him if he would like to order as the kitchen was about to close. He declined and ordered a large cognac. He sat with his eyes fixed to the heavy damask tablecloth and shining array of cutlery and glassware. He could not bear to witness the looks of sympathy and mirth that came in pulses from every occupied table.

At quarter to eleven, he ordered a strong coffee and stood alone in the rain with his cigarette. After he had stubbed it out and thrown it carelessly into the road, he paid his bill and drove home, with an empty heart and an emptier stomach, to his smiling Lizzie, his coffee maker and a brand new packet of cigarettes.