The coffee catastrophe

I am almost exactly halfway from Penn Station to Morristown, NJ to visit my grandmother when he sits down across the aisle from me. The man in the large black t-shirt.

Sits down doesn’t really give justice to the way he rolled his way with a running start, using his metal adjustable cane with plastic gray handle as a pole to vault into the air. His leather jacket swooshes as it slides against the New Jersey Transit seat.

The man is overweight and his large black t-shirt bulges over his belly. He is directly across the aisle from me. In front of him, a young couple sits deep in conversation.

The young couple, the man and I all hold coffees. We are on the bottom level of a double-decker train and the seats are raised about four inches on either side of the aisle.

I watch as his eyes immediately start to droop closed and his head begins to nod off to sleep. His coffee cup rests haphazardly on his knee. His breathing is slow and even. He’s not quite snoring but he’s getting there. I am struck by how much time passes between each of his breaths. It’s just long enough that I am not sure if it will come again.

Before it does.

Breathe. Silence. Silence.

Awkward silence.

Breathe. His large belly rises and falls.

His hair is dark and long, tucked into a faded Marlboro Cigarettes black baseball cap. Breathe. The coffee cup starts to slowly slip off his knee. I watch it intently. It’s going to fall.

I notice that the young woman’s purse lies innocently under her seat.

The man in the black t-shirt has a small goatee and moustache. The moustache has a tiny break in the middle where I can see his upper lip quiver slightly as he takes each breathe. He has bad skin. Splat.

The man flinches as the coffee cup hits the floor; he slowly opens his eyes.

It takes him a second to understand what has happened. I can see his mind searching as his eyes find the large spattering of coffee.

“That’s not what I meant to say,” he grumbles, still half asleep.

The young man is on his cell phone. The coffee gathers into a puddle.

“Are you still serving brunch? Great. Until 2.” He glances at his watch and smiles at the young woman. They kiss as the puddle of coffee reaches her purse.

The man takes his newspaper apart and starts spreading the pages on the floor. He begins wiping them back and forth with a dirty yellow Nike sneaker. He balances himself with his hand on the armrest of his seat. The newspapers soak up quickly and clump into a growing disgusting ball of brown.

The puddle slides to the right and cascades down the four inches to the aisle.

The young woman notices that her purse is wet and snatches it off the ground, turning quickly to the young man.

“You spilled your coffee on my purse,” she says. The young man looks down to his cup and then down to his shirt.

“No I didn’t. You must have.” The young woman looks down to her cup.

The man in the black t-shirt lumbers out of his seat with more newspaper and places it haphazardly down in the aisle. The young couple looks up at him.

He grumbles to himself. They stare at him. He doesn’t apologize. They smirk.

“What better way to soak up coffee than with the help-wanted section,” he says, without looking up at them.

As the train slows to a stop at the next station, the diminishing coffee puddle rolls deeper into the aisle. More people start to notice. The man in the black t-shirt shuffles after the renegade coffee as the train starts again and it turns on him. He struggles to bend down and grab the now huge ball of dirty stained paper, which he stuffs into a plastic bag.

He notices me watching him as he rolls back into his seat but doesn’t say anything.

I watch as his eyes immediately start to droop closed and his head begins to nod off to sleep. His breathing is slow and even. He’s not quite snoring but he’s getting there. I am struck by how much time passes between each of his breaths. It’s just long enough that I am not sure if it will come again.

Before it does.

- Zachary Stuart-Pontier