Story of the Month

Coffee by Sophie Livingston

He said he was willing just to be friends if that was what she wanted; only there were a few details to be ironed out. Like how many times a month was it reasonable to meet for coffee, and would a meeting that included other people still count towards that allowance? He wanted to know if this friendship encompassed practical assistance in troubled times or if verbal expressions of sympathy would suffice. Would it always be coffee? Or would lunch sometimes be permissible? Or trips to art galleries and museums for relevant exhibitions of mutual interest – for instance the work of Atsuko Fujii?

The raindrops were now hitting the windscreen like jellyfish, the red taillights of forward cars lost in clouds of smoky water. He changed up a gear.

He doubted she had fully considered the complexities of physical contact. Was a kiss in greeting acceptable on the cheek? What about the corner of a mouth? If he put his arm around her waist as they entered a coffee shop in a gesture intended to guide her up the steps, would that break the boundaries she had put in place? He needed to know these things because the situation was clearly open to misunderstanding. Also, did the agreement deal only with his public behaviour, or was she seeking jurisdiction over his fantasies too? Was he permitted, in the hot, dark hours of his sleepless nights, to roll away from his bed companion and think of her?

They approached Toddington Services doing eighty-five.

No, he did not want to stop for a sandwich. He turned the music up. They were playing Charlie Mingus. ‘Listen to that bass,’ he said. And now he thought about it; she could not claim to be innocent in this, having already had, by his calculations, four cups of coffee, three paid for by him, while failing to define their relationship in terms that could easily be understood, misleading him, in fact, by omitting to clarify from the start. Despite this, he was quite happy to be friends with her, even though she was self-evidently a fucking, frigid bitch, just as long as she made these things clear. ‘Look at that sky!’ he turned his head to look at her sprawled on the back seat, ‘it has just the sooty overtones of Turner’s ‘Fishermen at Sea.’

‘Please let me go,’ she said.