The man from the other side of the world walks in the front door of Charlie's Restaurant. He goes to the counter and sits unsteadily on one of the spinning stools. The man smells --like gasoline and sour-sweet unwashed body. My friend Kirsten and I peer around the comer at him, from where we are making fresh coffee and pouting Cokes. He's wearing a dirty off-white poncho with brightly colored stripes on the ends --the kind that looks like a carpet with a hole cut in the middle for your head. She looks at me and shakes her head: no way am I going to go talk to that guy, her eyes say. I grab a pot of coffee and approach him.
"Would you like some coffee, sir?"
He regards me through a fall of ratted chestnut hair, through eyes as clear and tranquilly blue as a Colorado summer sky. Up close, he is frail under the bulk of the poncho: face brown and lined by the elements, shadowy hollows under each cheekbone, eyes set deep into their sockets. He has the face of a tortured martyr gazing in supplication at the sky, body shot full of arrows or stretched on the rack. He says nothing, but smiles gently at me, and shakes his head.
I am not sure how to deal with this man. Can we let him sit here without buying anything? But I look outside through the glass doors, and snow is falling. He wears no coat --just the poncho. I leave him to attend to another customer, wondering what our boss will say when he sees this guy.
Should I have given him some water nonetheless? Or a mug of coffee or hot chocolate, better perhaps on this snowy night? He came through the door and sat down without a word, and seems to be asking nothing of us. I walk around the restaurant warming up other guests' coffee, glancing surreptitiously at the stranger at the counter. Kirsten stops me as she serves a bowl of clam chowder and a BLT to a teenage couple at one of the booths.
"I think you better check on our friend over there," she says, grey eyes wide with concern.
Not wanting to look obvious, I put on a fresh pot of coffee at the station nearest the counter, and catch a glimpse of our friend through the plastic green fronds of a potted plant. Alone at the counter, he methodically peels the thin seal off a packet of jelly. Placing that aside, he dips a grimy finger into the packet, scoops up a fingerful of grape jelly, then licks it carefully off.
In my fascination I have forgotten to put the coffee pot on the hot plate, and drops of the scalding liquid fall and splash onto my hand. I flinch and shove the pot into its rightful place. As the pot fills, my mind races. Yeah, we get weird characters in here all the time, but they always order real food. Should I give this man something so that he doesn't have to subsist on jam and honey? Should I leave him alone? What is the nutritional value of grape jelly, anyway?
I approach the counter with my fresh pot of coffee, intending to offer him a cup again. But before I can say anything, he reaches out and takes my sleeve, looking at me with imploring sapphire eyes.
"Excuse me, but --could you tell me something?" His voice breaks intermittently, like that that of an adolescent boy trapped in the limbo between tenor and baritone. I nod.
"All my friends have left me, and--" He looks down at an empty jelly packet. "Can you tell me, am I on the other side of the world?"
His hand grips my sleeve with surprising strength, and his shoulders are tense and stiff, raised up to his neck. I look at his fingers, black dirt caught under the nails and between the tiny ridges of skin, then back up to his urgent face, as if my answer to this preposterous question has the power to extinguish the fight behind his eyes, blue as the center of a flame.
"No," I say, finally. 'You're right here."
Apparently this was the correct response. His hand falls from my sleeve to the countertop with a fight thud, and he sighs, breath rushing from his thin body, suddenly relaxed and slumped.
"Thank you."
I smile uncertainly then hurry to the kitchen where I pick up an order of french fries and onion rings for the teenage couple. On my way to their table, I glance at the counter.
He's gone.
Hurriedly, I give the kids their food and go back to the counter. There is a small pile of empty condiment packets where he was sitting. Among the crinkled plastic and sticky drops of jam, something gleams. It is a single penny, untarnished, gleaming copper. I pick it up, turn it over --1992, brand new.
I go to the doors of the restaurant and gaze at the few cars in the parking lot. In the streetlights, the snow continues to fall, quiet as the breath of a sleeping child.
There are no footprints in the snow.