Coffee Before Bed
Harry Oxford had just arrived home. He was lodging in the flat of a 34 year-old man named Gia on Devonshire Street in Marylebone, London.
Gia was hunched at the kitchen table, sipping an espresso. Harry sat down next to him with a cold glass of orange juice.
“It’s a tradition for me, coffee before bed,” Gia said. “It’s the closest I feel to being home in Sicily.”
He stroked the cup that held his coffee, like a priest the cloth that shields their altar.
“Harry, you need to get one.”
“What?”
“A Moka. I’ve never seen you use one. Have you, never?”
“Never,” Harry admitted.
“Then you’ve never lived!”
“Cliché,” Harry said.
“I’ve seen the instant coffee in your cupboard, it’s full of chemicals.”
“Chemicals are everywhere.”
“Just try a sip of my espresso,” Gia offered.
“No, thank you,” Harry said.
“Can I make you one?”
“No, thank you. I’ll be up all night.”
“You and your english ways,” Gia chuckled. “Weak tolerance for caffeine, and other things. Very weak.”
“Other things, like what?”
Gia placed his coffee gently on the table and smiled.
“Take a small sip, Harry. Go on. I know it’s bad because we both have to wake up in seven hours, but just try it.”
Harry could not distinguish a difference of flavours, only a thick bitter taste. It made him want to gag, but he daren’t displease Gia’s pride.
“If your coffee were a fruit,” Harry chimed. “It would taste like a ripened nectarine.”
Gia laughed. “Yes, of course. Coffee is a dessert that lingers on the tongue, like forbidden fruit.”
Harry kept his paradoxical thoughts beneath tongue: as to some, sweet is sour, and sour is sweet; heaven a hell, and hell a heaven.
“I’ve been in London for two years and I’ve only been to see the Leonardo here once, at the National Gallery,” Gia said, with an air of regret.
“Virgin on the Rocks. Sublime,” Harry said.
“But then I came to London for the freedom, not the art.”
“Two sides of the same coin.”
“Art and freedom? True, you could write a book on the subject. To go with all your other books.”
“That’s a subject for you.”
“No,” Gia said. “I wanted to be an academic once, but the time has passed. I’m old now.”
“Not that old. Who was that boy you had in your room the other night?”
Gia smirked. “Timothy. A very handsome sixteen year-old. I took him to the National Gallery. He was so bored he kept tugging at my trousers. Didn’t I tell you about him?”
“I think you’ve already told me too much.”
“Prude. The english are prudes.”
“But not Timothy, apparently.”
“He was a little, but we still had fun. In Italian, prudere means to have an itch. It’s often used figuratively, like he was itching to get into bed with me.
Gia suppressed a giggle, a peculiar sight in contrast with his black beard and hairy chest sprouting out from under his night-shirt.
“You aren’t used to talking about the beauty of boys, are you? I’m sorry, Harry.”
Harry topped up his glass of refreshment. He was itching to get into his own bed, but remained conversational, prizing his politeness.
“No, don’t be sorry, Gia. We could talk about the beauty of Michelangelo’s Davide.”
“Oh! It’s the most beautiful object in the world! I first saw it when I was nine and from then on I knew forever that I wanted to be seduced by a figure like that, or to seduce one myself, or to be in possession of something that beautiful. Imagine what it would feel like to be loved by something so beautiful, or caressed?”
“I admit the thought had never occurred to me, but it must indeed be a wonderful feeling.”
“Davide reaches out and touches your heart. He blows you a kiss and it sends shivers all over.”
“Art is love,” Harry shrugged.
“Art is love,” Gia agreed.
“And love is an art. And love is art,” Harry said.
“Harry, you have a great mind. Art cannot exist without love. I love it. It must be true. I wish I was a writer.”
“But an artist has more freedom, and more passion to love than any writer could ever hope to have. A writer is buried by language, suffocated by it, and, only occasionally, set free by it. And indeed, when set free, a word well placed can transcend human knowledge and rationale.”
“I know what you mean. Poetry is like that for me. I wish we had time to write a book together, it would be called: art and love in London. We can comment on every painting that transcends human knowledge.”
“Good idea.”
“But my life is too busy selling underwear on Oxford Street and finding new dates.”
“Alas. And I have to be at the agency tomorrow morning for an eight AM meeting.”
Gia suckled on the last drop of his stocky espresso.
“Are you sure you don’t want a coffee before bed?” he asked.
“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Harry replied.
“That’s a cliché,” he said.
“Is it? Coffee before bed? I think it’s quite unique.”
“Not in Italy.”
“Well, thank you for the sip,” Harry said. “I do feel I might go to bed and conquer Tolstoy now.”
“Have you read Calvino?”
“No.”
“Calvino is the best for late nights. So imaginative, a genius. So I can’t tempt you to share one last sip with me of pure Sicilian coffee?”
“I’m afraid not, Gia.”
“Okay, handsome. Buona notte.”