Sleeping with the lights on
Been having trouble falling asleep lately. Thinking about too much, pulling up old memories in a vivid, but incorrect fashion. Here is a memory some time which was most likely January or February of last year.
It was a late night, I had sought shelter from home and sleep in the 24 hour coffee shop, pouring over a book called “And Then, You Act”…Intermittently that evening I had been talking across tables with the other visitors. A uneasy man, greasy long hair, late 30′s – 40′s who I shall call “Qo” sat a table off. He was eager to share his thoughts on Germany, poets, and linguistics. Qo was in town for his once a week treatment with the VA, he said.
He got up to replenish tea at the counter offering me a fresh cup. I accepted, though I should have run off.
Moments later another man walks in off the street, drunk as hell, and grabs the chair across from me. He hands me his cell phone and insists, “Call me a cab, please! Please, call me a cab. I’ll buy you a coffee…just…”
Qo comes over and takes a seat next to me now, with a full cup of mugwort tea. The table starts feeling a bit crowded.
“You know a number for a cab?” I ask, No such luck, so I visit the Barista and get a phone book.
“Please…get me a cab! I’m not a bum, I own some apartments on the east side…”
Eventually I call the cab company for him, and convince him to wait outside so he doesn’t fall asleep.
I mention that I have a long drive home, and should be going soon myself. Qo tries to hint that he would like to come with me, but I make certain to turn deaf ears on him.
Qo starts talking about how he used to live out in the country, and why he has to sleep with the lights on. “I lived out in the mountains, and my dad was off…so I was all alone. One night, the whole place shakes, the power goes out, it sounds like a flock of a thousand angry birds taking flight from the foundation. I was so scared…I just…I can’t sleep in the dark anymore.”
I wonder about what Qo’s life now that I remember having had this conversation. (Who he is, & was. How much of anything that he said was truth.) I will never be able to ask nor believe him in the fragments of this memory, let alone identify him if we met again.
