Fiction

Coral Lipstick and Coffee

His dirt-caked fingernails drummed the table top. They tapped the table one by one, over and over again, as if desperately searching for a rhythm, for some miraculous new musical ability he never knew he possessed. The other hand was wrapped desperately around an off-white mug, as though the coffee it contained held the answers to life’s questions and would tell him why the sky was blue and why everyone must die and why his marriage had failed.
The navy anorak clinging to the chair was slightly too small for him, had always been too small, but he had never had the heart to tell his wife that. She’d triumphantly tossed it down onto the dining room table, proclaiming: ‘It was only a tenner! Do you like it? Nice isn’t it- good for a tenner.’ He’d murmured that yes, it was nice, and yes, it was a bargain. ‘You don’t like it, do you?! You don’t bloody like it.’ He wore it every day after that, even though it was cheap and uncomfortable and too small. It seemed important to him. He sipped his coffee.
A girl in an apron approached his table, clearing away stained napkins and crumb-covered saucers. He looked up at her, with a mouth that said ‘thank you’ and eyes that said ‘I am sad and I would rather be anywhere but here’.
The day he found the lipstick was a Thursday. Her handbag had overturned. The seams on the anorak strained as he knelt down to retrieve it, to put things right, to clear the mess away. It rolled out, unsuspicious, unassuming. It was bright coral, and only a tiny stub remained as though she had worn it every day for months. He had never seen her wear lipstick before. He gingerly took a bite out of the brownie and then gently placed it back on the plate. Chocolate crumbs mixed with the dark dirt under his fingernails.
He was sat on the old sofa the night it all fell apart. ‘I don’t love you anymore’, she had sighed through a coral-painted mouth. The vibrant orange looked alien next to her pallid complexion; an ugly wound that bled insults. He said nothing because he had nothing to say. ‘I’m having an affair.’ She threw another spear in the general direction of his heart, hoping for a direct hit. Did her other man buy her the lipstick? ‘I am having an affair with another man who will love me more than you ever did.’ Silence, still silence. What was the point in retaliating? Words would not stop the universe from falling apart around him. ‘Why don’t you care?!’ Shouting now, as though her words would penetrate the walls of vacancy and hopelessness he had built around himself. ‘I just wanted to feel beautiful.’
He knew he should speak, so he said all he could think of. ‘Coral doesn’t suit you. Dinner will be ready soon, check the garlic bread isn’t burning because it was charcoal last time.’ The sofa swallowed him whole and he fell through the musty floral darkness for eternity.
He raised the mug to his lips only to find that there was no coffee left; only muddy brown dregs. ‘I thought there was something left.’ He said to no one in particular. ‘I didn’t think I had finished it.’ His words fell through the dead air and every ear turned them away. Even the air itself recoiled from the stench of loneliness that visibly pulsated from him.
He stood up slowly, as though he almost could not bear the weight of his own world, the heavy poisonous fog that consumed him. He pulled the anorak around his slumped shoulders like a slimy navy skin that clung to his frame. He nodded at the empty coffee cup, the crumb covered plate and the faux-wooden table as though they had become dear friends to him. He raised a hand in a half-wave to the apron girl. She had her back to him, already helping another customer, already moved on from their brief interaction. He waved anyway.

Mollie Carberry