Virtual Café
Going and Gone
When there were connectivity problems and time, you would drive to the nearest village.
A strip mall in which, between the wings joint and Hot Wok, a sign read Market Coffee. It became the back up when power went out at the farm.
The internet often brought with it the prospect of severed connections renewed, from those you thought long parted.
This was both liability and asset, depending on the nature of the last time you saw them.
***
Unresolved issues, and curiosity, led to the situation that was more common than admitted, of wishing to communicate, but also fearing what might result.
Over the years, it turned out there were damn few you could talk to, fewer you could trust, and of those remaining, none could write.
Oh, maybe there was one in particular you wouldn’t mind sitting across a table from, with two hot mugs of coffee as the sole remaining battle line.
With unresolved anger, a small chat, it might be hoped, could have cleared things up and settled conscience, even if resolution had no impact on your, or her, lives.
Things were never as they seemed. You learned to read the clues, to sort out what face and posture revealed, and whether the words spoken contradicted their appearance.
Some issues unresolved could not be written, at least not without the stress of revealing the wrong answer.
****
This was a story of reconnection, of inadvertent deception, one that in the end, went bad.
Death had a way, while severing some, of bringing together others who had been long absent and rarely considered.
That’s how it started.
A group of young people who had grown up together, dated together, but graduation scattered them.
Years later, Arthur, finally made partner in his law firm, turned up in an unusual group email.
Brain tumor. Insidious, sudden, fatal.
We mourned together. No one had much followed his (or each others’) trajectory since his family relocated out of town when he was thirteen.
Among the addresses was one that stopped my breath.
*****