# 4

‘So what the fuck am I doing here?’ Nola said as she sat directly opposite Charles near the window. It was the same window where he first saw her.
‘Don’t ask me that question.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t answer that for you.’
‘I thought you had all the answers.’
‘Well, you thought wrong. Do you drink coffee?’
‘I guess I do.’ Charles remained annoyingly peaceful. He kept his eyes on Nola’s face. He studied every single aspect of her face. After all, it was an exquisite face. ‘I mean I would if I stayed.’
‘Stay.’
Nola looked outside. People where flooding the streets. People with briefcases, shopping bags and mobile phones rushing off to somewhere important. She turned around and said ‘So your name is Charlie and you play the piano ehh?’
‘That’s right’
‘What else do you do then?’
‘I watch old black & white films. Any kind but Westerns are my favourite kind. Especially old John Ford- Westerns.’
‘Why Westerns?’
‘I don’t know really, I like vast open plains. That huge emptiness of the country, the true freedom. The sense that one can truly control their fate even if it is by holding a gun.’
The waitress approached the table behind Charles and looked at Nola. ‘Can I get you anything to drink mam?’
‘Black coffee’ she gently whispered. She took a pack of smokes out and lit one.
‘The world’s not black & white anymore Charlie’
‘I know, it seems there aren’t any vast open spaces left either. But you can still carry a gun at least.’ Nola smiled. She suddenly felt comfortable, relaxed. Charlie seemed to transpire to her a certain calmness she had not felt for a long time.
‘So how come you became a piano player?’
‘I played the piano forever but I always did it on the side. Then a few years back something happened to me. I returned home one night to find a fire had burned down the building where I lived. I was left with nothing. All my belongings were gone. Right there and then I thought about what it was in my life that defined me. And that was playing the piano, not a lot else.’
And so they went on talking. She did not say a lot, but she liked what she was hearing. What was it that defined her? What where the simple yet so important traits that defined who she really was? Charles kept looking at her straight in the eyes throughout. Maybe just maybe, it could be this piano player she was having coffee with.