A Simple Pleasure

The elderly man looked like he needed a good dusting, as usual. Nelly handed him a coffee in a reusable mug, along with an apple muffin. As he perched on his plastic milk crate, the top padded by newspaper, the rest of the world passed them through relentless drizzle in relentless commuter rush.

Having offered to share with Nelly many times, he knew she always declined,while assuring him she could eat as many as she wanted at work. So he broke the muffin in two, crushed half into little pieces, and shared it with his buddies. They had been waiting since sunrise, and now clustered around crumbs like cooing filings to a magnet.

“How are you, Ivan?”

“I’ve had worse days,” he grinned, inadvertently showing that his teeth had had better. He lifted the mug in her direction. “Because today I’ve got good coffee. Thanks. I owe you a few.”

“Not at all,” she said, waving his owings away. “Staff bonus; it’s a simple pleasure.”

“Well, I’m a simple man.” He looked up at her. “I really am, you know.” He savoured a big mouthful of long black, no frills. “How’s the freeloader going?”

“Eddy’s...fine,” she lied.

“Has he paid you back yet?”

“Ah...”

“You okay?”

She made herself smile. “Let’s just say I’m not holidaying on the French Riviera anytime soon.”

He leaned forward, the forefinger of his mug hand pointing at her. “You deserve better.”

She had no reply, just like every other time he told her truth she didn’t want to hear.

Needing distraction, Nelly’s eyes scanned his meagre possessions. The messy pants, and his medal pinned to what was left of his army surplus coat. The green beanie with the big pom-pom. His milk crate. She could see the tattered black notebook in its safe place under the crate. It must have been beautiful once, and smooth, and brimming with potential. Now the cover and the frayed, grey ribbon (that may have once been white) hanging from its pages looked as bedraggled as the man above them. Ivan noticed her eyes gazing.

“Just you wait!” he giggled, patting the side of his crate to indicate the notebook. “I’ll give you a hundred coffees! Every day!”

Nelly was charmed; how many 70-something homeless vets found a reason to giggle on a drizzly grey day?

“Is today the day you tell me what’s in there?”

He smiled hugely, sending his white stubble into patterns. Like his notebook, he must have been handsome once. “Secret!”

“Oh, I knew you’d say that. Why don’t you share your secret with me?”

“Maybe,” he winked, “Someday.”

Nelly smiled fondly and winked back.

“Okay, Ivan, I gotta go work. See you Monday!”

“I’ll be here,” he promised.

She turned and picked her way through the buddies, then crossed Murray Street back to the cafe. He didn’t watch her leave. He never did.

“Hey, Nelly!” called one of her regulars, from where a few huddled under the market umbrella. “What’s for soup today?”

“It’s Friday! Friday’s pumpkin day!” she grinned.

Friday was also the day Nelly’s boss, Otto, had to cut her hours to three days a week.

Friday Evening: Nelly checked her letterbox and found a Notice to Quit. The landlord wanted to renovate. Vacate, or be evicted.

Saturday: Eddy ended their year-long relationship to go backpacking with his best friend.

Sunday: Her best friend, Maria, told Nelly she was now Eddy’s best friend.

Monday Morning: Nelly was half way across Murray Street, coffees in hand and preparing herself to be cheerful for Ivan. She looked over and saw the pigeons were waiting but he was not. She stopped in the middle of traffic.

A verge tree. An autumn leaf.

Unanchored. Falling. Lost.

Nelly’s tiny Como flat was unwelcoming that evening when she trudged through the door. Eddy’s things were already gone (he hadn’t bothered to tidy up), and soon she would be too. She needed to find a new home! But how could she secure one while her bond was tied up in this place, and her hours had just been cut?

She poured an unhappy glass of red wine, and plopped in the orange vinyl bean bag Eddy would have taken had Maria let him. Eddy! How he relished eating out, and how often he forgot his wallet. How she seemed to cover most of his rent. The bills.

“I’ve never felt like this about anyone,” he told her, looking at her adoring green eyes while gnawing a T-bone. “This must be what love’s like.”

She thudded her forehead with the heel of her hand, in time with declaring herself, “Stupid...stupid...stupid...”

Nelly demolished the wine in three big gulps. She felt the tingle move up from the warmth in her belly, through her neck, and arrive solidly in her head. Her eyes went to her black journal atop the little coffee table, its red ribbon poking out. She reached out and touched it. The book was used, loved, depended on. It looked like Ivan’s, so of course it made her think of him. Homes, jobs and boyfriends might be transient, but he was not. Ivan was bedrock, the earth, and she never realised she counted on him always being there; sitting on his milk crate in front of the park, surrounded by hopeful pigeons. With a brainful of merlot, she would have coped with the last ruthless days if Ivan had been there that morning. But not even wine could alleviate his absence. It was like going to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower, but discovering it removed. Not even removed; just...gone.

I hope he’s...

The next morning, at work with her forced grin and at war with her headache, Nelly didn’t check across Murray Street. She poured the two coffees and grabbed a vanilla muffin. It’d be fine. You can’t just lose the Eiffel Tower. And so she strode confidently over the bitumen, between peak hour cars, leapt onto the footpath, and with her most radiant smile, looked straight into Ivan’s warm eyes.

Except she didn’t.

How long she stood there, staring at the empty space in front of the park.

She gently crumbled the muffin for the pigeons, dropped the coffees in a public bin, and vomited on top of them. Otto saw all this as he frothed milk. He waited till she was back inside.

“Go home, Nelly,” he said sympathetically. “We’ll be okay.”

Will I?

She hauled herself off the bus, up the stairs, and into her bedsitter, which didn’t feel like home anymore. There was nothing to do but collapse on the bed. And the tears.

When Nelly woke up, her head nowhere near her pillow, the first thing she felt was the damp patch next to her face. Her awareness travelled to the heavy lump lodged where her heart used to be. Everything gathered there; rampant, consuming.

You’re alone. You’re broke. You’re nothing.

It took most of what was left of her to get out of bed and go to the kitchenette, her unwilling feet scuffing the floor with each step. Ginger tea, perhaps. Some mechanism of habit moved her to the fridge because it was dinner time. As the fridge door opened and its contents illuminated, her eyes discerned half a Subway and some leftover curry. Nelly’s stomach lurched and so did she, a wave of nausea carrying her to the bean bag. With barely enough time to turn around to land face up, she fell and lay spread-eagled. Her red eyes stayed open, because that way the room didn’t spin. As much.

When her nausea finally eased, Nelly tried to face her housing situation. First thing in the morning, no matter what. It was either that, or set up a milk crate next to Ivan.

Oh...

She rushed away from dwelling on him. His contentment.

Her stability.

You promised!

She would go to the police, but not today. Ivan wasn’t just not there; he was gone, she knew it. She knew. What could the police do to change that?

Still in the bean bag, Nelly tried to invigorate her body with a stretch a cat would have been proud of. She pushed her arms, fingers, legs and toes to their limit, and held them there for as long as she could.

“Nnngggnnnahhh...”

She let herself relax and her arms drop. Her right hand landed on her journal, and automatically clutched it. She picked it up and propped it against her legs.

I should write about him.

Taking the ribbon in her fingers, she tried to open the journal but was unable to. The ribbon poked out from between two pages that seemed glued together. Curry?

Nelly eased a finger in between, and carefully slid it along the adhered edges, separating them as best she could without tearing. She could feel paper in the cavity, pages that must have doubled over. As she parted enough of a gap, a small, folded piece of paper fell out of its cocoon and onto her legs.

“What’s this?”

Nelly unfolded it as her brain tried to make sense.

Today’s date.

“Uh-”

Her name.

“What the - “

$20,000.00.

She couldn’t believe it.

***TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS***.

She couldn’t believe anything.

“What’s going on?” she yelled to no-one, her eyes darting around her bedsitter in near-panic. They crash-landed back onto the paper rectangle, searching.

“Who uses cheques?”

The signature. Painstakingly printed, childlike.

“How...?”

She picked up the journal again, desperate for clues. She opened the pages that had been stuck together. The same handwriting.

‘You deserve better’.

A moment. Two moments as the fog dissipated. Relief overwhelmed her, then sadness, or perhaps it was the other way round. Serenity.

Nelly stayed in the bean bag for a long time, barely noticing burdens lifting from her. With her finger she gently twirled the grey ribbon that dangled from the journal. She stared at the cheque as she held it with both hands, and then softly stroked the signature.

I. B. Simple.