The Color of Home: A Novel

by Rich Marcello

  The Color of Home

  A Novel

  Rich Marcello

  Copyright © 2013 by Rich Marcello

  Langdon Street Press

  322 1st Avenue North, Fifth Floor

  Minneapolis, MN 55401

  612.436.3954

  www.LangdonStreetPress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-62652-370-8

  Table of Contents

  PART 1CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  PART 2CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PART 3CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  PART 4CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  “When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure.”

  —Rudolf Bahro

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  When Nick met Sassa, he was pulled in by an unusual light in her eyes, old and familiar, a beacon and a badge for those deft enough to notice—the color of home.

  “You have great eyes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “They’re sweet and sad. And guiding. And proud.” He glanced at her empty cup. “More tea?”

  “Sure, especially if that gets us off this topic. Surprise me.”

  “Be right back.” Nick unwound his lanky body, stood, stacked Sassa’s cup on top of his, and ambled across Joe’s Artful Coffee toward one of the baristas. On the way, he stopped at a waste and recycle station, and as he unloaded their cups and spoons, mind-walked the previous hour. Sassa had stepped into the café largely unknown. A friend of one of his employees. His first ever blind date. Dressed in sixties vintage clothing—a royal blue mini-dress with a black jacket, a black fedora, a black pearl necklace, and black leather boots up to her knees—she had arrived from a safer era. She was a chef. A Michigan grad. A New Yorker for half a decade. And at twenty-eight, a year younger than he was. Early in their conversation, a flicker in her eyes conveyed the sweetest sadness, the deepest loss. And from that alone, he’d drawn an unrooted conclusion—like a character in an Ingmar Bergman movie, she didn’t have much emotional time left and, without help, would soon fade into that hopeless place, one he’d imagined in black and white CinemaScope all of his adult life.

  At the counter, he picked up six different tea jars and sniffed each. Pointing to one on the end, the one that smelled of lavender and rose hips, he said, “I’ll have a large tea and a cappuccino with two shots of espresso.”

  As he waited, a photo on the side wall of the John and Yoko bed-in caught his attention. In an intensely sunlit room, they sat on a mattress with their legs crossed. Two handwritten signs, “Hair Peace” and “Bed Peace”, were pasted above them on the windows. A Schwinn bike rested directly in front of them. Nowadays, did anyone get that much sun?

  He looked over and studied Sassa Vikander thumb-typing on her phone. Her long, straight blonde hair draped her shoulders and danced on the tabletop like two expertly controlled marionettes. Her creamy white skin framed her smile perfectly, and her eyes reflected fractal blue, so much so that he pictured strangers stopping in their tracks to stare, compelled by the color and movement. Only the second Nordic goddess he’d ever seen.

  “Excuse me, sir. Your drinks are ready.”

  Nick turned around and rested his palms flat on the counter. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you watch foreign movies, you know, the deep ones, like Ingmar Bergman’s?”

  “Nah. I like romantic comedies. You?”

  “Yeah. Way too many.” He picked up his drinks, nodded, then balanced his way back outside to the table. On the way, he scanned the Greenwich Village café, which bustled with conversation that spring morning. With open floor-to-ceiling front windows and outside tables full, the café extended to the end of the Thirteenth Street sidewalk, where Sassa sat waiting. As he gently placed her tea on the round tabletop, a warm breeze washed over him like water caressing a stone. “Here you go. Extra strong Gyokuro Imperial Green Tea.”

  She took a sip. “This one is really good.” After a few more, she put her cup down, stroked the handle a few times, moved her mouth as if to say something, but checked herself and stared at the sidewalk instead. A short moment later, when she turned back to him, she clearly had a more measured response. “I’ve been thinking about our earlier conversation. Have you used that line about eyes before?”

  “First time.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Really?”

  He did know; he’d just kept the real reason to himself. But now that she suspected more, he had to do better, before she struck the game-over bell. Even though he hardly knew her, even though his chest was in a vice-grip, that much was clear. He took a deep breath, then said, “There was such sadness, such loss in your eyes. I couldn’t bear it. I wanted to save you.”

  Her face blanked. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a Chick-in-Shell Pez dispenser, which she repeatedly flicked, stacking Pez on the table until they fell over. Then, starting again, she stacked two side-by-side pillars even higher, before intentionally toppling them. Pez strewn like pieces on a Risk board, she said, “Let’s recap. So now I know you’re attracted to me, my eyes remind you of loss, and you’re good at picking tea. When do you get to the original stuff?”

  “You’ve heard this before?”

  “Most of it.” She twirled a Pez with her thumb and index finger for a long moment before popping it in her mouth. Reaching for her tea with both hands, she smiled into her teacup, put the cup back down, lifted it again, took a sip. Cup to mouth, she asked, “You like words, don’t you?”

  “Life’s all about words and ideas.”

  “Sadly.”

  “What do you mean?

  “Really? This might go south.”

  “Where do you want it to go?”

  “North.”

  Her phone buzzed and she picked it up to read a text message. As she chatted, he looped uncomfortably. What did she mean by north? Where was it? How could they go there? He didn’t have a clue, and he couldn’t shed his discomfort, but instead of closing down, instead of pulling back, instead of deflecting, he leaned in. That was a first.

  “Sorry,” she said, setting down the phone.

  “No problem. Maybe we should shift gears and talk more about our backgrounds?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Okay, I’ll start. Why a chef?”

  “Love. An Italian grandmother taught me to cook while I was in college. It stuck, I guess. That’s why I went to cooking school after I landed in New York, and eventually ended up at Diposto. Why did you end up starting studiomusicians-dot-com?”

  “Love. And I thought the timing was right for an online recording studio.”

  “It sounds like you were right about that.”

  “After many years of hard work, yes.”

  “What came first, the songwriting or the poetry?”

  “Poetry, but only by a little.” Nick sipped his cappuccino, and drifted back to the night that changed everything, the one when h
e wrote his first poem. Who could have known then it would lead to the Village Cinema, to Persona? And who could have known Persona, a decade later, would lead to this moment? “Your favorite movie?”

  “I’m not sure I have a favorite, but I like Me and You and Everyone We Know a lot. And yours?”

  “Persona. Ingmar Bergman.”

  “Aren’t Bergman movies depressing? Why do you like it?”

  He picked up his spoon and stirred his coffee until it whirlpooled, then reversed direction until the whirlpool followed his lead. “I was numb, so I gathered feelings. Persona helped me learn to feel again.”

  “‘Gathered feelings’? What does that mean?”

  “They were like scripts. I used them when I needed a certain emotional response.”

  Sassa pushed her chair back and crossed one leg over the other. Interlacing her hands, she draped them over her knee, quickly tapping her thumbs like they were drum sticks, and she was playing the drum solo from “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Solo complete, she said, “But you didn’t feel anything yourself?”

  “Something like that. I was frozen. The scripts were my pretend thaw.”

  “Scripts sound appealing. Can I borrow some?”

  “They don’t seem necessary around you.” What a reversal. After years where he withheld as much information as possible from his former girlfriends, where he used scripts often and to his advantage, he’d flipped with Sassa to openly sharing, to scriptless, to intuiting deeply. How did that happen so fast? And why? And would she eventually return the favor? “I want to come back to your eyes for a second if you don’t mind. There’s much more there than sadness and loss. I also see strength. You’re strong, though your strength might be better described as perseverance. You don’t give up. You’ve tried to fix a problem for a long time and you haven’t been able to sort things out. You’re hoping you’ll get there someday, though my hunch is your hope is starting to dwindle. That, more than anything else, scares you. If I’m right, I hope in some small way I can help you.”

  Her eyes widened slightly and the corners of her lips barely turned upward, coloring her face red, like he’d at least gotten part of his theory right, like she’d unintentionally given him an inside glimpse before the deflectors kicked in. This was good.

  “Wow. Strength. Perseverance. I don’t give up. I’ve won the emotional jackpot. Have you thought about a career as a therapist?”

  “Go with the flow for a bit. Trust me.”

  “Much too early for that, but I’ll play for now. What do you think you’re . . . sorry, I’m trying to fix?” she asked.

  “Your sadness? Or is it numbness?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Do you always answer a question with a question?”

  Her eyes dulled and she stared off at nothing, twirling a strand of her hair for a time. Eventually, she said, “I don’t know if you’re right. You sound pretty sure of yourself after only an hour, but I don’t trust words. You need to show me.”

  Show her; she was right about that. But how? He needed a gesture, something physical, clever, something he’d never done before, something that showed her the connection that he was sure existed between them. Phone home? When was the last time he’d seen that movie? Reaching across the table, he held his finger up like E.T. and slowly pressed it against hers. For a second, a spark, a current passed between them, until he pulled away and recovered his finger on the table. While looking down at his finger, he said, “I don’t know what happened to you, but my hunch is there are places where we overlap. Maybe we can figure out the overlap together?”

  “Too soon to tell.”

  “I hope so. One more thing. I believe in congruence between words and body language.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not really. I say what’s on my mind and my body language mirrors what I say. I’m hoping you’re interested in acting the same way, and that we can use that to explore the overlap.”

  Her phone beeped. Plucking it off the table, she read another message. “Just a second.” Smiling, she started typing something, sent it, got an immediate response, typed something else, then rested her phone back on the table. “Sorry. Congruence. What an interesting idea. We’ll have to talk about that more sometime.”

  They would talk more sometime. She’d thrown him a bone, but she wasn’t going to stick around past their next date unless he figured out a way to get through. Words didn’t work. Ideas didn’t work. But there were unseen places where they overlapped and he’d never experienced that before. Maybe that would be the way in.

  CHAPTER 2

  After a restless night of replaying his entire conversation with Sassa, Nick found himself again waiting for her the next morning at Joe’s. Each table seemed blocked off as patrons sat with opened copies of the Times. Street percussion from cars, trucks, delivery boys, and pedestrians blended with Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” which blared through the café sound system, causing him to tap his foot in rhythm. With his laptop open to his company’s website, he admired Sassa from a corner table as she breezed into the café wearing jeans, a Nirvana Nevermind T-shirt, and black Keds. Both of her arms were adorned with antique gold bracelets, and a matching gold necklace with black beads interspersed along its length dangled from her neck. What a beautiful combination. When she arrived at the table, he said, “Nice look.”

  Smiling, she fixed a stray hair behind her ear before closing his laptop and sitting down. “I wanted to match you. Were you working?”

  “Yes.” For most of his twenties, he’d worked nonstop to build his business into something substantial, rarely taking time for anything else. And while building, he’d worn similar clothing every day: a Beatles T-shirt, jeans, and sandals. One of every Beatles T-shirt style filled his closet, along with twenty pairs of the same Levi’s jeans, and five pairs of the same Birkenstock sandals, which he wore even in the middle of winter. Pointing at his T-shirt right below the “Strawberry Fields” artwork, he said, “I’m a few years behind you musically. Sometimes I think I was born into the wrong generation.”

  “The White Album is my favorite,” she said.

  “Mine too.”

  “How many Beatles T-shirts do you have? ”

  “Lots.”

  “Can you get me that same tea?”

  “I’ll order. Be right back.”

  As he waited for the coffee and tea, he purchased the Times, folded it under his arm and repeatedly questioned her small gesture. She’d taken the time to dress down for him. It showed movement, interest, right? And she liked the Beatles. Maybe that was another positive sign? Still, he stood on shaky ground. This would be their last date unless there was further movement. He didn’t have a clue where to take the conversation, only that he had to go for it in some way he’d never done before. A few minutes later, back at the table, he served Sassa her new favorite tea.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “I didn’t sleep well. Do you want a section?”

  “Why not.” For a few minutes, she paged through the Times business section without reading a single story, like she was off in her own private think-space, formulating something unrelated. When she finished, she folded the paper neatly, put it down on the empty chair next to her, leaned over the table with her hands folded in prayer position, and said, “Want to know what I thought about when I went home last night?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re way ahead of me. I’m just looking to have a good time with a cute guy for a while.”

  “Cute?”

  “Yes, Nick, you do have that going for you.”

  “Thank you.” At 6’4”, and thin, with shoulder length Jim-Morrison-like hair, he’d always done okay with women, even though he tended to smile rarely and intellectualize often. They’d called him all sorts of things over the years—intelligent, creative, distant, aloof, intense, arrogant—but when wa
s the last time someone had called him ‘cute’? A long time ago. Maybe high school junior year? Somehow, she’d taken him back there, and he liked it.

  Grabbing his spoon, Sassa fiddled with it, tossing it from hand to hand like she was playing hot potato. Then, balancing the spoon on one finger, she glided it over the table until it fell on his hand. Reaching over, she patted the place where the spoon hit. “Sorry.”

  “No harm done.”

  “Let’s finish our drinks and get out of here. It’s a beautiful day for a walk.”

  A short time later, they were strolling down Bleecker street. The spring sun, warmer than usual, bathed the downtown, exposing equal parts beauty and disfigurement. The street, covered with potholes, cracks, and temporary steel metal plates, was in such disrepair that vehicles had no choice but to bounce forward. Two young women, striking enough to be models and dressed in the finest clothing, passed by Sassa and nodded.

  As Nick walked, something deeper, with undercurrents worth riding, stirred in him. At first, he wasn’t sure. But as they passed storefront after storefront, slowly, he came to a decision. He had to tell her about his dad. Why was that? In the past, his father rarely came up in conversation, and then, only when directly asked. That strategy had served him well for over a decade, but with Sassa, he had to do better; he had to be up front. He stopped, turned toward her, loosely crossed his arms, and said, “My father died when I was seventeen.”

  “I’m so sorry, Nick. How?”

  “Heart attack. That’s why I started writing poetry. My first poem was about him. An outlet, I guess.” He looked at the cracks on the sidewalk and traced the longest one until it ended. “Do you think a single point in time can define you?”

  “That’s an interesting topic.”

  “Why?”

  “Just is.” She wove her arm around his, and gently tugged him back into the walk. After a block of silence, a block of apparent contemplation, one in which she rubbed his arm the whole time, she asked, “Can I read your poetry sometime?”