cinnamon

[chu_totoro]

this was something I wrote in the first week, supposedly a first-person adaptation of story 57 except halfway through it totally died and ended without my intending to end it, which would have made me angry and foot-stampy, only I was too exhausted by then to care (oh deadlines). so yes.

I still hold a certain penchant for the... original. The people who read this first don't like the original v. much, but I s'pose each to their own.

Cinnamon Today a girl wearing orange shoes walked past me. She didn’t see me, no, in fact when she reached me she didn’t even look down, just shifted her stride slightly and went around me without ever realizing I was there. Or, more accurately, I was there, but just a piece of the crummy old wall, the dirt-streaked sidewalk. I could have been a trash can for all she cared. Perhaps my straggly hair was the remains of someone’s lunch, my rags the crumpled napkins smeared with gunk, and my tattered shoe a half-eaten apple that landed on the sidewalk. But that orange. It was just right! A light pastel with just the slightest tint of yellow. It felt like someone had set a spark to my fuse and the entire rope suddenly ripped through with flames. It felt like someone had whacked me in the chest with a fifty-pound tuna fish. God, it felt good. I mean, I’m not saying getting whacked by a fifty-pound fish feels good (actually I’m sure it wouldn’t), it’s just that I haven’t felt so – so real, in years. I’ve been living this half-assed existence that the world is probably better off without, and which I’ll probably continue to live until I die and the world becomes a better place, but at least I remembered why I was living it. You know. Like I became a half-assed person again, instead of a – half-assed trash can. On the side of the road. You know? Not that they were the right shoes or anything. In fact, now that you mention it, they were designed quite badly. No traction at all on the bottom, god help that girl if she goes out on a rainy day. The front, too. I bet her toes hurt because they were all squished together and she was just hiding it. Oh, did I mention? I’m a shoemaker. Or used to be one, at any rate. If you really want to get technical I’m a shoemaker’s apprentice, because I, well, got kicked out before I ever made it to official shoemaker. It’s a long story. I used to be a promising young man, see. Yes. I did. Stop looking at me like that. I had a career ahead of me and everything! Really! Ah, back then – the days of short cropped hair, nice clothes, and a winning smile. I quite miss that smile, you know. I’ve never been able to get it back. I tried, I did! I found my reflection in shop windows and struggled to rearrange my face the way it used to be, but there was always something that wouldn’t quite work. I had a dog back then, too. A Welsh Corgi, the type with those short stubby legs and furry pointy ears. He was fat and looked funny when he ran, but she absolutely loved him. She thought he was the cutest thing in the world. And her thoughts must’ve infected me, because I brought him every time I went to her shop, even though dogs weren’t allowed and I had to tie him outside. I would always use the pole right by the street sign, so she could see him out the shop window and laugh. Every time she laughed I smiled like an idiot (inside, inside, outside I gave the winning smile. I think). Oh, those were the good days. I went down to that bakery almost every single day. She – oh god, I can’t remember her name anymore, isn’t that embarrassing? – but she had a dimple on the corner of her mouth. You couldn’t see it normally, but every time she smiled, every time her eyes crinkled and the corner of her lips went up, there it was. She used to run her hand through her hair to hide it, but when she’d been rolling dough it powdered her hair white, and then when I pointed it out she couldn’t help but laugh. “Why do you do that?” I asked her once. “Do what?” she asked, shaking her head to free her hair of the clinging flour. “Hide your face,” I said. “Every time you laugh outright you hide your face behind your hands. You even do it when you smile.” “Oh,” she said. She looked a little pink. “I – yaugh!” The edges of her hair had gotten caught in a half-rolled piece of dough, and I turned away to hide a grin. “Well, I – that is, my face – it looks sort of lopsided when I laugh, so I – I try – not to let – others see.” Her voice got smaller and smaller as she spoke, and by the time she reached the last word it was barely a whisper. Then she thrust me my cinnamon bun and disappeared into the back, and I didn’t see her all the rest of that day, though I waited and waited there to tell her that she looked like nothing of the sort. There was this other time I was lingering between the shelves, and she randomly asked, “What do you do?” “Shoes,” I blurted without thinking. Then I realized she probably wasn’t even talking to me and looked around, but there was no one else inside the shop. And she seemed to be looking at me. “You do – shoes?” she asked, hesitantly. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. I mean, uh. You mean. Well, you were referring to my profession, right? I – do shoes. Er. Make. Shoes. That’s what I do, see. Making shoes.” I felt like an ass after I said that, so I flashed her my winning smile in the hopes of saving what little dignity I had left, and it seemed to work. That is, she had turned away from me so I couldn’t tell whether her shoulders were shaking from a small choke of laughter or a grimace of disgust, but at least she didn’t throw me out. “So you make shoes,” she mused. After a long pause, she added, “Is it fun?” I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Is it fun? What kind of a question was that? It’s like asking someone, “So you like to read – are books good?” I mean, how much vaguer can you get? But then I saw the dimple on the corner of her mouth and I melted. “Yes,” I said. “It’s very fun. Shoes are nice. They, uh, smell good. Especially the leather ones, they smell – fresh, somehow.” “Oh!” she said. “I know what you mean. But I don’t like the smell of leather. Whenever I think of people scraping the hide off a cow, I just get the shivers all up and down my back.” “But that has nothing to do with how it smells,” I pointed out. “Yes,” she agreed. “But whenever I smell leather, that’s what it reminds me of. So it’s pretty much the same thing.” “Oh,” I said. She had a point. “What sort of smells do you like, then?” The dimple again. I dissolved like a piece of wax. It’s been years – I can no longer recall her name, the shape of her face, or the color of her eyes, but the one thing I’ve never, ever been able to forget is the small dimple on the leftmost corner of her mouth and the way her whole face used to light up when she smiled. “I like – how it smells here,” she decided. “I like the smell of different pastries, all mixed together. It’s warm and almost comforting, in a way.” I bobbed my head like a sock puppet. “I also like-” she tilted her head slightly to the side – her face was plump, I remember now, roundish, so that it made her look like a little kid when she tilted it like that – “the smell of cinnamon buns.” Usually when I went to the bakery I lingered between the shelves, taking my time to choose from the various types of pastries. Only it didn’t actually matter, because every time I ended up getting a cinnamon bun. Her bakery had the best cinnamon buns. They were large and soft and not so sticky as to be annoying, and miraculously not too sweet. I can’t stand overly sweet things. They repulse my tongue. “In that case, could you heat mine up for me?” I asked, flashing her what I hoped was a charming smile. “Certainly,” she said, and disappeared into the back. Soon the warm scent of cinnamon wafted out to fill the shop. “I see what you mean,” I told her as we waited. “It’s got this certain – appeal to it.” “Yes, hasn’t it?” she said. That was the longest conversation we ever had. Though after that she began to talk to me from time to time (by talk I mean saying things other than “Could you heat this up for me?” and “Here you go, that’ll be four-fifty please”), I don’t think we ever quite topped that. She never was one to talk much. She was more the type to catch your eye and wink, or look down at the counter and fiddle with her hair, or notice something out of the corner of her eye and laugh without explaining herself. We had a conversation about pineapples once, I think. It was fairly long, but not enough to beat the smells conversation. And I don’t remember it. The only other conversation I remember is very short. “You sold your dog!” she exclaimed. “Why?!” “No money,” I said. She bit her lip. I kept waiting for something to happen. For the clouds to go away and the sun to come back, for my dog to suddenly appear outside her shop window and wag a “hey I’m back!” with his tail, for myself to think of something brilliant to say so she could stop looking like that, but it was not to be. The transaction was completed in silence, and when I left she wouldn’t look at me. I couldn’t finish my cinnamon bun that day. It was the same as always, warm and soft, but I had to choke down every bite and the smell of cinnamon seemed to overwhelm me until I nearly suffocated. Perhaps it was because my dog wasn’t there to share half of it with me. Who knows. All I know is that I left most of it uneaten and stored it in a corner of my closet. I had trouble sleeping that night, too. The missing presence of a warm body really makes a difference, believe it or not. On top of that, the image of her face kept floating up in my mind, the look in her eyes and the slight crease in her brows as she handed me my change. I saw it every time I closed my eyes, and it kept me from what little sleep I may have had. That was when it started, I think. When the dimples began to go away and the grayness began to take over. I can’t say what it was exactly – something about the silence, the look in her eyes, the set of her lips, but I couldn’t look her in the face when she looked like that; every time I did, a little bit more of me died inside. When I ran out of money for the second time, I wanted to tell her but I couldn’t. The few conversations we’ve had since then have been short and meaningless, and she always started them. Go up, I told myself. Just go up to the counter, give her a winning smile, and say, “Sorry, I’m not getting anything today.” You can do at least that much. It’s only polite. But she was watching me. I couldn’t quite see her from behind the shelves, and when I looked at her she always seemed to be doing something else, but I knew she was. I could feel it. She was watching me as I came in, watching me as I walked through the shelves acting like I might pick something other than a cinnamon bun, watching me as I lingered longer than usual, not daring to approach the counter. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, my legs just wouldn’t move. Taking a step forward became an enormous task, and, though I knew I shouldn’t, it was so much easier just to turn and stop looking at the figure behind the counter, to take one step, then another, then another in the opposite direction. She watched as I strode out without turning back. I would never go to her again, I promised myself as I walked along. I couldn’t, not after doing something like that. I’d lost my chance, and now the best thing I could do was stay away, let her think what she like. It was over. Finished. Done. Yet the next day, at the usual hour in the afternoon, I found myself in front of the bakery again, and before I knew it I had pushed open the door and gone in. Out! Out! my heart screamed. Turn around and push open the door and go straight back out and pretend this never happened! But I couldn’t decide what to do, and while my brain was hesitating my feet had already taken me down the aisles, where it was so much simpler to resort to habit and examine the pastries like I’d never seen them before. The funny thing is, the more I did stuff like that, the easier it became, you know? It was still awkward and all, but I guess I felt like if I kept doing it, she would eventually get used to it and – forget about the awkwardness. Like maybe she would start talking to me again. Of course, it didn’t last very long. On the fourth – or fifth, I can’t remember – day, the baker’s wife came out and told me off. “Loitering is not allowed unless you’re planning to buy something,” she said, casting me a distasteful glance. The next day I came I stayed outside, on the sidewalk. The shop windows were big enough for me to see inside, and I was on public property, so she couldn’t come and kick me out. If I looked through that space between the display shelf and the sign, off to the left, I could just see her, standing there behind her counter. I don’t know when it was I stopped caring about how stupid I looked. All I wanted was to see her laugh again. I made faces at her through the window. I danced. I sang. I pantomimed my dog chasing his tail in circles. I even managed to juggle three water bottles successfully once, for about twenty seconds, but always, always, she just looked at me with those sad, sad eyes until I felt like I was a legless tortoise floating upside-down on the surface of the water, one of those sights so depressing that you just wish you didn’t have to see it. Other times she simply turned away. The only time she ever came close to cracking a smile, she wasn’t looking at me but at a passing couple, who had with them a five-year-old waving his arms about and trying to fly. Eventually she stopped coming out. Oh, she was still there sometimes, but chances were, when I peered in that shop window, there would stand the baker or the baker’s wife, glaring daggers at me. I gritted my teeth and redoubled my efforts. I dressed in orange every day in the hopes that she would be there and see that I am wearing her favorite color. I recalled old conversations and practiced reenacting them in front of a mirror, thinking perhaps to jog her memory. I taught myself rudimentary sign language and spent each day inventing new things I could say to her when she finally came out. Every afternoon I practically flew down to the bakery, hoping against hope that she would be there today. Each time I saw the baker glaring at me or his wife folding her arms across her chest, my insides deflated like a balloon and I slumped, cramming my arm into my mouth so I wouldn’t scream and biting so hard I left teeth marks. I became irascible as a snake, and if ever someone looked at me strangely or remarked on the ragged state of my clothes, I lashed out at them without hesitation. The time the apprentice who had bought my dog said hi to me I nearly kicked him, not for any real reason but just because. My dog. When she did come out it was worse, because she never even spared a glance for me. I had so many things ready for her, and if she’d only look she’d know I’m good, I’m good, I was bad but I’m sorry and I’m so ready to redeem myself it isn’t even funny, everything will be all right again if we could just go back to the way things were. I’ve imagined it a thousand times over in my mind, how she’d see me and she would laugh and everything will be all right again, but if she won’t look at me it can’t happen, and. God. The wall, the wall had that jagged rough brick on it, you know? And I hit it so hard this one time my fists started bleeding and I nearly broke my pinkie, and you know what? I didn’t care. I just didn’t fucking care anymore. I would have done it again and again until I did break my pinkie, only this old man dragged me away and sort of spit in my face and shook me by the shoulders and then just left me there, in the middle of the sidewalk, and I didn’t quite feel like it anymore and went home. My boss thought I’d gone crazy. He didn’t say anything but I knew he did, he just kept me because I was the best shoemaker around, ‘side from him. I was his best apprentice, see. He was a nice sort of guy. Had the old cap on crooked, a frizzy mustache, lopsided grin, all that. I tried to keep up with the shoes for him, even when my heart wasn’t in it, but eventually he just couldn’t take it anymore. I had chanced to see a calendar that day, see, and I’d started getting all excited because it was going to be her birthday in, oh, a week or two, and I knew with an absolute certainty that this was the last, last, last chance I would ever get to redeem myself. I was so fired up I could hardly think, imagining all those fantastical presents I could give to her. Gradually, of course, I realized it would have to be something within the realms of my capability, but even so, I had a legitimate reason to give her something and she would accept it, she would, and when she did I could redeem myself if only it was good enough! I began composing a letter in my head, explaining all my actions from the day I met her to the day I walked out and everything that happened after that and why I did it and as I did so I began to realize how much I’ve degenerated and how little of a – a life I had left, and I promised in the letter in my head that I’d start anew, make it big, treat her as royally as a princess would be treated. I could, too, and I knew it, because I was the best in my trade (aside from my boss). It was around then that I decided her present would be a pair of shoes. Not just shoes, though. The most beautiful shoes she’d ever seen in her whole life. And they would be orange, because that was her favorite color. The next week was the first time in months I cut off my daily visits to the bakery. I put aside all my other assignments and stayed indoors all the time, crafting her orange shoes. They couldn’t be ugly, see, but they couldn’t be too pretty either, because then she would feel like they were too good for her. And her feet were wider at the toes, so I couldn’t taper it off too much or it’d hurt her. I also had a lot of trouble choosing the material. I didn’t want it to look too cheap, see, but on the other hand I didn’t want it to be too hard and stiff. I scrapped seven or eight sketches before I settled on one that I liked. And then I spent the next few days measuring out material with the utmost precision, cutting, sewing, gluing... this had to be done all by hand, see. I couldn’t just let a machine cut out the bottom, it’d be off just ever so slightly with the imprecision of mass production. Thing just don’t work that way. I stayed up real late a couple of nights, working ‘til I figured I was losing my sense of judgment and forced myself to stop so I wouldn’t mess up her shoes. But I was real proud when I finished. That pair of shoes was arguably the best piece of work I’d ever done. I still had one or two days left, then, so I spent that writing out the letter I had composed in my head earlier. Then I changed into some fresh clothes, washed my face, and trimmed my hair as best I could manage with a pair of old scissors. I felt like a new man. “Hey!” said my boss as I was walking out the door. “Looking pretty good today!” “Yeah?” I said, and gave him what could almost have been a shadow of my old winning smile. “Well, how are those sneakers coming along?” he asked. “Sneakers?” I asked. “Yeah, I’ve extended the contract twice for you already,” he said. “But if you really can’t deliver I’m going to have to give it to someone else.” “When are they due?” I asked. My boss frowned. “Today,” he said. “Where’ve you been, boy? What’s that in that box you’re holding? That ain’t the sneakers?” He shook himself off his spot against the wall and reached towards the shoebox in my hands. “Oh, no,” I said. “No. Not at all. Nothing, er, nothing – of the sort.” “Well, what is it then?” he asked, deftly lifting the lid. As soon as he saw what was inside his brows began to furrow, and as he picked the shoes up and turned them over from hand to hand, his forehead began to crease and the wrinkles just got deeper, and deeper, and deeper. Finally he looked up, and when he spoke again his voice was completely different. “Boy,” he said. “What is this for?” I blinked. Innately I sensed that something was wrong, but my mind hadn’t caught up to it yet. “What is it for?” he repeated, more urgently. “A – girl?” I said. “Except, well, she’s – well, it’s a long story – you see, she doesn’t really-” “Boy,” he interrupted me. “Are you telling me that you’re, you’re taking our resources for your own personal use?” “What?” I asked. “Is that illegal?” My bossed scratched his head. Then he scratched his mustache. Then he adjusted his cap. “Yes,” he said finally. “It is.” “Oh,” I said. “What should I do?” “Wellll,” my boss said. He kept taking his cap off, and then putting it back on. It looked kind of funny. “We could say you accidentally misread the commission, and give them this pair as a temp-” “No,” I snapped automatically. Those shoes were not going anywhere but to her. Keeping my lips pursed in a tight line, I tried to shoulder my way past him. I had to leave this at the door of the bakery today, or it was meaningless. “Hey, hey,” he said, moving to block me. “You stay right here until we sort this out-” “I can’t,” I said, “I have to go give this to-” “Now you just calm down and listen to me-” “So you can persuade me to give those shoes away? No!” “Now listen, boy, those shoes aren’t yours-” “I made them!” “-they belong to-” “I made the fucking shoes, let me through!” “-your contract-” “I DON’T CARE ABOUT MY FUCKING CONTRACT!” I yelled at him. “JUST – LET ME THROUGH, ALL RIGHT?” “Look-” “Look,” I shouted. “I quit, all right? I FUCKING QUIT. GO AHEAD. FIRE ME. I DON’T CARE.” And then I pushed my way past him and ran outside, clutching the box to my breast. As I ran I thought about the letter inside the box, all the promises of becoming a new man and striking it rich, and I thought about shocked look on my boss’s face as the cigarette dropped out of his hand, and I began to cry. And the harder I ran the harder I cried, until I positively sprinted to the bakery and she was there, she was actually there for once even though it was her birthday and she had no business working, and when she saw me burst in her eyes widened so much I actually wanted to laugh, because when had those eyes taken over my life, why did it matter and why did my chest ache so, so much, and I thrust her the box and said “happy birthday,” half laughing, half crying, and turned and stumbled out onto the street. I half-hoped it would be raining, storming if possible, so I could get soaked and the wind could cut me through and through, but it was a nice sunny day and passerby stared at me as I staggered out onto the street, sobbing unintelligibly. And as I lurched ahead, half-blind, with no thought but of getting away, away, away, I suddenly began to laugh. And I couldn’t stop laughing, because, because, it was all just so funny. I’d thrown my entire life away and what did I get now, in the end? What did I get? It wasn’t raining when I left, but it was raining much, much later, when I woke up in a street miles from my old home.