s (atrophy) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-06-24 01:04:00 |
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He took his coffee black today, forgoing the creamer and the sugar, so he could feel it seal on his teeth as he sat in the back of the low-ceiling'd shop, dim from a lack of proper lighting, despite the sun outside that died in its crucible of the evening. Steve was somber, a baseball cap (Yankees!) tugged down low over his face, and his old sketchpad cracked open on creaking spine. He leaned in close to the page to press the heavy, dull tip of a pencil to the paper. (He'd forgotten a sharpener or knife.) The pencil scratched softly as he roughed out the curve of a cheek, rounded just so, soft and rose petal petulant. Next was the wax black of a china marker, light and traced, over the etched features, hard to see in the picked-out dimness. The man at the table in the back, removed by a few feet over scuffed floorboards, tucked into the prim shadows inked by the tattoos of the hipsters that glanced Steve's way with very ironic curiosity, sniffed as he sat back for a drink of his black coffee. He was younger than many of the patrons, but the careful tuck of his button-up shirt and the part of his haircut that harkened to a past forgotten or an overzealous barber, added age, added a sense of age. His drink too was too simple. There was nothing added in warped Italian (and he knew Italian). It was black coffee because today was a day to be done up without frills. Steve had spent the past several hours in the company of dead men, and his mind was full to bursting with regrets, with philosophies gone astray. He intended to meet Peggy in the middle, despite the tightening knot in his stomach, and he meant to beg. He would rather be a coward, a beggar, than a man with his idiotic pride in tact over a mistake he'd made, whether he was still confused over it or not. Steve bit his bottom lip as he looked at the drawing of Peggy's face, caught, crystallized in an expression of great disdain, on the pages of his sketch book. He slammed it closed and closed his eyes. |