the future god lets me see

The kitchen was warm. June made that a near constant; the sunlight filtering onto the checkered tablecloth would have been downright oppressive in a handful of hours. As it sat, the puddle of yellow struck two coffee mugs and two men who were clearly jittery enough already. The young one started things.

“So.”

Bold stuff. A smile creased the face of his conversation partner–he remembers those feelings. Anxious. A need to stab the silence dead.

“So indeed. Ask away. You only get ten minutes.”

Back to silence. The tension wasn’t lessening any time soon, and not for lack of things to say. With a visual cringe, he found courage.

“Are you happy?”

The sound of it felt almost cute. “That’s a question that I can’t blame you for asking, but it’s also a question that I can’t answer. There ain’t a way to measure that, son. Not in a way that can help you make your choice.”

Brows furrowed further. “What? Of course there is–do you feel happy more often than you don’t? That’s what it all comes down to, right?” That spark of red there; that wasn’t real anger. What was it?

“This life is all I know. I can say that most days, I feel good. But good compared to what? If you’re asking if I spend most of my days in abject suffering, well, no.” The old man smiled, tried to soften edges. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Surely you can tell me if you’ve felt happy all these years?” Raised voice this time. That was it–fear. The old man wondered if this boy knew it was okay to feel anything else.

“That’s the problem, son. I can tell you that I feel alright, that I’ve felt happy. But I can’t tell you that this is the life that brings the most joy. I would be lyin’ if I told you I knew that.”

That familiar silence. Sips of coffee. Shuffling of hands, unwrinkled and liver-spotted both.

“Are you lonely? Without…without anyone?” A sigh that, at this point, was more like a wheeze. A beat passes, and he smiles again. This time, it’s even less convincing. This time even a self-centered young man notices.

“Every damn day. Every day.” Hissed out.

”I have friends. Family’s mostly gone now–they raised kids, got busy, died. Nieces and nephews don’t see me much. They got kids too, now.

“Church is good. I been through three priests now but I’m not the oldest parishioner, if you can believe it. But I pray every day.”

The young man sits up at this. “Good. At least…” That fear is naked now. Tears well and are forced back almost too fast to be seen. “At least we didn’t lose that. At least we didn’t…”

“Damn ourselves?”

He starts, sucking in sharply. The tears are more than welling now. For the first time, their eyes meet. The sunlight nearly blinds the room, and even it can’t make the old man’s eyes look anything lighter than pitch.

“Sonny, there’s more than one way to lose a soul.”