Inside the Brown Coat

Weighted down with rain and mildew, the coat hung thickly around his sides. A variety of holes and patches covered it with an erratic precision, an organized chaos. Some of the jagged cuts in the fabric exposed neither clothe nor skin, but pervasive velvet black.

Shirley blinked.

The bum's coat now looked brown and ordinary. But, she edged away all the same. As she did so her heel caught on the pavement, sending her careening into a glossy movie poster. She picked herself up, threw off her stilettos and started walking toward her car. And stopped. If she stayed, she would finally have her date with Rahj, the beautiful insightful boy from work. The thought warmed her, in spite of the biting rain, and she felt a joy she hadn’t since her parents had passed away. She clung to the joy; it filled her. So when the bum turned to her, she couldn’t help but smile.

He burst into tears.

Shirley’s mouth opened and closed and opened again

“Are you al-” she began.

“WHY?!” he screamed. “Why did you do it?!”

“Do what, sir?” Her voice rang with tranquility with that calmed countless CEOs. She developed and perfected the tone working the morning shift at CoffeeCounter.

“You know what you did! You stole!” he cried, hot tears streaming down his face.

“What you mean?” Shirley replied. She kept her hands in her pockets so the bum couldn’t see them shaking.

“What the fuck do you mean, ‘what do I mean?’” His voice cracked and carried across the empty box office walls.

“Can you explain what you believe I did?” Her trembling fingers found the cell phone in her oversized jacket pocket and traced what she prayed was the nine key.

His creased brow relaxed and his scrunched eyes softened. “Explain,” He said, almost innocently.

“Yes. Please. Tell me what you think I stole,” Shirley responded.

“These!” He ran toward her. Terror stabbed Shirley’s throat and twisted her legs; she could not scream, could not move. But as the scent of mildew and folds of thick fabric threatened to drown her, she found, at the very least, she could shut her eyes.

“Open them,” an even voice commanded.

And before she could stop herself, she did.

And blinked.

The lining of the coat was a solid, pure, beautiful blackness and what appeared to be glittering galaxies floating on the inside. But they didn’t look exactly like galaxies. In fact they were shaped like . . .

“Are those crystals?”

He let a short rough laugh “Of course! You wouldn’t know, would you? My mistake. My . . .apologies.” His sunk his hands into the darkness and pulled one of the glistening objects out of the black. It was about the size of her pinky and a soft, but proud, red.

“This,” he stated. “Is a Crysmile.”

Shirley knew she should pull away, but the glistening surface enraptured her.

“Do you see it? He asked, almost eagerly.

“See wha-.”

And Shirley then saw it. A smile with full lips and slightly crooked teeth shinning is the inside of the Crysmile. The image expanded and revealing a face, an upper body, then an entire person, a young man in fact. He had dark brown skin and wore a clean, but worn, navy blue sport coat. “You see it then!” He sounded pleased. “I sell them!”

“Sell them?” Shirley couldn’t keep her eyes off the man in the crystal.

“Every time a person smiles at me, a blank Crysmile fills up and I can sell it back for a profit. Some are worth more than others.”

“That’s amazing.” Shirley noticed the bum’s tone had changed. His voice, though still gruff, had grown even and fluid. He reminded her of a scientist she met once who made sense only when speaking of his experiments.

“You think that’s good?” He placed the red crystal back into the void and picked out one about as large as his ring finger that transitioned from a tentative yellow to a triumphant orange. The smile inside the Crysmile had thin lips and small straight teeth. As the image zoomed out, Shirley saw a pale small boy in a sweater vest and shorts grow into an elderly man in an charcol elegant three piece business suit, the same smile ever-present.

“One of my finest, but this! Oh, this one is my treasure!” His enthusiasm was childlike and Shirley suddenly noticed that he looked, in fact, her age if not younger than her. And that his eyes were a searing shade of blue.

The crystal he pulled out next was a royal purple color and about size of his fist. It dazzled with an inner light so brilliant that Shirley had to squint to make out the smile inside. The lips were painted black and the teeth sported a pair of metallic braces. As the image enlarged, Shirley saw bruises on the girl’s skin, scratch marks on her arms, and rips on her beautiful knee length white dress. The fingers on the girl’s right hand twisted at a painful angle, but she glowed. Her smile was triumphant, yet fearful. Dismantled, yet whole. Blissfully joyous, yet achingly tragic. The girl reached out with desperate, broken fingers and-

“So,” the bum tossed the Crysmile back into the infinite blackness. “Do you want to know why you made me cry?”

“What? Who was that-”

“Look.” He reached back into the darkness and pulled out a light pink crystal with a streak of magenta.

“You need to tell me-”

“Look!” His voice grew high pitched. Shirley calmed herself.

“Okay.” She peered into the crystal. The lips were chapped, and the front two teeth stuck out slightly, in an endearing sort of way. The image expanded. Shirley saw the face.

“That’s me. My god. I look. . . happy.” The Shirley in the Crysmile carried a joy that Shirley thought she’d lost. She couldn’t recall when she had last smiled like that. Perhaps before her mother’s diagnosis, before her father started taking slender white and green pills.

“Yes, you!” The bum screeched. “You stole my last Crysmile! And filled it up with what? Pink?! Do you know what pink means?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Fleeting love, a dime a dozen! You two will be over by next Wednesday!”

Shirley’s mouth went numb. “How do you-” She barely stumbled out.

“How do I know? The same way I know that guy in the red Crysmile is Mexican lawyer! That the guy in the yellow-orange Crysmile is a Canadian actor! That the purple girl is an all American dyke! You can tell everything about a smile. And I know, I know that yours is sh-sh-SHIT!” The bum drew back his arm and let the pink Crysmile fly into the air.

“No!”

Shirley leapt across the course movie theatre pavement, her cell phone flying out of her pocket, scrapping her elbows and knees. If she just save that one moment, that one precious moment she knew. . .

The Crysmile flew beyond her hands and shattered on the ground.

“No,” she whispered. “You, you can’t do that to me. You can’t do that to me! I was happy!” Her fingertips scrapped at the asphalt, picking up silvers of pale pink crystal. “What gives you the right?!” She looked up and saw no trace of the bum. With her hands she covered her eyes.

“Shirley?”

Shirley looked up. She saw Rahj’s eyes staring at her, wide and concerned.

“What happened? Did you trip?” Rahj asked.

Shirley nodded.

He helped her up. “My god, you’re soaked.” He quickly took off his worn leather jacket and tossed it round her shoulders. “I would have suggested a different theatre if I’d known you’d show up so early, this place is never staffed. Man, I’m so sorry. I’ll go grab our tickets so we can get inside.” He walked toward the box office that a red headed boy had just entered. Shirley stared at the crystals shards. One had cut her hand.

“Okay,” Rahj returned with tickets in hand. “So my friend Shaun over there works here and lives across the street. He said he’d run home and grab you a towel. And I’ll buy you some tea inside. You like that better than coffee, right? It’ll warm you up.”

Shirley nodded as Rahj started to walk to theatre. “I know I should just ask you if you want to reschedule, but I’ve been . . thinking about you a lot lately and I really-” Rahj turned around.

“Shirley?” he asked. “Are you coming?”