A short story about patience
Words & images © Paul Ransom
PLEASE NOTE: Unlike the rest of As If You Were Listening, this piece is pure fiction. (Some might argue that the entire site is full of such fancy, but here at least it is intentional. Enjoy.)
People watching. This is what I say whenever I am asked. I bought this wine bar for the view. Of strangers. Of lives I can only ever know in passing. Some nights I am reminded of scenes from the film I never made. The one about waiting.
Now I find myself waiting for them. My favourite regulars. The couple who never meet. Always at the same table, which I reserve for them in a low-lit back corner.
They arrive separately. After work. Expensively attired. Her first, around 8pm. She drinks Cabernet Franc from the Loire Valley. I order it in especially. Write her name on the bottles. Jin-a. He comes later, after 9:00, and prefers the vintages of other valleys. Clare, Barossa, Napa. They sit next to each other, an hour apart. Tuesday through Thursday. Most weeks without fail.
I imagine the film version. Languorous cross fades between them. The elegant melancholy of it. Their intimate separation overlaid by haunting piano lines.
In this life, unscored, in a bar I have recently come to own, theirs is a curious ritual of missing. She waits for him to arrive. He watches out for her return. They drink their wine quietly, not looking at phones or watches. Their eyes briefly focus whenever they notice the door opening, scanning each arrival. Neither seems impatient, nor disappointed.
The choreography is exquisite. She departs. I leave the glass on the table until he arrives. He always glances at it. I allow him a few moments before taking his order and removing it. By now he knows that I know. I am already a part of their dance.
Yet all this lovely movement, I know, is not confined to a few square metres in the bustle of a midtown bar. It happens in a quiet corner of my heart.
*
When I tell friends about this establishment, they shake their heads. Some love the symmetry. Others ponder the psychology. In the fantasy of my unmade film, it plays as fate. Doubly so.
First – because I used to meet her here; back when it was a cosy, day-trade café. We would share pancake stacks with maple syrup and cream, followed by large ice coffees in tall, dimpled glasses. Two sets of cutlery. Two candy-stripe straws. Split bills. Standard undergraduate fare. Cheap and cheerful.
Second – because I later spent years perfecting the classic side hustle of actors and artists; until casual hospitality hours became my steady gig. Instead of a name in lights, I now have a name above a door. On a variety of contracts. Mostly for money I owe.
I knew it was risky, but the lure was gravitational. Turn the pancake kitsch into an upscale bar. Make the space stylish. Understated. Fine wines and artisan sharing plates. A small library. A couple of beautifully carved chess sets.
And here it is, my refined, yet homely bolt hole, nestled on a corner, one block away from the hectic impersonal mess of the financial district. Here too, my open door to the remote possibility of her.
For a name, there was only ever one candidate. Patience.
As I polish glasses in preparation for another evening, I think of Karalyna, confident she would appreciate the in-joke. Knowing not to expect her.
*
On warm nights, he prefers whites. His name is Carlton. He is in his mid-twenties, and he works in IT. Even though he has explained it, I do not truly understand what he does. Tonight, he has opted for Chenin Blanc.
As I move to take her discarded glass, a smear of red still visible, he says, “In case you’re wondering…our parents strongly disapproved…and most of our friends thought it was way too soon.”
I am surprised. It is an abrupt declaration. He smiles, as though in apology, then adds, “In the end it felt like the whole world was against the idea, and we weren’t strong enough, or in love enough, to resist.”
My head explodes with questions; but mostly what I want to know is whether the wine ritual is deliberate. “Unspoken,” he confirms. “We used to meet up in a bar not far from here. But the crowd got too young, too noisy, and then…not long after we called it a day, you popped up.”
He blinks, exhales a small sigh, and hands me the ‘reserved’ sign. “Thank you,” he says. “For noticing. But more for allowing. I’m sure Jin-a appreciates it as much as I do.”
It is a remarkable gesture. Made without fanfare. I twirl the sign in my fingers, lost for words. “It’s the least I could do.”
The phrasing is cliché but, saying it, I feel its import. Having put two and two together, how could I help but make four? We three, present, plus her, long gone. Who knows where.
In Carlton and Jin-a I see the better dressed parallel of Karalyna and I. The likeness is not exact, far from it, yet enough for me to divine what they are tacitly asking. Do not intervene. Do not pass messages. Simply make room.
I return with his order. “On the house,” I say. “For noticing. And allowing.”
*
It was an associate of Karalyna’s, a wise-cracking dealer who ran a small-time dope business from the back of a busy diner, who gave me my first waiting job. He laughed when I told him I was studying performance. “You sure you’re pretty enough?” he mocked. But she had obviously put in a good word, and I was hired on the spot.
At first, I was awful. Clumsy, slow, forgetful. I hated it too. Not that Mo seemed to mind. He was making cash money and having his way with Karalyna. Maybe he enjoyed my helpless jealousy. My futile indignation and inept saviour pose.
“If you can’t be a real man, at least act like one,” he used to say, relishing what he felt was a street-smart triumph over art school intellect. He was muscular, moneyed, and competent. I was skinny, fumbling, and minimum wage.
I was also arrogant and afraid, but Mo’s radar never detected that and, ultimately, Karalyna’s came to register it as cowardice. Yet, by the time she had weaned herself off the milk of intoxication, and he had pressured one too many of his female clients into bartering sex for substance, my stubborn streak had elevated me from burgers and kebabs to waiting tables in fine dining luxury.
At 30, I was an industry veteran on an attractive hourly rate; and I had learned to love hospitality for its wealth of stories. The character studies. The complex play of human interaction. Great source material. Serendipitous inspiration.
In hindsight, I see clearly how this was also a convenient rationalisation. Truth is, I was addicted to waiting. For my big break. For grant money and willing investors. For my vision to be appreciated. But mostly for her.
I made an artform out of waiting. It was how I dealt with rejection.
Meanwhile, she got married and Mo went to prison. Watching the drama unfold, sidelined, I merely grew up. Gave up.
*
Jin-a is probably closer to my age than Carlton’s. I sense the years in her movements. And in her sorrow, which is both less obvious and more intense than his. She does not hold my gaze for long but when she does I see the ocean. The deep distance between possibility and compromise.
I produce a new bottle. Show her the label. She nods her approval, and I uncork. A minute smile of relief plays across her lips as I pour a small sample. With delicate fingers she manipulates the glass. There is a scarlet swirl. A fruity plume. She inhales, reminding me of sighs. Sometimes I could break watching her.
When she is resident in her corner, I deliver a small bowl of warm olives. I know she loves them. “Gomawoyo,” she says, thanking me. To which I reply with a slight bow and, “Cheonmaneyo.” She teaches Korean at a nearby language school. This, I have surmised, is how she met Carlton.
From there, I further assume that theirs was a union which defied the standard fault lines, and that for this transgression they have been made to pay. A common narrative of forbidden desire. However, by an act of grace and gorgeous resistance, they have maintained a form of togetherness. A tacit continuation, hidden in plain sight.
To this, I now bear unobtrusive witness. A pole star. A location. Together, we enact a secret love. Three characters in a bar called Patience. Waiting quietly. As yet unnoticed.
*
I spent ten and a half years waiting for Karalyna. Most of my twenties. Friend and confessor. Unpaid counsellor. Fetcher, carrier, bystander. I reasoned that if I could fix her, prove my loyalty, act with unimpeachable kindness, she would surely fall into my arms. While others tired of her volatility and broken promises, impatient with the circular dramas of trauma and addiction, I remained. Safe harbour. Warm shoulder.
There were times when I felt she was ready to choose me. A word, a touch, a look that lingered, near to melting. I would catch my breath, but the flicker would resolve again to smoky residue. Thence to ash.
Yet, in my conceit, my ignorance, my blind terror, I continued to believe I was the one. Until I was not.
Having fled the family home in Bratislava at 16 for the care of a distant aunt in Western Sydney, Karalyna’s passports were her precocity and her looks. Mathematics, and a sweep of auburn curls. She had learnt young, too young, that this was her power. She used it wilfully. Recklessly.
It would take her several years to fully disentangle gift from curse. A process I aided and abetted with my own conflicted psychology. Hope and helplessness. Compassion and control.
From the healing distance of time and silence I can now confess to liking her more when she was damaged. As she began to extricate herself from the clutches of ghosts and the manipulations of men like Mo, I felt her slipping away. Looking back, I accept that I had simply served my purpose, yet in the penumbra of her affection I was yelping. Resentful. I took cheap shots. Said stupid things. It only served to hasten her departure.
Enter Dominic. Handsome and decisive. Whereas I waited, hoping, he acted. Seven months later they were married, and I was exiled to the miasma of memory and forgetting.
“At first I thought you didn’t want me,” she said by way of explanation. “But then I worked out that you lacked the balls.”
I hated hearing it, but I knew she was right. Fear had misled me. Instead of waiting for her love, I should have acted on mine. The dread of no and a beggar’s plea for yes were never going to be enough for her. Having been the target of men who did not seek consent, or who resorted to crude transaction, what she wanted was a man with the simple courage to ask.
I was not that man.
*
“I know it might seem strange,” Carlton acknowledges. “Like, maybe we’re in denial or…we can’t move on…but it’s not that. I can’t even explain it to myself.”
His eyes search me, not so much for a grain of insight, as a form of allegiance. There is something in their graceful observance that sits in stark opposition to the definitive noise of a goal-focused world. Like a journey without destination, their objective is not closure, nor even reunion. It is as though, with an act of beauty, they now make love without the standard exchange. Celestial bodies, eternally circling. Defined by the space between them.
They wait like water. To make vapour or ice. To be heaved by satellites. To take the shape of vessels. In a universe of manifestation, they have chosen essence. By such tender meditation I am deeply moved.
“The table is yours as long as you want it,” I say.
I am tempted to elaborate, to offer up my own fuzzy logic, but the impulse catches at the top of my breath. Allow the space. Wait.
The flow of cursive script on a pane of polished glass reminds me. Patience.
Beyond the signage, the city at night. A busy luminosity. The hyper-colour blur of modernity. Here, in the suspension between inhale…exhale…like a slowed down scene from a film…I return to the stillness from which I watched my longtime love. As she moved around me. In sensuous orbits of dysfunctional genius. And at long last I sense it, like fog rolling in. Hard edges soften. The valley fills with an undulating mist, dancing on the surface of stony old ways.
I never truly waited for her. Because I did not know what waiting was.
Carlton smiles. I intuit, perhaps simply hope, that he has understood. Neither of us require the brutality of confirmation. He raises his glass. “Thank you, Alex.”
I nod, and it is enough.
*
In lieu of plain-speaking fortitude, I defaulted to passive-aggressive acting out. As Karalyna grew distant, I became impatient. Through the prism of vanity and desperation, her retreat seemed like betrayal. I was no longer the careful listener. Instead, I behaved as though recompense was due.
Then, Dominic. He cast me as the lead in his short film. Boasting, I invited Karalyna to a private screening. Within minutes it was clear that it was not my acting that caught her eye that afternoon. I felt humiliated. Passed over. Yet I had bought it on myself, and I knew it.
Thereafter, a period of remorseless self-loathing, which itself was a drama of ego. Later, with time and other distractions, a quieting of the heart. A measure of maturity. The ordinary process of living.
Since then, my roles have changed. Today, I dream my dreams behind the camera, and I no longer wait tables as a casual employee. My daughter will soon be ten. The ex and I are still friends. I am also the executor of my parents’ humble estate.
Karalyna is a memory I do not often indulge; except as the inspiration for the film I still plan to make. Even though it has failed to attract sufficient support to green light production, and I am too busy with the bar to spare much thought for it, I am yet to finally forfeit the ambition. One day, I tell myself. One day.
*
Something has shifted. Jin-a has taken the rest of the bottle to her table. Ordered san choy bau. Extracted a volume from the shelf. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter. She looks at ease.
I note the clock. Wondering. As the hour ticks over, I catch her watching me. Her smile is like spring. I am like melt water. There is no pretending.
She stands. Moves over to the bar. I sense she is a little tipsy. “Carlton is in Korea,” she says. “For work. He will be back next week.”
My relief must be obvious. She laughs, kindly. “There is a place I used to go when I was at university in Seoul. A park by the river. I used to sit in this one spot and just let myself…be. Until I met Carlton it was the happiest time.”
Tonight, she explains, he will go there on her behalf. To the same park bench, where he will shoot footage of the view on his phone. “I asked him to send it to me. While I am here. And tomorrow, I will film you.”
When she is back in her comfortable corner, I retreat to the staff toilet, where a silent stream of tears flow like the videoed river.
*
Jin-a shares Carlton’s footage with me. I wait until after closing before watching it on my laptop. Drinking European beer, looking at the shimmer of an Asian city. Nothing spectacular. A dark body of water. Illuminated buildings on the opposite bank. Noises off. Voices in a cool autumn night. I stare at it, like she did earlier, strangely at peace. As though I am waiting beside the river. For my sweetheart to arrive.
The rendezvous takes place in the cinema of memory. The only kiss we ever shared. At this address. A week before the wedding. “We really want you to be there, Alex,” she said. “Me especially.”
Over a final stack of sweet pancakes, we lingered. Savoury adult taste having replaced sugar fixing. Years of detail having scoured the surface of hormonal shine. I was not her saviour. She was not my fallen angel. We spoke at length, barely tasting the corners of farewell.
In truth, ours was a trauma bond. An oppositional stance. Once the revolution had fulfilled its primary purpose, the fighters faded back to civilian disinterest. Only the blood stains remaining to be laundered. No proud monuments for us.
Then it happened. While I was not looking. Karalyna moving from her side of the table. Squeezing in next to me. Her body warm and alive. The feather-touch tumble of long tresses. Fingers knotting mine. Kissing like dissolution. A decade of desire, evaporating on the sizzle of skin. A moment nearing oblivion. Together, finally.
Since then, nothing. Save years.
I did not attend the nuptials. Did not seek her out. Nor have we sought one another on social media. In her place, a fictional proxy. A strong female part in a film yet to be shot.
With a long exhalation and a swig of tepid lager, I snap back. Carlton’s video still playing. I am seated on a bench, in a park, at night, while the Han River rolls by in the shadows, and lines of coloured light dance like neon fire on its silken back. I am in awe. Everything is so simple.
*
As promised, Jin-a shoots footage the following night. I help her find a good frame. She notices the way I make small adjustments. I tell her a little about myself, and the film I want to make. She asks if I intend to call it Patience. “It’s a working title,” I confirm.
There is a bittersweet depth in her gaze. For a second I find myself drowning in it. Then she smiles, sorrowful and soft, and says, “We chose this place because of the name. It seemed appropriate to our situation.”
I want to ask her if this is because she and Carlton were once too hasty; yet refrain. It is their story, not mine to extract. Nevertheless, she waits a beat for the expected question. A slight tension discernible.
“Gomawoyo,” I reply, and a commensurate wave of relief softens her. As though she were a flower moving in a whisper of wind. Here at least, she is not required to offer herself for judgement.
In the tiny crease of her smile I feel, perhaps for the first time, a weight of similar proportion lift from my shoulders.
*
There is waiting, and there is waiting. One I have known for decades, like a fist of urgency in my gut, the other I have lately discovered. Two lovers in a bar. Their gentle ceremony. The slow dance into which I have been invited.
We now inhabit a different way of waiting. Not for an exact outcome, nor for the verdict of circumstance. Neither are we clinging on or praying for victory. Our situation is not helpless, our actions not heroic. This is not a test. There is nothing to be proved.
Ours is the simple act of remaining. Of moving closer to stillness. Paying attention to the infinite beauty of moments. In the sensual motion of breathing, a kind of music can be heard. A minute could be a river. An hour might be the sea. A pearl of wine at the bottom of a glass is a jewel fit to adorn a limitless love. There is no distance between us. There never will be.
Watching Carlton and Jin-a has inspired me. I am no longer wedded to the drama of the absent Karalyna, nor do I await the permission of financiers and gatekeepers. My film does not have to be liked to be made.
With their slow and cinematic circling, two solitary wine drinkers are sharing a story of patience that is emboldening the bartender to action.
Starting today, I will move, without fear or hesitation, in the beauty they have brought into my presence. They will be written into my film. Our film. The script will not be fixed. The vision deliberately imprecise. Yet still we will begin; allowing the making to unfurl the form. We will proceed directly, but we shall not rush. There is no deadline.
Finally, without knowing, I know.
And, as though it were a pay-off in a three-act structure, the ideal framework emerges for this vaporous determination. It arrives like a door swinging open. I look up, and there it is. I tell my new friends, separately, that I have decided to rename the film.
The Waiters.
As If You Were Listening 