Page 4 of The Legend Next Door
“I, uh, I wasn’t sure how you took your coffee,” he says. “So I made one with cream and sugar”—he gestures to the mug in my hand—“and one without.” He raises his mug as if he’s making a toast. “I can swap with you if you’d like. I don’t mind either way.”
“Sugar and cream is fine, thanks.”
His lips curl up, and he breaks into a smile that affects his entire face and is out of proportion with the occasion. I guess he’s one of those people for whom joy lurks close beneath the surface. Maybe it’s why Luca likes him so much.
“Jelly, can I show you the plane I’m building?” Luca asks.
“Sure, buddy.”
Luca dashes into the house, and I wave Jeremiah over to the swing, unsure what else to do with him. The swing rocks from our weight and then settles. I take a tentative sip of my coffee, testing the temperature, and when I find it perfect, I take a more meaningful one.
“Mm, it’s good. Thank you.”
It is good. Not too hot, not too sweet, not too much cream. Just right, and a hot beverage that is just right is something I’ve come to appreciate more and more since becoming a single father.
“I made it,” he says. It seems like an unnecessarily obvious thing to say, and I must look a little unsure how to respond because he quickly tacks on, “The cup, I mean. I made the cup. I also made the coffee, but I’m talking about the cup. I made it on my wheel.”
I look down at the vessel in my hands. It’s a light dusty pink. Taller than average for a coffee mug and narrow enough that my hand almost curls all the way around it. It has a snug lid with a triangular opening that pours well. The lid is a slightly darker shade than the rest of the mug. There’s something organic about it. It’s imperfect but purposefully so. There are gentle dents and grooves that weren’t immediately obvious when I first saw it, but it fits into my hand like it was designed specifically for me, or if not specifically for me, at least for a man with hands the same size as mine.
“Impressive,” I say.
Jeremiah smiles like he did before, only this time, there’s no doubt he colors under my praise. The funny thing is, it doesn’t seem to bother him that he’s blushing. He wears his feelings on his face and doesn’t mind that he does it. It gives me pause. A brief hiatus that takes me out of the moment and allows me to gather my thoughts.
I like him, I realize.
He’s nice. Comfortable and relaxed. He’s the kind of person who goes through life not hurting anyone or trying to be something he’s not.
“Is this what you do for a living?” I ask. “Pottery?”
“Well,” he says, crossing his legs and turning his body toward me, “it’s kind of a long story, but yes, I do pottery. I love it, but I also love photography and a bunch of other things.”
He’s enthusiastic and passionate about what he does. I vaguely remember the feeling.
“What kinds of other things?”
“I’m someone who starts more things than I finish,” he says unapologetically. “I started a degree in psychology, but I never accepted them telling me it was a science.” He twists his mouth and shakes his head. “The study of the mind and behavior, a science? I think not. Everyone is so different I honestly can’t with the studious attempts to generalize. I’m not sure it adds value to the discipline, and I’m not sure it’s helpful.”
He appears to feel very strongly about the matter so I nod in agreement, though I’m not entirely sure I follow his argument.
“After I dropped out of that, I enrolled in physiotherapy.” He shakes his head again, this time with a little laugh at his own expense. “Boy, was that a big mistake. Ihatedit. Stuck with it for almost two years because I didn’t want to be a quitter, but it was killing me slowly. I couldn’t do it. It was awful. I dropped out of that bad boy at the end of the second year and did a course in remedial massage instead. It was woo-woo as fuck. I’m talking beaded curtains and incense, the whole nine, and Ilovedit. My teacher was way into tantra and was always dipping into this really hot sex stuff.” He hears himself and blinks as if he’s having a hard time believing he just said that. He shakes it off with a spluttery laugh. “Anyway, so basically, I do a little pottery, a little photography, a little massage, oh, and I teach a yoga class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Wow,” I say with a raised brow and a chuckle. “Are you sure you’re doing enough? You’re making the rest of us look bad.”
“What can I tell you.” He shrugs, eyes lighting up so brightly that, for a second, I feel like I’ve been transported back to a time when everything wasn’t heavy. “I’m a jack-of-all-trades…master of none.”
I turn the cup he made slowly, taking it in from different angles. It’s good work. Maybe great work, but I don’t know enough about pottery to say for sure. I do know I like it, though, and I haven’t seen anything like it in a store. “I don’t think that’s true.”
Luca comes tearing onto the porch with the force of a whirlwind behind him. “I’m tweaking the plane, Jelly,” he says urgently. “I’m adding a propeller onto the roof so don’t go yet, okay? It won’t take me long.”
“Take your time, bud,” says Jeremiah. “The aerodynamics are going to be off the hook.”
There’s a disturbance in the air when Luca leaves. Calm takes a second to settle, and when it does, the fact that I’m on a swing with a complete stranger with nary a social grace still left in me is suddenly palpable. Before the silence has time to stretch out and become uncomfortable, Jeremiah says, “So, what brought you to Seattle?”
I prepare to deliver the usual response.We have family out here, and we always planned to end up in Seattle when I retired.Instead, I hear myself say, “My wife died. Car accident.”
The words land and sink down around us. For me, at least, there’s a brutality to them. A ferocity that makes it feel like I’ve spoken out of turn or said something inappropriate.
I slowly work my gaze from the mug in Jeremiah’s hands up his chest and neck, pausing at his throat to check him for signs of discomfort. I find none. His Adam’s apple doesn’t budge. He doesn’t swallow or smile. His jaw and lips don’t move. I steady myself for the final ascent. His eyes. That’s where the pity lives in most if not all people. I search for the discomfort. The unease of not knowing how to reply to what I’ve just said.
