Tiramisu

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

That young man with the red plaid. Yeah, the one staring at his hands on the table. His mind is locked on the date April 17.

To him, the earth is still facing the same side of the sun it last saw in April. For the past three months his mind has been swimming in some sort of dream state, wondering when he will wake up in a cold sweat in bed or end up dying in his sleep. It terrifies him to think about how much time has slipped by him since April 17.

Concerning April 17 of this year, there were a number of odd holidays marked to be celebrated on that specific date. Let’s see here, we had Bat Appreciation Day, National Cheese Ball Day, World Hemophilia Day, all important to their respective enthusiasts. But to Anthony, or Tony, which he preferred, this day marked the time he realized how much of a terrible person he was.

Sorry, that sounded too harsh. Let's display Tony in a positive light from now on- his own mind has tortured him enough these past months.

Anyway, Tony is nineteen, a freshman in college. A big fraction of his life still looms ahead of him. You may be wondering why he is currently sitting alone in a quaint cafe in Paris, staring at his clammy hands as his palms soak the table cloth. Why the answer is obvious. It took me five minutes to to learn his life story, and within that five minutes all I did was ask for his order: a slice of tiramisu.

We both have seen many colorful customers. You worked here for a good five years longer than me, so you definitely have seen more of these wonderful characters than I have. I sketch any who catch my eye next to their orders on my notepad. Look here, it’s a rainbow of skin colors and hideous tourist shorts, all recorded in three by three sheets of paper stuffed in my back pocket.

That being said, Tony is one of the most average people I have ever served. He's American, but nothing like the usual American tourists we receive. That button down is the most exciting thing he decided to wear today. Dark brown hair, white skin, brown eyes with drops of blue, I have twenty pages of that already, two of which bearing the same name.

Here's his story that I learned. To us, he's just a part of the backdrop. But to Yvonne, he was perfect.

Yvonne is five months older than Tony, but that only mattered when you were twelve and that girl you couldn’t stop thinking about at night and during math tests was thirteen. They knew each other for about six years now. Tony met Yvonne in fifth grade, talked to her for the first time in seventh, became best friends in ninth, and started dating her in eleventh. That story is cute, fluffy, and long winded on its own.

This story is about the end of the first one.

Every scrap and piece of Tony was admired by Yvonne. She found beauty in every strand of soft brown hair, the long and narrow shape of his large nose, and even the pinkish white patches of skin dotted by the pubescent curse of acne he wore. That was just his appearance. Yvonne saw so much more wonder beneath Tony’s ordinary cover. Even as the narrator, I know less of this secret world than Yvonne.

I've seen many worlds sit in these chairs, drink from those tea cups, and swallow brie cheese down their throats. Yet none of them have given me the inkling that there’s something miraculous hidden deep inside more than Tony has. Only Yvonne is lucky enough to know of it.

And lucky was Tony as well. Yvonne had intelligence, charisma, loyalty, courage, humor, and a good sense of morality. She was loved by many but she adored Tony the most. That was quite unfortunate, Tony believed. He told himself since day one that he did not deserve Yvonne. Yvonne needed someone else.

Tony may be both special and equally unspecial, but in no way is he perfect. Just minutes ago his tongue stumbled over saying “tiramisu,” and he smells of cheap deodorant and underlying sweat. Speaking of sweat, the table cloth might have to be wringed out when he leaves.

Even though Tony has been rather quiet for the past five minutes, I can sense he has a bad temper. Those eyebrows look just the right shape for being scrunched together in frustration, and his fingers are designed to be rolled into a tight clenching fist. If you looked into his hazy eyes, deep in those brownish pools, there's a storm brewing. His blood could start boiling at any moment.

But poor Yvonne. No disgusting, vile demon snaked out of Tony would change her mind about how she thought about him. Even his imperfections held a place in her heart.

Tony yelled at her from time to time, although he never actually meant what he said. He might have loved Yvonne, but that did not stop the occasional “you're annoying” or “leave me alone.” Beneath such blunt statements were the quieter truths. Only Yvonne could decipher the whispered, “I love you” and “Don't go away”. That was another reason why Tony loved her. That was also another reason why he wanted her to stay away from him. No one as amazing should love a hopeless idiot like himself. Tony was afraid that he would end up hurting her.

Tony could see it all unfold in his cold eyes. One mistake that would go too far, hit too strong, and sink too deep. Yvonne may have been pretty and sweet, but she was also weak and pathetically human. The heights of Tony’s imagination brought him to the depths of his fears. Tony saw his beloved Yvonne cry before. The sound of her gentle voice cracking and the sight of warm tears slipping through her delicate fingers made his stomach turn. The very thought of such trauma being the result of his stupidity kept him awake at night. Tony knew he had to protect her, but he also thought he was the least qualified person to do it.

So in a twist of irony, Tony left her.

It did not go exactly like the worst case scenario Tony imagined before. The pain Tony felt in his imagination was like pulling out an eyelash compared to how it felt in reality.

The tears, the choked cries, and the shivering were all present in Yvonne that afternoon. On April 17, while the clock hands continued to spin and the earth continued to slowly but surely rotate, two worlds were thrown through space out of time and orbit. And as far as we know, space has no walls, floor, or ceiling. That sickly feeling you get in your gut when you are falling never goes away.

April 17, the day Tony burned his bridges and fell asleep. In his mind, he's still at Yvonne’s apartment, sitting in the couch across from her. His life slugged onward in his dream for three months now. When he finally wakes up, he might not even tell Yvonne about the crazy dream he just had, favoring to see her smile instead.

The worst kind of dream isn't even a dream. It's reality when you feel like you have no control over anything whatsoever. No one can hear you speak and your body phases through everything you try to touch.

That Friday afternoon, Tony could have ended it all with what he wanted to say: “I don’t deserve you.” That, I believe, would have taken this story into a different, better place. But no, you already learned that Tony’s temper speaks for him when unwanted.

A concept: You always caught yourself studying this one certain person. You have a mental list of things you like about him, like the way he holds his hand up in Mrs. Flochen’s sixth grade math class. Or how he mutters swears under his breath when his hand held pencil sharpener vomits graphite and shavings on the floor. When you finally worked up the strength to talk to him, you learned he was just as interesting and wonderful on the inside. Even when he shouted nonsensical insults at everyone who got on his nerve, you could see the desperation pleading in his eyes, begging for someone to understand him. And you were the only one gifted with the key to this hot-headed kid. You fall head over heels for him. Secretly, under the covers of your bed or behind an open book, you thought about him. When it rained, you wondered if his mood worsened with the weather. When he coughed in to his sleeve, you feared of what life might be like if he died. Since your third year in high school, he and you have been saving up for a big trip to France, just the two of you. Your sole motivation for getting out of bed on Monday mornings was to treasure his presence while he walked to school with you. You marveled at his peculiar and perfect existence. You concluded that no matter what the future held in store, as long as he was there, you would be OK.

And then one day, out of the blue, he tells you that he hates you. That tight relationship built on whispering and yelling was all a hoax. It never meant anything. He only did it to make you, the naive fool, happy, so that one day he would get rid of you. The final blow are the words, “I don't need you.” And despite it all, you loved this monster, this angry stubborn tantrum-prone child.

Congratulations, you have just walked six years in the shoes of Yvonne for a matter of a minute.

To clarify, Yvonne was not perfect either. You might find it surprising to hear that Yvonne’s flaw is insecurity. Like anger binds words, insecurity binds hearing. What Tony wanted Yvonne to hear was that he did not deserve her. What he basically ended up telling her was that she was unwanted. Tony had ultimately one goal in his relationship with Yvonne, and he messed it up without even thinking.

How stupid. How idiotic. Go ahead and add fuel to the guilt and the anger currently eating away at him. Spit in his tiramisu when it's ready to serve. Remember, we already established that we will keep our dear customer in a positive light, so be careful with your words. We just learned how much damage those can do.

Tony did not wake up one day and decide to rip himself away from Yvonne, although that's what it may sound like at the moment. No, this was a decision he thought long and hard about.

Like I mentioned earlier, Tony is a freshman in college. Just a year ago he and Yvonne graduated from high school. In case you were about to ask, the answer is no, they did not go to the same college. Yvonne had plans to become an elementary teacher. She knew where she was going. Her future was bright. Tony still did not have his life figured out yet, but Yvonne suggested that he would make a great lawyer. What about Tony gave her that idea, we will never know. Despite making plans to pursue a career in law, Tony could not see more than ten feet into his own future.

Yvonne lived in an apartment two blocks away from Tony’s. Although their new lives were busy, they made every effort to spend time together. Of course, as the weeks and months went by, and the school work and adulthood piled up, Tony found himself alone more often than he would have liked.

Add that to the stress, an untamable rage, and the daily feeling of being afraid of your unknown future. Each day you wake up with another ounce of dread in your system. Sooner or later the ticking time bomb within you will blow. All you can do is push away anyone still in the blast radius.

Of course, that's not a good enough reason to lose your self-control and leave someone behind at a time when you both needed each other the most. Tony couldn't even remember how he ended up yelling in the first place. He had no grip on his life back then and he doesn't now. That is why he left Yvonne.  And that is why he hates himself.

While Tony slipped into the dreamy reality, the living world continued without him. On April 18, Yvonne still had the strength and courage to knock on Tony’s door, stand there for a good ten minutes, and leave. She still had the same amount of strength to repeat on the 19th, and the 20th, and the 21st. On the 22nd, she did not need the strength. She came to find that the landlord already broke into Tony’s apartment uninvited. Not only did Tony neglect to control himself on April 17, but he forgot to pay his rent as well.

Shattered lamp. Overturned desk. Crystals of broken glass sprinkling the floor. An unmade bed with the bedsheet torn at one side, as if the person wedged between the mattress and blanket ripped himself free from a nightmare. Untouched food in the fridge. A cracked cell phone in the trash. And lastly, the empty spot on the shelf where the jar labeled “For Paris” should be. Those were the contents of Tony’s apartment when Mr. Jowl the landlord and Yvonne entered. The person the forty-five year old landlord and the nineteen year old college student were looking for was gone.

When Tony did not turn up two weeks later, the search was already in full swing. Police scourged the city and the surrounding neighborhoods. His parents back in his hometown could only sit and watch the horror of their son’s name and picture appear under a missing person announcement. Everyone who knew Tony thought of him as someone who yelled at his problems, not someone who ran away without a word. Most people feared for the worst.

I find it kind of funny. A neighborhood in America fears they will find nineteen year old Tony face down in a ditch, but you and I are looking at him right here in a cafe in Paris, the least expected place to find him.

While everyone has been searching, what has Tony been up to for the past three months? He dreamed of hotels in different cities, travelling only at night, cheap food, and a lonely plane ride to Paris. You can travel far with a jar of cash meant for a trip for two.

Despite being missing for three months, Tony still took the trip to Paris he and Yvonne have been planning by himself. It may seem very selfish, but the plane and hotel were already paid for two months before April 17. The money that remained in the jar when Tony left was for the other necessities. This trip could not be cancelled, even when one of the travellers is declared as missing in his own country.

That is why Tony is here. He left Yvonne behind and carried his guilt and anger with him. Once he pushed Yvonne out of his life, he had nothing that mattered as much to him. No goals, no plans. Without Yvonne in his life, he thought he had no life to begin with.

He's been eating himself up ever since. All that hot anger he poured on others was drowning and digesting him on the inside. He knew he should not have left Yvonne, not like the the way he did it. And since Tony knows Yvonne so well, he knows she is still out there, still loves him, is trying to hold herself together, and is waiting for him to wake up.

Tony is thinking about her. He’s imaging their conversations. His lips are moving slightly. Yvonne is right there in front of him across the table. Her hands are on top of his, and she's smiling. Her hair sits on her shoulders in the warm breeze. She's giggling softly about a joke he's telling her. It's their first day to be in another country. They're excited to see the tower right after this. They're both wondering when their tiramisu will be served and what it will taste like.

His mind is locked in April 17. Tony only thinks of the Yvonne he knew before that day, not the one he left at home, waiting for him to come to his senses. He knows one day he will have to face reality again. For now, he wants to swallow his sorrow in a slice of tiramisu.

That's the end of Tony’s story, for now. It will pick up again when his trip ends in two weeks and he'll be off again. You could ask him where he's headed next when you serve him his cake, but keep in mind I just made up this entire story based on his appearance. Maybe he’s younger than nineteen, maybe he's older. Maybe he's not even American. He could be Canadian. Maybe the reason for why he’s alone is because he is waiting for Yvonne to finish putting her makeup on in the hotel room above. Maybe he hasn't even met his Yvonne yet.

Who knows, but do you really want to ask for the truth when I already concocted this bittersweet story for you? You might be sad to find that the only truth in my tale is that his name is Anthony. Or then again, maybe I really did figure out his life story. Well, here’s his plate- ask him whatever you're brave enough to. While you're at it, I'll serve this young lady that just walked in. The one with the two children at her sides. Yes, that one. I'll tell you the story she brought when you're done.