What We Could Be
written by: Hannah Woldum Ragusa
In the reflection on the glass of the coffee shop gas fireplace, cars drove to and fro past the new apartment buildings decorated with pine garlands and cheap red bows. It was almost Christmas.
Jackson sat across from the fireplace and typed his Arthurian Legends paper with reckless abandon. He had received an extension from his professor to turn it in after finals week, and now it was due the next day by 10 a.m. and he had only just started. But it wasn’t his fault. Not really. He had turned down his mom’s offer of a plane ticket home and instead planned to spend the holidays with his girlfriend, not guessing that she would break up with him at the end of the semester to be with someone else.
“Perhaps the dominant theme is the tension between loyalty and betrayal.” He deleted the sentence the moment he finished it. “The ironic tension of the story resides in Lancelot’s political loyalty to Arthur despite the personal betrayal of his love affair with Guinevere.”
A pretty barista in a red skirt and blond bob paused next to his table and interrupted his train of thought. “Would you like to try our peppermint mocha?” She smiled.
He took the miniature cup from the tray in her hands and swigged its contents down, then gagged. Why had he accepted it? He hated peppermint.
She looked at him with a hint of condescension in her eyes. “I guess it’s not for you.” She laughed, turning to the next table.
He pushed up his glasses and stood up, leaving his laptop on the table. No, he pushed up his glasses and stood up, taking his laptop with him.
“Wait a minute,” he called.
The barista, probably a few years older than him, looked over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“Have you ever been to Russia?” he asked. It just came out of his mouth.
She set her tray down on an empty table. “What are you suggesting?”
“So you haven’t been there? Step outside with me a moment.” He pulled open the front door and a gust of icy wind blew inside.
She followed him out into the cold, shivering. “What’s this all about?”
“Listen, Lara.” He bent his head down a little bit so that his lips almost touched the top of her head. “I’ve got two plane tickets to St. Petersburg for tonight. Are you coming?” He hardly knew what he was asking.
She glanced back through the foggy windows of the coffee shop. “Will it cost me anything?”
“Already paid for. Come on.” He took hold of her hand and led her across the icy parking lot. Now for a taxi. Who was he kidding—there weren’t any taxis circling through this part of town.
A familiar-looking yellow car was just coming around the block. Jackson waved it down, feeling satisfied, although a bit ashamed of this indulgence. The cab grumbled to a stop in front of them, the brakes spinning in the snow.
“Airport, please,” he said, already sliding into the front seat.
The girl wasn’t dressed for a trip to Russia, he realized after a glance into the rearview mirror. She was wearing only a thin white sweater.
They were just coming up to a red light. Off to the right, a brightly lit strip mall beckoned. “We’ll make a stop there,” Jackson told the cab driver, a tan-skinned, dark-haired man in his forties.
When the light turned to green, the cab crossed over two lanes and turned right into the strip mall’s unplowed parking lot.
This wasn’t right—he couldn’t imagine walking into Marshall’s to buy a woman’s coat. Not right at all.
“Never mind,” he said to the driver. “You wouldn’t happen to have a coat in your trunk, would you?”
The man looked uneasy. “As a matter of fact, sir, I do. It’s for my wife,” he added defensively.
Jackson ignored this and glanced behind him at the girl. “We’ll take it,” he said. “Is one hundred dollars enough?” He pulled out a bill from his wallet.
“Certainly not!” the man said, horrified. “It was at least two hundred.”
Jackson shrugged and dug through his wallet again. No more cash. “Here, take my credit card,” he said, feeling ridiculous. “Do what you want with it.” The words surprised him. Perhaps deep down he was generous at heart.
“Lara,” he called to the girl in the back seat. “We’ll go to a nice restaurant when we get to St. Petersburg.”
She was looking out the window and didn’t say anything.
They pulled up to the airport where lots of other cars had already stopped, gray puffs of smoke spiraling from their exhaust pipes.
“Thirty dollars,” the cab driver said expectantly.
Jackson shrugged. “You have my credit card.”
The man sighed and got out to open the trunk. He pulled out a long brown fur coat from a paper bag. “I’m sorry to part with this,” he said, smoothing down the fur and then rubbing his cheek against it.
“At least your wife didn’t see it yet,” Jackson said hopefully. He turned to the girl. “You can put this on. Please stop shivering—I hate to see you so cold.”
He held it up as she pushed her arms through the sleeves. She tripped a little, but he caught her by the waist. In the coat she seemed shorter and smaller than ever. He glanced down at her eyes, but she was looking at the ground. He paused, surveying her with a sinking feeling. “You don’t really want to go to Russia with me, do you,” he asked.
“No,” she said.
***
Jackson turned back to his paper. “The ironic tension of the story resides in Lancelot’s political loyalty to Arthur despite the personal betrayal of his love affair with Guinevere. In fact, Lancelot is the tragic hero of the story, whose hubris and inability to act eventually drive him to his demise.”
It sounded alright, although he knew it was a bunch of BS. He looked up from his laptop and surveyed the room. There were a few other students sitting alone at tables, reading books or typing away on their laptops. Behind him a trio of adults was engaged in a heated discussion.
“How can we best utilize our resources?” a beak-nosed brunette woman was asking. “What do we do about the stock market and kids who need scholarships?”
A tan-skinned man in an argyle vest seemed to be arguing with her, but he was speaking too softly for Jackson to make out the words. The third member of the trio was a thickset bald man who seemed very interested in the lid of his coffee cup.
A city bus passed in front of the window and slammed to a stop. People exited one by one and filed down the sidewalk in a line, as though they were part of a solemn procession.
“I never bring up the adjustments,” the brunette woman was saying loudly. “….it’s a big mistake. 90% of sales…..what are the things we most need to figure out?…A lot of people have that question…”
Jackson was momentarily distracted by the classical version of “These are a few of my favorite things” wafting from the speakers overhead.
He stood up, restless, and went to the counter. The pretty blond barista came out from the back room. He blushed.
“What can I get you?” she asked with that impersonal kind of polite cheerfulness.
“I’ll have a slice of pumpkin bread.”
She rang him up at the register and slid a ceramic plate across the counter toward him. When she leaned over, he saw that she was wearing a name tag. “Amber,” it read.
As he sat back down at his table, he noticed a young couple involved in a serious discussion at the table next to his. The young man was stooped over with his elbows on his knees, speaking quietly, emphasizing points by counting on his fingers. The young woman bounced a coffee cup in her hands and nodded impatiently.
Another bus pulled up in front of the window and more people got off. An old man with a long white beard climbed down the steps and happened to look up through the window. He was wearing a long purple velvet robe. He carried a cane.
The man came up to the window and knocked three times. Jackson stood up, wondering. Actually, the old man was wearing a brown sweater and faded jeans. Jackson nodded briefly and slipped out the front door once again.
The old man was already walking towards him. “You come with me,” he said, pointing his bony finger in Jackson’s face.
Yet another city bus pulled up. The old man latched onto Jackson’s coat and hauled him toward the bus.
“Where are we going?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the man said. He pushed several coins into the automated ticket machine and pulled Jackson to the back of the bus. They sat down next to a little boy in a newsboy cap.
The window next to them was broken and wouldn’t close completely. Bits of snow filtered in with the cold air. When the bus started with a jolt, a gust of icy wind blew across the back of Jackson’s neck. He shivered.
“How do you feel about adoption?” the old man asked.
Jackson shrugged. “I’m for it.”
The man scooted over in his seat toward the little boy, who looked up at them with suspicious brown eyes.
“This little tyke needs a place to stay,” the old man said, jerking his withered thumb toward the boy.
“How do you know?” Jackson asked.
The old man shrugged. “You take him with you. There’s no room in the inn.”
Jackson raised his eyebrows and said nothing. At the next bus stop, the man pulled on Jackson’s sleeve. “Get off here and take him with you.”
“Whatever,” he said, standing up. He moved toward the nearest exit. It wasn’t until he stepped onto the sidewalk and turned around that he noticed the little boy behind him.
“Are you an orphan?” Jackson asked, observing the boy in his overalls and cap.
“No. My dad drives taxis.”
“Are you coming with me?” Jackson asked. The boy nodded. They crossed the street at the crosswalk when the light turned green.
They were in a rundown part of town. Most of the stores were empty and boarded up. A homeless man sat in a pile of snow, leaning against a lamppost, holding a sign. “Need money. Need food. Will work,” it said.
The boy took off his newsboy cap and pulled out a coin. He tossed it to the man.
“Why did you do that?” Jackson asked after they had rounded the corner. “It’s not safe to give money to homeless people, especially in this kind of area.” He glanced at the abandoned warehouse beside them and its rusty chain-link fence. There was no one else around.
The boy shrugged. “Do you think we could stop for some food?”
Jackson snorted. The smell of sweet baked bread seemed to materialize out of nowhere, but he doubted his senses at the moment. “When we see a place, we’ll stop,” he consented.
Suddenly the sound of sirens flared up and an ambulance wheeled around the corner, rushing past them. It sped down the road, turned, and disappeared from view. After the noise faded, there was nothing in the air but the gold haze of city lights in the cold, black sky. It was night now. Not a sound in the world but the stiff squeak of their footsteps in the snow.
“If we can’t find a restaurant, we might have to camp here for the night,” the little boy said, pointing across the street. “We could always catch a bird and roast it.”
Jackson shot the kid a look, but he seemed to be quite serious.
They were coming up to a sort of park now. Beneath a lamppost, a few benches were scattered next to an icy square of pavement where one lone basketball hoop stood, looking for all the world like a gallows.
Jackson followed the boy across the street, stepped around a rusty bike rack, and walked up to one of the benches. Someone had cleared off the snow. And there was a familiar smell in the air. Hamburgers!
There it was—a greasy McDonald’s bag sitting on one end of the bench. Jackson reached out and touched it. It was still warm.
“Looks like someone was prepared for us,” the boy said.
Jackson unfolded the top of the bag. There were two unopened hamburgers sitting inside. Usually, he would never think of doing this, but he picked one up, unwrapped it, and took a bite. The little boy pounced on the other one.
In the middle of a swallow Jackson noticed a large rock wedged against a young, spindly tree, the kind people try to plant in cities. A sword was sticking out of the rock.
“Hey, that’s for me,” the little boy said, wiping his greasy hands on his pants. He took off his cap again and tossed it to the ground. He marched through the snow to the rock. He took hold of the sword with both hands and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. “Do you think you could help me?” he called over his shoulder.
Jackson looked at him with raised brows. “You said it was for you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s too heavy for me.”
“Keep pulling.”
The boy pulled with all his might, bracing his knees against the rock. “It…won’t…come!” he mustered.
“Keep pulling.”
***
This was really too much. “In fact, Lancelot is the tragic hero of the story, whose hubris and inability to act eventually drive him to his demise. Arthur may be the legend’s namesake, but the core of the story revolves around Lancelot.”
The man in the argyle sweater, the one arguing with the brunette woman, had abandoned his low voice and transitioned instead to loud, accented English. “You think I offer that? You think I of a worse opinion? Just because I of a different idea does not mean my opinion is bad.”
“Well, you might want to reword the question,” the brunette woman replied, swinging her long hair over her shoulder. “She won’t agree with you. You need to think of a better solution….my concerns are….”
It was very dark now. Outside the coffee shop a myriad of lights shone—the red stop lights, changing to green and yellow now and then; the moving headlights and taillights of the cars; the white Christmas lights on the skinny bare trees planted along the sidewalk.
Jackson swallowed the last bite of pumpkin bread. It wasn’t as good as a hamburger.
A man who had been reading a book for quite some time stood up, put on his long overcoat, bussed his coffee mug, and walked out the door. Jackson watched as the man made his way through the parking lot to his car. When he unlocked it and opened the car door, the lamplight lit up his face. It was the cab driver!
Jackson jumped up from his seat so quickly that he bumped into the table next to him. The young couple glanced up from their serious discussion and shot him a dirty look.
He ran out into the parking lot. “Wait—wait a second!” he called.
The man looked up. “What do you want now?”
Jackson slipped as he hurried through the frozen lot and steadied himself by grabbing onto the sideview mirror of a parked car. It had begun to snow, he realized. “Thanks for the coat earlier,” he said sheepishly. “I know your wife will be disappointed.”
This time the man looked embarrassed. “Actually, I lied. It wasn’t for my wife. It was for my mistress.”
Jackson sighed, then studied the man through narrowed eyes. “Then I don’t feel so bad. What about your wife? How do you think she’d feel if she knew about this?”
The man shook his head. “I don’t really have a wife. But my mistress has a husband.”
“How do you think he’d feel, then? Does he know about all of this?”
The man looked up guiltily. He was younger than he had been before. In fact, he was almost youthful—tan and handsome. “Yes, he knows about it. It’s a terrible burden on me.”
“Then get out of it. Now’s a good time to clean up your act.”
He shook his head again. “Even if I tried to get out of it, she wouldn’t let me. She loves me more than she loves him.”
“I doubt she loves either of you very much. If I were you, I’d leave. Get on a plane to Russia and don’t tell her where you’re going. She’ll forget about you, move on, go back to her husband.”
“She’ll always love me, though,” the cab driver said. He smiled sadly. “Her husband is actually my best friend. In fact, he’s the manager of this place.” He cocked his head toward the coffee shop.
“He works here?” Jackson asked, astonished. “Then what were you doing inside? Don’t you feel ashamed?”
“Yes. But I have to see him—when I’m not driving cabs, I work here. So does she. Lara, I mean. We all work here. It’s terribly messed up.” He shoved his hands inside his coat pockets and looked away.
“You don’t mean Lara, the one with the blond bob—”
“Yes. The coat you made me give her—well, it was for her anyways. It was her Christmas present. I guess she got it early. She was so dismal in the car…she’s disappointed in me, even though she loves me.”
Jackson felt his face and neck growing warm. “Why didn’t either of you let on? It wasn’t fair.” After an angry pause, an idea came to him out of nowhere and he smirked. “Her name’s not even Lara anyways. It’s Amber.”
The cab driver shrugged. “Look, if it’ll make you feel any better, I’m going to go back inside and end everything right now. Watch if you want.”
Jackson trailed the man back into the coffee shop. They both approached the counter.
An old man in an apron appeared out of the back room. The second he saw Jackson, his eyebrows furrowed. “Why aren’t you with the boy? I told you to take him with you.” It was the old man from the bus. He turned to the cab driver with a kinder tone. “Back, are you? Decided to work tonight?”
The cab driver squirmed but struggled to maintain a confident expression. “No…actually, I need to speak with Lara.”
The old man nodded, looking at the floor. “She’s a good wife, a good wife,” he said to himself, walking away with hunched shoulders.
The barista with the blond bob had just come in from the kitchen and stopped short when she saw all of them. Her name tag still said Amber. She looked across the counter, a wary expression in her eyes. “What now?”
The young cab driver cleared his throat. “I think it’s time…” he stopped.
Lara shot a look at Jackson. “You put him up to this, didn’t you.”
Jackson said nothing—it was true.
“You’re not better than him, you know that?” She looked right into his eyes. Hers were a beautiful brown, determined, but a little sad.
“Lara, this is goodbye,” the cab driver said, holding out his hand.
It’s not how the story was supposed to go, Jackson thought to himself. But it was a better ending.
“You love me,” Lara was saying defensively. “And you would never leave him. You’ll come into work tomorrow morning and everything will be the same. I’m just going to ignore this. Here comes a customer! Gotta go…how can I help you?”
The cab driver stepped aside for the customer. He glanced at Jackson. “See, I told you. It didn’t work.” He sounded disappointed.
Jackson sighed. Across the room, he glimpsed the empty table, the pile of books, and his laptop, still open. It seemed to tug at him.
“I’ve got to write a paper,” he admitted to the cab driver. “You’re off to a good start, though. You did the right thing. I really think you should leave. Go to Russia and don’t tell her. She’ll forget you.” He fished into his pocket—there were the two tickets. “Take these,” he said, shoving them into the man’s hands. “The flight leaves soon. You’d better be off to the airport.”
The man shook his head slowly, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “These won’t do me any good. There are two tickets, understand? She’ll find out. She’ll beg to come with me. I won’t be able to stop her if there are two tickets.”
“Fine, fine,” said Jackson. “Will you go if I take one of them back?” He held out his hand.
“Okay.” The cab driver relinquished one of the tickets and clasped the remaining one with both hands. “Thank you. I think this might work. I can start a new life. Just in time.” He turned on his heels, pushed through the coffee shop door, and trudged through the falling snow to his car. He wheeled out of the parking lot and was gone.
***
“Arthur may be the legend’s namesake, but the core of the story revolves around Lancelot.”
Only three sentences and he was still stuck. The arguing trio sitting behind him had left—he hadn’t even noticed until now.
“With his ironic combination of vice and virtue, Lancelot represents the condition of fallen man, weighed down by sin but aided by grace.” He stopped. It wouldn’t work to use the word “ironic” twice in one paragraph. He deleted it. “With his paradoxical mixture of vice and virtue, Lancelot represents the condition…”
He arched his back and stretched his arms. He had been sitting for so long. The serious young couple next to him finally stood up. “We should go and get our tickets,” the young man said to the woman.
Tickets! Jackson sighed. He still had time to make the plane to Russia if he really wanted to. He still had one ticket in his pocket.
Yes, he would go. He packed up his laptop, tossed the coffee cup into the trash can, and placed his used plate on the counter. He had hoped to catch one last glimpse of Lara, but she was nowhere in sight.
He ran out the door toward the street. He waited for a taxi, but none came. When a city bus pulled up, he hopped on. Please, please go to the airport, he thought.
The lights of the massive terminal finally came into view. Jackson practically leaped off the bus and ran inside to the ticket counter.
“You know it’s less than two hours before departure,” the female attendant said, scanning his ticket. “I really shouldn’t let you on. That’s the rule for an international flight.” But even as she said it, she handed him his boarding pass. He rushed up the escalator, passed through security, and arrived at the gate in a blur. He scanned the lounge for the cab driver, but he was nowhere to be seen.
He found his seat on the plane. It was a window seat, thank god. He kept looking for the cab driver among the line of people still filing down the aisle. Surely he hadn’t changed his mind!
The plane began its journey down the runway, picking up speed until it took off in a loud rush of air. They were flying into the night. Below him were a thousand gold, twinkling lights. Snow hurled past his tiny window and he thought of the bus ride earlier, and the little boy.
It only seemed like a moment before the plane began to descend. Jackson looked out the window again. The air was clear now but just as dark. Below him in the moonlight pine forests spread out for miles and miles. The plane finally landed on a runway in the middle of nowhere.
There was no jetway. They climbed down a narrow fold-out staircase onto the tarmac. Jackson stole away from the crowd and wandered off the tarmac and into the forest. It was very dark and very cold, but overhead the full moon was watching him.
So this was Russia. It was pretty much the way he had envisioned it. He wandered through the pine forest until he came to a set of railroad tracks. They looked so lonely, just a thin opening in the trees that vanished ahead and behind him into the darkness.
Suddenly he heard a noise. A train whistle! He waited, excited. A bright golden light appeared in the distance. Before he could count to five, the train whizzed past him. It was full of people, people watching him from the windows, crammed in the doorways, a few even sitting on top, bundled in long fur coats.
When it had passed, Jackson got to thinking again about the cab driver. Perhaps he had chickened out at the last minute and decided not to come to Russia after all. Poor man; he would never be happy unless he ended things with Lara.
The hours passed as Jackson marched through the snowy woods, breathing in the scent of pine sap in the dry winter air, guided by the moon. Finally, he spotted a faint light through the trees.
It was a small village. Hesitating a moment, he slipped through the last stand of trees and crept into the town square. It was deserted. Across from him towered a Russian Orthodox church.
Suddenly the front doors opened in a flood of light and several women descended the front steps. They were wailing loudly, faces in hands, weeping.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, falling into step with the last and youngest of them.
He didn’t expect her to answer, but she looked up with tear-filled eyes. “We are all going to die,” she said, choking. “The shroud is over us all.”
The woman was young and beautiful. She looked like Lara, only her blond hair was longer and she wore a scarf pulled tightly around her head and neck.
Suddenly Jackson remembered something. “It’s Christmas Eve, isn’t it?”
The woman sniffed, beginning to cry again. She brushed him aside and followed the other women down the road and out of sight.
So that was that. There was no one else in the snowy, deserted square. He noticed the real intensity of the cold for the first time and couldn’t remember why he had decided to come.
Then he felt a tug on his coat. He looked down to find the little boy with the newsboy cap.
“What are you doing here? What happened with the sword?”
The boy rolled his eyes. “You gave me a ticket, didn’t you?” he asked, as if Jackson was being very stupid.
“I didn’t give it to you,” Jackson said, annoyed, but now he wasn’t sure.
The boy glanced in every direction, almost as though he could see a crowd of people gathered around them. “Do you know who I am?”
“I thought so,” Jackson replied. “But I appear to be wrong about a lot of things.”
The little boy shook his head. “No, mostly you’re right. If I grow up to be a bad man, it won’t be your fault.”
This was all so absurd. He was supposed to be writing his paper, and here he was in Russia, of all places, talking to a little boy he’d only just met on a bus, except that had been in Minneapolis.
“Why aren’t you writing your paper?” the boy asked him.
“How do you know about the paper?” Jackson replied. He dropped his backpack, which had become very heavy. It fell into the snow with a thud. “Aren’t there more important things to do?” He didn’t know what he was saying. Then he saw a rock in the middle of the town square. A sword was sticking out of it. “Hey, there’s your second chance.”
The little boy’s eyes followed Jackson’s finger. “It was too heavy before and you wouldn’t even help me.”
“Give it another try. I bet you could do it this time.”
The boy took off his cap again, tossing it into the snow, and stood before the sword, which was taller than him by a few inches.
Far off in the night Jackson heard the wailing women again. They reminded him of something. “You better try hard,” he said to the boy. “It’ll be good for us all.”
The boy gripped the sword with both hands and pulled with all his might. “It…won’t…come out!”
“Keep working at it. Keep pulling.”
“Help me, Jackson.”
It was not the way he wanted it to go, but Jackson stepped forward, knelt down in the snow, and pulled. The sword didn’t budge. He pulled until his forearms ached and his hands grew numb. He pried and yanked. He was breathing heavily now and could taste iron in the back of his throat.
“Hey, I’m doing all of the work,” he said under his breath. No one answered. He let go, panting, and looked behind him. The boy had gone off.
“This isn’t fair,” he said to himself. “It’s his job.” He pushed up his coat sleeves and tried again, though. With both hands on the hilt he pulled straight up.
Metal scraped against rock; a crow flew overhead, cawing; then he pulled the sword from the stone. A grey light had begun to spread over the tops of the pines, over all the buildings in the village, casting the first shadows on the deserted square—the sun was rising.
It was really late. No, it was really early. Jackson packed up his things, slung his bag over his shoulder and walked away. His paper would be due in a matter of hours and he had written only a few worthless sentences. He yawned and found himself standing on the street corner outside the coffee shop. The stoplight turned green just as a city bus was approaching the intersection.
Jackson stopped in his tracks. A man was watching him through the back window. It was the old man. He stuck his old face through the window.
“Thank you!” he called. “Merry Christmas!”
The bus rushed past him into the dawn.
- What We Could Be - December 20, 2023
