Behind the Eyes

By Cat

He poured his story out to me over a cup of coffee one evening. Actually, it was several cups of coffee, preceded by several drinks, resulting in the rambling monologue I heard. Some men get silent when drunk. This man was apparently the opposite. I'd met him just earlier in the evening, but I thought he was cute, and bought him a drink, and then another, and another, and when it became obvious he wasn't going to let me leave (he grabbed my arm when I tried to go at some point, but I correctly interpreted his action as one of desperation, and not one of violence), I had the horrible inclination to ask him if something was wrong. He asked me out to coffee, and that's when the story came spilling out.

I have to give him credit, though. If I'd been through what he told me that night, I'd have probably been much drunker than he was. And a lot more often, too. As it was, I didn't make a habit of drinking too much, and he said he hadn't had a drink in months (probably the reason three whiskies got him trashed).

When we left the bar that night, as plastered as he was, he didn't make a move for me, and frankly, that surprised me. I'm no slouch in the looks department, and I rather think of myself as quite pretty. But, as I said, he didn't even touch me, except when we were thrown together in the back seat of the cab by the maniacal driving of the cab driver. Whenever we slid together, he practically scrambled away from me as though I had a communicable disease. Even the times he lingered near me held no romantic overtones. It was more a problem of centrifugal force, and the inability to scooch to his side because the cab was still careening wildly.

For once, and of course, when it didn't happen, I wanted the drunken man across from me in the dimly lit coffee shop to make some move for me. It wasn't often I met up with men as...well, pretty, as he was. He was only about 5'8", but he had a strength and air of capability about him that what he lacked in height he made up for in attitude. His dark brown hair hung to his shoulders, unruly, and the kink through the middle of it told me that he usually wore it held back. I tried to picture him with a ponytail, but something about the finality of the night made it impossible for me to imagine him any way other than he was. His hair hung into his face, covering almond-shaped luminescent eyes that I only occasionally got a glimpse of, but when I did, they took my breath away. Brown, no, walnut-colored, languid pools of pure emotion, reflecting pain, and torment, and some unspeakable hatred that lay there dormant, waiting to be stirred up again. The raw emotion in his eyes was unbelievable. I'd heard that the eyes were the windows to the soul, but I never believed it until I looked into his.

As we sat in a coffee shop that seemed to have only one functioning light, I gazed thoughtfully at him, bemused, amused, and taken in completely by the story he told. I didn't say much. I didn't have to, didn't want to. If I did, I thought the flow of words might stop, and I knew that talking to me in his drunken state was more than likely the only therapy he'd ever had or would ever have. I stayed quiet, not sure I could speak if prompted. I just listened, sipping the hot, sludgy black liquid that was supposed to be coffee, that was slowly bringing me out of my own semi-drunken state. Or maybe it was the sordid tale he told that was doing that.

He began to talk in almost a low whisper. The words came out slow and slurred at first, but as he remembered more, the words poured out faster and faster, until he was almost interrupting himself to get out the entire story.

He spoke of a love of music, the love of a woman, both taken away by the same man in the same day, until he was left with nothing. His love was gone, both for the woman who was killed, and the ability to make music that was destroyed. In the place of his love came hatred, such pure, black hatred that the only thing he could do was kill, seeking his revenge until only one man was left: his brother. His brother was the one behind it, the one that took away everything good in his life, the one responsible for that hatred in his eyes. His brother was gone now, dead by the hand of the man in front of me. I took in a quick, shocked breath when he told me this; he didn't notice, just kept speaking.

After ending his rampage, calming the angry, hostile beast inside, he had left town with a girl he'd met up with during his reign of violence. He told me sadly it hadn't worked out. The hostility, the hatred, the anger and violence didn't go away as he'd hoped. He told her once, he'd said, that it was easier to pull a trigger than play the guitar. The ease with which he pulled the trigger scared her, and she left, and loneliness was mounted on top of the sadness and anger that already burdened this man's soul.

He left Mexico after that, he said, and came to San Francisco. He hadn't been there long, only a few weeks, but a change of scenery did little, if anything, to quench the beast inside hungering for more victims. He said he didn't allow himself near a weapon of any kind. He also didn't allow himself near any guitars. One spurred a love that couldn't be, the other spurred a violence that couldn't be controlled.

He looked up at me, for the first time making any eye contact with me, and once again, my breath was taken away, both by the simplicity and magnitude of his handsomeness, and by the hurt that lay behind his eyes. He pushed away the coffee cup, signaling the end of the conversation. He seemed steadier, no longer drunk, and he stood up, pushing his long, unkempt hair away from his face. He looked into my eyes, reflecting God knows what...pity? Sympathy? Confusion? I tried to smile at him, but his story of sadness left me too drained, and instead of smiling, it was all I could do to hold back my tears.

There was a time, he said, when he would have left thank-yous unsaid, bridges unburned, but with what his past had provided for him, he explained, it was all he could do to go on. This tormented stranger looked over my head as his eyes grew damp, from some memory I was unable to share. He looked at me again, said a quiet thank you, kissed me silently on the cheek, then straightened up, and walked away. He never looked back…