French Cup: A Neighborhood Story

Chapter 5: -Kazuya- Chocolate Dominoes

Late at night, the wind was blowing like witches whispering in the atmosphere. Things one can't quite make out. Maybe I was being influenced by my friends. I'd stayed over with Colette and Julia for a while, helping at their counter and greeting their customers. I knew some of them, but they really had a friend group that was separate from most of us. A lot of them were artists, too, and I enjoyed chatting with them. In particular, one of them liked to paint, as I found out during our chat, and I offered him space on our wall to rent so he could try to sell. He jumped at the chance, and I got his phone number. 

On my way back home now, the moon was waning, following me. Up ahead, a familiar figure was surely on top of a ladder, carefully placing letters in a marquee. As I got near her, I stopped and gazed up at her work. White letters were spelling out the name of a movie that I loved, and my excitement couldn't be contained. 

"Funeral Parade of Roses?!" I shouted up at her. "You're showing it again?!" I started doing a dance, and she laughed as she looked down at me, pausing in her work. Up above me was my friend Charlotte, the madame of the art house movie theater. Her red librarian glasses were slipping down her nose, her bleach blonde hair waving in the wind. Her long body, like a model, was still stretching toward the sky holding a number in her hand, ready to tell the world what day the movie would be available to see. Her grungy clothes adorned her, keeping her warm in the December wind. 

"I might show it once per month," she called back to me. "You're not the only one who loves it. I always get a full house with it, and I love seeing everyone."

I pointed up at her accusingly. "When are you going to show a John Waters movie next?"

"Stop pressuring me!" She sang, placing the number on the marquee, fully ignoring me now. 

Charlotte's movie theater was a one screen establishment, and she showed whatever she wanted with no regard to what anyone else thought. We always packed the house, no matter what it was, to support her. In showing art house, indie horror, and films that might be porn if they weren't high art, she was an artist. Curating movies to show the public, letting us into her surrealist world, one by one. 

As I walked a little more, I saw there was a new poster next to the entrance and I stopped to look at it. She liked to collect vintage movie memorabilia, too, and this poster spot was a way to peer into her world. It was for a slasher movie, someone holding bloody intestines in their hand, squeezing with all the gore imaginable. Not something that one would expect to see on a public street. It was the perfect thing to make people stop, to make them consider her theater when they might have passed it by. In that way, it was art, and I loved every inch of it.

Feeling comfortable in the darkness, I drew my coat around me more, and continued on walking. Leaves from the trees that lined the streets shuffled ahead of me as the breeze spiraled them up into the air, playing with them like an unknown specter in the night. 

The smells of the coffee shop were full of cinnamon and nutmeg, chocolate and strawberries. The treats I'd made today weren't so out of the ordinary, but I liked having a normal day sometimes. Nothing too fancy. It was comforting in a way. There were coffee cakes with a streusel crumble, little Victorian sandwich cakes, and chocolate cakes with banana and strawberries in the middle. Small coconut pies were also up for grabs, as well as a mini bananas foster with way too much cinnamon. You could have the mini bananas foster with vanilla ice cream, too, if you were adventurous. 

Nikki was standing at the showcase, eating one such bananas foster as our usual customers drank their morning coffee and read their newspapers. A new edition of the neighborhood magazine, the Rainbow Edition, was waiting for people to pick up a free copy in a wired stand near our door. It was called that, because you never knew what kind of paper it was going to be printed on. One week it could be pink and blue, the next it could be a highlighter yellow monstrosity. It was based on whatever the creator, a nice hipster kind of guy named Minoru, could get his hands on for cheap. One time, it was printed on horrendous notebook paper and everyone looked like they were carrying around a secret notebook from high school.