The woman pauses, coffee in hand, as she looks down at the crack in the floor.

“What am I doing?” she says. 

Coughing and rubbing her eyes, she wipes her nose with the small napkin.

“This damn cold weather.”

An escaped tear rolls down her cheek, around the curve of her chin, and drops silently into the the smooth crack running across the coffeeshop floor.  

She drinks another swallow of coffee.

“Well, I can still ‘crack’ jokes.” She laughs hollowly and scratches at her pale wrist exposing a slow pulse of blue veins.  

“Let me think. What did that kid say? Oh yeah . . . ‘What is a pile of kittens?’ he said. ‘What?’ I dutifully responded. ‘A meown-tain.'” She shakes her head. “The kid doubled over at his own joke. I’m not kidding, doubled over, and then held his gigantic overflowing bag of candy out for more.”

“And speaking of ‘cracks,’ who doesn’t like the cracking sound of a bat?” She looks up at me. 

“I’m not sure I’ve ever hit a baseball in my life,” I admit.  

“Hah, I remember being a little kid, scared of my own heartbeat. I was in fourth grade when it happened. I was sure that older boy was going to bean me with his fastball.”

“And?” 

“You’ll never guess. I didn’t die. Instead I connected solidly — CRACK — sending that ball over the playground fence.”

And she looks over the espresso machine watching that ball fly out of sight.

“Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit a homer. Isn’t that what Matthew said in the New Testament?”

She smiles and rubs the side of her head, repositioning a strand of gray hair that slipped from behind her ear and was beginning to swing like a clock pendulum in front of her eyes. 

“My grandpa was a ‘crack’ shot,” she said.

“True?”

“Yup. I used to walk with him through the harvested fields, shotgun at the ready, no words spoken between us, deadly as a heart attack.” She pauses. “Really, the low-flying pheasants didn’t stand a chance even against his old eyes.” 

“My goodness.” 

“He let me shoot once. Carefully giving me instructions and then picking me up from the ground with a red bruise already showing on my shoulder.” 

“Ouch.” 

“I’ve never hit anything,” she said. “Well, unless you want to count the time I hit my husband, may he rest in peace, with a Lemon Meringue Pie. He never saw it coming.”

We laugh. 

“Time to go. Tomorrow is the day. I can’t put it off any further. The doc said it is either do or die . . .  and in the doing I might die.” She gives a forced laugh. “That sucks. But there it is.”

She sits quietly without moving.  

“Thank the lord the surgery isn’t at the ‘crack’ of dawn.” She wipes at her eyes.  

“Ha ha,” I say. 

And she carries her empty cup to the bin, placing it carefully inside. And walks back, the muscles visible in her jaw. 

Before putting on her coat, she points to the middle of her chest where her thin bones are pressed tight against her sweater. 

“Here is where they are going to crack it open.” Her voice hitches. “I guess I should say crack ME open.” 

She takes a jagged breath.

Steady, steady, steady.

She puts on her stocking cap.

Breath. Breath. Breath. 

Slowly she tries to grin.

“If it goes badly, remember to ‘crack’ a beer for me.” 

And she walks alone out into the cold. 

____________________________________________________________________________

“What do you think?” My friend Bill Roach says with a smile.

“Really?” I say.

“Yup. I dare you to write a made-up story about this crack in the floor.”

We both laugh.

“Okay, I’ll do it, but I dare you to do one of your photographs of that same crack in the floor.”

Here we are. Two old men having coffee. One a writer and one a photographer. Talking foolishly about creativity, which is an unfortunate deviation from our normal talk about wine, women, and song. 

“I’ll do it if you will.”

“No, I’ll do it if you will.”

“Deal?”

“Deal!”

The refrain of two 10-year-olds.

So we did. 

Joe