When I pick up the phone the voice on the other end says, “Hello, Mr. Bluff, we’re just calling to confirm your reservation.”
I mumble something like, “Who is this? I didn’t ask for a reservation.”
A voice in my head grumbles something about not needing these sorts of hassles right now. For the past two weeks I’ve been sleeping every night in this real swanky London hotel. My doctor called it a “much needed rest.” Seems to him that I have issues with my homeland and a long sabbatical from the constant machine roar of Hollywood and an election year might do me some good. I only went because I had a doctor’s note demanding a three week vacation from work and I had a novel I wanted to work on. So I’m a writer, so what? For some reason, it’s always the writers that get stressed and flee the city. I never accused myself of being original.
The voice on the other end of the receiver says, “Are you there, Mr. Bluff? I have you down at table 22 this afternoon at one o’clock.”
Truth is, I didn’t make a reservation for that table, but I was hungry so I lied. “Is this the…” a brief pause for dramatic effect.
“Thames Café in Covent Gardens, Mr. Bluff,” replies the clerk.
I tell him thank you and fall back asleep on starched cotton sheets.
Covent Gardens on a weekday has a completely different energy than the tourist rapids and shopping sprees of the weekend visitors. I’m glad I mysteriously reserved a table on a Tuesday. I look at my watch – 12:47. It’s just about that time.
I’m standing at the top of a short row of stairs. They split off two directions down into a lower level of tables and dining strangers and bustling waitresses. A long circular stone wall surrounds the eating grounds and at the back it is covered in thick English ivy. In the background you can see the Thames catching the gleam of the sun like slick yellow oil paints and blending into a canvas horizon. I take the short steps down into the gulley two at a time and grab a waiter by the arm, “Excuse me, I have a reservation for table 22 at one o’clock.”
The waiter looks at me with a strange confusion and silently sets back to work brushing a small tip into the palm of his hand. Whatever, I just keep walking toward the back. A faint gleam of light through the ivy catches my eye. It looks like the white touch of the sun passing through a gray cloud of cigarette smoke. Either that or the ivy wall is on fire. Hurrying toward it to investigate brings me to a small archway, almost a door, and inside is a small courtyard entirely overgrown in dense jungle green ivy. In the middle sits a white metal table with a glass top and two white chairs. One of them is empty, in the other sits an old man smoking on a long-stemmed pipe. He winks at me and says, “Table 22, you presume?”
I laugh at his choice in syntax and say, “Yes, someone rang my hotel room this morning. Told me I had a reservation for this table at one o’clock this afternoon. Am I early?”
“No,” says the Old Man, “you’re just in time.” Glancing down at a pocket watch attached to a gray vest he whistles low and says, “Bingo, right on the tick,” just as I take a seat at his table.
“Pardon me,” I say, “but was it you who rang my room this morning?”
“Me?” He laughs, “Why would I ring your hotel room? I don’t even know you.”
Good point.
“Now then,” he clears his throat into a fist, “you’re wondering what you are doing here. You want to know what or who is playing this mean practical joke on you. You are trying to decide if this is something cosmic or supernatural, a slight of hand from the bizarre, or if this is just a ridiculous hoax phoned at random from a lonely old man in a dark corner of a café in Covent Gardens.”
I admit to him that all of this is true.
“Of course it’s true, dear boy, I’m no fool. Where was I? Oh yes, well, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you. Quite frankly, this is my table. I sit here every day at the same time and drink the same cup of black coffee smoking from this same pipe. Why, I must say that you coming here and sitting at my table is the greatest upset to my routine in nigh fifteen years.”
“Surely you’re joking,” I mutter.
“Speak up, boy. No one can respect a man that talks into his chest. And no I’m not joking. You should pay more attention. Someone like you could learn a thing or two about the effect of rippling a constant routine.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that young men like you are always searching for significance. Significant careers, a significant cause or goal to believe in – why even the phrase for a mate these days is a ‘significant other,’ whatever that means.”
“Excuse me for being blunt,” I begin, “but you appear to be rambling.”
“I’m not rambling at all, you lily. I’m making a point. Stop waiting for me to say something in the obvious tone you expect me to say it in and just listen.”
I ask him what he means by ‘the obvious tone I expect.’
The Old Man grunts, “You came here today because your phone call had a touch of mysticism to it. It felt as though something magical were about to happen to you and so you showed up here expecting me to be Buddha or Confucius or Moses, King Solomon, I don’t know what. You expected some wizened old miser that would unweave the fabric of time and eternity for you with a sage air. Stop waiting for that, apart from a few key details I am more or less an old drunk who smokes too much. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to me.”
“Yes sir,” I apologize and say, “please, continue in whatever way you see fit.”
“Very well,” he laughs under his breath and says, “Let me just ask you a question. If for the past fifteen years I have been coming to this same place, doing the same thing at the same time and never speaking to anyone but my waitress, wouldn’t you say that this chance meeting we now find ourselves occupying is somehow significant?”
“Well, when you put it like that… I suppose it is.”
“Thank you, dear boy. People everywhere are searching for significance, but they rarely know where to look.”
“And I suppose you’re saying that you do?”
“Don’t patronize me, boy, I don’t claim to know significance anymore than the next man, but I do have a pretty good grasp on where to search for it.”
Playing along I ask him, “Where is that?”
He suddenly grows serious and I look him in the eye for the first time. Not just a glance, but really looking in. From behind his spectacles his eyes are a pale gray folded and creased inside of weathered skin. My old host says, “You look back through the long stable timelines of history and watch for a ripple. Like the surface of a pond, find the ripple and you can trace it back to that stone someone cast. The stone is everyone’s much-needed significance.”
We sat in a shaded hush for a few seconds and I watched that look disappear. His earnestness fades as if he just closed some veil over a sacred relic. For just a minute that veil was lifted and I saw in. Leaning across the table I ask him, “What does a ripple look like?”
He shakes his head, but says nothing. A sun-baked hand, so swollen and wrinkled that it looks like a glove, slides across the table toward me. The old man lifts it and it leaves behind a tattered leaflet of paper that appears to have been torn from a sketch book. Picking it up I read in deep calligraphic India ink a simple inscription that reads:

What truly interests me is not whether or not God created the world,
but whether he had a choice in the matter.
– Albert Einstein

I read it over a few times and look at him perplexed, then ask, “What does it mean?”
The Old Man shakes his head again, “Sorry, not yet. Think that one over tonight and come back tomorrow. We’ll talk more then. Show up a little earlier this time. I always leave here at half past one and will not have you upsetting my routine any more than you have to.”
Standing up he looks down at his pocket watch and I notice for the first time that he is dressed entirely in gray. Gray head to toe, in an almost antique three piece suit and a bowler cap he walks away with a charcoal umbrella for a cane and a sort of swagger in his steps. He looks back at me for a moment, adjusts his gold rimmed spectacles and turns to leave. I shout after him, “Hey! What’s your name?”
“Howard P. Lush, Mr. Bluff. Folks around here tend to call me The Lush. A fond nickname, I should hope.” Tipping his cap politely Mr. Lush says, “Good day to you.”
Now I’m back at my hotel room, it’s after nightfall by now and I suddenly realize that he called me by my name. I am sure I must have told him or else he must have found out somehow. He has to be pulling my leg or trying to get inside of my head. I keep telling myself it was nothing and I work hard to fall asleep. But sleep is far away from me tonight. That quote keeps playing over in my head twisting and falling like some weird trapeze act. Whether he had a choice in the matter…whether he had a choice…that same voice in the back of my mind keeps whispering, “What truly interests me…is whether God had a choice in the matter.”

Want to comment on this Prose? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Prose and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...