"... But the evidence for such assertions, when it is once brought out, is rather evidence for the contrary, since it merely shows how somebody would make music who does not know how to — how accordingly music ought in no case to look if it has been composed by an artist. This is even true when a composer writes criticisms. Even if he is a good composer. For in the moment when he writes criticisms, he is not a composer, not musically inspired. If he were inspired, he would not describe how the piece ought to be composed, but would compose it himself."

--Arnold Schoenberg, "The Relationship to the Text"

"Heart's Foliage (Coffeeshop #2)" [draft] by Patrick Simpson

"Under the blue bell-jar
of my listless moods
griefs are suffocated,
gradually stilled:

‘a forest of symbols’:
sleepy lotuses,
soft mosses, slack vines, slow
pines of my desires . . ."

--Maurice Maeterlinck, "Feuillage du cœur" ("Heart's Foliage") trans. by Richard Howard

You've been sitting in the red chair by the History section for almost two hours now. You've sat and contemplated, read a poetry book you picked up on one of the shelves on the staircase down (you remembered the title from a friend's recommendation; you haven't talked in a while), scrolled on your phone and then felt guilty about it, and then read some more, and now you're only sitting and thinking again, attempting to absorb the botanical imagery from the poem you just finished by some kind of passive contemplative osmosis.

A girl around his age in a short skirt walks past and he steals an eyeful. He knows he looks a little too long---he hears a voice in his head say, weirdly, "her legs are like stems, or stalks"---and then catches himself and becomes very interested in the back of his hand resting in his lap. She politely notices without noticing and walks away, and he curses himself---he sits up agitated for a moment; thinks, sitting upright like that for another moment, about leaving or at least getting up to stretch his legs---then relaxes again into the chair, indecisive. He can hear Orson Welles booming---must be F for Fake or something, he thinks---through the wall behind him.

She can feel this guy in the red chair eyeing her and casually moves on to browse in another section. It's nearly 3 am in the HERZGEWӒCHSE now; she's killing time until the 4:30 am Daisies screening. She picks up a Clarice Lispector novel she's been eyeing for a while now from the "staff picks" table in the middle. The little notecard---handwritten by "tim" (spelled with a lowercase t) in blue pen, the same somewhat lame (she thought) bold HERZGEWӒCHSE red and green lettering at the bottom (the cards were custom-made: everything was a little overdone in the place, she thought)---recommended Água Viva as "the most strangely erotic experience I've ever had with a work of prose fiction. Essential," and so she decides to take the plunge and sits down with it at the bar, where a slightly stoned bartender-barista (it's a coffeeshop by day and an all-night coffeeshop and bar by night) rings her up.

"Tim loved that---you should talk with Tim."

"Oh?"

"His shift starts in about an hour."

She nods neutrally and orders a decaf mocha with a shot of Bailey's, which the bartender-barista prepares with expert precision. She tips well and reads with the big ceramic HERZGEWӒCHSE mug (with the same overdone lettering) on her right side, taking slow, deliberate sips every five pages or so. The prose is, as promised, intense (she can't decide if "erotic" is going too far yet), and absorbing, and she slips into another shape of time sitting there, the way movie theaters seem to warp time and space so when you walk out into the street or look up from the book and re-situate yourself again the whole surrounding tableau settles into itself in an entirely new way and you're almost blinded, or drowned, for a moment, in the mass of in-rushing sensory data, and she looks up to see that the hour has already passed and "tim" (his handwritten namecard also spelled with a lowercase t) is talking with "Eric" (the one who made you the mocha) at the end of the bar.

Tim just got out from the Orson Welles Chimes at Midnight and F for Fake double feature and his head is spinning. He half-whispers to Eric: "it's like thorns everywhere in my brain---it's seriously In the Mouth of Madness in here. The Welles screenings didn't help at all."

"Do you want me to take over for you tonight? I can talk with Patrick."

"No, thanks. I can get through it. The work helps a lot of the time, honestly."

He grimaces and collects himself, smiles warmly, almost convincingly, to Eric. Eric flashes back a not unkind smirk.

"Take care of yourself."

"Yeah, okay, thanks."

Elisabetta can hear most of this from where she sits, and she pretends to read as she eavesdrops. When Eric leaves and she feels like enough time has passed, she waves him over and orders a negroni.

"Who's Patrick?"

He looks up at her. "You weren't supposed to hear that."

She shrugs.

"He's the Art Director here. I'd need to talk with him if I needed to take the night off."

"Why would you need to take the night off?" she asks with performatively exaggerated, though not entirely inauthentic innocence. She's a little bored and something about "tim" intrigues her. She knew him from before the shutdown---he was one of the staff who stayed on. His face is a little funny---one eye is a little droopy, she notices, now that she's getting a good look at his face. It's not unattractive. He has thick, well-trimmed facial hair. He's tall.

"I'm not sure I can really answer that." He's irritated at this girl confidently strolling into personal shit while he's on shift; she sees how he recoils from the question like a hurt animal and backs off.

"I've been enjoying this Clarice Lispector novel you recommended." She holds it up. "I'm about 40 pages in."

His face noticeably brightens, and then crumples into a somewhat performatively embarrassed laugh. Neither of them can tell how performative it is.

"Yeah, I guess it 'really turned me on,'" he says with an indiscernible amount of sarcasm. More sincerely, "no joke, some of the best prose I've ever read. It's so vivid and full of life. It's in the title, I guess..." he trails off.

"Well, it was definitely doing something for me," and there's a beat where neither of them are sure what she might exactly mean.

"Have I seen you here before?"

"I used to come in for these late-night screenings pretty often. I was going to see Daisies tonight."

Now he knew how he recognized her. She had come in fairly regularly before the shutdown. He thinks to ask how she likes the renovations. This girl almost never spoke a word when she came in before, so it was strange how much she was talking now---one of the more 'out there' crowd who tended to show up in these late-night/early-morning shifts, he had always thought. He had seen her run her fingers through her hair in a very particular way at least a few times when she came in back then, back in the old days of the HERZGEWӒCHSE, and had noted then how she didn't seem to be aware of the tic in the least. Her hair is a lot shorter now; it looks hacked off in places, he notices for the first time in the conversation.

"... You're in for a treat with that one. My shift's until 10---I'd be curious to hear what you think of it, if you want to stop by again afterward. Coffee on the house." He smiles at her, earnestly, but it's a little much.

Elisabetta nods coolly, understanding the kindness being clumsily offered---cautious of what to do with it.

Tim loved the place---he'd been one of those weirdos for years before he was hired---but he often wondered about what brought them here, whether the place was good for them, gave them what they needed. Sometimes the patrons sat so incredibly stock still in "Thinker"-like cramped postures over their books and steaming mugs that they seemed more like the houseplants Patrick loved to keep around the HERZ than the living, literally "animated" animals they were, even though he had had to hire a gardener at great, mostly (he admitted) self-indulgent expense for the purpose, when the budget for the re-opening was already strained to its absolute limit (seemingly: Patrick always seemed to be able to get what he wanted in the end, even when it seemed like he was all out of tether; he seemed to thrive in this mode, perversely). "That's what a visionary does, or needs to do," he would sometimes absently say to himself in the mirror in the morning. "The art life. That's what it takes," with an absent stare. Following blind logic of association, Patrick would then often think of good ol' David Lynch, and of the way he talked about "moving paintings." (What the hell, another Lynch screening this week---INLAND EMPIRE---he decided without deciding. "I'll have to tell Tim to push the Rosselini double feature to Thursday...") So, he needed plants: things that could move, grow, while also staying absolutely still. Contorted shapes in pots.

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