Soot

The lines between the bricks shone white in the light from the stained glass like a child had taken Bible to ghosts and powdered them haphazardly into the wall.

Plate 1 from Diversi maniere d’adornare I cammini: ed ogni altra parte degli edifizi by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

An old man in his navy baseball cap sat pawing through newspapers and magazines, a dying breed him and them both, half reading and half thinking of other things, of how coffee had lost its appeal decades past and the booth against which his back rested would do better to be equipped with a cushion and the whispering of the young women several tables away seemed like the whiskering of leaves on a lean-lit fall afternoon when nobody is near and your ears burn with chill.

There was also a cat, a grey cat, with long luxurious fur that would do for the winter and wicked green eyes. The eyes were a deception for in truth it was an affectionate and decent cat who occasionally rose to wind around the legs of visitors to this room that was open to churchgoers and the public alike, but saw little of the latter.

Neither the old man, the young women, nor the cat, had ever approached the dead fireplace wherein rested a clutch of partially used candles. Its interior, like the lines on the wall, was chalky, and where it was dark, streaked with what could have been dried wax or liquid passed through soot.

In this fireplace lay at unrest the faces of a hundred sinners, a secret known only to the cleaning woman who…