Cafe Cassias

She looks like GI Jane.  Not in a bad way.  She just looks like her, although much friendlier and less likely snap your neck or shoot you in the face without remorse.

He looks like someone you think you recognize, but you can’t figure out from where.  Kind of distinctive, and yet bland enough that you might have seen him anywhere.

Interesting couple.  I think.  Hard to tell if they are actually a couple.  It looks like he wants to be in a couple with her, and she looks like she knows that that is what he wants and is unsure if that’s what she wants too.  She’s probably leading him on because she can’t decide.  This is either going to end well, or rather badly for him.  She’ll want to stay friends with him, and he’ll be her friend.  But he won’t really ever be over her.

He keeps sneaking looks at her.  His gaze softens so much when it’s directed at her.  She genuinely doesn’t notice.  Either she’s distracted, or he is very sneaky.  Probably a bit of both.

She works here, although not tonight.  She nips behind the bar to make him a coffee.  Iced coffee with cream.  The good iced coffee; cold brewed.  She gets the better barista to make her a cappuccino.  Since she works here, she knows the smattering of other employees in on their nights off, enjoying their free coffee privileges (the boss just left).

She has meandered towards the back to chat with someone.  GI Jane and the guy-you-think-you-know don’t seem to have been on a date; although he was definitely hoping to get more one-on-one time with her to turn it into one.  She’s been a while.  Surreptitiously, and without any noticeable forethought, he opens up her small, embroidered, leather purse.  He takes a quick leaf through, just to see what’s there.  Probably trying to gauge the rest of the evening by what she’s got in there, or looking for some clue as to whether they will ever be an item.

He doesn’t seem to be looking for anything specific.  One of those I’ll know it when I see it things.

Not seeming to find anything conclusive, he takes a quick look through her phone.  Casually.  This is likely to be a gold mine.  She’s going to have messages to her girl friends about him, whatever she thinks of him, although the items he’s looking for is likely buried under the tailings pile of mundane things that are so fun to message about.

He still doesn’t seem to have found anything.  He doesn’t look broken-hearted about it.  Just resigned that the mystery of exactly what they are will remain.  She gets up to make herself another cappuccino, but he doesn’t bother to look through for anything else.  He gets up and walks over to the counter so they can chat while she is brewing her drink.  She’ll probably pour him another iced coffee with cream without his even asking for it.

Whatever that means.

Quick post; Observed

He’s sitting unobtrusively near the corner en plein air. The atmosphere is oppressively humid and dense; it is descending upon the city, cloaking it. Small, black coffee; crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Small French roast, black

It should be raining by now.  The strong wind is breaking apart the clouds.  Torn pieces of deep blue cloud are sent scudding across the twilit orange sky.  The wind peppers people with sand and grit as they struggle across the parking lot towards the door.  They stumble in, the wind holding the door open against their efforts, making everyone in the cafe look up.  The newcomers seem momentarily stunned by their unexpected audience, who suddenly realize they are staring and quickly look down, pretending to resume what they were doing and trying to concentrate.

Small study group.  Seems like a group project.  All three have different, but related, material in front of them and the two almost-twenty-something girls have research and a presentation open, respectively.  The almost-twenty-something guy is clearly dead weight.  He spends most of his time tangentially from the topics at hand, and he is one his second coffee and third cigarette break, though he is more of a casual smoker.  His contribution to the material is in a suspiciously thin binder beside him.  Closed.  He seems to have only the loosest grasp on their research material and he circumvents most efforts made to clarify things by more tangents.

[ Two almost almost-twenty-something girls are blown in to the cafe.  The shorter of the two, with deep reddish purple hair, seems quite confused.  Waist up features a scarf, mittens, canvas winter jacket.  Waist down features the bottom of a long, boyfriend cut t-shirt, tights and flip flops.  Fortunately, to offset this, her friend is much less confused. ]

He isn’t dating either of the almost-twenty-something girls.  No pandering hand-holding to his lack of enthusiasm or his obviously lacking contribution.  No snide derision to coasting along on her coattails.   No mild suggestion from one almost-twenty-something girl to the other that he did lots of work with her earlier and that he will do lots more later.  No.  He is dating a close, almost-twenty-something friend of the almost-twenty-something girls.  Which explains quite a lot.

[ A very shiny black leather jacket with equally shiny black leather boots have entered followed by a large unkempt beard with lots of very well kempt wavy hair.  Black leather jacket and boots stops and brushes sand and grit from his black leather jacket and boots while unkempt beard and lots of very well kempt wavy hair brushes sand and grit from his unkempt beard and lots of very well kempt wavy hair.  They look ridiculous. ]

What there is, instead, are quick looks between the almost-twenty-something girls when he yet again picks up his BlackBerry to answer urgent BBMs, and the kind of furtive whispering that features at the beginning of labour movement documentaries that end in the triumphant formation of unions.  As he steps out, the furtive whispering decides to wind things down.  As he comes back in from his fourth cigarette break, although only really puffing away at a third of it, one almost-twenty-something girl is closing her laptop while the other is organizing her material.  He immediately picks up on this, and is already grabbing his meager contributions to the evening.  He backs away extolling his surprise at what time it is and the things he needs to do.

[ A twenty-something couple enters, but has to return to the door to pull it forcefully closed.  They have come from Sunday dinner with her parents.  Her delighted expression, and light happy demeanor shows how well it went.  She is absolutely enthralled with him in this moment.  He looks exhausted with the effort of the evening.  Happy, but exhausted.  She orders him a very large and very fancy coffee, and leans in close to him.  She clutches at his arm and stares adoringly into his eyes. ]

The friend of the two almost-twenty-something girls now leaving the cafe pawned her mostly useless boyfriend off on their group, knowing they wouldn’t say no, though she knows full well they don’t much like him.  Hoping that he might redeem himself by spending some time with her close friends, she’ll be unsettled to instead be catching snippets of that furtive union whispering.

The weather might be much worse, but the wind keeps breaking up the clouds whenever they manage to stick together.

Quiet Mornings

Coffee, black.  The most unique blend I’ve ever had.

They stand together in the small enclave at the front of her boutique.  His shop, right next door, has a similar enclave, but they stand in hers because he walks past her boutique every morning on his way to open his shop.

He is clean cut, on the tall side, and quite thin, making him appear slightly taller.  Thin, angular face with a very sharp jaw line and jutting cheek bones.  Grey hair that probably used to be in a quiff, it seems to vaguely remember the shape.  He must shave in the evening because his 5 o’clock shadow is happening on his way to the shop.  It does every morning.  The life he has led is inscribed over every inch of him and physically it has taken quite a toll.  Mentally though, he doesn’t show the strain at all, and his quick, bright eyes liven his whole being.  He walks slowly, with a pronounced limp.

Her hair is streaked with grey, but she is not the type to bother concealing it.  It comes to about her shoulders, and is nicely cut, framing her face.  Tanned skin stretched a little tightly over her face.  Keen, hooded, though not unkind, eyes.  She looks nice, and she doesn’t wear much make up.  Certainly not like those middle aged women rediscovering the what the new 20 is, and looking all the older for it.  She has an air about her that she hasn’t changed much in looks since her younger days, which are catching up with her.  But she chooses to bear those scars.

Her lingerie boutique opens at 9:30am, and his 60s collectible shop opens at 10:00am.  She opens 15 minutes late to stand out and wait for him, and he opens 15 minutes early so that he can step into her enclave while she is waiting there.

Together, shop and boutique side by side, they bear their respective clientele: people their age, reminiscing incessantly through rose coloured glasses upon times in which they never really lived life they way they pretend to have lived it.  For better or worse, each bears the unmistakable signs of having lived very full, and perhaps in the end rather empty, lives, but untinted by rose or the collective misrememberings of a generation.

They stand in the enclave each morning, the 60s collectible and lingerie businesses are not really morning businesses; the phone calls and inventory can wait.  They stand chatting, sometimes drinking coffee and sometimes not, enjoying not speaking about the endlessly discussed past their generation shares in varying degrees of authenticity.

His husky, yet sharp, cockney accent rings out with her equally husky and sharp voice, albeit, hers without the accent.  The things they aren’t talking about are so much more important than what they do talk about.  They revel in their morning escapes into idle chit chat.  Something to look forward to every morning.

The mystery of each other is omnipresent, and yet somehow, not knowing makes them much happier.  They don’t need to know: it is that tacit bond that opens the lingerie shop 15 minutes late and the 60s collectible shop 15 minutes early every day.

Quiet mornings shared together.  Sometimes with coffee, sometimes not.

Last Night’s Bad Decisions; To Collect or Not to Collect

Small Cappuccino, probably the best I have ever had.

Walking down a small, leafy street packed with modest, old, brick houses, a wrought iron fence becomes apparent.  It is a nice piece of metal work; thick iron bars, ornate spikes at the top, elegant joint work.  Not so tall as to prevent someone from hopping over, or seeming too unfriendly, and just spikey enough to discourage casual leaning, or loafing as would have been said in the 18th and 19th century London.  Moreso a fancy delineation of property.

But the fence is apparent because it is strewn with various articles of clothing.

The house is broken up into apartments.  There are too many things for it to be a single family home.  3 sets of recycling boxes, 4 bicycles for adults, and far too much mail.  The lawn is running wild, and is lightly sprinkled with house party debris.  There is a mostly empty pizza box, an empty wine bottle, more cigarette butts than one might expect, and lots more colt butts than one would ever expect.  The grass is haphazardly trampled, and there is a general feeling of debauchery, although is suppose that isn’t really quantitative.

There is a light pink tank top with minuscule straps.  It is stained with red wine over where her right breast would have been when she spilled.  The spill pattern suggests she wasn’t bumped into, but that she spilled herself.  The stain is lightly spread around; she was talking with a guy she met at the party, and panicked, embarrassed half to death, trying fruitlessly to daub away the European Pinot Noir on her sheer tank top.  While this tank top sits strung across the fence the host is minus one tank top, probably black, with promises of its return.

There is a bright blue Aeropostal polo shirt, no stains.  Jock.  Well built, crispy spiked haired, loudmouth.  Likely the disliked boyfriend of one of the hostess’ close girlfriends.  He wouldn’t have been invited otherwise.  Promptly after the first shot-gunned beer, the shirt came off.  As usual.  He must have a whole box of these things.  Things mustn’t have improved from that point, because the shirt isn’t really strewn on the fence, but rather impaled upon several of the wrought iron spikes that keep the loafers away.  Probably by his girlfriend who was so spited by having her girlfriends’ opinions proven right about him all along.  Hell hath no wrath.

She would have left earlier in the evening, before things really started to get out of hand, so the pair of cut-off jean shorts are definitely not hers.  No obvious signs of why they would have been removed.  Likely she’ll have woken up and not fully understood her lack of shorts.  One of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time.  Of course, she’ll be able to chart the decline of her evening via Facebook, although she might prefer not to know.

And hello, now things are really getting interesting.  A black corset.  The kind that tend not to be worn strictly in the boudoir, but rather by women with black hair and pale skin who strut down the sidewalk looking as vampireish as possible.  Except for the being out in the sun part.  Of course.  The strings are frayed, and the eyelets around the top have worn through the silvery finish to reveal the bronze they are cast from.  It is well broken in, and the shiny quality of the leather has worn away to a flat black, and even without being tied, it holds her shape.  Deduction; morals of a pirate.  Since corsets do not necessitate the wearing of another undergarment.

This was clearly the point of the evening where things had gotten out of control.  The point where the number of people that no one seemed to know exceeded the number that people do seem to know.  Definitely out of control, because there are gaps along the wrought iron railing where more items of clothing would still be, had they not been picked up by their respective owners.

Following the tell tale signs of out-of-control-house-party up to the top floor of the house, where the party evidently begun, my eye catches the upper floor of the closely adjacent house.  The window closest to the house party house has a deep sill, and in it are a coffee cup, a glass of water, and a large and well read book.  As I stop, someone looks out at me and smiles.  She has a perfect perch from which to watch the walks of shame by the wrought iron railing to collect the results of bad decisions.

I smile.

She smiles back.

I think about taking the corset to make her laugh.

This really is the best cappuccino I’ve ever had.

1+2 and 2+1; Opposites Attract

Cafe Cassais

Double date.  Late twenties couples.  Aged late twenties that is, not that they look like they should be from the twenties, which would have been much better.  They all have coffees, no desserts.  The couples sit opposite each other.  The men on the chairs, the women on the bench seat.  They lean in, absorbed in conversation.  Not a group conversation.  Not conversation between couples.  Not a conversation between women or between the men.  Conversation between opposite members of the couples; one to two and two to one. Very absorbing conversations.

Women.

One.  Pink Reebok workout shoes, expensive tights.  Expensive work out shirt; expensive enough to have been worked out in without looking like it.  Hair tied back very nicely, also impressively not looking like she’s worked out, although her slight flush says that indeed she has.  Must be some expensive hair product.

Two.  Somewhat boring boots, nice flair jeans.  The kind of jeans that are just jeans: no rips, no tears, no acid washes, no preworn treatment.  Just jeans.  Plain black sweater with a nice, moderately expensive, floral print silk scarf.  Her hair is nice, but she isn’t too worried about it.  She’s less flashy and is less perfectly-put-together but she looks all the better for it.

Men.

One.  Casually dressed.  Expensively casual jeans and shoes.  It’s his general theme.  Everything is well cut and fits him nicely.  Decorative scarf around his shoulders: it’s probably warm, but he doesn’t wear it in any way that would keep him warm.  He leaves his black felt coat on and he sits very casually, playing it cool.  Maybe if he would wear his scarf as a scarf he could have taken off his coat.

Two.  Much more nicely dressed.  Dark grey slacks and a starched light blue business shirt.  But everything is a little boxy and too big making him look bigger and boxier than he already is.  The clothes look nice, but the cuts are bland and make him look awkward, somewhat negating his effort.  Neatly parted hair and a very smooth, round face.

Even though they are talking across each other, each completely ignores the two outside their conversation.  Very occasionally one will make comment on something said in the other conversation.  The comments are thinly veiled sarcasm at best and snide derision at worst.  Usually comments pointing out something that is incorrect, then condescendingly correcting it and returning to their conversation, as though they are only listening to the other conversation for the purpose of rudely interrupting it.  With the exception of those derisive comments, the conversations don’t cross over at all.

As time passes, they become increasingly drawn into their conversations.  They sit in closer to the other and become more animated; one to two and two to one.  They laugh more, they act more intensely, they are more enthralled.  There seems to be a critical mass; they build towards slowly but surely.  The callous commentary additions to the other conversation gradually lessens as their absorption into their conversation increases.

Then.  Critical mass of their absorption into the other.  It seems to be the point beyond which they will get up with the person with whom they are conversing, and just leave behind the others that they so obviously cannot abide.  Still no conversing between couples, between the men or between the women, but they all decide that the evening has come to an end.

They stand up saying their goodbyes one to two and two to one, making plans for the next double date.  They leave as couples and in derisive silence to each other with finals waves one to two, two to one.

Later at home the contemptuous silences will continue, one to one and two to two, but they will hardly notice, still enthralled by the evening and utterly lost in blissful anticipation of the next double date and their opposite number.

Chicken and Egg; Watchers Watching Watchers Part 3

Small Light Roast, black

His backpack, his cell phone, his coffee cup and his kobo are placed a little haphazardly upon the table that his and the chair beside him share, suggesting that there might be someone else sitting next to him.  There isn’t, but it gives the khaki sweatered square jawed man with short brown hair and rectangular glasses a chance to covertly glean details about the man who is about to ask him if there is anyone sitting next to him.

[ Something is burning.  Something behind the counter in one of the large industrial looking ovens.  It fills the air of the cafe with smoke, making the many lights in the chandeliers shimmer in the haze.  Like they used to when socializing and thinking over coffee was synonymous with cigarettes, and Gauloises were the choice.  ]

As green checked shirt sits down; khaki sweater now picks up his Kobo and leafs through it.  In front of them are the backs of two women.  This seems quite unremarkable.  One is just below middle age with dyed, deep brown hair with a vaguely reddish tinge, and a very loud floral print shirt.  The other is just above middle age with naturally grey, mid length hair, and a much more conservative ensemble.  They lean very close to each other, gossiping in very hushed voices.  Very hushed voices.

Typical hair salon gossip, but with a keen ear and some patience it becomes much more intriguing.  Their gossiping  is easily divided up into paragraphs of approximately equalish length.  After each paragraph, they pause, as if in rest from this arduous past time, and look around warily before returning to another paragraph of gossip.  The entire conversation is well constructed; how very unEnglish.  While everyone in earshot has become accustomed to these two, just below and just above, middle aged women gossiping away in hushed tones and pay them no attention, every three to five paragraphs, they abruptly switch out of gossip and into German.

[ People arrive in from the sleet, quickly ordering large mugs of coffee to warm themselves.  They look around in mild bewilderment at the unexpected haze.  As though their eyes are deceiving them.  As though the sleet and cold has fogged their retinas.  The diffused, yellowish haze must look especially inviting in this weather. ]

Green checked shirt gets up after the latest bout of crisp, covert German to order a large mug of coffee.  He returns, and khaki sweater does not seem to have moved in the slightest.  Green checked shirt’s things sit on the table much more neatly than khaki sweaters things.  A small novel, a magazine, and a cell phone.  One identical to khaki sweater’s, which has occupied the corner of the table closest to khaki sweater since green checked shirt’s arrival.  In fact, green checked shirt’s phone is more identical to khaki sweater’s phone than to the one now sitting neatly on his novel.  Intriguing.

[ There is a young man in a black hoodie and very large jeans in the seat opposite them, and next to the women’s backs.  He is facing them with his alarmingly angular features and a dangerously paranoid countenance.  As he glances from side to side, the shadows cast by his sharp features make him even more sinister.  He gets up to leave, just as the women finish their third paragraph of gossip since the last nearly imperceptible bout of German. ]

Calmly, and with a smile towards the women as he sits down, green checked shirt slips into the seat the alarming hoodied youth has vacated.  It might seem that eavesdropping on the German paragraphs would be simpler when facing the backs of the just above, and just below, middle aged women, but they seem to be only paying attention to who might be behind them.  Green checked shirt, now being in their sightline, is completely eliminates him from their suspicions.  They barely pay any attention to him now.  Because no one eavesdrops from the front; eavesdroppers must be like tigers, they wait until your face is turned away.  That is, until they get used to it, and use it as a double bluff.  Ask the people in the Sundarbans.

[ A large, slightly unkempt, older gentleman has sat down in green shirt’s vacated seat.  He has a very tattered and well worn paperback book in hand.  He opens the book about one quarter from the end; no bookmark.  He reads very slowly and without the usual eye movements and head inclinations.  Perhaps he’s relishing the words he’s read many times.  Perhaps. ]

Green shirt picks up the phone that is in front of him.  Stillness from khaki sweater: his rate of flicking the corner of his Kobo decreases by half.  At least.  If there were a realtime Yarbus eyetracker app, it would be especially interesting to see what a isn’t being looked at, since that is often the object of greatest interest.  No reaction from green shirt as he presses * ← and unlocks the phone.  No un-reaction either.  Un-reactions being an exceptional non-reaction made while trying to control ones reaction to something usually unexpected.  Either green shirt is very skilled at catching his reactions as the neurons are firing instructions to his facial muscles, or this isn’t a surprise and his double bluff has become apparent.  The phone is now back on the table in front of him; green shirt is sipping his coffee, magazine open, all the while, khaki sweater is looking more and more uncomfortable.  His mental process, mirrored in his physical nuances, is stymied.

[ The large, slightly unkempt gentleman is now sitting further along the cafe.  His wiry, grey hair apparent across the couples and students.  His third successive seat in a short space of time.  His impatience is getting the better of him; not sitting long enough to discover what he came here for. ]

Green shirt shows none of the imminent signs of leaving.  No looking around, checking the time, or the very slight unsettling that usually predicates people deciding to move on.  Khaki sweater decides he has been still for too long.  He stands up with his coffee cup and walks casually towards the counter.  A mild, convenient, and very unpredictable confusion in the line about who has ordered and where the line is.  Khaki sweater returns, small black dark roast in hand, to an unchanged situation.  He resettles, and resumes flipping through his Kobo.  By the time he next looks up, he has missed all the slight unsettled movements that predicate green shirt’s leaving.  Or perhaps there were none.  Either way, Green shirt has collected his things, the phone has already disappeared, and is leaving.  Khaki sweater notices that the just below and just above middle aged women’s backs are no longer speaking in hushed tones and are saying their goodbyes.

Khaki sweater takes stock.  The contents of his phone have just walked out the door.  He picks up the phone next to him to analyze his spoils; but it’s his phone.

Double bluff.

Learned quietness

Small cappuccino, just like them

Russians.

He is tall.  He wears a long sleeved striped shirt, like Parisian men wear in cartoons (and do in fact wear in Paris, apparently unaware of the stereotype), a dull green knit zip up sweater, blue jeans, and deceptively expensive black loafers. She is wearing black leggings under a casual, above-the-knee cut black dress, more like a fancy long shirt than anything else.  She has fur boots and a matching fur collared coat, not unlike what women wear in St. Petersburg.

He has perfect salt and pepper grey hair, the envy of a Just For Men commercial with a twenty-something blonde proclaiming the value him of having “just enough experience”.  Because that immediately happens upon the purchase of the dye.  I just can’t figure out how they fit her inside that tiny box.  His eyes are deep brown and unfathomable.  He is lightly built, but his intensely muscular hands belie the feats of incredible strength and agility of which he is capable when needed. He is clever enough to take full advantage of that element of surprise.  When needed.

Her hair is somewhere between light brown and dirty blonde.  A colour difficult to describe, and therefore perfect for her.  There seems to be lots of it, but it is neatly tied back.  I suspect that she could easily tie it back much more tightly or style it to make for lots of curly hair.  She could look like just about anyone if she needed to.  She is shorter than he is, but her slightly broad shoulders and her stature show equally unsuspecting physical prowess.  She has quick, steely, blue-grey eyes that flit around restlessly.  Her mental dexterity assesses all situations before any surprises, notes every possible option and outcome.

They are speaking Russian in low voices.  Voices practiced in speaking quietly, practiced in avoiding being overheard or attracting attention.  Voices that are saying things you would want to overhear.  Their soft Russian is much more inconspicuous than heavily accented English; it is a while before it is even apparent that they aren’t speaking English.  They have stacked the dishes from their quickly eaten lunches very neatly.  The cups and saucers from their small cappuccinos, finished after the meal, are stacked on top.  Few details to be gleaned with everything arranged in such a neat, vertical pile.  Clever.  Or perhaps they are neat freaks.  Likely they are, but that’s not why the dishes were stacked so quickly.

She looks much more anxious than he does.  She hunches over the conversation, protecting it.  Protecting them.  Her steely eyes continue to look from table to table, trying to catch any eyes upon them, or eyes so stagnant that attention must be focused upon them.  His calm, steady, unfathomable gaze seems much more docile, but he is indeed looking around.  They are still together because of their balance.  She is fiery, paranoid, and urgent while he is much more calm, calculating, and questioning.  But together they are each what the other needs.  Together they are formidable.

They must be being followed.  Or perhaps it’s just habit.  They do not stay long.  Not much time has elapsed after neatly stacking the dishes and getting up.  Coolly, but quickly, they put on their coats and leave.  They move just quick enough not to be conspicuous.  One might describe them as efficient.  Eyes averted for but a moment, they have disappeared without having drawn undue attention in the process.  Efficient indeed.  They never stay too long in any one place.  Their learned habits, the habits that have kept them going to this point, are hard ones to break.  Habits for survival always are. They do not wait, they do not settle in and wait to see what might happen, to see who might appear.  Wary of perhaps being preempted.  Perhaps someone already being here.  Perhaps being overheard.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

They seem to know their game, but then, they must.  They’re still at it.

Russians.

All Sorts (no licorice)

Large dark roast, black

An apres-lunch meeting.  A very rotund businessman and a young, slim, stylish, and very ambitious employee.  She is ambitious enough to have landed the ear of him after lunch, despite his somewhat over-emphasized busyness, vaulting over the heads of much more senior, albeit more apathetic, employees.

Solo.  Laptop-ing, dark haired man with furtive eyes, wanting to appear much more mysterious and important than he really is.  Likely working on something quite dull.  Some poorly stitched together research piece; links created by paranoia rather than gut feeling or evidence.  Black felt coat with a collar that can be easily turned up against the wind, or hoped suspicion.

Lesbians sit and chat.  One with lots of piercings, genuine zebra print RayBan sunglasses, and a leopard print American Apparel zip hoodie.  She sits musing on a grey laptop while the other sits with a leather jacket slung over the chair, wishing her quiff would come in better.

Midlife crisis couple.  They are about to entre their forties, and contrary to psychological research, are having their crises now.  She is ten years too late, so it’s pent up; he is ten years early, so its a little half hearted.  They have reverted to what they remember of their 1970s early twenties selves.  They have re-enrolled in University to get back what they missed by completing their respectable degrees much too diligently.  Very awkward.

Post midlife crisis women.  With enough money to have spent their way out of oblivion.  One works out a lot and flaunts it by biting into a heavily frosted chocolate cupcake with gusto.  The other secretly skips out on half her work outs, but brags of her dessert restraint.  They sit and talk about what the media says all the twenty somethings talk about, and talk like how the media says all the twenty somethings talk like.  Not realizing that the media is largely not produced by twenty somethings at all.

New arrival.  Plaid shirt, light brown jeans, scruffy beard, shortish hair that he doesn’t worry too much about, but he looks nice enough.  He is reading his way through a short but impenetrable book, taking notes all the while.  A book mostly dismissed by many that simply couldn’t permeate into an ounce of its true meaning.  But he’ll craft a post doc paper out of it.  It will also largely be dismissed because none of his advisers will have the prowess to truly read it.

The composition of the long bench with six chair opposite it and six tables in between might be a microcosm of a Woody Allen film.  Although they all have different sizes and brews of coffee, all the mugs are the same shade of dull yellow.

True story.

Post Script; I stick around for a while.  After this cast of characters have left, there is a discontinuity of the dull yellow cup trend on the long bench, and everyone becomes much less interesting.

Abandoned Coffee

Cafe Cassais (my first of the week, and it is heavenly)

In the cafe there are two armchairs with a small table in between them.  The chairs are each rotated forty five degrees in towards the table.  People could sit in the chairs and be sitting together or not, but comfortably so.  I’m pondering sitting in one of the armchairs.  But there is a full cup of coffee on the table, ambiguously, right in the centre.  Just one cup, just one person.  But which chair?

Upon closer inspection, there is much more to be gleaned.  The table top is made from a tin (although probably not actually tin) ceiling panel with a pressed pattern, which makes for a handy grid.  The cup is, in fact, just closer to the left chair, from which one might infer that it belongs to someone sitting in the left chair.  Too simple.

[ Across from the perplexing chairs and table, two women gabble away in slow Spanish (which is still pretty quick) occasionally interjecting English phrases that probably have proper Spanish expressions. ]

The left chair has armrests.  The right chair is one of those lounge chairs without arm rests, but similar in every other respect.  A convenient reach for a cup of coffee over the left chair would be much closer than just, just, left of the centre, by any normal build.  The handle is turned towards the right chair, pointed out into the room at a forty five degree angle, making the cup belong to a right handed person sitting in the right lounge chair.  A left handed person would have put the cup down from the lounge chair with the handle pointed back towards the wall.

[ Down the cafe, three new mothers gossip about their lives, nodding knowingly at each others stories.  For all, apparently, being stressed out, questioning the state of their new lives, and not having slept in days they all look quite relaxed, at ease, and well rested.  I wonder at the meaning of this, much more baffling than chairs and coffee anyways. ]

The right chair has some dirt on it, on the left side, the side of the table.  The someone had to have been sitting on the right side of the chair to have not wiped the dirt off, and the loose leather substitute is suitably rumpled to corroborate the dirt’s evidence.  Cup rested slightly left of centre but having sat on the far side of the right chair, they were certainly tall.

[ In walks the fourth middle aged couple of the evening, not counting the three middle aged double dates.  It’s only eight o’clock, but apparently all the twenty somethings and thirty somethings are already out drinking. ]

No one has since returned to the coffee, so I take the lounge chair on the right.  I reach out to the cup of coffee for confirmation of my inferences.  They were tall, taller than me, six feet tall, and the handle is perfectly positioned for my right hand to pick up the coffee.  As I reach out to the coffee, I notice the coffee is cold.  It’s been sitting there for perhaps fifteen minutes.  Not a sip has been taken.

[ Outside, it has begun to snow.  Suddenly the cafe is bustling with people, sweeping big fluffy flakes in with them. ]

Someone left the coffee in a hurry.  They were sitting poised to see the entrance, but hidden well enough behind distracting people.  Someone else walked in, black coffee noticed immediately, and as the someone else walked past, distracted by a lone bearded thinker in between them, up to the counter, black coffee slipped out.  Circling around the block, through an alley, into and out of a bank machine vestibule down the street, black coffee then returned to the edge of the cafe window with a cigarette lit.  Whoever had walked in had noticed nothing interesting, and having placed their order to go for mobility’s sake, promptly left.

[ The snow has stopped, outside and inside; the street glistens, bathed in yellow streetlight. ]

Sitting in black coffee’s quickly vacated seat reconstructing my inferences, I look up as I touch the cup and notice someone in a black coat with the collar turned up lingering at the cafe window edge.  He glances at me, then throws his half smoked cigarette into the gutter as he turns away.