Attraction

His back straightens when he sees her.

I’m sitting quietly at my table, enjoying what remains of my crassly expensive hot chocolate, when I hear the door open from behind me. As most might, I looked to see who might be walking in. It’s something most people in the store did, actually, so I can only imagine how she might have felt to walk into a store and suddenly be seen by at least twelve different souls.

She’s blonde, her hair falls down in waves just above her waist — a waist that is hugged by a black skirt, which itself falls over black tights. Black leather boots climb her calves, stopping just short of her knees. Her peacoat appears to be violet, but in this lighting — and in my illness — it could very well be a vibrant shade of blue. A bronze pin pierces her lapel; a sunflower, stem and all. Her skin is pale, though her makeup…well, her face is three shades darker than her hands. Her grey scarf just barely hides the point where the paint ends and flesh begins, though who am I to judge? I can barely tell mascara from, Christ, whatever else it is women use to cover blemishes.

She’s attractive nonetheless, and I’m not the only person to notice.

The man in front of her sees it too, and I wonder if his noticing her is more blatant than mine. A writer can take quick mental notes — images burn themselves into the mind, perfected quotes to remember for later description and possible exaggeration. My notes were taken in what seemed like an instant, his were…well, his were lasting. Perhaps he wanted to make sure she saw him. Perhaps he wanted to leave an impression.

His sweater, an eggshell cable-knit with overdone holiday patterns, would most definitely make sure of that.

It was a size too small, something I guessed from his incessant need to reach up and pull the collar away from his neck. The poor man must have been uncomfortable. Underneath his sweater he wore a gingham button-up, with the sleeves pulled back and up his forearms. Pressed khakis lined his legs, and brown suede wingtips encased his feet.

He noticed her. She walked in, bringing in a gust of cold air with her, and we all noticed her. Beforehand the place was silent as the grave, the only sounds being churned out by ghosts of steam from espresso and milk. Her entrance was a disruption to our warmth — our peace. But as the door closed, most patrons returned to their drinks.

The man was next in line, but his gaze lingered on her for more than a handful of seconds. His hands, per usual, reached up to tug the collar away from his neck, and he straightened his back. His chest went from recessed to barreled, and in an instant he went from everyday orderer of coffee to, well, a more muscular everyday orderer of coffee. When he was called up to place an order, he coughed into his hand to deepen his voice. Black coffee, venti, room.

While he waited, he stole quick, silent looks at the blonde in the little black dress. How could he not? She was, after all, attractive. I kept waiting to see if this would turn into one of those moments from a romantic comedy movie — would he ask her out? Would he make an awkward pass? Would he spill his coffee on her “accidentally”? Moreover, I wondered, did she even notice him?

Her time in line was spent staring at the menu. She made no glances at any of the other patrons, and the only time her eyes shifted from the menu was to pull up the digital card on her phone. Caramel macchiato.

The man received his coffee, sipped it, and added his fixings. Was he taking time so he could spend more time seeing her? Was he purposely dragging out his order for this one woman who, arguably, was one of a hundred? Virginia is ripe with beach blondes, surely he could find another with ease. What made this one special?

Thus is the mind of the writer, perhaps. Perhaps these details were created fictitiously. Maybe I saw things that simply weren’t there; exaggerations, perhaps, to construct a readable experience.

As her order came up, he made his way back to her. Apparently while fixing his coffee, he had prepared a note on a piece of paper. This note was then casually slipped next to her drink as she went to pick it up, and as he passed the woman, he gave off a sly, satisfied smirk. To him, it was success. He left the building a new man.

She, however, crumpled the slip into a ball and tossed it in the trash can. Where he had seen victory, she had seen laziness. Cowardice, perhaps, could he not simply speak to her? Was he so disillusioned with his own pride that he thought hooking this woman would be so easy as slipping her a note?

Impossible.

The Reader

Unlike everyone else in the store, he’s sitting at the counter. Two binders, both red, spread out on either side of him, dozens of cluttered papers between them. He flips pages back and forth, eyeing over one sheet and returning to another. A ballpoint pen dances between his fingers. He’s in uniform, Air Force it appears, and he’s obviously studying for something. I can’t imagine he’d be looking over classified documents in a place as public as Starbucks, though from the amount of black on his papers he very well may be doing just that. 

The man is of some type of Asian descent, but he has no discernable foreign accent — if anything, he speaks with a heavy Brooklyn accent instead. I hear him probably three times while I’m there: Once to ask for his first cup of tea, once to ask for a Black Eye (dripped coffee with two shots of espresso, so it’s safe to say the man’ll be up for a few more hours), and a final time to say goodnight to the employees upon closing time. When the barista hands him his Black Eye, he pounds it back like a champion. The barista is impressed, something I gauge from the way her eyes open wide and her audible “Wow!”

His pen scribbles on several sheets of paper, sometimes dotting the same location while his eyes scan back and forth. His left knee bounces up and down like a sewing machine while he goes over this mass of information. Maybe he’s studying for a promotion, or maybe he’s just going over information that he’s taking home from work. 

He keeps to himself, sometimes moving papers away from other people if the store gets a little crowded. I can’t tell if that’s out of courtesy or out of privacy — perhaps it’s out of both. Perhaps it’s just one. My mind bounces; on one hand he could simply be studying for something, on the other hand…

On the other, he might be a super secret intelligence officer going over classified documents of a pending alien invasion. What if. That’s what I enjoy about people watching — it’s as much focusing on real details as it is about letting your mind wander. 

Court Over Coffee

Names have been changed to protect the identities of described persons.

“I’m surprised you picked this joint over somewhere else.” John starts off. John’s forty-something, half bald, and wearing a New England Patriots t-shirt. He’s got a chin and a half and he’s wearing sandals with khaki shorts that are far, far too short for his being. I’m divided as to whether or not I like him. I do, on one hand, because of the Patriots shirt — the man may as well be family since he’s wearing that. But I dislike him because he’s trashing my coffee joint.

“I paid three dollars more for this than I would have at 7-Eleven, and it tastes twice as bad.” says Mark, who’s wearing a wrinkled, peach colored polo with jeans that are twice as big as they need to be. He’s also wearing black and white Asic shoes. His sideburns extend into his neck and he wears glasses that make his eyes look ridiculously tiny.

John is Mark’s lawyer. Why they’re here, at Starbucks of all places, discussing Mark’s upcoming legal battle over his alcoholism, is beyond me. Here I am, and there they are literally light years away in some other planetary system. The patio of a Starbucks is no place to openly discuss legal troubles, let alone one’s history with alcohol.

“I want to keep it as plain and simple as possible. Lisa and Marsha are going to say you did it on purpose and they’re going to bring up your previous AA meetings.” says John. “But we’re going to play humility. We’re not going to bring up your history and we’re going to play things out, you know? Here, look at this, just follow this plan and we’ll be fine.”

“Isn’t that — you know, them using other stuff — illegal?”
“No, Mark, pay attention. We’ve gotta be flexible and you can’t grind your teeth here.”

Mark is confused as all hell. He chuckles awkwardly over his apparently disgusting and far overpriced iced coffee, but he continues listening to his lawyer.

“This’ll be good for you. It won’t be easy, but we can compromise. I know you’re gonna laugh.” argues John.
“You didn’t even tell me about that. If you had told me that I’d have told you to fuck off, I could’ve seen that on my own.”
“Well I didn’t realize how many were in there!”
“It’s okay — you’re okay. Where’s David at? We haven’t gotten to talk to him…is he going to be there?”
“I-…,” John stumbles, taking a sip of his water, “I don’t know.”

From what I understand, Mark threw a fit at one of his recent AA meetings that he was ordered to attend after being arrested for driving while very, very heavily intoxicated.

“The cop asked me if he knew I almost killed a guy!” laughs Mark.
“Well you did, but we’re accepting that and, you know, you’ve got your chips.”

Lisa — another attendee of an AA meeting — was the victim of Mark’s outrage. She’s going after him for “assault or psychological stress or some shit like that”, says John. “Worst case scenario, you get put up for a few days and they move you to rehab. Fuckin’ paradise, man, you get massages and treated like a prince.”

Mark doesn’t seem to believe him. He becomes quiet and leans into John, waving his arms around and whispering loudly enough for those around him to realize he’s trying to keep something a secret but not loudly enough to know what it is he’s saying.

“You can drink more, just don’t drive when you do it! A fifth a day!” jests John.
“I’ve been clean for months, John! I haven’t had anything!”
“You know that and I know that but I’m just saying, you’re gonna be okay.”

His court date is coming up soon, apparently, within the next month. Mark takes out a cigarette and lights it up before asking where the ashtrays are — apparently he’s ignorant of the fact that Starbucks recently banned smoking within 25 feet of their stores, a rule that I’ve seen countless people break. He drops his ashes onto the concrete beneath him.

“What we could do is bring in other group members, I don’t know, ones that weren’t there that day.”
“Why?”
“They can attest to your previous behavior. Make you seem innocent.”

Seem innocent. I need to mull that over. I don’t know why people choose Starbucks for these kinds of conversations — cheating, divorce, alcoholism, shady legal advice — but I’m glad they do, otherwise what would I blog about?

The Little Sh*t

He’s here more often than I am, and the people here like him less than the freebie skater boy. Sure he’s only a kid, but there’s something about him that just doesn’t sit right with the people around him.

His height is basically non-existent. He is, at best, four-foot-something. Shaved head, big teeth, and he’s always “dancing”. I’m sure to him it looks like he’s the next Justin Timberlake or Michael Jackson or some other smooth pop-star, but in his outward appearance he looks awkward and corny. Of course there’s nothing wrong with awkward and corny — I myself was an utterly terrible mixture of those two when I was his age. The difference, however, is that I wasn’t so outwardly and inexplicably rude to the people around me.

He comes in every night with a man that appears to be his grandfather — though it could be his dad, I won’t pretend to know. They don’t really talk to one another even when they leave the store and sit for a couple of hours at a table outside. The man he comes in with orders a tall coffee, as plain and bold and black as tar. He used to order the kid a cup of water but has since stopped that because they started charging for it. While the older man waits for his drink, the kid runs or walks or dances around the store as if it were his home. He bumps into people and doesn’t say “excuse me” or apologize, he’ll — no, look, one time he came up to me and stared at my laptop screen for a solid minute before looking at me and saying “‘Sup?”

‘Sup? ‘Sup? Who the hell does this shortstack think he is?

Like the freebie boy, this one has a reputation as well. Where the other kid asks for free stuff, this one is known for his rudeness and inability to stop doing things when people ask him to stop. He’s known for his sense of entitlement.

“Is he in school?” asks one of the baristas.
“No, I don’t think so,” starts another, “I asked him if he was and he told me he wasn’t allowed to go to school.”

They laugh in disbelief. Not allowed to go to school? That’s crazy talk.

“One time I caught him with his hand in the tip jar!” says an employee.
“Oh my god! What did you do?”
“I yelled at him! I told him to get his hand out of it and told him to leave before I called the cops!”
“That’s crazy. He’s so rude!”

They laugh again, this time in agreement. They discuss a time when he purposely knocked over a container of half & half and ran out before they could get to him. Why they even let him back inside is beyond me, why they haven’t talked to the man that brings the boy in is even further beyond me.

Behind me sits another man on a MacBook, and through the sounds of spitting espresso machines and laughing baristas I hear four simple words roll off his tongue…

What a little shit.

Hostile Conversation

Names have been changed to protect the identities of described persons.

Starbucks is, admittedly, a poor place to rekindle any romance. I love it as much as the next caffeine deprived person, but it isn’t the ideal place to re-ignite the flame that a 30-year marriage can apparently put out.

But here they are. Tim, sitting barrel chested with a silver crew cut, and Betty, a Martha Stewart-esque portrayal of a woman in her fashion but not her build — they sit awkwardly opposite one another at the same small table Mike and Jennifer sat at. They got here a few minutes after I did, ordered quickly and sat quietly. For the first ten minutes there was almost no conversation, the two of them just scrolled through their iPhones (she was up to date with an iPhone 5, he was falling behind with an older iPhone 3G). The two of them face the Subway across the street. He sits on the right side of the table, she on the left. Her phone beeps and she smiles, thus initiating the first of a few awkward conversations.

“What’s that?” he asks her.
“Nothing, just something a friend sent me.”
“Which friend? Natalie?”
“Nope, you don’t know…” she starts, seemingly distracted by her phone again, “…her.”

He nods his head and continues scrolling, and has yet to even take a sip from his drink. A venti-something-or-another, I assume it’s hot because it comes in a tall white cup as opposed to a clear one. Betty places her phone into her purse and grabs her…what is that, a caramel frappuccino? Let’s call it that. She sips her frappuccino and stares blankly towards the Ross across the road.

“I should go to Ross tomorrow — see if they have any luggage.”
“Why do you need luggage?” prods Tim.
“I told you, work is sending me to Indiana next month for a conference.”
He grunts, “I must have forgotten.”

Tim’s phone goes off. His ringtone, oddly, is Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'”, which is loud enough to cause myself and the group of what appear to be Muslim men to stare directly at him. Come on, Tim, don’t you know Starbucks doubles as a library?

“Hey man,” he starts, “No, no, I’m just sitting here.”

The phrase “just sitting here” causes his wife to look at him and sigh before taking another sip of her drink (Tim has still yet to even touch his). I feel like Betty wants something more than her frappuccino, though, perhaps wine. Perhaps a large fishbowl of wine, maybe a margarita. She seems desperate for contact, but more than just simple conversation…like she wants to laugh. She hasn’t even noticed that Tim’s removed himself from his seat to walk over to their car and talk, pacing back and forth, throwing his hands in front of him like he’s talking to someone who is actually in front of him. He returns about five minutes later with a reddened face.

“What’s wrong?” his wife asks.
“Huh? Oh, nothing, we just have to get rid of a few people.”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t ask.”

Tim finally puts his phone away and, at long last, takes a sip of his drink. He looks at it, puzzled, and puts it back down. It’s the only time he’ll touch it all night, and he leaves it on the table when they leave.

“What’d you do today?” Tim asks his wife.
“I was off today.”
“I know, but what’d you do?”
“I had another man over and had my way with him.” she jokes, but Tim just stares at her blankly.
“And I fucked my secretary. What’d you actually do?”
“I talked to Marcia [their daughter] and I went grocery shopping, Tim, I know you wanted salami so I got some.”

Betty appeared to be joking, but now I see why Tim was so persistent in finding out who made her laugh earlier. Maybe there was some infidelity in their marriage, but on whose side? Did Tim actually fuck his secretary? Their banter went on for another ten minutes, talking about different work related things (Betty works for a pharmaceutical company, Tim works for an aviation company), before finally leaving.

Betty and I lock eye contact while she struts behind Tim, and I swear I saw the slyest smirk form on her face.

The Regulars

“No foam havin’ people.” says the blonde barista. The two people in line — married, she’s white with pink hair and he’s black with a pointed beard — have just returned from Chesapeake, getting to the store thirty minutes before it closes. Like myself, they’re regulars here…but more regular than myself I presume, especially with the way they carry on conversation with the two people working tonight.

They’re both loaded with tattoos up and down their arms. Two particular ones stand out most on him; a hand of cards with unreadable cursive text overhead, and a flaming skull that appears to be staring right at me. On her left calf there appears to be a woman in a cape holding a gun, above which its a woman in daisy dukes and cowboy boots.

The two of them know the employees well, going back and forth with stories of their children and significant others and friends — someone named Katy (Katey? Katie?) is going to Africa sometime soon for a study abroad program. Laughter, and lots of it, erupt from both sides of the counter. Among the topics discussed are people being shot at, a guy masturbating outside of the store, and what kinds of coffee the man likes.

Oh yeah, that’s happened more than once. A homeless guy also peed on one of their windows in broad daylight.

In his hand is a large iced white mocha, something he’s never had before. He’s taken aback by the drink, unsure of whether or not he likes it. Between now and the time I leave, he’s taken maybe a few sips of the drink so I guess he doesn’t like it. His loss, I love white mocha.

Now they’re back to discussing foam in coffee. Apparently the woman was recently at a Barnes & Noble “Starbucks” (they don’t take gift cards, so they aren’t a real Starbucks) and asked for her drink with no foam, only to be served a drink with extra foam. “That barista was kind of a bitch,” she starts, “which is why I should have just come here!”

Oh, man, now they’re talking about a restaurant I used to work at. Apparently one of the employees was there last Sunday twerking, though she vehemently denies doing such a thing. “I had a few drinks!” she says, which meets laughter from all parties. They discuss making plans to go out as a group, bouncing different locations back and forth. “This place has a great Southwest burger!” clashes against “The appetizers here are perfect!”, but they all agree that they should get together.

But it’s five minutes from closing time, and I have to start making my way west for the night.