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. 

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 Ginger & His Mom

Thousands of little orange wires sprout from his scalp, where bulks of curls collapse onto one another. Freckles by the masses dot the kid’s face, which surround two murky green eyes. He’s young, though I’m not sure how young – ten, maybe, let’s go with ten years old. It seems like kids always look younger than they actually are, especially now that I’m in college.

He walks back and forth a lot, waiting for his mother – here with him – to get off the computer. “When are you going to be done?” he asks every few minutes, only to be met with rolling eyes and responses like “Soon” and “Be quiet.”

He’s wearing camouflage pants (the kind that zip off at the knees to turn into shorts) and a bright orange t-shirt – brighter than his hair – with light up shoes that flash red and blue with every step he takes, pacing and pacing some more. He leans in over his mother’s shoulder, staring at what she’s doing until she rubs her head into her shoulder as if to tell him to go away – leave her alone.

His hands touch everything; every surface of every table and door and trashcan, and then they touch his face. I shudder every time he does it.

Unlike her son, she is not a redhead. Her hair is wiry and sandy brown with streaks of grey riding through it. Early forties, probably, as I can see some wrinkles starting to line her face. She’s working on her laptop, an older silver Dell model – I don’t know what she’s working on, but I know it runs Windows XP. She has headphones plugged into her ears, but I’m not sure if she’s actually listening to anything because she can hear her son just fine.

I’m guessing she has them in so no one bothers her, a fact that doesn’t deter her son from constantly prodding her with questions like “When are we leaving?” and “What are you doing?”

She’s wearing a purple sweater – which is ridiculous given how warm it is outside – and green khaki pants with brown moccasins. With those shoes, I might add, she’s wearing bright pink socks. A clear, half-empty cup of iced coffee is sweating, leaving a nice sized puddle of water around itself.

Her son walks outside after another failed attempt to get her to go home, looks at me and asks, “What’s up?”

I nod and say “Not much.”

He’s resting against the window with his hands behind his back, pushing himself away from the window and falling back into it over and over again – something I too do when I’m bored and leaning. He sighs a deep, exaggerated sigh and kicks his toes against the concrete. Inside, I see his mom close her laptop and shovel it into a briefcase before standing up, stretching, and downing the remainder of her iced coffee.

Excited to finally be leaving, the ginger boy runs back inside and stands next to his mother while she checks her phone. It’s like she’s making him wait on purpose, just because he kept annoying her with questions. Eventually they begin to walk towards the door, before she changes direction and, instead, walks into the bathroom – the one place he cannot follow her.

In a final moment of despair and disbelief – an act of surrender – he throws his hands into the air and once more leans his back into the wall.