The thing about outdoor cafes is, on the occasional decent day during those touristy months,that the pedestrian traffic can stretch your lunch break unintentionally. This is not one one of those beautiful days. Sopping wet everywhere, but there had been no rain, just a low, thick, blanket of fog. It hovers around the belts and purses of those business types, walking purposefully, as each droplet they push through clings to their tastefully assembled outfits.
Glances back an forth from the small cup of coffee on the table to the window at the far end of the room are easily distracted. The mug is well used, cracked and stained in a mesmerizing pattern that is remarkably familiar, but no clear memories come to mind. That seems to happen more and more, something insignificant will catch the eye and those certain nerve receptors begin to shout and scream inside your own brain to remember the invaluable life lesson attached to the image of a paperclip bent into no particular shape at all. Back through the window more unimportant tasks were being dealt with en route to the office, some of these may have seemed important to those listening, but too little was known about these unnamed eavesdroppers to really judge their perspective. It is assumed that they eventually will have either died or gone on to fame and riches. These outcomes are respectively disheartening and vapid.
The coffee house was once an arena for political and philosophical discourse, a place for those who thought deeply and introspectively about this existence and their insignificant place in it. Now all that can be found here are self indulgent hipsters. People who scoff at the mainstream while their own underground band, with such the obscure influences you probably haven't heard of, tries desperately to get a song into the next free credit score ad.
Out the window the fog is lifting and gently reveals the other side of the street. In a small alcove between an old brownstone and what will probably end up as a coldstone creamery there is a beggar. He could be homeless, ill, forgotten. He could even be a woman, misfortune is wonderfully progressive when it comes to sex, the probability of a vagrant ever complaining that they make 25% less panhandling because they are a woman must be staggeringly high against. Though, the probability that it has happened without an ear to hear it or a mind to care must be marginally more likely.
A woman makes her way across the street towards the cafe. She is tall slender and graceful, with shoulder length hair that turns from a soft chocolate to a sweet shade of auburn in the small streams if sunlight that struggle diligently through the fog. Several once shiny bells are crudely tacked to the door as a makeshift alarm, they hardly made a sound as she enters softly into the cafe. Not many customers look up from their drinks and literature, the predictable ones do. Each of them insecure wallflowers that need to know who was entering at any moment for fear of that most unwanted encounter with someone they haven't seen in years.they mostly sit alone, in quiet desperation of someone to talk to, to share with, even someone to simply brush up against them as they walk by. These people have all but forgotten how good it feels to be in contact with another living breathing entity. They sheepishly do their best to convey an introspective depth that is nothing more than loneliness at it's most damaging.
She makes her way across the floor taking placein line and waits. She is comfortable and confident, doesn't look at the menu, and leaves her phone in her back pocket. It is rare, in these times, to see a person idling without pulling out a gizmo to satiate their constant desire for stimulation. She seems satisfied to simply have a moment without distraction. This subdued self confidence would be the most attractive thing about her were it not for the bright, piercing green eyes that would turn any of medusa's victims from stone back to flesh and bone, and then promptly melt them into a puddle of awe and inadequacy.
Infatuation. It can be dangerous. Love at first sight may seen ineffective as a means f finding a lifelong companion but it has evolutionary roots. Animals are instinctually looking for a mate that exemplifies the platonic ideal of that animal (although these animals probably have never considered Plato to begin with). In order to propagate their species they want the best adapted individual possible, the evolutionary advances that underlie the attractive attributes are the byproduct of the selective breeding of the genetic code. As can be seen in any domestic breeds. The marvel that we exist in the way we do is largely thanks to natural selection. It means more than which antelope the lion will catch, it is a statistical analysis of natural interactions between predator, prey, and environment.
This cafe is our environment.
She speaks softly, even in the relatively calm space I can't make out more than a whisper. The barista strains his ear and leans in to make out her order, he does not seem to mind this. He smiles, In the short amount of time I have known this woman existed I Have already imagined her entire life, her as a child, how she treated her family, classmates, anyone she encountered. An entire fictional back story designed to make her seem perfect is every way. This process is practice for the creative mind but completely detrimental to any social relationships. Imagining someone being perfect, however shallow the dream, only leads to disappointment.
No one ever lives up to the fictional standards of a lunatic introvert.
It is too late, though, her unreal self is already established in my mind. I already know she volunteers at soup kitchens on thanksgiving, she has a birthmark on her left shoulder just to the side of her bra strap, she had her first kiss in the back hallway behind the art and music rooms. Once i find out that none of that is true I resent her for not being so perfect, without ever knowing her at all.
She pays for her coffee tips the barista all the change a a single bill. I can see the side of her cup marked with familiar coffee shop shorthand, m/b/Xb. Medium black extra bold.
Then her name: Esme.
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