Coffee Shop Mornings, a Glitch in the Matrix.

I see the same people every morning.  The same sweaty men and women slowly bounce their way past my little corner of coffee shop.  They run early.  Early, before the sloppy tongue of humidity makes the smallest movements exhausting.   They don’t look in my window and if they did they’d see me pretending not to see them.  They wear spandex pants or flimsy iridescent short shorts and shirts that wick. 

Every morning, the same guy behind the counter swipes my card and pours me my first extra large bowl of coffee for the day.  He speaks too loudly and is too proud and arrogant, given where he is standing.  He’s like the homeless man outside the bar in LA that berated me on account of the Triumph shirt I was wearing because I liked it for fashion, and not its rich motoring history. Except my coffee pourer smiles and is nice, and has not recently peed himself.

I see the same people every morning.  The woman who sits across from me every morning who shows all of her teeth when she smiles because it’s genuine. Small talk gets smaller and smaller and we are soon silently working. 

Clicking away. 

The guy with the Porsche comes in.  He is tall and half-Asian and has a ponytail.  I imagine him being an IT Director, the kind of guy I used to sell toner to.  I dislike him even though I don’t know him.

The same dogs waddle by, walking their owners.  The dogs are patient with them, stopping to let their anchors catch up.

When she comes in, I have to take a break and watch her. She’s small and thin and Asian. The IT Director’s sister?  She’s older than me and has impeccable fashion sense.  I never see her car because she parks around the corner but I can imagine her in an Acura, or a convertible.  She enjoys driving and looks good in everything.

The bicycle guy comes in and roughly sets his bag down on the table across from me. I’ve never seen his bicycle.

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

Exactly one hour later, my coffee bowl is refilled by the girl behind the counter. 

During the early part of the week, there’s a different guy behind the counter that says, “man” a lot.  As in, “hey, man, your usual today?  Cool, man.  Here you go, man.” I imagine he is aware of his speech impediment and is consciously making the effort to speak normally and failing.  Either that or he is not very creative.  I like him either way.

I sit down at seven in the morning and leave around nine.  Sometimes I buy a quiche or a ham and cheese croissant.  They are both my weakness.

The people here see me every day. They must imagine I am working on something important because I type loudly.