She sat down at the window as was her routine at the Streetcorner Café. Looking out into the city’s traffic, with its cars, and lights, and pedestrians and curious glares, she felt for a moment as if she were on display. In a fast and familiar movement, she flicked her bag off its shoulder and swung it onto the stool stood next to the one she had chosen.
The movements that followed were just as unconscious as those that had glided her to the window perch. One hand into the bag, out come a notepad. Royal green. The grasp of another compartment produced a pen. Fire engine red. Err, no. Back in again. Jet black.
The bag made her seem like a magician and it made her feel good. It was her sister’s bag, and they were the only people in the world who would ever get to know it so well. It crossed her mind more than once, mostly on walks home at night, that she would die before giving the bag up to a mugger. In a braver moment, she once mused to a friend that she’d kill that kind of mugger before parting ways with the bag. She laughed after saying it, and blushed too, before revealing the half truth of her bold assertion.
“What might I miss about today, later?” she scribbled atop a page in her notepad. She was being somewhat sloppy. It wasn’t exactly like that, but it was close. What might she miss about the way things were today, say, in twenty years? What about today would be nostalgic tomorrow? This was the gist. Her left hand assumed an unusual angle as she wrote, but one that she had become used to. The hand was well-acquainted with the sentence, with how to feel it out on to the page, with how to execute its words’ letters. Despite developing a dexterity with it, she felt like she’d gained little skill in thinking productively about the question. She was told this would get easier but much like other professional advice, she treated it with suspicion.
She wasn’t a faithful girl by any means, but she knew faith wasn’t something to toy with either. Even if one didn’t have time for it, one could still respect it. Hope seemed to be different than faith. It too was dangerous, but she felt as though it was more random than faith. Random got a poor shake. It was an underdog of experience but a grand winner in the long run. She was, anyway, able to find hope within herself on the main point. Things like thinking would get easier. Of course they would. Some certainties were simply too appealing to abandon. Why call the hope god, though? And why not find hope here? Who, exactly, was watching that closely?
She watched as a car inched into the crosswalk at the light in front of her window. She watched rather carefully. The inching called a familiar thought to mind. The accident was seventeen months old and another of the monthly anniversaries was incoming. Down to earth, down to her life. Each day leading up to that day of the month weighed more but still less than the last. This was the recent trend at least, and she clung to it. She hated herself when a numb patch morphed into a rough one, when advances were retracted by the universe. She had learned, since the accident, not to take any gains for granted. They were precious even if her sister couldn’t be anymore.
In the weirder moments, she thought about how generous the accident had been. This had the effect of making it seem like less than what it was to her. It certainly provided more than its fair share of work for professional types. Fire fighters and tow truck drivers sunk their teeth into it first. That work was necessary, and it was honourable, much like the work at the hospital had been. Doctors were good people and deserved to work. She saw no issue with that. They tended to be quite helpful even in their failures. She knew they weren’t magicians. She knew fate had come calling that day. What else could it do?
Who else? The insurance adjustors paid for more than a few meals with the work the accident provided to them. They were distasteful and cruel and shared a table with the lawyers in her mind. Maybe that was unfair. She remained undecided as her sister would have preferred. Before turning to herself, she lost interest in where she was going. This destination in thought wasn’t one she stayed at for long. Predictably, she would catch a train to some other place before her mood took a turn, before anger reached up and out of the dirt to grab her. Back to the point, and to the party, she thought defiantly, carried there by the noise around her.
Regardless of how she remembered it, other questions had trouble flowing from the first. She had turned on it before, getting fed up with its command of her attention. But like an annoying and competent coworker, she couldn’t help but have respect for the question. Her thoughts had lost flavour recently, as if caged, starved, and forgotten. She liked where the idea of nostalgia made her mind wander. It had meat on its bones, not emaciated like her hungry brain was. It had reoriented her away from the reality of her life and far away from the much-overrated present moment. Most importantly, she fell in love with wondering about how her sister would have answered the question. What castles of nuance would she have built? How would she have reframed her own thoughts before they landed? Like their bag, the nooks and crannies of her response would have been many. Her sister was a magician, too. She felt happy she had remembered to rehearse the question amid all the café happenings. Pat on the back.
“Cold brew. Black”. The barista’s proclamation was unfamiliar. It was the same barista from Monday and the Wednesday prior. Perhaps it was the thud the cup came down with that startled her and interrupted her fragile stream of thought. He had thrown her for yet another loop, the clank of the cup evened out and maybe even outweighed the imperfect and enticing cadence of his voice. His command of words always caught her attention and kept it. She made a habit of keeping tabs on who he talked to in the line and what he said about what they ordered. Another opinion man, but one who knew his place and played things to his advantage. Listening to the words grabbed onto and then let go of again had become a bit of a game. She’d even looked up more than a few of the words he uttered. Did he think of himself as a teacher? Cold, she thought, as she warmed up to it, clutching the ceramic mug with more than hands and eyes.
This should make the list, she decided during a sip. “The afternoon cafe, alone, free” is what she stitched between two lines on the paper. It seemed true. Time wouldn’t afford this sort of excursion as often as it ticked along. She nestled it next to a dash, knowing full well that she was only half trying but also in need of starting somewhere. Get something on the page and be in a hurry to do it, was, she thought, some of the best advice she’d ever been given.
She had grown accustomed to these café sessions immediately after the real ones. Why wait until getting home to tend to the question and raise answers? The quiet of the apartment, its true emptiness, gosh, even when full, wasn’t in league with the bustle of the café. The apartment had its place, she knew that, but she wasn’t there, in mind nor body – not yet. Justifying Streetcorner on the list was logical stuff, even if a lay up. She liked the café, and missed it once before, so why couldn’t she again?
People of all kinds populated the café. It wasn’t owned by any single generation, identity, or category. It resisted easy classification and that is why she came back to it. She liked its hardness and its unpredictability. By way of example, there was a fight right in front of the counter a year or so before the accident. An argument about line etiquette that she still couldn’t make sense of despite watching it from start to finish. She avoided the pushing and shoving even though she was next in line. The casualties were limited to the sweet that day, an entire display of chocolate croissants and sable breton cookies called to the floor in the mayhem of the moment. Sable breton were her sister’s favourite.
Streetcorner housed more lovers than haters - or fighters, for that matter. Its evening inflow contributed to what she heard referred to as the ‘vibe’ on more than one occasion. Location, location, location proved true when it came to the café’s cool constitution. The shisha den across the street drove down the average age of evening attendees unsatisfied with just nicotine, for example. The Yoga Mat next-door increased the chill, and the spandex. But these were unreliable rules, and chaos was still always on offer. The café was like the city, she thought - without rule.
Today’s cohort was a real mishmash, and a classic haul for a Wednesday evening. She flicked around while thinking about her question, as if looking for the answers in the faces of those there with her. They were in the trenches of their own adventures, and she found herself wondering about their stories. Peering around, she thought she caught the eye of a middle-aged man sitting at a table with his wife. He was slender and bespectacled and seemed like someone used to commanding attention. His attention wouldn’t be unexpected, but today it wasn’t true. His gaze was squarely fixed on another young woman, about her age and about to pass by and join the table. She hadn’t figured it out before it was obvious. After a very warm embrace, one that seemed automatic and familiar, learned even, the young woman with her clutch slid into the conversation as if she’d never been missing. Daughter. Eldest? Unsure. She watched them for a moment more before looking back toward the counter where a large line was now flirting with development. How busy would it get, she wondered. Would the barista with the seamless voice get overwhelmed amidst the suppertime rush? The café doubled as a walk-away restaurant and in this hard part of the town the people were always hungry.
She raised and then lowered her coffee, captivated by a man in a suit. It looked as though he had thrown it on in a rush. He pulled up at the window next to her. The insurance of her bag’s stool was now fully realized. This one was different than the typical space invader. He was, it was immediately obvious, in his own world. There would be no embarrassing and bumbling introduction or ‘nice weather isn’t it’ or ‘have you tried their sandwiches; I’ve heard the sandwiches are spectacular’. His focus was singular. His purpose was singular. It was to have the cupcake he had just purchased from smoothvoice meet the pit of his stomach as quickly as was physically possible. Watching him look down at the cupcake as he prepared himself, she thought about the greatest argument for agnosticism she had ever heard spoken. Like a human being stumbling upon a termite hill, it’s not that he doesn’t see me, she recalled, it’s that he can’t see me. She considered the conceit of the thought and the irony of the scene but was too enthralled to muster any ode to the moment. No smirk. No scoff. He had no idea as to what proper cupcake etiquette might be today. She was helpless. What was left to her now was simply to watch.
The man held the cupcake like a hamburger as the annihilation began. It rose vertically and then on a bent angle before crashing into his face. The bloodied remains of the innocent left its mark on her. Old and thick saliva glued the icing and sprinkles to his lips. Those same lips smacked together rhythmically and too fast for drool and gravity to dance. Somehow exactly none of the remnants flew from his face. She wondered whether he might just choke on it after all. Gravity always wins, but maybe it would be more obvious if he choked. What made things so? Had he not eaten today, she wondered. Had he not eaten ever before in his life? Had someone invited him to the party? Could a cupcake taste that good? Something was missing from what she was witnessing.
She herself had choked before and it was not something she wanted to experience again. Spectating would be better than partaking in the choking, that seemed obvious enough. But the bystander effect had no legs in the café today. They were relatively isolated. If he did decide to make a show of it and clog his airway with the sweet mess of custard and dough, she would have to do something, wouldn’t she? She was invested now, but curiosity saved her. Maybe the middle-aged man was a physician or ambulance attendant. Maybe his wife was. Maybe their daughter was. Maybe they all were. She didn’t break her stare to look in his direction, but maybe smoothvoice was trained in the art of resuscitation. She once interrupted him blowing up balloons she had recalled. Blowing into lungs couldn’t be that different. Was this even his real job? It occurred to her that if the man in the suit did choke on it, whoever saved him might well share the taste of the cupcake. The thought of the ignorant spreading the celebration in such an absurd way was almost too rich but she enjoyed it.
She broke all social convention with the duration of her stare and with her own open mouth half mimicking his movements. The risk was limited to those spectating her spectating but that seemed like a fair trade for this kind of show. The man was a bit of a puzzle. Traditional attractive, she thought. Boring in the next moment. Then stupid. She could be mean. She landed on simple in the end, noticing a red circular mark around his left ring finger. No ring.
Somehow, he seemed knowledgeable of the risks she had identified. Like a gull packing its gullet in a parking lot, he tilted his head back as he swallowed. She respected this strategy, controlling for the craziness of it all. Swallowing air was okay now and then but breathing cupcake would come with complication. He treated the treat like something he loved to destroy, she thought. It wasn’t his first time, and it did ring like ritual. He gnawed at it like a rat and then ran the edges of his teeth up and down the muffin wrapper that used to encase a perfectly normal looking cupcake. He was shameless and incapable of any shift in strategy. She was repulsed and changing but couldn’t summon the movements necessary to look away. Not yet.
The man had not finished swallowing before he mashed the wrapper together, as if squeezing a tube of toothpaste between his fingers. It was, she decided, a bizarre party trick. He licked the icing that fell to his thumb. Then, without warning, he deployed the hook of a wet and grubby index finger into the deep end of a nostril. This was a different unexpected than she’d come to expect at Streetcorner. She immediately turned away, her spine swiveling as fast as a flash of lightning. It was a primal movement, one both known and unknown to her. All curiosity about his next course had quickly melted away. She didn’t take notice in the window’s reflection, but smoothvoice had been watching her the entire time, and released a small squeal of laughter when she relocated her gaze. She returned to the notepad, its question, and the street laid before her as the man in the suit wandered off. Take care with the crosswalk she thought to herself, watching to ensure he made it to the other side in one piece. Lucky him.
She thought more about the question before distraction set in again. She began to eavesdrop on what appeared to be a first date operating at a slow clip. What would become of that? The conversation wasn’t anything to cherish, even to a nosey bystander. She took turns criticizing each of their responses in her head, as if conducting some sort of assessment of the couple. It was obviously enough a first meeting. “So, were you born here?” “What kind of music do you like?” It was obviously enough a boring meeting. “Have you ever used a standing desk?” “What do you most fear?” Didn’t they know dates weren’t supposed to be interviews? Play it cool, dude, she thought, and was even tempted to go over and whisper in his ear. He would pass out if she did, she was sure. The café had already flirted with medical disaster once today and she wasn’t one to taunt fate.
As she listened more her criticisms softened. They were young and seemed to be enjoying each other’s company and the dance. Despite however simple it all seemed, where was the badness in it? Maybe they were heating up, like an engine does. Maybe they would soar, like and eagle does. Listening to them came with a treat of its own. Where do our fears really come from, she edited and then asked herself. A good question but not for right now.
“My general physical health”, shot out of the pen and down onto the page under the line about the café. The first date turned her mind to it for some reason. This one didn’t have the quality of being a lie, or a half truth. Of course she would, at some point, look back in envy at her current physical state. The only necessary ingredient for that was time, and not getting wiped out by some other incident of the universe. While not a fib, the contribution had poor qualities all the same. It was both banal and predictable. Such a toxic combination, one that made her feel a bit cheap for letting it pass customs and touch the clean white of the paper. Still, it was another item on the list that she was building. She reasoned that “physical health” wasn’t so much a synonym for good looks, even though her mind also went there. It should make the list, she declared. Whatever she did think about her looks, it wasn’t that they didn’t matter, it was that they couldn’t matter. Health should matter. She knew enough to know that.
She swiveled back and forth in the stool with purpose, tightening her amplitude with every change in direction. Watching her up there at the window, one would believe she was on display, and maybe even for sale. Before any sale the music arrived, and just in time, too. She had grown older by filling the void with the tap, tap of her pen. It wasn’t exactly party music, but it was good music, the kind she associated with the café and with smoothvoice. She never asked if it was his and was half guessing on that point, but she was right. Amid the roar of his score, she reached into the ether while no one was watching.
“Time.” So simple and the truest of anything she ever listed in response to the question. What was this anyway, the fourth or fifth voyage together with it at the café? It amazed her how it had escaped her. Finding something this tricky felt like an achievement. No pat on the back.
Time. It was, she knew, something that you could easily misunderstand in this context. Her sister wouldn’t have, and not her, not today, anyway. She thought more about the concept of time, how utterly strange it seemed upon close inspection. Was it bi-directional? If the past was real, wasn’t it only as real as the future, but less than the present moment?
She shifted. Her sister was the first to explain the wonder of light years in an intelligable way. The Andromeda galaxy was a cool 2.5 million light years away from our own Milky Way galaxy, she was taught. She remembered the frisson that came with the next knowledge thrown her way - that this meant any of our earthly images of Andromeda were 2.5 million years old. She looked at the middle-aged man across the café and realized that what she was viewing was also an outdated image, however close to the real thing he might be.
She returned to earth, and the café, and to the party, and time. It was true that she had more time today than she ever would in the future. She also had less than she did a day or year ago. Her mind unseized and it wandered further. She began to negotiate with choice but didn’t pin it to the page because it made itself less immediately exciting than did time. Choice was a good angle though, a good view from which to mold her thoughts. This choice or that choice translated to time, didn’t it? We just couldn’t be sure how. That seemed like both a problem and a solution. She liked how she wasn’t scared of it, and more, how others in her position would be but wouldn’t admit to it. As if something took control of her hands, she flipped the page and started writing.
“Time is elusive. Not merely as a quantity, but also in relation to domains of sense and experience. But suppose its quantity can now be better known. Suppose it repeats itself as if on a tape-recorded loop. In this case life may be marked by a familiar beginning and end, on repeat. Knowledge of the loop is earned through experience, but never explicitly bestowed. Would one recognize the sleep? Wouldn’t the knowledge change one’s actions? One’s ethics? One’s life? Wouldn’t it change experience itself? Choice? Could it be controlled?”
She suddenly liked choice again and wrote it down as a paragraph before slamming the notepad shut and clutching the coffee. She moved more like a spring now, bouncy. She had caught wind of something in the café and knew to relocate for the rest of it. She wasn’t promised an endless supply of content as weird as all of this was in her mind. She hadn’t felt this way in months and needed to play capture correctly. A sense of urgency and energy to do so overcame her.
The place was getting loud and busy, and she had a lead now, a strong one. Maybe it wasn’t even new, maybe it was just fresh feeling to her. That didn’t bother her, really. It didn’t matter because it couldn’t matter. She knew to bottle it up, to take care of it, and to take care of the business the café had delivered to her. Doing it in a hurry, was she thought, the most brilliant birthday present.
Foot meet concrete, bag nearly left atop stool, she launched off to the emptiness anew.