Every morning, I trundle on down to my local coffee shop where I sit at a table by a picture window to the right of the front door. I order iced tea, regardless of season. I open my laptop to review email and begin the day’s work of teaching creative writing to college students in a different state. I am happy with employment as portable employment.
Yet every day my happy work extends to my serious work: window witness, sometimes directly, but always peripherally. I see the stooped-over grandmother who asks for bus money in the last week of the month. I see the 30-something man who talks to an invisible someone and has not stuck to his A.A. plan. I see a toddler in a stroller whose father has face tats and is pushing the stroller a little too fast on his way to what we locals call the Heroin Hilton three blocks away. Every day or two, a scary disheveled woman comes in to buy coffee and is muttering fuck this and fuck that while paying. I do not know what happened to the woman who had finally gotten into a Section 8 apartment a bit north. She still owes me $20 and I know she hasn’t forgotten because she always paid me back before.
I suspect our purported beautiful federal budget will not mean much to those whom I watch from my window. But it will mean much to those who may join their ranks, new faces I may come to know.
No gangs operate in Florida, according to a young man asking my advice about make-up at Walgreen’s. One teardrop tattoo by his left eye marks not a man murdered as we expect it means here with California gangs. No. That one’s for his brother who got shot in the eye back in Florida where there are no gangs.
Doesn’t mean the same thing there, says he.
I need a dark concealer, says he. My mom says that’s what I need.
You going for a job interview? I say.
Uh huh, says he.
Nothing in L’Oreal. Almay doesn’t have anything close. We check the ‘ethnic’ section. Lot of good that does–only hair products.
No market here for dark make-up, I say to him.
We keep looking. Finally his friend with the skateboard finds something in Maybelline.
That will do, I remark. You have to pat it on. Don’t smear it ’cause it won’t look right. Maybe take some toilet paper and pat it so it looks like skin texture. You know you could have that thing lasered off, right?
No, he says. I want to keep it. It’s for my brother.
What kind of job you getting?
Oh, anything. I’m going to college. Gonna be an English teacher.
Oh? says I. Literature? Grammar?
Literature is okay–I don’t mind reading it. But grammar. Now that’s what I want.
Oh, I say. We need you. I’m gonna be dead someday and somebody has to get it all set right ’cause I don’t think I can fix everything before I head out. You press on.
Faced with a disoriented, hacking, sore-covered man who had been lingering for hours at the coffee shop, I wondered about my plan to continue grading papers there. The barista had been shuffling him from place to place, and his perch was now the chair in front of me. I got up to get a refill. Now I returned to work with him drumming on the table.
I stalled. Gathered up my stuff. Stood around. Man got up to move away. At least I would be a few feet further away from his coughing.
On further scrutiny, nope. The seat was still too close. Gathered up stuff. Stood. The barista now said to him, You have to leave.
Next: a former student of mine from the high school. One shoe. Wet shirt. Bandaged hand and black eye. He shivered but knew he couldn’t come into the coffee shop with only one shoe. Could somebody call him a ride? he asked at the doorway.
He wanted someone to come pick him up. Mental health facility wouldn’t send transport, he told me when I went outside. He continued to shiver. I recommended he sit at the table by the door where he might be a bit more sheltered from the breeze and drizzle.
He told me the police should come. When I called, the police balked: they had already dealt with him once today in a scuffle at the Rescue Mission. Finally the dispatcher agreed to send someone. Student did not want the sirens, though. He doesn’t like them. Not to worry: the police took their time.
Do you drink coffee or tea? I asked.
Coffee.
Cream?
Anything you want, he said.
I remember you from the high school, I said.
Oh yeah? What year did I graduate? he asked me.
I was a year off.
But he smiled broadly–nice white teeth. Happy.
Coffee handed over. Was he now 20? Been on the street for at least a year that I knew about. Five months in jail for stealing a car. Next, he said, he would have to go to prison. He does not want that.
Police came–an impatient officer who had broken up the tussle at the Rescue Mission.
He needs to step up and become a man, said the officer.
Flying Hermes 