The Man Who Ordered Black Coffee and Wanted Nothing Else

June nineteenth.

There was a man at the café this afternoon, the one on the corner I end up at when I don't have a plan, who ordered black coffee, sat down by the window, and did not open a book or a laptop or his phone. He just sat there. For almost an hour. I know because I was there first and I left second, and he was still in the same seat when I went. He wasn't staring at anything in particular. He wasn't waiting for someone. He had his coffee and then, when it was gone, he had an empty cup and apparently that was fine too. He left looking like a man who had gotten exactly what he came for.

I have been thinking about that for the rest of the day and I'm not sure why. Maybe because I came in with my whole small production, iced coffee, a vague sense that I should be doing something with a Wednesday afternoon, the particular performance of a person who is Being Somewhere Intentionally, and he just. sat. I have been in that café probably forty times and I don't think I have ever once been that settled in my own presence. I brought myself in like luggage and he brought himself in like he lived there.

the face you make when you're technically inside but mentally somewhere else entirely

I don't know anything about him. He could have been anyone. But for some reason I keep landing on: he knew exactly what he needed from the afternoon, which was nothing, and he let himself have it. I don't know how to do that yet. I think I'm getting closer.

the iced coffee that lasted an hour and a half because I kept forgetting about it

Some days the observation is the whole point. I walked home in the long way on purpose. The light was doing something good with the buildings and Father's Day weekend still had that particular energy of people running small errands for other people, picking up cards, carrying bakery bags. I noticed it all. That felt like enough.