By Adam Moorad
It was early and no one had arrived at the café besides the young girl who stood in the sun next to the railing of the wooden deck. The neighborhood is hot at night but in the morning the cool dew collects and puddles in the warped planks of wood laid flat beneath the girl’s feet as she stands sipping coffee from a tiny blue glass. She seems content as she remains still, looking out across the boulevard at the passing buses, cradling her glass gently with both hands. A waiter who I know is at work un-stacking tables and chairs, aligning them in even lanes along the timber veranda as I watch.
“Do you know her?” the waiter asks.
“No. Why?”
“She seems a bit strange.”
“Why do you say that?”
“She was here before we opened.”
“Is that so strange?”
“She has been there all morning.”
“Why hasn’t she moved?”
“Beats me. She prefers to stand.”
The waiter took my order and walked away. I watched the girl as she stood stiff and alone on the empty terrace where the waiter had arranged the patio furniture. Her shadow cast a long black line along the ground as she was situated in the sun looking out at the thin drizzle of early morning traffic. She leaned gently on the banister and set down her glass. A boy and a girl walked by with a small dog on a leash. A man with headphones jogged past them. I watched the white wires run from his ears down to his waist, swinging back and forth across his hips like a pendulum with each stride.
When the waiter appeared, he stared at the girl from behind as he approached with my food.
“Still there?” he asked me of the girl.
“What does it matter if she likes to stand?”
“She had better sit down or move along soon. Her legs will grow tired.”
The girl waited motionless next to the railing and stared at the street. Behind the boulevard stood a row of the red brick buildings under a bright blue sky full of heavy white clouds. The waiter went over to her.
“Can I get you anything, miss?” he offered.
The girl looked over her shoulder at him. “A refill,” she said politely.
“Anything else?” the waiter said. She looked at him and shook her head no. The waiter walked away.
“I think she will stand there all day,” he said to me quietly as he began wiping off the table tops with a wet bleach rag. Soon, he grew tired and deserted the task.
I ate as I looked on at the girl who remained frozen in the sun light with her eyes fixed on the road. I wondered what held her attention. A woman with a stroller passed. A school bus full of children stopped outside the church on the corner then drove away.
The waiter returned with a pot of coffee and replenished the girl’s glass. “Thank you,” the girl said. The waiter removed the pot’s cap and poured into the girl’s cup. When he finished, he remembered me and drew near again.
“She is sick,” he said.
“With what?”
“She is here every morning.”
“How long has she been coming here?”
“They tell me since before I began here.”
“Why does she stand alone like that?”
“How should I know?”
“And she never moves?”
“Yes. She is here every morning and stands there alone. She never talks to anyone.”
“There is no harm in that.”
“True, but I fear for her sanity.”
“You really think she is sick?”
“She must be to stand there all day.”
“Perhaps she likes it.”
“She’s must be lonely. You and I are not lonely. You and I have places to be and people to meet.”
“She has no places to be or people to meet?”
“No. Not if she stand in the same position all day – everyday – for no good reason.”
“She has no reason?”
“None that I can imagine. I’ve watched her stand there in the rain.”
“She must have a family that looks after her.”
“A family would do her no good. It’s probably too late for her.”
“I imagine so,” I said. “But wouldn’t it be nice to not have places to be and people to meet? Imagine the freedom.”
“Not at all. She has wasted many days standing there and will certainly waste many more. What is freedom if you don’t use it? Look at her.”
“I don’t want to look at her. I want to finish my breakfast. It doesn’t matter to me how she – or anyone else – spends their time.”
The girl looked down vacantly at her glass then over at the waiter.
“Another?” she said, hoisting the blue glass off the banister.
“Empty,” he said as he shook the hollow pot, speaking in the blunt tone that one uses when completing full a sentence would give a person the false impression of accommodation.
The girl turned back around and set her eyes back on the street, placing her empty glass down on her saucer.
The waiter rose slowly, carefully pushed the chair under the table, picked-up the coffeepot, and disappeared inside the café.
He emerged empty-handed.
“Why wouldn’t you refill her glass?” I asked.
The waiter looked over at the girl. She remained placid and looked lonesome but steady and poised.
“She will be here all day. I am in no hurry,” he said.
He collected my empty plate and cup as I sat behind a barren table.
“You look a bit lonely yourself,” he said looking down at me.
“Maybe, but I think I’m a bit different from some of your other customers.”
“I suppose I will have to trust you,” he said, half-jokingly.
“And you? What makes you so different from the people you serve?”
He glanced over at the girl and then met my eyes with an embarrassed smirk.
“I was only making a joke,” he said, still holding the plate and glass. “I know you have a good life. You are young, educated. You have a good job. You have all the things you need to be happy.”
“Is that what makes one happy then?”
“I think so. People are happy when they do not lack. I can tell there is little you lack.”
“And the girl – what does she lack?” I said, nodding at her from across the deck.
He was grinning and stalled as he looked over at her small, idle frame while she leaned against the railing with an empty glass resting on the saucer.
“I’d say she lacks the foresight to sit,” he said and walked away.
I reclined in my chair and smiled with humored approval at the wit with which the waiter spoke.
“I can agree with you there,” I said to him as he left.
The café was now beginning to fill with other customers and the traffic along the street grew thicker as the day lingered on in the warm sun.
A pair of students sat with books, smoking cigarettes as they talked. An elderly woman was reading a menu as she dug blindly through her purse. A gentleman in a suit carried a black, leather brief as he moved past a young couple and into the café. The cooks worked inside the kitchen scrambling eggs while the waiters scurried through the growing maze of people to fill glasses and take orders.
The girl’s eyes stayed on the black asphalt in front of her and – in the activity around her – she waited motionless and appeared to grow more and more inert as time passed.
I began to wonder what could be wrong with her. I wondered if there was anything wrong with her at all as she began to blend into the crowd and recede into the numbers that were filling the porch of the café.
She must be sad and if she is not sad then she must be afraid. What did she fear? It was nothing I could imagine. It was something I could not understand. She appeared different in the group of customers than she had before they all arrived. In a way, she looked more alone in her canned melancholy.
Standing silent and erect with her empty cup, it seemed that something was important to her and this unseen conviction kept her tranquilized amid the human throng, eyes held by the moving road ahead.
Some live in the insistent current of movement and progress, but are never able to feel it, join it, and take part. They stand static with glazed eyes and empty cups in the quietude of an insular life.
No place to go, no people to see. Safe and sound. What for or why not?
There was a father in glasses talking about baseball to his young son. An old man folded newspapers in the shade of café’s overhang and he shared a table with a bald man at a laptop computer holding a porcelain espresso mug over a beige dish.
The day was beginning to heat up and the puddles of dew had vanished. A star spangled banner mounted above of the entrance hung dull and stiff over the door in the breezeless air. It draped down alone amongst the curly, dry paint peels on tired eves of the café. The white stripes were spotted with tiny mildew stains and one could tell it had been left out in the rain.
Inside the café, there were faucets running and coffee machines hissing from the steam-pressured piping.
A waitress approached my table with a yellow pad of lined paper.
“Can I get you anything?” she asked.
“Nothing for me thanks,” I said and I began gathering my things.
She looked at me bemused. “Nothing?” she said. “No drink?”
“I was just leaving,” I replied.
She smiled kindly and walked away.
Without much thought, I stood-up and walked along the deck to the stairs, across the patio, to the street and joined the steady flow of traffic, marching with the human brigade along the sidewalk. I had places to be and people to meet. At the end of the day I would return home and go to bed. The next morning I would rise with the daylight, dress, and do it all again.
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