thou shalt not sip liquid at room temperature.
Stuffed a few things into my pockets, turned off the lights and then got out of this complex fast. I'm always stuffing my pockets full of things it seems, every time I need to go anyplace. Things. Things and stuff, the usual stuff. Keys and cameras and coins and CD players and things. Coupons and receipts, cards and glasses cases.
I'm smart, though. I mean, I was smart this time. When I left I planned ahead, so my pockets wouldn't be so full of junk. But to explain it's not like I just walk around thinking that I'm all really smart. Er, I bet I am smart, probably more than your average people though I wouldn't go around saying that to everyone, anyway. The point is that I left the apartment with only my glasses on my face, my keys, and some stationery which was in my back pocket with money. And a pen. I walked through the neighborhood to the chain coffee bar which is nice and also clean usually.
I stood in line at the coffee bar, and then ordered, and then stood at the end of the counter, and then took my drink when the girl called out my first name. Which she knew because I told the guy at the register when I ordered my fancy coffee. He wrote my name out on a cup and passed it over. The girl was pretty but I did not talk to her much, because I was thinking about her and about other things, also
I sat down in the shop at a little table in the window, which doesn't have the best view, looking out across the parking lot full of cars and at the street. In front of the coffee bar often are the expensive cars, Mercedes and nice silver new Hondas, Jaguars, and big SUVs and things. But then when you look next door at the taco place all the cars of the people who are eating there are older and worth less, sometimes rusty and not so shiny, believe me. One time with my roommate we were sitting in front of that window, outside of the coffee bar, and this guy drove his LeBaron really really fast across the parking lot next to the taco place I mentioned. Two balloons that were clipped to the back of his car for some reason broke free and floated up into the sky out of sight. The balloons were still tied together. They were the foil kind, but I didn't know if they were birthday balloons. It was sad for them escaping.
Wait so what was I saying? Okay, that I sat down at the table, and pulled out my stationery, my pen also. I bought the handmade stationery the February before last in the airport in Minneapolis because I wanted to write my grandmother a thank you note for her Christmas money to me. But I never did, and I didn't this year either, I forgot. I am not a good grandson sometimes. But then, so in a very nice letter that she wrote me last month she told me how her brother Bob just passed away, and it was the first I had heard of it. I am flying home though this week and on Saturday June 29th we are celebrating my grandmother's 80th birthday.
While I was writing the letter on my stationery, which was a year old but still new, and sipping my drink, all kinds of people were coming in and out of the coffee bar. A girl with eyes that look like they were mashed up into her face was on her way out when she stopped to talk about her pigtails to a grinning white haired wrinkled woman sitting against the wall. Then a sexy light-haired woman in a white top and tight white shorts with a white zig-zag bra came into the shop and went to the counter. Also her thong was white and I could see it since her shorts were kind of see through.
And it was funny when right afterwards another pretty woman walked in with sunglasses, dressed all in black. She had dark frizzy hair and looked Mediterranean, with dark red lipstick and her black dress. The opposite of the woman in white. There was a man sitting in this cushioned chair in the corner, a round man wearing all black and sunglasses also reading a technical manual and making notes. I wondered if they would make a good couple, so dark as they were, but they did not notice each other. Also they both had similar coffees.
A man with a funny mustache on a cell phone came in and out of the building, saying things to his phone. Then I noticed the older woman wearing a brown striped outfit with hoop earrings. I don't think she was as old as my grandmother is old. Her earrings were not quite hoops but they were golden and pretty, and she had very white hair with gray bits. I watched her buy her drink and sit down near me with a cold coffee frappe drink in a plastic cup and then come sit near me with her white purse. I wrote some, onto my card which was half finished and then heard a funny sound. I looked up and what had happened was that she spilled some of her drink on the table, but with no napkins around, she tried to clean it up by slurping at the table with her straw. Her neck was stretched down and of course she couldn't suck up much of the drink with just a green straw, and when I saw her I laughed out loud. She smiled. I went to get her some napkins to wipe up the small mess, and she thanked me. It was nice that she was so polite. It was funny that she didn't mind that the drink she was slurping was on some old table, since old ladies never do things like that.
In this letter to my mother's mother I wrote that I was so sorry to hear about Great Uncle Bob dying and that he always made me laugh and led such a great, full life. That also, I was glad I hear about his passing from her letter and not from anyone else. And I wrote, here I am only 24 and she has lived more than three times my years, seen so much and lived in so many places, and I am still so young, I said. I thanked her for the money and the letter and told all about California and cars and the nice weather, and how I was looking forward to coming home for her birthday celebration, to see everyone again. It can be nice, to talk about the weather. This is the longest amount of time I have ever been away from my hometown in Massachusetts since I moved to the town when I was two, with my parents. It doesn't feel so long, but it has been the longest yet.
Sorry, I know how I am digressing and drifting off, gosh. I bet I should grab a coffee or something to focus.
