Magnums

The cappuccino machine is blowing its nose. Then a clamber, the rosary like jangle of a spoon tossed into a cup, gaping windows stencilled by the heavy palm of a pine bush with white light poking through, looking like linen dressed over a tabletop. Overpriced blood brownies. Swell of scurf as an air born sun flower. There’s twenty dollars somewhere in my knapsack. Breathing deep into the atmosphere of the brew feels like a kiss, like the steeped water is murmuring back. I can’t believe I spent over five bucks on a brownie. Coffeehouse as the crossfire of a thousand sideline glances, like a shooting range staccato, like cicada popcorn, one step through the door and your pop pop pop. Who washes these carpets anyways? Dimpled doll face with auburn hair like a dream. Salt and pepper pappy with unnecessary v-neck. School teacher’s son sporting Dock’s with mangy frock and enough facial fuzz to give a boy hives. Finding the focal point of a spoon with my nose. Waiting’s metaphysical indigestion. I turn it over, he should be here. I shouldn’t be.
Twiddling thumbs turns to finger tip masturbation. Nape of neck like the oily underside of a grit filled frying pan. Tear at your eyelashes for a wish. Breathing the brume of the brew again. Sip it in with a pucker. God dam it.
Crazy crosswalk woman pours through the door, she’s vibrant as a snow cone, smeared lipstick, Blue Morpho eyeshade, a vaporized Mimi Bobeck, the lot. Hair carries an electric current, enough to power surge the West Island (though, not much does). She is as frumpy as an old couch, orders two to go, door swings behind her. The door sways and shuts. The walls are sublimating.
Plate scattered with crumbs, I launch for a lunar mission and scour the remains. A sigh slumps, a heave hefts, staying put like a chair after closing hours. Wrist watch as vicelike, a rabbit snare. Who’s watching? I know I’ve been here ten minutes, go back to the melodious legato of your laptops. Droning away like the Easter vigil of bent-back Brits. Space, tab, and click. Wikipedia as the consciousness for a nation. Hillary wore purple pumps the other day and won the vote of the East village, somewhere. At least Tim Horton’s would have seemed like a truck stop, I could’ve just sidled out through the door as if I were heading back off onto the 40 with a bulk of bovine as shipment. But no sirree, this here’s a classy joint that let’s you sprawl out over a coterie of chairs, lulls you in with it’s pretence of homeliness, and then clomps down at you like an oyster. Here I have a place, an identity, rising from my chair calmly would ensue in the lifting and aiming of a squadron of magnum-pointed eyebrows; I’d be bulleted like Pyle in the head.
I choose to wait. The lampshade flickers like a fly wing. There’s a scone bopping along in the ocean of her chest. I wonder what misanthropic actually means. I am a cappuccino clairvoyant, the bowels of that mug muse of one yellow rain jacket, something to do with a half-eaten sandwich, but then the foam rolls over my grainy scriptures before I can resolve my predicament. I whine a bit, I pine, then bite down on my lower lip till it bleeds.