The rain has let up enough that people have taken to the plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk outside the cafe. That leaves me as the only patron inside, perched by one of the large windows that let in more light than can even fill a Starbuck's venti sized cup. But by being the only person in the cafe comes an enormous burden the size of which can only be measured accoustically by the empty echo of jazz overhead. Passerbys on the sidewalk peer into the empty shop, expecting to see life, evidence of that "third place in American life" that is neither work nor home (ignoring the fact that I am here to work and that you find so many people with their faces pressed close to the slateboard screens of their laptops in places like this).
The passerbys, however, quickly turn away from the windows in disappointment. I'm just not lively enough. All they get from me is a stupid stare back, the vain longing of a person indoors wishing to be outdoors. What a disappointment I am to these people! I am a sorry advertisement for sociability, leisure, even productivity. I'm just sitting here mute and still, painfully aware that I am not filling up the space of the empty cafe enough to captivate any wayward looker. I'm not even shouldering the financial burden that affords the little bit of space that I am taking up, having only ordered a modest cup of coffee for a dollar-forty and having only let a lone quarter bang the tip jar.
As I try to hatch wild plans to make myself some kind of spectacle for the sake of business and look up, people begin filing in from the sidewalk, setting their things down at tables, and taking up the task of setting aside a few minutes of the day in a place that is neither work nor home. Chairs scrape. Bodies bend over tables. Sipping slurps sound from coffee cups. A throat is cleared. The cash register jingles and snaps. Perhaps my efforts have not been in vain.
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