I come here every day. Sometimes with a book bag. Sometimes with just my laptop, casually grasped in one hand as if I was Brett Favre eluding the rush. One day I will pay for that just as he often did. Each time, I order the same thing and slide down the counter to wait for the barista, a young thing of twenty if not eighteen, to do her magic.
As she froths the foam, she looks up at me without moving her head. A coy smile crawls across her lips. The swishing of the steam is like a drum roll egging the magician to perform. One day it was a heart. Another day it was a star. One afternoon, inexplicably, it was the state of Florida.
“That’s where my gramma lives,” she informed me when she saw my quizzical look.
It has become one of the little things that I look forward to each day. I put it up there with hearing my baby wake up, a text from my wife telling me that she is going to lunch and that she loves me, and a glass of Rioja to end the day. I feel a little guilty that this other woman has worked her way into my psyche, although my wife seems to find more amusement than envy.
She slides the cup over the counter and I gaze down to see the outline of a tulip etched into the foamy milk. “It’s never the same thing, is it?” I ask.
“Now what would be the fun in that?”
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I love how you take this simple event and turn it into a bigger story. The paragraph about the things you forward to is just lovely. And the last exchange, “It’s never the same thing, is it?” I ask.
ReplyDelete“Now what would be the fun in that?” is just a brilliant ending!