Standing in line before me at the Second Cup was a young woman. It looked to me like she had a crush on the guy who was working there. Her eyes were alert and alive and she had a big, beautiful smile on her face that she seemed to have absolutely no control over. When he handed her the coffee, she got all nervous. She wasn’t sure what to do. She took one step away, and then changed her mind and turned around, but she bumped into me and spilled a bit of her drink. This, of course, was a disaster, and she beat a hasty retreat out the front door, probably to write a long and involved email about her ineptitude to a friend.
I told the guy working the counter that I thought she liked him and he blushed. We had a little conversation about it, and he agreed that he thought maybe there was something there. I assured him that she would be back, and that he shouldn’t worry, but he wasn’t so sure, “I don’t know why I didn’t ask her out! I’m such an idiot! “ His face a mixture of happiness and regret.
Up the street on Madison there were about 25 college kids gathered in front of a sorority. Everybody was dressed up, as if for a big graduation party. The guys, some holding bottles of Grey Goose, all looked cocky, while all the girls looked, well, like they came from money. They stood and posed for photographs, pictures that they might show to astonished grandchildren in fifty years. Everybody seemed excited, eager to start the drinking and then, at midnight, make all the final declarations and confessions they’d been harboring all year.
Less than ten yards away, a guy who was the same age as the college kids, tarred a driveway. He wore a Dodgers ball cap and a lumber jacket. He was heavy, with the sort of facial hair you’d see on a professional wrestler, and he sweated heavily as the smoke and steam from the driveway clouded his eyes.
When somebody popped a bottle of Champagne, he looked over, but then he caught himself and looked away, pretending not to notice, just as they all pretended not to notice him.