Coffee Shop

Thursday

The door swings open and another customer enters. The low ceiling and red textured walls are comforting and create an atmosphere of contemplation and calmness. The bad art on the wall gives the room a feeling of home, the way old crayon pictures proudly hung, with alphabet magnets, on the refrigerator somehow make a kitchen warmer.

The smells of freshly roasted coffee and peppermint tea are a breath of fresh air from the exhaust filled streets outside. This is the perfect hide-away for Evy to write her scattered thoughts down on her ever present, yellow steno pad. She's comfortable here.

There's an older gentleman with a long Santa-like beard wearing an old fishing hat, shorts, black socks and hiking boots sitting at the table in the corner. He's reading what looks like an old paperback book from the library. Evy can't think of a time when she's seen him there without a paperback in his hands, intent on whatever plot is unfolding in the pages and pages of words. He sets down his book for a moment to take a sip of his coffee, and Evy giggles to herself at how funny it would be if he were reading a dirty romance novel and had taken a short sip-break to prolong a visualization of some perverted thought. She catches herself after a rather loud chuckle and quickly looks away when she notices "Santa'' glaring at her, annoyed that she stopped his train of thought. She looks back up when she notices from the corner of her eye that he's back to his novel and unaware of her presence again. She continues to laugh to herself as a well dressed woman loudly answers her cell phone and quickly walks out of the shop holding her iced coffee. She leaves behind an echo of her conversation and the tinkling of the little, old-fashioned bell above the door. Evy goes back to her journaling and the barrister behind the counter calls out her name, interrupting her daydream.

"Hey Evy, that lady ordered a large mocha and then decided she wanted it iced. Do you want it?"

"Wow," Evy thinks for a split second, "that's a lot of mocha. I'll be up all night, but yeah, sure. Thanks."

She contemplates the realities of how her body will react to a second much larger cup of coffee while she lays her pen down for a minute and makes her way across the room to where the barrister is guarding her free drink on the counter.

Coffee is a new vice of Evy's. She's never had problems getting up in the mornings or keeping her energy going throughout the day. Usually she feels she's had a natural driving force that hasn't needed any boost from outside influences. But everyone around her drinks it as a sort of life-juice and she's recently felt that it gives her a little bit of extra pep. She pretends that she's addicted to it like everyone else, so that she has a basic common ground to start from when she picks up conversation at the coffee shop. She only orders mochas since they cover up the actual taste of the too-often burnt coffee.

The movement from her seat to the bar and back to her seat changes the focus of what she wants to write in her steno today. Her little pad of paper is filled with random thoughts, grocery lists, dreams, poems and thoughts that pop into her head. She's sure that someday all of those thoughts will be useful and somehow make sense as a whole so she keeps her steno handy and fills each page until it's full.

An old Blind Melon song comes on over the coffee house speakers and Evy's mind wanders back to the time she and her 8th grade boyfriend were swinging on the playground swings late at night singing this song at the top of their lungs. They were competing to see who could sing louder and make the people living across from the park wake up first. The air that late night was warm and safe and made for an almost perfect memory. They used to sneak out on school nights. It wasn't hard. She'd just go out the front door. First Evy would swing by her friend's house and help her out the window. She was dating Evy's boyfriend's best friend, so it was always a double date. They'd meet up at the park and all four of them would lay on the ground and watch the stars. Most of the time they would couple up and make out by the tennis courts. He was a great boyfriend. Turns out there was more making out between the two boyfriends then Evy and her friend were aware of at the time.

She looks back down at the empty pages in front of her and starts writing questions to herself. Questions about her past. Questions about her reactions to love. Questions about the confusion inside. Questions about the life she sees around her and questions about the mundane. Eventually she spews out a poem she's somewhat happy with, stretches, grabs her purse, and goes to her car, bell ringing behind her.

She decides to stop off at the convenience store to pick up a six pack of beer on the way to Jake's. He tends to drink the cheap stuff and Evy prefers the beer she learned to drink in Europe when she visited in High School, so she chooses a 6 pack of each. She drives from the coffee shop, north-east, through an area of town she doesn't regularly frequent. It's not that big of a city, but like any town there are the parts considered good and the parts considered bad. Jake lives in the area generally referred to as the latter. He lives in a tiny little "guest house" on an old property. He's not the kind of person that would really care about where he lives and none of his friends care either.

She pulls up in her old, blue Toyota Corolla and parks across the street. She can hear Jake playing his guitar along to “It’s all over now, Baby Blue” from the open windows. She pretends to knock as she pushes the screen door open and steps in. Jake and a friend are sitting at the window rolling their American Spirit cigarettes, playing guitar and talking about their last camping trip.

Jake is about the same height as Evy, 5'8", maybe 5'9," and a little scrawny as most 19 year old boys tend to be. He's not handsome. His hair is a wavy mess of light brown on top of his head and matches the full beard he's growing on his knowledgeable, but baby-like face. Jake is a two hit wonder. First people notice his intense, blue eyes that take them deep into another world and seem to read their souls with eerie accuracy and lack of judgment. Then, when still in shock and floating in his eyes, he smiles and there's an immediate feeling of comfort. People like being around him. Evy and her friends call him “mountain man". They're sure he'll end up living in the mountains alone in a cabin with his dog spending his days reading and making wood furniture. He almost comes off as a caricature at times, but he's very real and Evy love’s finding out all the new and surprising aspects of the real Jake.

She met him through an old acquaintance and had been in touch with him off and on since she moved back from college. Evy liked that when she went out with Jake there were always lots of other handsome young men around that would give her attention. It made her feel like she "still had it." He was a pure ego boost to Evy. At 25, Evy felt old and tired.

She was married at 19 and envied the care free life that Jake had and she had traded in for a ring. Jake showed up to every one of Evy's piano recitals. With Jake she could hang out with the crowd in town she was always afraid to hang out with in High School because she didn't think she was cool enough.

"Hey Evy!" Jake jumps up to give Evy a friendly hug. "This is one of my oldest pals, Chris." He's brimming with excitement to show off his old friend to Evy.

Evy pulls away from Jake and puts out her hand to Chris, "Hi Chris. It's nice to meet you."

A young dark haired, boyish Chris, answers the same back. He's of the same ilk as Jake. Just boys enjoying life.

They sit back where they were and continue their camping tales while Evy walks over to the refrigerator to chill her beers. When she opens the door she finds it practically full of multiple 6 and 12 packs of beer with little room for her to put hers. She laughs at how pointless it was to grab beers on the way, but her upbringing doesn't allow her to show up empty handed. She goes ahead and squeezes them on the bottom rack of the fridge after taking a beer out for her to sip on.

"Do y’all want some beer while I'm over here?"

"Sure!" They both answer automatically without losing a beat in their conversation.

Evy pulls out two more beers and takes them across the room to the table where they're sitting. She sits down and looks around Jake's place. It's the second time she's been there. The first was a few minutes when she came to pick up her husband from an afternoon of hanging out with Jake. It's a tiny guest house, probably built around the turn of the century and looks like not much has been done to it since then. The refrigerator has to be almost 20 years old and the stove can be deemed an antique. There's one large window next to the front door, where the boys are sitting, that looks out across the front yard and the street to see a tall fence. Maybe 15 feet across from the front window, past the kitchen is the back door opening onto an empty backyard that belongs to the owner. Along one wall is an old, dirty, run down, floral print couch with a full bookshelf next to it. Across from the main wall is the door to Jake's room and the bathroom. All in all it's a dump. Evy likes it because it has personality, but she knows most of the personality that she likes about it is Jake.