The Coffehouse Complex

A little over a half a year ago my friend told me this beautiful story about how a couple she was acquainted with met and fell in love at a coffeehouse. She was the barista and he was the frequent customer. On a critical date of possible love lost (forever), she went to the coffeehouse on her day off to find him which also happened to be his last visit to the coffeehouse before he moved away. She told him she was single. He asked her out. And the rest is lovey dovey history.

My coffeehouse experiences are never quite as romantic or fantastic. They're usually quite mundane: I buy a cup of coffee. I sip it while I read, I pause to people watch and then I get up and go before my meter runs out. This past weekend things were a little out of the ordinary, or at the very least, very peculiar.

I was halfway through my large English breakfast tea when a forty-something petite woman takes the seat next to me. She loudly and intrusively pointed to my former neighbor’s dishes, dirty and piled high, and ask them if they were my own. She made it seem that I should share in the responsibility in finding a waiter to clear that space for her. I could already tell I was an unlucky bystander to what I'd quickly find to be her train wreck of a life.

Apparently, I was a manifestation of a recent wish of hers to meet someone in the "business" so she could get traction on a script she was writing. She told me that this weekend she intended to come and told herself that she would definitely manifest a meeting. Carefully gauging how much tea I had left and calculating in my head how much time was left in my meter, I glanced around the crowded cafe for an escape route. Too much tea left, too mnay quarters invested in the meter, and an overcrowded café mad escaping seem quite impossible and penny foolish.

Then it got personal. Suddenly I was engaged in a conversation about how women with children thought single women were selfish when really (really) they were the selfish ones getting boob jobs or taking fancy trips before even putting their own children through college. Then we got really personal when I was sharing this pint size woman's pain of being in love with a man who was still in love with his ex. By the way, that day happened to be his birthday that day and he (rather rudely in this poor girl's opinion) left her to manifest a meeting with me at a cafe instead of taking her to Vegas with him.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I gulped the last of my tea and as politely as I could took my leave.

And as boring as my previous cafe outings were, I realize I can live with not meeting my prince charming if I could just drink my coffee (or tea) in peace.