The taste of the hot, black coffee at the Super Donut is particularly hard for me to take this morning, for some reason. A nurse breezes in and buys what she needs, rushing right back out again, her blue scrubs flashing in my peripheral vision, as she pulls a cloud of citrus-sweet perfume out the door behind her. She climbs into her Ford F150 and disappears to start her day somewhere.
The slender young man wearing a road work vest steps in like a gunfighter through the swinging saloon doors, surveying his donut and kolache options. For those of you unfamiliar with what a kolache is, here you go. (And you’re welcome.) His hair is cropped short like mine, and our eyes meet for a moment. I can almost hear the three-note whistle from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, along with spurs jangling with each careful footstep.
I believe my line would be “Can I help you with somethin’ young feller?” or “Keep starin’ at me like that and I’m gonna start thinkin’ yer SWEET on me.”
Instead I smile and say “Morning.”
“Good morning, sir,” he answers, causing me to realize that what I’d perceived as a scowl was actually the cock-eyed stare of someone who, like me, got up earlier than he would have liked to this morning.
Next one in is the sheriff, who I’ve seen before, rolling up in his unmarked car, a sedan with tiny silver hubcaps that screams “undercover police vehicle.” He reminds me of the actor Charles S. Dutton, bald and Buddha-like. I smile and say “good morning” as he enters. He gives me the serious lawman nod, before handing his empty thermos to the girl behind the counter.
A pretty young woman of about twenty-five comes in next, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail that dazzles in its precision. She’s wearing suburban clothing – a navy tennis shirt, short safari shorts, and the impossibly white sneakers that make American tourists stand out in the crowded squares of European capitals. She asks if they have smoked sausage kolaches; apparently they don’t.
Later, a young man in a shiny red Toyota 4x4 pulls up. His cream-colored guayabera shirt is perfectly ironed and compliments his chestnut skin tone so well I can’t help but think he’d planned it. He’s got an ID badge hanging from a lanyard, making me think he probably works at Applied Materials, a few miles west of here. His cologne is a bit cloying for my taste. There’s something about his look and style that makes me want to bring back the pretty young woman with the ponytail and introduce the two of them. They’d make a lovely pair.
When I was a younger man and I would see guys of a certain age (let’s just call it “middle aged,” for the sake of argument) sitting in a public place, scribbling in journal books or tablets, my first thought tended to be “Crazy.” Then I’d watch them, their eyes darting like butterflies in a flowerbed, and I’d wonder what they were writing. Sometimes I’d even crane my neck – in a subway car, say – to get a better look.
Now I know, because I have become the middle-aged journal scribbler. They were writing descriptions of me, along with the other people they saw, all the while playing matchmaker for those of us who were young and pretty, just as they had been, way back when.
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