The Girl by the Window

It was neither winter nor spring and she sat at a café in the middle of the day with her books sprawled across a table by the wall window. Cars drove by and people streamed in and out and the jumble of words people and espresso machines made together made her feel at ease. The young man across the street a few windows to the left on the second floor knew she would be there with her books when he drew a smoke after a Sunday brunch.

“I thought you quit,” said his girlfriend getting dressed in the bathroom behind.

“Going to lab?”

“No, a conference. I told you yesterday.”

“Mm.”

“I thought you quit.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Late.”

She came by the window and they looked out at cars and cafés.

“Aren’t you going to be late?” he said.

“Yeah, probably. You should really quit, you know. You haven’t been exercising either. And this place is a mess.”

He saw the girl at the café get up and order more coffee. Waiting, she scanned the shelf full of coffee bags and the floor full of gray slabs. He threw down the shortened cigarette half mindful of people below as he reached in his pocket for another. His girlfriend saw this and gave him a mint.

“That café is always so packed,” she said. “I don’t understand it. It’s so noisy all the time and the music is terrible.”

He sucked on his mint and said nothing.

“Hey, you know what? Screw this conference. Let’s go do something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Go hang out at a noisy café.”

“Alright.”

“Really? That café?”

“Hm?”

“Nevermind. Get dressed.”

They sat a few tables away from the girl with the sprawled books. Between the girl and them sat two old men who moved too much and used too many gestures for them to see the girl. The young man leaned back to look behind them.

“What are you looking at?” the girlfriend said.

“That girl over there.”

“And why would you be looking at the girl over there?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“She looks like me.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t she?”

“What are you talking about?”

“She looks like me.”

“She’s a dirty blonde with blue eyes and a dull jacket. You’re a black-haired, unshaven, fattening beast who needs to pay more attention to his girlfriend.”

She bit into the apple she’d brought. The old men left. He followed the line of sight of the girl by the window and noticed it end on the table at a spot just past the book she was holding open flat on the table with one hand. Two younger old men in suits sat where the old men sat and discussed Chinese economy. He could only see her books and some of her hair.

“We should take a trip,” said the girlfriend. “I’m so jealous that Connie is in China. Let’s go to India. Or Vietnam.”

“Okay.”

“Really? I’m serious.”

“Yeah. Let’s.”

“Okay! I mean, where else would you spend your bonus, right? Oh we’ll have to buy tickets soon before they get too expensive for the summer. So, India? Vietnam? Japan would be good, too. Did I tell you about my friend who…”

He noticed the girl by the window turning a page. It was the first page turn since they had arrived.

“Hey, are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“So, I was thinking we could go the Friday before Memorial Day. You can take the week off, right? It’s only four days. I’ll talk to my PI about delaying the…”

The younger old men obstructed his view as they left, and a father-son pair arrived. They began to play chess with a timer and above it the girl turned toward him some before turning back toward the window. A homeless man crossed the street half mindful of the honking cars.

“Hey, are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“No, you’re not. But that’s okay. You said we’d take the trip, so I’m going to hold you to it.”

“Yeah, we can go on the trip.”

“I’m such a lucky girl,” she smiled. “So Connie says that in China, their milk is…”

Next week he had to give a pitch. It could even get him a promotion if he did well. The chess pieces and the timer together created a rhythm. Tap, click, tap, click. He noticed the two pawns in the center, white one in the white square and black one in the black square in front of the white square. They stayed that way despite all the tapping and clicking around them. The girl by the window turned another page.

“Have you called your parents yet? When was the last time you called them? Don’t tell me it was that time at the Luigi’s when we…”

After a while, he thought it was quiet and realized his girlfriend had left. He vaguely remembered a kiss and her saying something about going into lab and telling him to call his parents. The chess players were gone, too, and so was the girl by the window. He looked around. The panorama before him was the same and not the same. Two teenage girls sat at the table by the wall window. A mother and two boys no more than five years old huddled around the table next to them with chocolate chip cookies. In front of him sat an old lady cross-legged with a large hat and a newspaper. The espresso machines puffed and hollered in the packed café full of people talking and noises of the street swelling in and out with the doors opening and closing. He thought he’d better get back since tomorrow was Monday.