Coffee

The table by the window is cluttered with a teapot and a cup and saucer. She makes her way over to it anyway, pushes them aside, mops the spills with a paper napkin, settles herself to stare into the street through the gold stencilled letters.

                The city in Spring is a different place to different people, depending on their loneliness. Several times this year she has felt alone but realises alone is not the same as lonely. Being lonely means a need for other people and she doesn’t need anybody.

                               She watches a man standing at the corner. Checking his watch. He doesn’t look comfortable and it takes her a while to decide why. And then she notices his clothes are too neat. Too neat for his hair which curls over the collar of his jacket, a crisp new blue linen jacket. His trousers are slightly too long. Maybe they’re not his. Maybe he borrowed them from a friend. They don’t look like his. They are shiny and black and have a neatly ironed crease down the middle. They almost cover his trainers and bunch up around the ankle. He moves position, walks a few steps in different directions and then pretends to look in the shop window while he checks his hair and straightens his jacket collar.

                Being alone, she thinks, means independence, self-reliance, not having to answer to anyone. Being alone means doing what you want when you want, without having to share it or discuss it with another person. After eleven years of marriage it is an enormous relief. It means she can sit at the cafe table with her cooling mug of coffee for as long as she wishes.

                To her, the city in Spring is full of people holding hands and laughing. And full of people alone like her and the man on the corner, still checking his reflection in the shop window. Often she forgets to look up but, when she does, she sees the beauty of the creamy stone caught by the sunlight rather than the blackness of the shadows in the street.

                The man on the corner checks his watch again and she blows across the surface of her coffee. How much longer will he wait, she wonders.

                Once upon a time she was one of those who held hands, who laughed while the sun beat down on her head. Who checked her watch, anticipating.

                The man looks up and down the street. If only he would look over the road and see the woman watching him. He would see the woman and then he would come over and sit with her and ask her why she didn’t come to meet him. She would be able to explain that she is tired. And afraid of feeling lonely rather than alone.

                She watches the man walk away. The street seems empty now without his pacing presence. She gathers up her bag and leaves her empty cup on the table.