The Prospective Client

            But he could see that there was already another problem. Three blocks ahead, there was a large branch across the sidewalk and halfway into the road. What he saw first as bright yellow amongst the branches was a person, directing the moderately busy traffic around the leafy calamity.

            When he was a block away from the scene, a police car passed him and stopped just before the branch. Singleton walked, and, as he walked, he watched a couple of officers of every gender talk to the heavy-set man in yellow. The man took off the yellow vest and wiped his brow. The woman in blue began directing traffic as the other spied something in the branches and leaned into the until recently high branches. He tugged something out from amongst them.

            “Did you see this happen?” the cop asked Singleton as he approached.

            “I didn’t see it fall,” Singleton answered, then gestured to the man formerly in the yellow vest. “Perhaps he knows.”

            “No!” The cop said. “This!”

            He lifted what he’d plucked from the mess. It was a bit of car bumper, along with the front license plate. Singleton was amazed.

            “No! I didn’t see that!”

            The two were already beginning to laugh at Singleton, as if he were the one who’d driven a car into this green barrier. But Singleton himself, due to a small synapse lapse or sudden dip in IQ, still hadn’t figured out how the bumper and branches had met.

            “How did that get up there?” Singleton asked them.

            The two paused without answering, and he began to walk his way around the branch, street side. Then they burst out laughing even harder. Singleton waited for oncoming traffic to pass, and with a grimace to the policewoman, a nod, and some crouching just on the edge of the tiny disaster, worked his way around to the sidewalk again. She’d seen what the others had discovered.

            “Happens more often than you’d think,” she told him as he passed.

            Now, Singleton was thirsty and had to pee.  A nice young man approached him from the other direction, shouting something as he walked. Singleton couldn’t make it out, at first, then, as they got closer, the man repeated:

            “Hey, Person.”

            They stopped on the sidewalk together. The man’s t-shirt caught his eye. It had a portrait of Patty Sedalia. Patty was known for her crossover hit back in ’05, ‘Stone Heart On A Train To Somewhere’. That, and a yogurt commercial which aired regionally.

            “I’m not Person,” Singleton told the man.

            “What happened over there?”

            “A big branch fell down, and they found a license plate in it.”

            “It happens,” the young man who thought Singleton’s name was ‘Person’ said. “More often than you’d think. Hey!”

            He pointed to the toaster pastries Singleton held.

            “Where’d you get those?”

            “SenseWorth.”

             “Good brand. Got a smoke?”

            “I don’t smoke,” Singleton told him, and continued down the sidewalk. As far as he could tell, the man had said- “Okay, Person,” and continued past toward the tree.

            Singleton still had a few blocks to go before he made it to the avenue lined with shops, which ran practically the length of the small city. Then, he would be close to the neighborhood where he currently lived. He heard some loud talking behind him as the person who thought his name was ‘Person’ arrived at the scene of the tree.

            It was late summer. Singleton was in a nice stretch of neighborhood. The leaves of the ash trees had turned a dusty, light green, and some trees had that tint of yellow that indicated that the tree was just beginning to close up shop for the season. As before, Singleton wasn’t aware of any ants nearby. But, by no means does that indicate that there weren’t any. He then heard-

            “Hey, Person!”

            The man had backtracked, and still thought Singleton’s name was ‘Person’. Really. The guy used an inflection like it was a proper noun. As confusing as it was, for Singleton, at least it was an affirmation, of sorts. And Person (dammit!), Singleton swung his head back, looked as he walked, and felt the fatigue. He wasn’t going to stop or walk back, or even slow his pace for this man who wanted small talk, and thought that Singleton was a man with a name that was exceedingly general, and who smoked.

            “Person!” The man caught up, panting for show, and walked along with Singleton.

            “Whew! You get around.” He chuckled, then, serious, pointed back. “Sidewalk’s blocked that way. You really thought that bumper wound up in the tree?”

            Singleton laughed.

            “I didn’t know what happened. Now I know what happened.”

            The man laughed. Then asked,

            “Got a smoke?”

            Singleton nearly stopped walking, but kept his cool in the face of absurdity.

            “No. I don’t smoke.”

            The man smiled.

            “Okay, Person.”

            They walked awhile through the dry air, within the whiz of frequent cars alongside, and amongst what seemed to be a dearth of ants, each careful not to trip on sidewalk slabs that had been tilted by roots of the large trees on the lawns beside them. The man asked Singleton about the baseball cap he was wearing, which simply had a small logo of crossed tennis rackets. He then said that he ‘knew tennis’, but didn’t go into much detail. He was at a bit of a loss for words when Singleton told him that he’d bought the hat at a charity shop, primarily because of the color.

            They came to and crossed the busy intersection. The intersection was so busy that no one was waving them across, but were actually trying to run them over, and Singleton started to look for a way out. He found it on the short side of a strip mall on that corner; a coffeeshop called ‘The Inscrutable Bean’. He told ‘Hey Person’ that he was having coffee with someone there, and peeled off. And, he wasn’t lying when he said that. ‘The Inscrutable Bean’ contained coffee, and it contained people. And now, not only did Singleton have to pee, he had to urinate.

            He went into the shop and into the bathroom. The second order of business was the water cooler. He poured himself a frosty glass, and drank slowly, careful not to get brain freeze, and plotted his timing to the coffee counter proper. There, the barista was talking to a man in a red baseball cap. Singleton mourned the stigma red baseball caps currently have. He wouldn’t wear any himself, though. At least for the duration.

            The man turned a bit as he talked to the barista, something about mounting gutters, and Singleton saw, at the end of the phrase in white on the front of the cap: ‘Again’. No.

            And he had to catch more of a glimpse, as discreetly as possible. He got behind the man, who was talking about this gutter job, this method, that, and whatnot. The man turned right, and Singleton’s fear concerning the cap was confirmed. Singleton swung his eyes back and forth, wondering if anyone else in the shop, a few, saw what he saw. Someone with a MAGA cap, and who actually had it, there on their head. No one was reacting. The man seemed able. Even able to think. But, he had that thing on his head.

            Singleton had been in the shop before, and it seemed like a liberal place. There had been, not only posters announcing protests against Trumpism and the like there on the community corkboard, but others, like, for pollinator preservation. Then Singleton realized that it didn’t matter. What could one do, in such a context- such a milieu. How to make this guy cognizant somehow, and quickly? The man finished his exchangeless conversation with the barista and stepped away. Singleton then steeled himself for the offers of modification to his request.

            “Can I have a double espresso?”

            “Of course you can,” the barista said. And, she was the picture of a barista, with tall hair. Another woman, possibly a trainee, came up and observed the barista. And, Singleton was cool with that. He was fully in favor of those with vertically-challenged hair making their way up the barista ladder.

            “Cream?” The barista asked. Singleton was ready for that.

            “No, thank you.”

            The barista nodded, and the trainee leaned a bit forward, soaking in every word of the exchange.

            “Sugar.”

            He shook his head. “No thanks. Just… un doppio per favore.”

            “You betcha,” the barista responded, and turned to the machine. The trainee quickly quietly chuckled, then pointed to his box of toaster pastries.

            “Bringing your own dessert?”

            “Oh, no,” Singleton said. “These aren’t for public consumption.”

            The trainee knew just where he was going.

            “They’re for home-use only,” he told her. “Or to distract the odd bear.”

            The trainee nodded. The barista behind her kathump-kathumpped the grounds from the basket into a tiny bin indented in the counter.

            “Or during those dark nights of the soul.” Singleton finished. The trainee pointed to him and clicked.

            “Gotcha. For when the Chamomile just ain’t doin’ the trick.”

            “Yep.”

            The barista then made the machine squeal. Singleton loved that sound.

            “Hey!” the trainee said, and pointed back to a shelf. “We have some great flavor shots.”

            Singleton shook his head shyly and wave-rattled a hand.

            “Nah.”