[kawalek.]

There is an old man at the coffee shop counter. He lays a cane across the counter, so that the head of it – metal and carved, an eagle? – rests at his thigh, the foot at the barista’s crotch. The man orders a Coke, startles upon hearing that the shop doesn’t have fountain sodas; only bottles. He doesn’t want a bottle, but he counts out change anyway, bumbling it into the barista’s open palm. The girl, a collegiate brunette with ringed eyes, watches the man with flat disinterest. She places the change on the counter and sorts it, meticulous and insulting.
“You’re short twelve cents.” The girl sweeps the money off of the counter and back into her hand.
“Let me tell you something – I only had a sixth grade education, and all my siblings called me stupid. Do you know what it does to a person to hear he’s stupid?” The girl’s eyes begin to shift in the way of those embarrassed by having been impatient with others. “It makes you feel dumb. I’m not dumb – ” the octogenarian and the young adult, grappling over a granite countertop flecked with gold mica. The man’s rant probably began decades ago, but he picks up the thread as effortlessly as though this girl, this young woman in particular, was the sibling who called him dumb, the teacher who gave him low marks.
I plunk a quarter onto the counter and keep moving toward the bathroom. The old man turns in a slow circle; I imagine that in another incarnation, the one in which he wore a pressed military uniform, he pivoted neatly on one foot. Instead, the man takes several very small steps, turning and looking and finding my face and then, after a half second of complete confusion during which his eyes are blank, unfocused, my eyes.
“Well now thank you, but this young lady is not correct. She does not stand correct.” He shuffles around again so that he faces the barista. “You are not correct. I have a sixth grade education and even I know you’re not correct.”
The girl begins backing away from the counter; her cheeks color and her brow furrows. “Sir, a Coke is one dollar and ninety-two cents. You only gave me a dollar, eighty.”
“That’s because a Coke is a dollar and eighty cents!” The man’s trembling hand comes down hard on the granite counter.
“Tax,” the girl says helplessly. “There’s tax, sir.”
I touch the man’s elbow: “Why don’t you find a table? I’ll bring you your drink. Would you like ice in it?”
“Ice?”
“Yes, sir, would you like ice in your drink? In your cup.”
“Of course I want ice.”
“Alright, find a table. I’ll bring your drink. Alright?”
Indecision crosses the man’s face; his eyes are small behind myopic lenses. “Alright. Alright, I’ll find a table.” The man takes up his cane. “Will you sit with me?” he asks, and his voice leaves little room for refusal.
Perhaps he thinks that he knows me; he does not, but I hear myself saying, “I’ll be right there.”
“And you’ll sit with me?”
“Yes, I’ll sit with you.”
The man retreats: white, thick-soled tennis shoes move haltingly toward a table.
I smile at the barista; she drops her eyes and begins scrounging in the cash register; she puts thirteen cents on the counter between us.
“I’d like a small cappuccino, skim,” I say, then add, “Please.”
I am not certain that the girl’s heard me. She steps away from the counter and reaches into the deli case, shuffles some muffins onto a tray. Right before I speak, she straightens and is suddenly engaged in a flurry of motion: hands reaching, pouring, stirring. There is the scream of a milk steamer, the rich smell of espresso. And then, there before me, is a wide, deep ceramic mug. She’s made a brown fern, fronds reaching into the puffy white of the frothed milk.
“Can I have a cup, too, please? With ice.”
She seems to have forgotten the old man already. Then, “Oh.”
I leave the cappuccino on the counter and go to the drink cooler and choose a Coke from the back of the case. I carry the cup of ice in one hand and the soda in the other. The old man has chosen a four-top, hooked his cane significantly over a chair’s back. When I set down his cup, he looks up anxiously, eyes searching. For a moment, he looks hunted.
“Where’s your drink? You didn’t get a drink?”
I gesture toward the counter.
“Where’s your drink?”
I open my mouth slowly and calibrate each word’s impact before I say it. “I couldn’t carry both drinks, so I brought yours first. You’ve been waiting longer. And my drink is hot – I didn’t want to spill it on myself.”
This is the voice in which I speak to my students: exacting language and a firm, even tone.
“Well, you said you’d sit with me, and I’m going to hold you to it,” the man says. “You said you would.” His eyes are darting from my face to the counter, where my drink still sits. He looks at my drink for a long, steady moment, and then says, “That yours?”
“It is.”
“She’ll bring it. It’s her job, anyway. Shorted her twelve cents, my foot…” he lapses into a murmured reverie and then barks, “Twelve cents and you can’t bring the lady’s drink?”
The girl behind the counter scrabbles out from behind it. She moves slowly and carefully, as confidently as I imagine she can in this burning moment of frustration and outrage.