Not an anniversary. Not an apology. Tuesday.
Three Tables Away, Not You
Someone three tables over laughed exactly like you this morning and I looked up like a dog hearing a car door. That is the whole incident. I had also made two coffees before leaving the house. Nothing is wrong, nothing is broken, and this is not an apology in disguise.
Since the last confirmed sighting
coffees made for two, roughly
I had not counted until an hour ago. I have now counted exactly once, and I am already regretting the precision.
The incident report
A stranger laughed like you and I behaved appallingly.
Three tables away, by the window, a woman finished a sentence and laughed the way you laugh — the one that starts before the sentence does. I turned round like a dog hearing a car door. She looked nothing like you. I knew that before I turned. I turned anyway.
Then I sat back down and remembered the second coffee going cold on my counter, made this morning out of pure habit by a man who lives alone.
Two of you in one morning, in a café you have never set foot in, and neither of them was you.
A full inventory, all of it embarrassingly small
I could claim I miss the holidays and the long weekends. Then I made two coffees this morning without noticing, and that argument is fairly comprehensively over.
It lives in the second cup. In the noise you make in the next room while looking for something you are standing next to. In half a thing handed over without negotiation, and in my name said with absolutely nothing after it.
None of which survives a phone call. Hence a page, which I accept is a disproportionate response.
This week, itemised, none of it newsworthy
- This morning
Two coffees, one of me
Made the second one without thinking and then stood there looking at it. It was still on the counter when I got home tonight, cold, exactly where I left it.
- Nine forty, by the window
A stranger with your laugh
Three tables away. She got to the punchline before the sentence did, the way you always do, and I turned round before my brain caught up with me.
- Last night
I told the story to nobody
Something happened at work that you would have found far funnier than it was. I got as far as picking up the phone before I remembered what the hour was where you are.
Photographic evidence of the laugh in question
None from today. Today has produced one stranger, one laugh, and one abandoned coffee.
Playing while I embarrassed myself
The song playing during the incident
Playing during the incident. Four plays since, which is one per time I have thought about it, and I did tell you the number was four.
Supplies, for an unspecified emergency
Then we are even, and neither of us has to be the one who admits it first. Mine is still on the counter, going cold, being quietly judged by the kettle.
You do not have to be impressive this week. Get through it badly if that is what is going. There is no mark for it, and the only person watching is four hundred miles away with a cold coffee.
A stranger laughed near a window this morning and I turned round before I could stop myself. That has never happened to me about anybody else, in eleven years of sitting in cafés.
Put this down after this sentence. Nothing at this hour is the size it currently appears to be. It will be smaller at nine in the morning, next to a coffee.
Rub here. I almost cut this bit.
I have thought about that laugh four separate times today. I only turned round for the first one. The other three I stopped myself, which is the part I nearly did not put in.
Two coffees this morning.
Neither of them a decision.
One is still on the counter,
cold, waiting for somebody
who is not in the building.
A toast to nothing whatsoever
To a cold coffee and a woman three tables away.
- To the second coffee, made without thinking and cold by the time I noticed.
- To whoever was sitting three tables away, who has no idea what she started.
- To Tuesdays, which nobody writes anything for.
- And to the noise you make in the next room, which I would like back.
While I am here
I posted you something on the way back.
I walked past the post office on the way home from the café and did not go in, and then walked back to it twenty minutes later, which is the most decisive I have been all week.
It is small. It is faintly stupid. You will know exactly why the moment you open it.
One more, and then I will stop
I also registered a star today. It has been that kind of Tuesday.
Same morning as the second coffee, which should tell you the state I was in by about ten.
Vega
Lyra, the lyre
- Designation
- Alpha Lyrae
- Constellation
- Lyra, the lyre
- Right ascension
- 18h 36m 56s
- Declination
- +38° 47′ 01″
- Magnitude
- 0.03
- Distance
- 25 light years
- Type
- Single · the future pole star
- Dedicated to
- Ishita
It was the pole star twelve thousand years ago and it will be again in another fourteen thousand. The sky turns slowly enough that the fixed point moves, and Vega is simply waiting its turn to be the thing everyone steers by.
Apparently it used to be the pole star and it will be again, it is just currently in the gap. Twenty six thousand years of waiting around to matter again. I have been doing it since Thursday and I am already complaining.
Northern sky. Look up on a clear night and it is there.
Since I have you here and the coffee is already cold
I am useless at this in real time. The right sentence arrives roughly four hours later, usually halfway home, at which point there is nobody to say it to and ringing seems dramatic.
So here is the four-hours-later version, written down somewhere I could edit it, which is cheating and which I am doing anyway.
You are the person I want to tell things to first. Not important things. The stranger three tables away. The second coffee, still on the counter, now arguably a science experiment. The nine minutes of rain. None of it deserves a phone call and all of it deserves you, and I have never managed to explain that to anyone without sounding unwell.
I am not asking for anything. There is nothing to mark and nothing to answer. The parcel is not a trap either, before you start looking for the catch in it.
I simply did not want the whole Tuesday to go by without you knowing that a woman laughed near a window this morning and I turned round like an idiot.
Come back when you can. Or I will come there. Not urgent. Still soon, please.
— yours, with a cold spare coffee
No occasion.
No anniversary.
No excuse of any kind —
only a Tuesday,
a cold second coffee,
and a woman three tables away
who started all of this.
Anyway. The coffee is still there, still cold.
Go back to whatever you were doing. I am going to pour it away and then, with total confidence, make two again tomorrow.
made instead of drinking the second coffee