It’s always like this: the best get-togethers are had at a place that serves hot soup.
There are one hundred
and fifty bagel choices sitting in organized baskets coated with sweet cinnamon
sugar, chewy sesame seeds, rosemary garlic, and crunchy poppy seed bits. Amateur
artwork lines the walls and the dinner rush keeps the eyes of the employees
frantic and the potential bagel-buyers antsy.
A bearded homeless
man takes a nap on the floor. Three young Indian students, tense and focused,
discuss current events at a round table meant for seven. A purse is forgotten
on a carpeted floor. Fliers for University events are distributed amongst
unwilling participants by a group of ambitious pantsuit wearers. Two best
friends discuss the headlines in their small lives. A dark, calm man approaches
people about spare change and the possibility of Heaven or Hell. The warm light
from the setting sun interrupts the concentration of a student’s attempts to
absorb James Joyce.
The coffee makers
dribbled with lukewarm liquid. It was late in the day and only an ivory-skinned
woman with sad eyes had asked for her caffeine freshly brewed, but that was 15
minutes ago and the trainees had completely forgotten about her. The neglected
novel the woman held in her slender, translucent hand sat poised, mid-air as
her sad eyes gazed passed the passing families and laughing reunions and
fixated on the pavement. The cool, cement pavement that held no expectations
for her. A husband and wife
silently taste their paninis; a four year old plays imaginary tag with every
piece of furniture clustered around the crowded eatery. That was unwise, Emily
noted, where was her mother?
She shouldn’t have
come this late in the evening, clearly this time of day was not the time to
come to Panera if you are looking for solitude, and she was. Yet there’s
something endearing about a gaggle of older woman digging into their steaming
bread bowls full of sticky chicken and dumpling soup while clucking over their
children and how many face-lifts that witch from three doors down has had this
year. Emily sat three tables over
from such a cluster of women, entranced by their reflections and the dribbles
of coffee splattered down the pudgy woman’s blouse. She had a throaty laugh and a couple of chins that were
tucked beneath years of what Emily imagined being quite a life. Her gold watch choked her thick wrist
and her white, button-up blouse squeezed the rest of her extra inches of her
body as she reached for a pinch more sugar to put in her coffee. Across from her sat another woman who
looked as though she were the grandma that made Christmas dinner every year,
but never took a bite of it. Her
oatmeal colored sweater sagged over her pointy joints. It was quite the
contrast, Emily observed. She
often wondered how she would look as an older woman. Regal? Probably not, but it sounded good. She’d be the mousey one always clutching
to a mug of green tea and past memories. Jamie would probably resemble the old
crotchety man growling at the people surrounding and peering out of his thick
glasses. What a sight. She held an imaginary conversation with him about it.
When she brings him tulips tomorrow, she’ll ask him what kind of old man he
would have been. She likes to ask him questions and recount the monotonous
details of her day her mother can’t be burdened with, even if he can’t respond.
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