enter Connie and Weymouth

Out from the coffee shop, Friday morning lilacs, white, spring following the kid up the coast. Crossing state lines, sweet April’s faint fragrance. So quiet, even these words conjure hush. And yet, tick tick tick…….

At my usual table in a space of sunshine, Saturday morning coffee shop. Strewn Chinese poems, empty notebook, lonely Bic pen. Two walk in the door, holding hands. I can’t quite make out their faces, must be the reading glasses. They come over. “Connie,” she says, as introduction. “Weymouth,” he says. Connie takes the other chair at my two-chair table. Weymouth slides a stool over from the plate-glass (now boardless) window counter, sits between and above us. They’re married, it turns out.

“You’re here a lot,” Weymouth said from his position up on the stool. “We see you,” Connie added. “I’m not sure I have anywhere else to go,” I say, not in my defense, just playing along. “It’s impossible for me to explain how it feels to come in here with a book or notebook or both, and order the same thing every time. I sink into this space entirely. There’s a word I see a lot in the books and it truly gets at it – utterly. When I’m here the way I just said, sipping coffee, there’s an utterness to that “here.” (My hands up in the air with quote marks). I looked from one to the other. “You know what I mean?”

Connie stared straight at me. “We haven’t got a clue.” Weymouth’s eyes went out the window, following a bird above the roofs across the street. “Of course we do,” he said.

Connie stood up and sat back down again, said, “From this standpoint it looks like your life’s falling apart.” Weymouth added, “From this standpoint it seems your life’s never been more together.” The marrieds grinned at each other, and I felt the air move, like they’d high-fived and I couldn’t see it.