Unlight originally posted by dknNYC.
New York was cold and bright in a way that made the gases waltz in the sunlight as they escaped the sewers. I was lunching alone in a SoHo cafe. That might sound romantic, but New York always finds a way to drain the romance out of a moment: a rude stranger, or a shoe stuck in chewing gum.
On this particular day, though, the romance was being drained from an Italian cafe. The place had recently changed hands from the jovial Italians who had run it for years in favour of a staff of beautifully cold Israelis. Where once you could be ignored at the counter, now you had to pay fifteen percent more to be ignored at your table. The crusty formica tables were now hidden beneath white linens.
I ordered a fussy glass of sparkling water and a vegetable panini, and settled in with my handheld e-mail for the inevitable wait. As I fidgeted on my device, I spied an elderly couple in their eighties seated to my right. The man was wearing a checked shirt and slacks. The woman was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. He had taken his baseball cap off and formed it over his kneecap. It bore the logo of the Scottish Lotteries. They both sat upright with more muscle than I could muster from my Gen X back.
We couldn't have been in more different states of mind. I was flying around with worries about reports, and brands, and marketing, and jobs, and money, and whether I could meet with everyone I wanted to meet on this particular trip.
They were both looking into the distance, but not at one another; I couldn't help but imagine that they were here on a retirement trip from Scotland, and that this was just one of many quiet but perfect moments in their lives now. New York was very much romantic for them, and there was nothing that was going to ruin it for them, not even the strange man sitting next to them typing into his cellphone.
John Lennon's "Jealous Guy" came on the restaurant's sound system. I was seated in a way that I could only see the husband clearly, and at the faint sound of his wife whistling along with John Lennon, a slight, wry smile appeared on his face. He held out his hand on the table, and without looking, she slid hers to rest within.
And then suddenly they both recoiled as his burger and her sandwich were thrust at eye level between them.
"Your burger," (watch out) commanded the server. "Your sandwich" (look out, now). The unsmiling pony-tailed woman snapped her head around towards me. "Yours is next."
I smiled, falsely.
