Chronicles of New York

The Westway Café was not crowded yet, but even so he didn’t notice the girl until he had almost finished his omelet. She was in a booth at the back, near the kitchen, typing on a laptop. A coffee mug sat to her left on the edge of the table. It was accompanied by an empty juice glass and half a glass of chocolate milk. He toyed with the idea of approaching her, asking if she was thirsty. He hated pickup lines, but it was hard to meet a stranger without one. He shifted his gaze to the window and focused his eyes on the people walking down Broadway while he considered the pros and cons of a possible conversation.

Pro: She was using a laptop in a diner early on a Saturday morning. It was unlikely she had been up all night partying. But did that mean she was a fellow workaholic? Con: He didn’t need an enabler. He turned his head to look at her again. She appeared young enough to be a Columbia student, but old enough to have graduated, which put her in an acceptable age range. She had blonde hair and he preferred brunettes, but she wasn’t overweight.

He refocused his gaze and watched her as her fingers danced across her keyboard. Without glancing away from her screen, she reached for—maybe the coffee mug, but her forearm clipped the glass of milk and chocolaty brown liquid cascaded onto the floor. She looked over quickly, a hand flying up to cover her open mouth, and he jumped to his feet, as if to offer his assistance. She saw him move toward her, and a flicker of confusion passed across her face as he took three steps, turned around and walked out the door.

He had work to do.

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This entry was posted by Willow on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 4:21 pm. It is filed under Guest Contributors and has these tags: career, daily life, diner, drinking, fiction, food, frustration, life, manhattan, new york city, privacy, sex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.