While the proprietor was out of the city for the week sorting business that would probably be no business at all, Michael had permission to close up early if things slowed down. They had slowed two hours ago.
At this time of night most people were done with expensive coffees and teas and had no desire to be seen eating tiny, absurdly priced sandwiches. Other shops with later hours and better conversation about necessary reads with real content could be had elsewhere. C'est La Vie was not elsewhere and Michael, along with the authentic people of the world, knew it.
Michael had grown rather tired of his job and did his best to stay entertained despite the endless hours of pretentious talk heard in every corner of the shop. He forced himself to discuss Kant and Ovid as if he were really interested and did such things only because tuition was high and cake jobs were rare. He once watched in near agony as a scrawny and unkempt hipster and Occupy movement reject spotted an attractive female enter the shop. The milksop appeared comically awkward as he fought to keep a slight copy of Glas aloft in obvious hopes of sending some tired, subliminal message. Worse still, Michael became physically ill when the young girl ordered her coffee, searched the shop for an open chair and opted to ask if she might sit with the hipster instead of taking the available seat next to the window where real thought could possibly happen. Michael disliked such people and inwardly laughed at the idea of their vapid lives. Laughing at them felt so damned good he wished to do it openly, but knew he never would.
Michael finished wiping down the faux rosewood tabletops and refilled the germ-ridden glass sugar pourers that fooled no one by their wannabe crystal cuts. He retrieved a new mop head from the tidy cleaning closet only half hidden by an ivy-laced armoire that had been hastily converted to a bookcase of sorts and screamed contrived.
The owner's wife had gone to great efforts to order and stock the closet with ridiculously expensive foreign versions of readily available and all too common household cleaners. Michael had listened in awe one day as the owner had tried desperately, and without any real success, to explain to his wife how unnecessary and financially irresponsible this insistence to use French bleach over the American store brand was and how it was probably chemically identical to any domestic bleach found in a thousand discount stores in the city.
The conversation was ended abruptly when the owner was struck with the futility of introducing his wife to logic when she stated, with no hint of pause, "I like the smaller packages European products come in. And the name sounds better. So, well, it's just better."
Michael totaled the day's receipts after a half-hearted mopping and found that his tips barely covered his goal of 10 percent of the store's take. It wasn't unusual for the nouveau riche and the aspirant rich to leave worthless tips and feign accidental omission. Justice was occasionally served when some understanding girlfriend, usually half the age of the card-holder, pointed out that the tip line contained a scribble that resembled no number at all and shamed the cheap bastard into tipping correctly. Michael would simply smile knowingly and say, "Happens all the time", because it did.
He set the shop's alarm after taking care to overstep the damp travertine tile that formed a concentric circle around a meaningless white star. When the alarm refused to set properly, Michael knew a call to the alarm company was in order and no less than a half hour delay in closing the shop lay ahead. Michael made the call and took his waiting place in the smallish outdoor porch that faced the building's narrow side alley and gave no real view.
The opposing wall to the patio showcased a peeling advertisement that some decision-maker had painted then deliberately scarred to resemble a half-century-old campaign. This concocted design fell in line with the city's new and painfully obvious push for all things old and interesting. A contentious bond debate had taken two years to produce any noticeable results in making retro-chic profitable for anyone. The revival of the city's long defunct trolley and track managed to squeeze a dollar or two from weekenders who were noticeably reluctant to hand their money over for a series of hundred-foot stops that wowed the PlayStation shrieklings none. "Your boutiques and salons sprung up like little cash flowers and wilted in your greedy hands," Michael thought to himself as he lit his twice-nightly cigarette and untucked his many mocha flavor stained shirt.
A light rain had helped clear the streets of the die-hard downtown Thursday night clubbers and cleaned the air of the normal dumpster charged stench. The cheap covers and cheaper alcohol that could be found downtown after ten, normally kept the college students descending and the low base pumping long into the night. But even the slightest of rain demanded effort, and for the majority of the local juco attendees this was an unknown concept.
Michael flicked a length of ash into a puddle that was developing on the alley side of the patio's waist-high wall. A thin layer of water and motor oil varnished Main Street and reflected the red-orange glow of a nearby tattoo shop's neon sign. Michael looked on as the sign pulsed with a hypnotic regularity and was accompanied by an electric buzz that completed the peculiar heartbeat.
The eleven o'clock trolley's bell clanged in the distance and bounced hollow off the empty storefronts. Michael smiled thinly when he noted the bell's chance alignment with the neon throb.
"Life and its random harmony," he said quietly to himself.
Michael watched as the trolley emerged from behind the adjacent building and slowed to a stop in front of the shop. There seemed to be a moment of slight confusion between the operator and the trolley's lone fare before the passenger eventually gave a defeated shoulder shrug and stepped hotly from the now swiftly departing car. A diminutive girl appeared once the trolley had moved on and the rays from a nearby sushi bar’s yellowish dull light collected upon her shoulders, penetrating droplets of rain on her clothing and sparking them faintly. The girl, turning a searching half circle while dragging a small tote, spotted Michael and took a short reluctant step toward downtown's only offering of life.
The girl briefly halted her commitment toward Michael's direction to smooth her skirt with a free hand in an unconscious attempt to regain a measure of composure for the unknown audience of one.
Michael rolled his head to one side, trying to convey affability in the lean and did nothing to hide his curiosity with the show unfolding before him.
The girl hefted her tote, took a few more reluctant steps in Michael's direction, paused to look up and down the street a final time, and then slowly closed the gap between them.
Michael stood waiting on the other side of a wall that, in her instant evaluation, was just high enough to give her a head start if a flight into the night became necessary.
"It happens,' Michael said from a distance.
"What?" The girl called back as she neared.
"The trolley, it stops at the wrong place all the time. I don't think those guys even live around here. They just hire them off the street, put them in costume and show them the stop and go stuff. No training, you know?"
The girl entered the light of the cafe's patio and Michael saw that she was dressed in a business casual suit, bluish in color. The snug skirt was cut just so and ended in a tantalizing spot two inches above her knees. A light blue scarf, tied loosely about her neck, seemed more for function than fashion. Practical and smart. When the shadows played with the girl's face, Michael marked her striking angular features, a study in linear perfection. Her rose pale skin told Michael that the girl had only met with the sun in the brief moments spent between the shades of her life. The lack of forced color gave her countenance youth on top of her youth. A pedestal of lips emerged from the girl's light facial palette, seizing the eye by a ten thousand-year old reflex. And it was impossible for Michael not to notice that the
girl's body spoke well to all men and needed no adjustments to be woman complete. In the seconds that he had to take her in, Michael assigned one common but necessary word for the girl: Beautiful.
"I don't think that man spoke much English on top of the training you mentioned," the girl said, dropping her bag and tucking a tress of long brown hair behind her ear. "I don't know what he was saying, but I'm positive he had no idea what I was saying."
"So you're lost, I assume?," Michael asked.
"Perpetually," she answered, making eye contact with Michael for the first time. Brown eyes wide, the girl seemed to take a breath reserved for a small shock, but stopped it short, forcing it to end.
Michael saw the girl's start and sat in silent assessment, allowing the moment to pass without speaking. The lull seemed theatrically long and he broke it with a finger point to the girl's bag.
"The water," he said.
The girl followed Michael's index and saw that her tote rested in a small puddle at her feet.
"Oh, damn!" she said, lifting the bag to the patio wall.
"Here, let me see it," Michael offered as he took the bag from the girl and began to wipe it with his ready hand towel. "I think it's going