Coffee delivers a gourmet rush of caffeine if you drink it in the right blend. Crushing the beans in your mouth to crack the skin delivers its own kind of mainline. Daub the fingertips with the grinds and rub it right into the gums for a shaky grin.
He spills his coffee and that's enough to walk by and liberate him of his wallet. Weathered leather, typical of sweating his rear end for years. Credit cards and some bills. Not much. Not even receipts. Clean. Barren.
Swearing and cursing over under his breath, he makes sure the other customers see how learned and deep he is with Charles Bukowski's "Mockingbird Wish Me Luck" in one hand, wiping down the table with the other.
Across the street. He continues with his murine staring of the pages, reading the people over the margins, keeping tabs and listening in on the couple with a foreign accent. Culture is best at a distance, where it can't assault your sense of pretence.
Can't pay the bill until he stands up, patting himself down, fading it out as he realises. Another kind of rush now. Fear, soon embarrassment and later, anger.
Credit cards are pointless, dead as soon as he hits a phone. The cash already in amongst a mound of clothes with a story too long to read on a piece of cardboard. No, not the gain here.
White-anting another's confidence, delivering ghosts and breezes on the back of their necks, is the only payoff to seed.
Written on Tuesday, 16 November 2010