A priest in a black suit and white collar and a monk in a long saffron robe walk together into the store before sunrise, and if I’d spent the summer working anywhere else, if I’d lived this year in some other town where things like this don’t happen, I might dismiss them as the start of a very bad joke. The priest buys a coffee and is liberal with cream, and the monk makes Earl Grey tea with two bags, and neither of them uses sugar and neither of them says a word, though they smile at each other and also at me. We stand in a triangle of mismatched colors—black suit, saffron robe, and blue apron—like stripes on the flag of a country no one has been to before.
It feels like an opportunity of some kind, the two of them there at the counter. It feels like I should have some question to ask, something I really want answered, but it’s been a long night and nothing comes to mind but clichés—I could tell them they’re the start of a very bad joke, or ask where the rabbi is this morning. I could ask them the meaning of life or I can let them walk out of the store with their coffee and tea and their smiles, no wiser than I was when they walked in together a few minutes earlier.