My oceanography professor from last fall comes in to buy milk and Cheerios at two in the morning, and she doesn’t recognize me as the guy who sat near the back of her three hundred seat lecture hall almost a year ago so I don’t say anything. She’s skinny and sharp like a bird, and watching her hands flit from wallet to pocket to purse makes me nervous so I look away toward the glass, remembering how exhausted I was in her class, shoveling one fact after another into my head, no time to slow down or stop to ask off-track questions, no time for daydreams or wondering aloud, and it all stuck in my brain long enough for the exam and washed out like some kind of tide the next day. I could ask her which kind of tide but I don’t. I don’t really care what it’s called.
She shoves two handfuls of change across the glass counter and they spill off the edge to my feet. “Oh!” she says, “Oh!” and I stoop for the money and she leaves before I stand up so I dump her coins into the register without counting to see if it’s exact.