Felix had just taken the shuttle up to campus for his morning work-study when Rachel ducked into the Lovin’ Cup for her caffeine fix and saw the man.
He sat near the window, sipping tea and reading a book as she came in for a coffee before heading up the hill again. She needed a jolt to kick-start her. She was running on fumes.
The man did not see her, immersed as he was in his book.
As she moved ahead in the short line she watched him. She could not make out the cover of the book, a hardcover with a sort of foil wrap. The fingers of the hand in which the book rested were long and they stretched to cover most of the book’s spine. What was he doing here, in a college coffee shop on a weekday? Didn’t he work?
“Go ahead,” a girl’s voice said as Rachel felt a nudge at her backpack, the handgun shifting.
The line had moved forward.
“Clare. Clare?” a barista said. A girl came and got a coffee and muffin at the end of the counter.
Rachel stepped forward, her eyes on the man near the window.
He was not that attractive, not really. But there was an air to him. Her earlier impression had been correct. A man of his age sitting in a coffee shop run and patronized by undergrads was out of place. If he were any other man, Rachel would have had one of two impressions of him: he was a poseur wannabe coffee shop artist who suffered delusion and did not recognize his age difference to those around him, saw himself as one of them, mentally and philosophically; or he was a creep. She got neither impression from this man. He was simply enjoying a tea and a book before he headed to wherever his day brought him. Which is where? Rachel wondered. Was he a visiting professor, a salesman? No. He was dressed too casually, worn jeans and a flannel shirt, although the shirt did have suede patches at the elbows.
“Patrick,” a barista said. “Patrick. Order.”
“Go ahead,” the girl behind Rachel said.
Rachel stepped to the counter and ordered her Red Eye to go.
She watched the man near the window as the cashier, a classmate of Rachel’s, said, “Fueling up before the lecture later?”
The man peered up from the pages of his book. Instinctively, Rachel gave a slight wave, but the man seemed not to recognize her and went back to reading.
Rachel felt slighted, and moronic. What did she expect, the man to leap out of his seat for a girl he’d offered to give a three-minute ride? If men of his age all seemed to look alike to her in a vague way, what must students Rachel’s age look like to him?
Rachel went to the end of the counter to await her coffee.
The man glanced at her again. Or did he? His eyes showed no recognition. Perhaps he was merely gazing at the menu above her, a blackboard scrawled with colorful chalks.
“Your daily Red Eye,” her classmate said. Rachel took the cardboard coffee cup and slipped a corrugated cardboard sleeve onto it.
When she turned to leave, the man was gone.