Sometimes when I can’t sleep I go to the twenty-four hour Waves café on Commercial drive that’s about four blocks from my “garden suite” apartment to write. Surprisingly, at 2am on certain nights it’s difficult to find a place to sit and that’s excatly what I was wondering as I packed up my laptop, some books for inspiration (Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays; Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols; Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories) a notebook, pens and then I’m off. Oh yeah, and tunes, gotta have tunes and right now anything by Do Make Say Think really helps while writing; and also lately I’ve also started carrying along a small Ziploc bag of tuna in my pocket because there’s a stray kitten that I’ve seen hiding in a bush by the park near the all night coffee shop. I first saw it one night walking home as a passing car’s headlights picked up two yellow orbs and a white twitch of whisker amongst the foliage. I’ve tried to catch the kitten a couple times but with just my bare hands and “Here kitty kitty,” I haven’t even come close. So before I shut my apartment door I snatched the small Ziploc bag of tuna from the counter and tuck it in my pocket beside my iPod.
What cat can resist tuna?
But the kitten wasn’t in the bush on the way to the cafe and I ordered an Americano. The guy behind the espresso machine looked tired as he made my drink and I couldn’t help feeling bad for him as he serviced the insomniacs, and it reminded me of the time when I was eighteen years old and worked the graveyard shift unloading transport trucks and my supervisor caught me sleeping atop a stack of mattresses I was supposed to be unloading.
What does the guy behind the espresso machine do on these long nights to keep himself entertained?
He polished the milk steamer as if he was jerking it off and smiled at me seductively. I smirked, but was kinda creeped out cause I didn’t really know him, but then I realized that was what made it funny, so I laughed, but it came out after the fact and it seemed fake to him, I think, and he handed me my coffee and took a step back from the espresso machine.
I found a table, a particularly lucky spot I thought at the time, considering the amount of people at that café at two in the morning and I placed my backpack on a chair, took out my laptop, and removed the small stack of napkins that were on my table and put them on the empty table beside me. I sat down and opened my laptop. The batteries were almost dead. I stood up and searched my backpack for the plug, but I left that at home and decided just to write in my notebook, so I put my computer away. I opened to a fresh page of my notebook and rested my arms on the table, but the table shifted, and spilled coffee all over part of my notebook, which was lucky, because that would have been my computer. I grabbed a napkin from that stack on the other table and wiped up the coffee and then used the rest of the napkins to prop my table so it didn’t wobble anymore, and while I was doing all this thought I heard the guy behind the espresso machine smirk, but I wasn’t sure, because of the Do Make Say Think playing in my headphones.
Once the table was balanced, writing went pretty well. I started and finished a story about an insomniac, a stray kitten, and a guy who worked behind an espresso machine at a twenty-four hour coffee shop. After my coffee and several refills of my water bottle, which the guy from behind the espresso machine filled for me, but without any kidding around because I’ve creeped him out, I wrap up the story, pack up the books I haven’t even glanced at, throw on my hoodie, and walk out the door. From the window of the coffee shop I notice the guy behind the espresso machine cleaning my table: he wipes it down with a cloth, removes the stack of napkins that I was using as a prop and places them on top of the table. He’s smiling the entire time.
As I walk away, and the warm light from the all night coffee shop fades from my footsteps, I hear a noise that I hope is a kitten. I pull my headphones off, scrunch down as I near the bush, and reach into my pocket.