One Day in Autumn

If I remember correctly, it must’ve been a thursday. A cool autumn breeze blew through the doors, playfully shifting the doorbell from its rest. The tables were mostly empty, except for perhaps one couple, close by the window, bent over two cups of steaming coffee. I must’ve shivered a bit, at least once. I hate the cold. 

If I remember correctly, there was something different about that day. Maybe the breeze was colder than usual, maybe the leaves were kicked up by the wind more than yesterday. Maybe there was nothing peculiar at all about that day. Maybe I’m making up visions in my mind, something to dull the incessant blandness of the day. 

But, for whatever reason it may be, I remember a girl. She was average: light brown and wispy hair, golden flecked brown eyes, lightly tanned skin. She wore a faded black rain jacket and carried a small, black backpack. There was nothing particularly impressive about her, but the memory of her is burned into my mind. 

Her jacket hood was up. Her hands lifted the paper menus placed outside delicately. Her eyes darted back and forth over the menu, slowly widening with wonder. She nearly scrambles inside the cafe, but I can tell she’s trying to keep her composure. She mumbles out her order, looking down at her feet. 

I remember it vividly. A tall caramel macchiato, with a dash of cinnamon and a pump of cream. She hands me the exact cash: two dollars and twenty-five cents.

I make the coffee quickly, trying to put as much care into it as I can in the small amount of time I spend with it. I know I have to get this right, if anything, but I’m not sure why. 

I hand her the coffee and she gives me a quick nod. If it were any other day, if it were any other person, I would have taken no note of it. It was a simple, polite gesture. An acknowledgement of each other’s existence in the vast universe. There should have been nothing odd about it. 

In the split second I see her face, her quick yet subtle smile, I see the pain. I see the years that have worn on her. She couldn’t have been but twenty, probably in college by now. But her face. The tiredness written on her skin. She had more responsibility than anyone else her age. She’d had to grow up quickly, all throughout her childhood, her high school years, and now. I realized this all in the milliseconds it took for her to nod, to smile at me. 

She quickly moved toward the back of the cafe, a seat near the window. She opened her backpack, withdrew her computer and phone, and plugged in her earbuds. She took a while to find a song she liked, but when she was finished, she flipped over her phone and began typing something up. 

That was when it began to pour. The sky opened up, and seemed to rip out its whole heart and soul, there, in that moment. It stormed. Trees bent over, outdoor umbrellas went flying. 

But even so, the soft droplets of water ran down the side of the windows, reflecting the warm light from the inside of the cafe. The girl stared out the window, one hand resting on her chin. She seemed to be examining the phenomenon. 

Soon enough, her hands became full of motion once again. Her eyes were alight. Inspiration must have hit. Her fingers glided across the keys, like notes to a song, a song she was singing to herself. The moment didn’t last long enough, it seemed. 

Every moment felt like a movie, a video caught on tape, sped up to skip to the more exciting scenes. Her hands moved faster, people moved in and out of the store quicker, rain droplets zipped down the window at lightning speeds. My life was speeding up before my eyes, and I could do nothing about it. Every new customer, every new order, it all felt like a dream. All of my work was perfunctory. 

Eventually, time slowed down again. The girl slowly closed her laptop, a small, polite smile upon her face. She delicately slipped the computer into her backpack, slipped her phone into her pocket, and stood up. As she left the cafe, I remember her expression clearly. Another smile, however wavering, and a single tear trickling down the side of her cheek. We made eye contact. Another split second where I could feel all of her loss, her sadness, her joy. She was happy. Happy with what, I’m not sure. Happy with what she had created, with what she had solved, with what she found? I’m not sure I’ll ever know. 

But as she left, pulling out a dark blue umbrella from her bag, all I remember feeling was content. Not joy, not sorrow, not regret. I felt satisfied with helping her in whatever way I could. 

The soft daylight slowly shifted to the evening darkness. The storm calmed. Rain now sprinkled the air and the ground. Everything smelled of dampness. And the girl still walked on, along the cracked and crumbling cobblestone beneath her feet, near the swaying trees and the brick walls. She continued on, despite everything.

The lampposts that guide her path flicker ever so slightly, an odd detail that would go unnoticed to most. Only someone who had watched them for long hours on end could see the dying lightbulb lose its light among the spider webs and dusty glass.

I wanted to follow her, I wanted to know what had caused us to connect out of everyone else in the cafe, out of everyone else in the universe. But I knew I couldn’t. I knew this was a moment that would only last in my memory, that would be forgotten but all others.

I returned to the cafe, and finished my shift in a haze. It was as if a dense fog stood between me and my life. 

Eventually, I learned to forget the moment. I stopped puzzling over the oddness of it. The glass pane between me and all others cleared up. I’ve learned to forget this odd thirty minutes of my life. But I tell you this, now, so that maybe you will know what a moment like this feels like, someday. Maybe you can tell a story like this to another, maybe you can detail every second, minute, ten minutes, thirty minutes. Maybe you can learn to remember.