The Art of People Watching

Author’s Note: Hello reader! This story does start a little slow, but hopefully, that is made up for in the end. It just kind of came to me all of a sudden, and I decided to just roll with it, so I hope it is an enjoyable read. All feedback is greatly appreciated! Thanks! 🌼

It wasn’t uncommon for there to be so many people around the park but that didn’t mean I had to like it. I didn’t like people all that much, they were just so complicated. Aside from my friends, I stayed away from people as much as I could, which was completely ironic considering I lived in one of the busiest cities in America. 

New York City was always buzzing for it is the city that never sleeps, I doubt it ever blinks either. I had to follow the money though, and where there are people, there is bound to be a story worth telling, whether it’s a scandal, a miracle, or tragedy, New York had it all. 

I usually stayed clear from Central Park, there were just too many people doing too many things. That made it hard to think, but today I made an exception for an old friend of mine who was staying in the city for a while. 

I never realized how beautiful the park was until I was looking around at the trees surrounding me, slightly swaying back and forth in the gentle breeze. For a moment, I forgot what I was doing, and why I was there but came back to when a voice called my name out from one of the many benches lining the pathway. 

“Hey Taylor, over here.” 

“Hey,” I said making my way over to one of the benches, “how have you been? It’s been a while hasn’t it?” I noted, going in for a hug.

“I’m doing fine,” he replied, holding his hand up to stop me. I forget, he wasn’t a people person either, which was why we were such great friends in high school. “It’s been roughly seven years since I saw you last in Chicago was it?” he asked, putting his hands in his pockets.

“Yea, I think so, it’s been so long, it’s hard to say.” I hadn’t thought ahead too much, I wasn’t sure what was going to do now that we met up. I gestured to the small coffee stand, thinking that could be a good way to strike up some sort of conversation. 

He only nodded as he stood up and walked over to the small stand where he looked over the menu that hung from the side of the cart. 

“To be honest, I think we should get coffee from the other stand, the one we passed on our way here.” he just stood there, still looking the menu over. 

“Uh- sure, okay.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that, it was so out of the blue considering I hadn’t seen anything wrong with the stand before. As we walked along the path toward the other cart, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer and decided to ask him, “What was wrong with that stand? Why are we going to another one, and how did you even know there was one up here?” by the time I was done, I had stopped walking and just stood there, confused.

He turned toward me, with a strange smile stretched across his long face. 

“Well, it’s quite simple really.” he started walking again, gesturing for me to follow. “Their coffee wasn’t very good, and I remembered passing another cart that did have good coffee, and so we are going there instead. As I said, simple,” he said shoving his hands into his pockets again. 

Nothing about that was simple as he had never been to New York, so there was no way for him to know which stands had good coffee. Even though I didn’t say these things out loud, he knew what I was thinking.

“Honestly, Taylor it isn’t that complicated.” he looked over at me again and sighed. He pulled me over to the side of the path and sat down. 

I couldn’t help but laugh at how he was sitting, knees pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them almost as if he was hugging himself. He just glared at me and nodded down to the empty spot next to him. 

“It’s become a hobby of mine to notice things like this,” he waved his arms in front of him, signaling to everything and everyone around him. “People are truly fascinating, don’t get me wrong, I still prefer not to interact with them but I have found it quite enjoyable to watch from a distance,” he explained.

“So you got all that… from watching them?” I asked, still confused. 

“Indeed, by simply watching, you can learn a lot about a person and their life. Take for example this coffee stand. What about it or it’s surroundings tells you that their coffee is better than the other stand’s coffee?” he asked me, rocking back and forth now.

“Well…” I looked around for anything that would give away that this was a good spot for coffee, but after a minute of scoping the area, but there was nothing that could tell me anything about the quality of their coffee. “There’s nothing, I don’t understand B, how’d you figure it out?”

“By paying attention to the people and the little details, like how they act while waiting for their coffee, although this detail alone does not prove much, they could be upset because they were having a bad day, so we keep watching. We wait and see how they react once they get the coffee, and even then that isn’t always enough, so we continue to watch to see what their reaction is when they drink the coffee. Are they happy, relieved, upset, disappointed, maybe angry? That is where you get a lot of your information as well as from what they do after their initial reaction. Do they throw it away, continue drinking it at a steady pace, or maybe they just hold it, for they don’t want to drink it nor throw it away. These are all important details. Does that make sense?” B asked, tilting his head slightly as if examining me as he waited for a response. 

“Not yet I suppose, well then let’s take a look into… that man’s life over there.” he pointed over to a middle-aged man, wearing a suit standing over by the coffee stand. “Do you see him?” he asked.

“Yea, what about him?” I replied with a small nod.

“Does anything stand out to you, what can you tell about him by what he is doing, what he is wearing, and so on?” 

I looked the man over for a while and thought I could pick out some key details, but I wasn’t entirely sure if they were what he was looking for.

“He is clearly in his late thirties, early forties maybe. He wears a suit, but from what I can see it is cheap, for a suit anyway. You can tell by the way he is standing, he thinks very highly of himself. He has charm though, he’s flirting with the woman at the register.” As I finished my analysis, I looked over to see if I had passed his little test, but he looked disappointed. Had I missed something, I had looked him over completely. 

“You were on the right track, but you didn’t dig deep enough into his flirting. It’s obvious this is not his first time meeting the woman, and yet he’s clearly married, but I can’t tell if she knows that or not,” he started.

“How could you know that? Are you saying he’s cheating?!” I said, probably a little too loud. 

He glared at me and continued when everyone’s attention had finally drifted away. 

“Look at his hand, his ring finger has a very clear tan line, certainly from a wedding ring. He isn’t distraught enough to have gone through a divorce recently so it’s very obvious, he’s hiding his ring when he goes out,” he said this as if it were common knowledge.

All I could manage to say was, “Huh…” I hadn’t even looked at his hand, it seemed like such a silly little detail, but it told so much. 

“Okay, let’s try another one,” he scanned the area, “there,” he said pointing to a man, carrying a large black duffel bag. “What do you suppose is in his bag?” 

I looked him over, checking for any dead giveaways, but couldn’t find anything that stood out, so I looked a little closer, for small details that I would have missed initially. 

“It’s something he wants to hide from others, looking at the way he is standing, almost guardian his bag from everyone around him,” I noted, thinking out loud. Then the man bent over and unzipped his duffel. He grabbed out a large bulky box, with multicolored wires poking out from all sides.

“Is that a…” I started to say when B cut me off.

“BOMB!!” he screamed out, grabbing my arm and attempting to run. People around us ran as well and others threw themselves down on the ground, none of them knowing just how close to the threat they were.

I realized if I had known this skill, if I had made a hobby out of it sooner, I may have been able to spot it sooner. I might have been able to help, to stop him before it was too late.

I didn’t see it, but I heard it, and definitely felt it, and then there was nothing.