Six of Cups [Reversed]

The Coffee Shop—DAY

I am daydreaming I am dancing on a rooftop with a broom with Andrea. I wake to find myself am in the Coffee Shop helping Anna Feng with her research. Brainy girl. A brainy girl I’ve always had a minor crush on since college. It is not now or was it ever clear what our relationship is, but we’ve always seemed close. Now we flip through some art books. She’s been going on about something as I drifted.

Art history.

Okay.

Needing to save the conversation I say “I guess what we a looking at is just a series of regular conventional conceptions.”

“Exactly.” She’s excited. I get it.

We sit at our usual table in the corner where we can watch folks go by on the sidewalk. When the Waitress totters over hands me a bottle of malted non-beer with a cartoon dog on it. She tells me to give this to Anna, who is going to do a drawing of her dog for her. She wants the dog’s eyes to look like the one on the bottle. She also gives me a photo of the dog for Anna for reference too. Not knowing why I have become the middle man, I turn hand these things to Anna but find she is missing. Again.

I do not want to carry the bottle around, so I assure her I have a case of malt at home. Then, to be sure I get a pen and paper and sketch the eyes just in case. Anna comes up to me from behind and asks what I am doing. By this time I have finished the eyes and am making a sketch of the rest of the dog too. I apologize for stepping on “her territory.” But tell her I couldn’t stop drawing once I started.

“You know me.” I mutter.

“Of course,” she sighs somewhere between frustration and nostalgia, “I is good that we could meet up and talk about the good old days. Are you still close with some of the old gang?”

“College? Bah.” I complain, “You are not remembering properly. I was never part of the group. I was lonely and alone. Now that I have a good job and a good wife. Sometimes, maybe for both, but regardless. These are the good old days.”

“I wanted to know what you’ve been up to since college and if you miss everybody. I guess you’ve just answered that.”

“Those were four horrible years of my life.” I tell her “I was always being hurt or getting in trouble and no one ever helped me. You weren’t friends. You all let me grow up an angry, lonely person, who doesn’t believe in anything.”

“But there’s Andrea.”

“There was always Andrea.” I tense. Chuckle. Past tense. “It was always us against the World.”

She gives me a hug. “You’re leaving now, I guess.”

“That’s what I/ men do. Right? ” I tell her, “When there’s nothing here for me. I have to leave eventually.”

“That’s sad. I cannot help you.”

I stomp off. She doesn’t make a move to keep me. I am gone.