A woman wearing dark-framed glasses, made of
thick plastic as is the style these days, is teaching another woman English.
She is doing it syllable-by-syllable, each elaborately enunciated.
Her student is a smiling 30-something and very
attentive. Her accent is African.
Her teacher stands out in the coffee shop, and
not just because of her studied pronunciation of the English syllable – it’s
her sweater. It is in an equally well-pronounced bright reddish-pink with
fluffs all over. She and the woman at the next table – wearing an almost
iridescent Kelly green blazer – seem to be the only style-emphatic folks there
on a sunny and unseasonably warm mid-winter afternoon.
Of the nine others in the coffee shop, six are
young people in non-descript drab-colored casual things, clacking away on their
“devices,” while working on the neck-equivalent of carpal-tunnel syndrome. One
is even reading a text and wielding what looks to be a scientific calculator.
He makes strange equational markings on a notepad.
I – strategically positioned in a corner where I
can see them all – am the retrograde player in this scene. Not only is my
clothing traditional -- a gray wool sport coat in a tight herringbone knit,
cuffed black cotton pants with no pleats -- I am writing these
observations in a notebook of real paper in longhand with a fountain pen.
Next to the linguistics exercise at a
standard-issue Starbucks table in the
Barnes & Noble, sits Ms. Irish Green
and her companion -- a laughing blond with loopy locks cascading over her
shoulders. They are flipping through fashion magazines. A middle-aged couple
just got up and left after the man thumbed out a message on his phone. And over
there is a youngish woman, a brunette with big hair billowing down the back of
her speckled gray and white sweater. She is multi-tasking among a book, a
magazine, and her “device.”
As if to complete the whole chummy/scholarly air
of the place, at the next table another youngish woman sits, very intent on her
laptop, her notebook, and a thick textbook which she is underlining
promiscuously with a fat-tipped glow-in-the-dark-yellow Magic Marker.
The backdrop to this a-la-mode stage is a long
Starbucks counter. Two women – I’d guess
college students working part-time – are joined by a bald, be-speckled
guy who has begun one of those new urban beards.
The tableau is active. And if you’ve seen one,
you’ve seen them all.
What goes unseen is the mental buzz of such
places. Intellectual property is being traded, and if you pay attention, you
can observe scenes that capture the tenor of the times.
For example, on a day in late fall at another
coffee shop – in a time well before any of us had ever heard about “urban
beards” – a couple of buzz-cut young men of military bearing began showing up
regularly at a Starbucks with an outside seating area. Even though the timing
was earlier it was more consequential, as my friends and I soon would learn.
The coffee shop was an appendage to a bustling
shopping center, and the men sat in the same place each day just outside the
café’s storefront windows. Curiosity piqued when we noticed a well-dressed
exotic-looking older Oriental woman joining them there frequently.
Mystery Woman never stayed long with the young
military types. Never even had a latté. Instead the three, moving their heads
closer in furtive conversation, exchanged unheard words. Then she disappeared
around a corner. After three consecutive days of this covert tête-à -tête, we
began to pay closer attention. Something did not add up. It did not feel right.
One day we saw why, as the tableau took a
disturbing turn.
She showed up. Whispered something. Then all
three got up. She left hastily, again around the corner, while the guys moved
out in different directions, flashing agitated looks straight ahead. But one
left his backpack behind, leaning it against the storefront window of the
crowded coffee shop.
At our table, the two of us with military
experience exchanged quick looks carrying messages from a then-recent time –
9-11-01. We
knew the abandoned backpack was not a good sign, especially given its
positioning. One of us went to a police officer parked nearby. Another
headed to find mall security. Quickly we learned we had passed a “test.” The
mall had hired this team for just that reason – a test to see if shoppers would
… pay attention.
