It's "grande", sir...

"Ummmmm...I guess give me a large latte with an extra shot, and can I get one pump of hazelnut and a half pump of vanilla? And with half two percent and half skim?"

I didn't really like coffee, even, but what I did like was going somewhere and ordering something like that, just to see what kind of reaction it would get. You could always tell the real pro's; they didn't bat an eye, maybe they'd give you a "sure thing, sir!" or make a quick scrawl on the cup, but they never lost that air that they had just made seventeen of those in a row just before you walked in, no big deal.

The guy today was somewhere in the middle; I think he briefly entertained the idea of telling me they wouldn't mix milks like that, but he controlled it well and only let a little bit of frustration seep into his voice as he called it out to the girl making drinks. I could definitely tell that he noticed me not tipping; he didn't glare at me but he didn't have that generic friendly smile anymore either.

So I waited for a minute for the drink, and I saw this girl go by on a moped that I had asked out a couple of times just after college. She still didn't wear a helmet, which didn't really surprise me, but I couldn't tell if the half-turn of the head that she made as she went past the store window meant that she had seen me as well, or if it was just a coincidence. I looked a lot different then, with the hair and the flannel shirts and the hemp jewelry, but she looked mostly the same, blond hair gathered back in barrettes with loose ends whipping just over the place on the back of her neck that I'd never quite gotten up the nerve to rest my fingers on for a moment sometime, casually, even when we were both on the couch at a friend's party or sitting around a campfire at the beach at the end of the summer, collectively and unconsciously resisting the deepening chill and the specter of growing older with one of the oldest and most primal human technologies of all.

Maybe it would have made a difference, maybe she would have taken me up on a couple of dinners then, maybe we could have grown old together and vacationed in Maine in the summer and all those things; I guess it's possible. To me, though, the moped told the story better; she was going somewhere, and I may or may not have been part of the scenery on the way by, a bit of color and texture that helped make up the impressionistic memory of a short trip to somewhere very ordinary that would almost certainly be filtered from her mind as soon as she got there, only to turn up again in a dream, perhaps, or a vague impression of having encountered something familiar.

I wish I could say that I swung back by the tip jar on the way out and dropped a couple of bucks in, but instead I made a big fuss about the milk being scorched (it wasn't) and demanded my money back, which tied up things at the counter for a good three or four minutes. I could feel the eyes rolling and the impatient glances at watches and cell phones behind me, and it didn't feel good exactly, but inside I was saying, "yeah, ignore this, you fuckers, block this out of your morning memories...you'll get to work a little late or a little frazzled and you'll be telling somebody a couple of cubes over the story of the guy in the coffee shop this morning, and I'll be that fucking guy, and even though it won't matter to you, I'll get to tell the same story, and it'll matter to me, it will fucking well matter to me."

I also wish I could say that I don't look for girls on mopeds anymore either, but I do. God help me, I still do.