This Aint No Coffeeshop (Revised)

A flash-fiction about a loser--nobody, really--and the the ever-elusive retort

 

 

 

 

This aint no coffee shop, hunny. 

F**k you. Fuckyoufuckyou. 

The lights were dim but the little hooded lamp over the pool table to my left was just enough. I held my notebook like a shield—it was, in a way—as the pen spun over page after page. No great inspiration, just quoted lines. Effortless bits of conversation spewed from drunken lips all around me. I didn’t record conversations, what would be the point in that? Random verse poured from my ears to my brain, then immediately through my nervous system and out the pen onto the page. Quips, foibles, slang and come-ons. I stopped only to slug from the bottle of beer before me, replaced every so often by the greasy-haired sow (this aint no coffee shop, hunny) moving here and there with her tray when she bothered to step away from the half-comatose men at the bar.

 

 Effortless banter, so it seemed. More than I could make. More than I could produce if you put a gun to my head. The waitress slammed my beer against the table like a fist on a punching bag making her contempt for the dark, silent freak customer known without saying a word. But words mean so much more, don’t they? And I had not been able to come up with a response to the waitress’s words—harmless as they were (…coffeshop, hunny…) by themselves. No, it had taken a full five minutes to come up with a response, only because a woman from two tables over had uttered them for me. She hadn’t meant to. They were meant for the grabby-handed b*****d in the Red Sox cap and button-down blue shirt from which the sleeves had been raggedly cut off. 

“F**k you, Maggot! Goddamnit you just better keep yer hands where I can see ‘em!”

F**k you I wrote furiously in my little notebook, my book of comebacks, my list of things I'd always wished I'd said but…well…couldn’t.  Nothing. I am nobody.  I hide in plain sight quietly screaming, waiting for words I can't conceive to fill in the silence.

 

I emptied my beer and raised the bottle in the air hoping the old b***h behind the bar would notice.

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Relatively true story - I'm am that girl you tell, "I've never seen anyone come out to a bar to read a book before"... Hope you enjoy

Reviews

[The Tao of Bri]

Ah ...people watching...too cool! I love that..this is a great vignette!