The Café

The Café never closes and he likes to be the first to arrive before the breakfast crowd because he enjoys the early morning stillness and his coffee and the music from the aging speakers.

Earlier, he had stirred in the predawn black because he heard snoring in the adjacent apartment. It must have been very loud, but through the dampening walls it sounded like the softness of one man’s true and indecipherable and earnest claim and it steeled him to rise and comb his thinning grey hair before leaving. 

Eggs and toast, he said to the waitress. And, will you sit and join me again?

No I have to stay working today.

I think everyone is set now, he said looking around at the empty room.  Let me buy you breakfast.

Smiling, she said, I’ll join you for a cup of coffee. She poured another and the eggs came out, and she brought them to the small cracked leather booth where he sat.

It is really good to see you.

Always.

They both sipped their coffee and looked out the window at the dark fog that made her think of even darker mornings more fondly than she thought she would.  His inadvertently good company seemed to bring a steady glow.

He took another sip and began, I don’t remember where I learned this, but did you know that great white sharks generally live near the coast where they have enough food?

That’s what I always thought, scary.

But then, sometimes, and scientists don’t know why, but they’ve tracked their patterns and the noticed that a large portion of these sharks will make a long journey to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and will dive hundreds of feet down and then return back to the coast to live out the rest of their lives. This is a mystery to them and they call this area in the middle of the ocean The Café.

She smiled.  Really?

Yes, why do you think they do this?

Well, there must be something really important out there for the sharks I suppose. 

Yes. Do you know what I think? I think some of them don’t make it back. I think some must swim too far or dive too deep, and I wonder what it might be like for a sinking shark trying to make it back.

We might have to go out to the Café to find out. 

And dive down deep to find them?

And dive down deep to find them. But there might not be anything there, I don’t want you to get your hopes up.

That might be just as well.

The bell above the door jangled and a young family with an overstuffed van outside poured in.  She turned her head and looked back at the family and then straightened upright towards him with a heaving smile and squeezed his bent fingers as she got up.