No More Heroes

The cafe was open 24 hours. The tables scattered around the open area and looked like scattered pawns of the chess games people played down on Market Street. Stains from old spilled drinks marked each table. Outside, along Van Ness, discarded newspapers followed the wind, blowing along the street. Cops shuffled in and out. Niklas never saw them pay for any muffins. He looked at the basic menu. It was always easy to choose what he was going to take. He ordered tea because of the free refills and the milk on the side was already warm. At least the Lao ladies, who ran the cafe late at night, gave him free refills.

The manager never asked why he was there. She always said hello and gave him hot water with a bag of tea. He was awake watching the world. The world saw him but didn't notice him.

A person would walk in who would strike his curiosity. Like the old guy who shrugged his shoulders as he took off his thick green army jacket and a Buddha necktie wrapped around his dirty neck. An interesting looking person could make him stop everything. Grease popped and food cooked. The grill was on all night, except french fries--they always ran out of those. He heard the ladies talk in their Lao-accent. It was like background music playing. Outside, buses hissed to a stop like a cat hissing at a dog. Bus 42 passed the most frequently: running from downtown to Fisherman's Wharf.

He loved to be alone this late at night. It was like telling the reader to relax, these forthcoming words were on him. He could hear himself saying in a silent tone, I found my muse. Then the written words flowed like conversation.

He started writing hard like a track runner beginning to break a sweat to know he is warmed up. A friend once told Niklas that some people probably go nuts after years of trying to write and she was right. Arianne also said, Art can tear away so much of your sanity if you let it. It can consume you to a point that you become unrecognizable to the people who know you.

The cafe manager ran back and forth to the kitchen. She brought fresh baked donuts and muffins. She waited on a lady wearing a mini skirt that showed some of her bum. The lady sat down and ate the muffin she bought and nobody looked at her anymore. The people stared. Hookers need to eat also.

About six months ago he sat and wrote about a soft looking old lady who always ordered hot cocoa with a chocolate chip muffin. She stood at the counter about five minutes and looked at the menu. But she always ordered hot cocoa and a chocolate chip muffin. Then she sorted through her handbag and pulled out a plastic grocery bag full of money. A red rubber band wrapped the dollar bills tightly.

She floated across the floor and always sat in the corner. That old lady sat alone and watched people the way a hawk sees the world. She had a warm feeling about her the same way your skin gets warm when the sun shines through a window. He had not seen her for six months.

He glanced over at the next table where another woman had walked in carrying a plastic bag full of aluminum cans. She was interesting because of the way she sipped her hot coffee and poured half a cup of the free milk they gave at the counter next to the simmering coffee. As she took the coffee her bony shoulders shrugged. He could tell she was about to shiver and get warm. Then she would smile. Have you ever seen a street person smile? He hated to label a person, but the lady should know it was a pleasant smile. If you have not seen this jewel, you have missed a piece of life, uncommonly attractive. She had to take the coffee slowly because that would keep her warm the rest of the foggy cold night. She even smiled to herself. Maybe she was revisiting something in her past. They all do that!

He wasn't sure if he could describe anyone else in the cafe so he described the way she sat. He could see she respected herself although her clothes were as dirty as a child who had been playing outside all day. Her clothes fit her like a sail: they whipped back and forth in the wind. He wondered who took time to look at her today? She may not have even looked at herself. There's loneliness in modern societies. Nobody has the time to even talk to another person.

When the lady walked in the cafe a man reading a newspaper glanced at her. The blank stare on the man's face was a look of hope that she wouldn't ask him for money like the last four people. His eyes watched her walk to the counter then his eyes got lost in the newspaper again. His expensive slacks and leather shoes marked him as a foreigner to the place. Niklas suspected most people did not have the disadvantages people here have. The man sat with a silent vacant glare trying to understand why she lived the way she did. She kept herself company. She had an ease about her the way a poet has ease over the words. Niklas' mother once told him the only time a woman is uneasy with life: when she sits next to a handsome man. That's the only time she cannot control her emotions.

One man buttoned his dirty jacket, reached his hands in his pockets and slowly closed his eyes as his shoulders shivered back and forth as if they are trying to wake his body up to go out in the cold dampness of San Francisco.