this guy" the way you talk about an odd and eccentric weirdo—
Dude, I love that homeless guy who plays the kazoo all day on State Street
—or does she mean, you know, that she
loves
this guy, me?
It turns out the woman with the vanilla skinny latte, extra shot, is a reporter for Channel 3. She wants to do a segment on me, maybe on Minn, too, about how I guess drinks at Starbucks every afternoon.
"Well, I don't do this every afternoon," I say. "Only when the café is slow—for example, we never play this game in the morning rush—and only when I am feeling particularly intuitive."
"It's amazing," the reporter says.
"It always makes our day," says Tammy, another barista who is working the milk steamer.
Minn just smiles at me. She never seems to not be smiling; she may be the only genuinely happy person I know.
"Anyway," I tell the reporter, "media attention would simply negate the subversive pleasure I get from this little game. People would come in to deliberately throw me off. Imitating guessers would crop up all over town, plaguing cafés with such guessing games. But, anyway, you were debating getting a pack of trail mix. You should get it. But in truth, I think you really wanted a pumpkin scone. But there's your diet to consider, especially given your profession."
Minn is laughing so hard tears come down her face.
The TV reporter gives me her card as she exits. Her name is Kathy Simon. The trail mix comment has left her dazed, as if I have plumbed an intimate region of her psyche. She is a bit more attractive now, smiling. Her gray eyes look almost blue, but no, they are gray. Her skin is pale, too, and in midwinter it will turn to gray. Soon, her hair will be gray; it's possible that she will be all gray soon. A gray woman.
"Do you have a gray cat?" I ask her as she nears the exit.
Now she just leaves, wide-eyed, near tears. Minn helps a few other customers and I go to the washroom. When I come back, Minn has my triple-shot ready.
"On me," she says.
"Many thanks," I say.
"You have a dark edge to you today," Minn says. "A sort of harsh subtext to your guessing."
"It's a gift. A useless one, but interesting: I've studied unhappiness for a long time and now I can sort of guess everybody's unhappiness before they speak. And I also note, at least among a certain well-educated demographic, Starbucks is a ritual—costly and mildly unhealthy as it is—meant to mitigate our day-to-day unhappiness."
"It's like this very focused sort of ESP, don't you think?"
"Funny thing is this: if I know the person at all, I can never guess what they'll order."
I hear my name being called, boisterously, across the room.
"Zeke!"
I nod at Minn, mumble "Thanks," and go over to the waving, suited man. H. M. Logan has obviously followed his Rotary meeting with cocktails, too, many more than the one I had, and now is trying to sober up at a corner table before heading back to his office, a palatial suite on the thirteenth floor of the U.S. Bank building from which he runs the Dorothy Logan Memorial Foundation, named after his mother. "You were terrible today," he says. "What were you thinking? You embarrassed me in front of the Rotarians!"
"Sorry, H. M. I really am, but it wasn't an ideal audience," I say. "It was like giving a lecture about cooking with bacon at a PETA conference."
"What are you talking about?"
"You can't have an attentive audience without a receptive one," I say.
H. M. is drooling a little. "What are you talking about?"
"How much did you have to drink today?" I ask.
"Look," he says, "I got a call from somebody in Washington yesterday. Apparently, my name is the contact name in their database for GMHI. I told them to call you."
"Okay."
"Why would they call me?" H. M. asks.
"I don't know. Because you're the chair of the board?" I say.
"It makes me nervous, federal bureaucrats calling me on the phone."
"It's probably nothing. Maybe Lara forgot to turn in a form," I say, which I know would never
Jimmy Fallon, Gloria Fallon
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