People Watching at Starbucks

I am sitting in Starbucks on a Tuesday morning.  As I write, I like to people watch.  I strain to listen to conversations.  Most people here are like me.  They are working by themselves on their laptops, headphones on, lost in their own little worlds.  But there is man and a woman sitting at a table near the window.  He looks like he is in his fifties, she, her mid-thirties.  She is talking loudly, rather fast, and looks square at him, unflinching.  He is having a hard time looking her in the eye.  He looks down at his feet a lot.  When he does meet her gaze he wears a shy smile.   

The man is getting fired.  I catch phrases like,  “you haven’t applied yourself” or  “you just don’t have the drive that is needed for this job.”  She says she is embarrassed that her company has wasted thirty-three weeks on him.  She could be his daughter.  He mumbles a few words here and there.  He looks out the window.   

Above their heads hangs the mermaid wearing a crown, the green Starbucks emblem. Looking closely, I notice for the first time that she has fins.   I cannot make out what he is saying.  But when he does speak, she interrupts, she nods incessantly. She assures him that she fervently agrees with what he is saying.  She goes on to take his words and make them into her own; she pretends that his thoughts are really her ideas.  Once in a while, with built-up courage, he holds up his hand, stops her,  gets a word or two in. 

Amazingly, at the end of the conversation, they stand up and shake hands, and he holds the door for her as she walks past him and out of the shop.  He shuffles after her, sheepishly.   He gets into a Jeep Cherokee, probably an early 90’s model.  She jay-walks quickly across the street and gets in to a bright red, fully-loaded SUV, a 2007.  Her engine revs instantly and she shoots out of her parking spot and drives away.  He sits in his blue jeep Cherokee for a couple of minutes.  Then he turns on his car, checks his mirrors and cautiously pulls out.