The Questions We Rehearse But Never Ask

I have been thinking about an old man because he stopped coming to the coffee shop three weeks ago.

The coffee shop sits next to a dry cleaner that always has the same gray suit hanging in the window. I don’t know if the suit is for sale or if someone forgot it. Remedy has twelve tables, four of which wobble. I know this because I’ve sat at all of them over the past year, working through a book about the Napoleonic wars that I keep meaning to finish but probably won’t.

The old man ordered two coffees every morning. Not two different drinks. Two of the same, served together on a small tray. He carried them to a table by the window and sat facing the street, his back to the room. I never saw anyone join him.

His coat was green. Not olive, not forest, the green of a chalkboard that has been erased many times. He had a way of setting down the tray that suggested he had once worked with his hands. Or maybe he had just carried many trays. I don’t know. I was making things up about him the way you make things up about anyone you watch but never speak to.

The barista’s name is the barista. I’ve never seen it written down. She waits for the espresso machine the way people do when there’s nothing else to do. She never asked him about the second coffee. Neither did I.

I rehearsed ways of asking. You planning ahead? Too jokey. Double fuel for the day? Worse. Is someone meeting you? Direct but intrusive. I ran through them while pretending to read about the Battle of Austerlitz. The questions accumulated like a small debt I kept meaning to pay off.

So I didn’t ask. I took my own cup and left.

The window table has a chip in the corner of the wood, shaped roughly like the state of Nevada. I noticed this the second week after he stopped coming, when I sat there myself for the first time. The chair faced the street. I understood why he chose it. You can see the crosswalk, the bus stop, the entrance to the dry cleaner. You can watch people decide whether to jaywalk. Most of them do.

I had built an architecture around him without testing it. A partner at home who couldn’t leave the house. A loss settling into habit. A ritual that had outlived its reason but kept its shape, the way a path through grass keeps its shape after the walking stops. These explanations let me stay in my own business.

Here is what I actually know: he was old, his coat was green, he ordered two coffees, he sat by the window, he stopped coming.

The Napoleonic wars book is six hundred pages. I’m on page two hundred and twelve. Napoleon is about to invade Russia, which I already know doesn’t go well for him. There’s a coffee stain on page one hundred and forty that I don’t remember making. The book has a bookmark from a museum I visited three years ago in another city. I’ve thought about throwing away the bookmark but haven’t.

The questions I’ve actually asked people over the years have faded quickly. They turned into answers, then into facts I half-remember, then into nothing. The ones I didn’t ask behave differently. They stay active. They return at odd times, testing the shape of a moment that has already passed.

The dry cleaner finally took down the gray suit last week. The window is empty now, just glass and a few dust motes catching light in the afternoon. I don’t know what it means. Probably someone finally picked up their suit. Probably it doesn’t mean anything.

The barista has started wearing her hair differently. She asked me last Tuesday if I wanted my usual. I said yes. She didn’t ask what I was reading.

The old man’s table is just a table now. Four legs, a surface, a chip shaped like Nevada. Sometimes other people sit there. A woman with a laptop. A teenager doing homework. They don’t order two coffees. They don’t face the street.

I still have the question. It sits with the others, rehearsed and intact. His coat was green. The espresso machine makes a sound like a long exhale. The crosswalk signal clicks sixteen times before it changes. I counted once, then counted again to make sure.