Dear Woman Reunited with Lover at the Joe Coffee on Waverly at 6:28pm on November 7th,

An open letter...

Dear Woman Reunited with Lover at the Joe Coffee on Waverly at 6:28pm on November 7th,

Yes, you, woman in the red fleece with the red plastic snap buttons and the slim black pants. Your black loafers had black shearling trim, and your socks were white. You looked supremely, simply chic, though I’m not sure now if I thought that at first or only after. It was the type of outfit that I put on and look alternately like a teenage boy or someone who has literally never put two items of clothing together into any kind of cohesive outfit.

I’ve been on eBay looking for a red fleece like yours. I don’t even know if red suits me. I need one of those women from Instagram to lay rectangles of different colored fabric over my shoulders and tell me. They’ll say wow see how much of a difference that makes when they switch between a deep teal and a sage green, and I’ll nod along and pretend like I see anything. But I digress. I liked your haircut too. I had just gotten my own hair cut, same length as yours but no bangs for me anymore.

You were standing first at one of the counters in the window, eschewing the stools. Backpack, working, doing something. I didn’t spend too much time wondering because I was writing and drinking tea way too late in the day like a crazy ass and just otherwise occupied with myself. What else is one to order at a coffee shop at 6pm? I’m not going to eat a piece of this morning’s slightly stale lemon pound cake for dinner, and I always feel compelled to get something more than just a water from the case.

Before your man showed up, you had moved over to the low-slung leather chair by that case, leaving your things at the window counter—comfortable enough in the little space to treat it like your own living room. An air of impatience or tiredness. Perhaps you’d been there all day waiting. Of course, I didn’t know you were waiting yet. As I’ve said, I really wasn’t actually paying attention to you. All of this observation and analysis came after. After the reunion. Funny how we aren’t always consciously aware of the things our brains are recording.

I say reunited, though I don’t know if that’s strictly accurate. Reunited implies a prolonged separation, though why should it? Maybe you were together for breakfast, or even for lunch. Is it not a reunion to be together again?

I was there so I know that it was—when he arrived, all earthtones everything like a cornucopia. Quite flinging the door open and you were up and he across the room and then a long embrace right in front of the register. Not that anyone else was coming in—I only mention it to highlight your absorbtion.

You were about the same height, almost, and your heads locked together against each other, crooks of necks and all that. While you hugged him, he held you by the hips. He seemed simply happy to see you. Whispered something or some many things into your ear, I think, because you were nodding your head with your eyes closed, and not even a smile, but a look of something. You seemed to be experiencing a depth of emotion that included what could have been a simple smile along with many other things: tiredness, relief, some restraint, submission.

When you pulled back from the hug, he kept his hold on your hips, and you stood with your heads bent together, not quite touching but very close, speaking quietly to each other. I can’t explain it really, but your heads bent like that—him looking at you from under his eyelashes and you looking down, that complex posture of the lips—the image of it struck me so intensely, it became for me perhaps the truest physical manifestation of love. I was almost inclined to thank you for letting me witness it, though imagine that would have made you feel pretty uncomfortable.

In my memory you kept your heads bent adoringly towards each other just like that, even as you moved across the room getting ready to go. Back to the backpack and putting everything together in it. He took a sip of water from your paper cup and, and all the while your heads stayed leaning one way or the other as if pulled by a magnetic force, or why complicate it, a simple rope.

You kissed then in the window as if agreeing that all was done here, ready to go, goodbye, but not to each other, to me I suppose. To all this. To nighttime coffee shop cast of characters. Off into the night, taking the physical manifestation of love on elsewhere. And after you’d gone out, through the window, I could see you throw your arms around each other in that slightly impractical but containing way that requires perfect synchronicity of steps and hips. And then you were gone.

And where off to? Dinner at the bar in a dimly lit restaurant, a friend’s housewarming party, a pottery class, a jazz concert down a flight of stairs? Just home to sit on the couch with socked feet tangled up?

Now I realize what you might be thinking. Eve (my name is Eve), you’re really creating a whole thing out of nothing, and to be frank, freaking me out a little. You’re embarrassing us both. Actually, all three of us! Me, my boyfriend and yourself! ‘The truest physical manifestation of love?!’ Get a grip!

To which I would say, thank you for writing me back!

No—I’d say that you might have a point! Perhaps I am a bit odd. I’m still daydreaming about your loving life—you, a total stranger and your earthtoned man! And maybe I do like to speak a little hyperbolically from time to time, as is the prerogative of the writer. It could be that, yes, being in love myself, I’ve projected all of these November warm fuzzies straight onto you. That I only delight in it because seeing you allowed me to externalize some of my own constant delight?

But no! It’s not true, or at least it’s not entirely true. You were a romance. Your heads bent just so, a whole event. Accidental theater, a piece of art. And so I’ll ask, if not you and your heads the truest physical manifestation of love, then who and what?

With my own love,
Eve

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