"What? Oh – oh, um, no, not quite. I was born in Wisconsin, moved to the state when I was fifteen, to town when I was in college – how about you?"
"I’m from Virginia, actually."
"How long have you lived here?"
"Long enough."
Todd laughed. "Long enough for what?"
Silence.
"Well, then, how about a number?"
Through gritted teeth, Lydia answered "11 months."
"Ugh. You got here when the weather was at its crappiest, didn’t you?"
"Yes."
"That sucks. So, how long are you planning on staying here?"
"Don’t know."
"I didn’t want to stay here, not forever – I’ve always wanted to move to California, or New York, or maybe even out of the country somewhere. Now, I don’t know – I’m finding things I like about being here. How important do you think a change of scenery is?"
"Don’t know."
"Oh. Um, fair enough."
There was a pause.
"So," Todd continued, "Where were you before you graced our lovely city with your presence?"
"Look, I really don’t want to talk about it."
By now Lydia’s hands were gripping her coffee mug like it was her last key to survival, and her mouth was a thin slash across her face. Todd looked at her in surprise, eyes widening with surprise as the bitter force behind her words. Suddenly realizing, he mouthed a curse and clenched his jaw, looking down at the table, approximately where Lydia’s eyes were resting.
They breathed for a while.
"Look," Todd said quietly, not lifting his eyes. "I’m sorry."
"Don’t be." Lydia’s voice was quiet, and the strain of before had been replaced with sorrow, and a little guilt. She glanced up at Todd, who was still looking down at the table with his face uncharacteristically set. Her own face softened.
"I’m sorry," she started.
"Don’t be," he interrupted, a slight hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Lydia sighed. "and I ask you to excuse this hideous cliché," she continued, "But I’m not making this very easy, am I?"
"No," Todd said, looking up and catching Lydia’s eyes before they could skitter away. "No, you’re not."
"I’m --. No, I won’t apologize. But I’ll try."
"You don’t have to," the barista said, leaning forward as though preparing to stand.
"Wait!" A hand reached out to grab at his sleeve, clenching into the dark green fabric halfway up his forearm.
Todd looked at her fingers, and Lydia could feel the heat of his skin through the thin, smooth cotton. She bit her lip and lowered her eyes as he sat back down.
"Why – " she started, and then started again. "Why do you do this?"
The young man looked at her almost suspiciously. Eventually, her quiet, nervous manner and the way her eyes, darting up to scan his face worriedly for a second and then diving back to the table, so perfectly matched the tone in her voice seemed to convince him that she meant no start no confrontation. He leaned back, a studied attempt at nonchalance, and looked up at the ceiling.
"I don’t know for sure," he said after a moment. "You – you interest me, I suppose."
"Why?" Lydia asked. "There’s nothing the least bit interesting about me."
Todd looked at her, incredulity in his eyes and a tease in his voice. "Nothing the least bit interesting about you? Nothing the least bit interesting about you? This from the girl who orders a double-espresso mocha every day of the week, at various times throughout the afternoon, and says she doesn’t like mochas. This from the girl who invariably requests a blue mug, although if she misses her chance she won’t ever correct her server. Do you like blue, by the way? Why do you wear all brown if you like blue?"
"I like blue a little. And I don’t wear all brown, it’s just that my coat is brown."
"And your scarf – but I’m not picking. ‘I’m not interesting at all,’ says the girl who bypasses the merrily warm and secure interior of the café to sit alone outside, each and every day, on freezingly cold metal chairs, in the rain and in the heat and probably in the snow, too. It’s not even pretty outside, and the chairs aren’t even nice. Furthermore," there was a glow in Todd’s eyes and a merry excitement in his face by now, "Furthermore, I know for a fact that you don’t like the cold."
"How do you know that, hmm?" Lydia seemed to be teetering between surprise at the outburst and amusement at either Todd’s words or his manner.
"Point," he said, cocking his head to the side and holding up one finger. Raising his eyebrow, he continued, "You wear a great big honking coat, although you could probably get away with a slightly smaller jacket in this weather. It’s not that cold, really." Lydia snorted at this, and Todd smiled. "Point," he said with an amused twitch to his face, "You snort when I say the weather isn’t cold. There hasn’t even been the first frost yet."
"There was frost on the grass just a few days ago!" Lydia protested, her surprise now seemingly at Todd’s conclusions and her amusement, winning the battle, at his methods for reaching them.
Todd gave an exaggerated sigh. "I meant a real frost. Anyway. Point," and he tucked his chin down slightly towards his chest and managed to look up at Lydia despite his superior height "You always, always shudder, sigh, or pause before opening that door to go outside. Hardly the behavior of a cold-blooded winter-lover, hmm?"
"Mm," Lydia said noncommitally..
"Not to mention fastening your coat around you tighter."
"Mm."
"Final point," Todd said triumphantly, raising a fourth finger, "I saw the way your face was relaxed by the time you no longer were rubbing your fingers together against the cold, AND the happy little sigh you let out when you started unfastening your coat. You like to be warm."
Lydia just looked at Todd, who leaned back with satisfaction on his face.
"Now, where was I? Ah, yes. "I’m quite boring," says the girl who, every day, drinks her coffee only halfway, and exactly half way, and always half-way. ‘Nothing interesting happening here,’ says the girl who, I strongly suspect, only ever drinks her coffee after its cold. Sitting out in the cold that you dispise, holding a coffee you don’t like, not doing anything which might bring you the warmth you adore, in an environment you can’t possibly enjoy, each and every day. How can you call that not interesting?"
"Sounds rather dull to me," Lydia said almost flippantly. There was a lilt to her voice that was slightly exaggerated. "The same thing, every day, nothing new, nothing ever happening."
"True, I’ll grant you," Todd said, leaning forward once more, "that your actual ations are not particularly interesting. But they why? The reasons behind them? Ah, that – that I’d like to know."
"So," Lydia said, looking almost sternly at Todd before she slid her gaze down to the table between his elbows. "You’re sitting her talking with me because you’re interested in knowing why I’m weird?"
The lilt was quite completely gone, replaced by a peculiar inflection with a hitch halfway and a rise only on the very last sound of the final word.
"no," Todd said quietly. He leaned back again, resting one wrist against the metallic edge of the table and placing his other hand on the bench beside him. "I’m interested, period."
They both looked elsewhere, anywhere but at each other.
Suddenly, Lydia glanced at Todd. "What time is it?"
"Ah – " he glanced at his wrist. "2:45, or thereabouts."
"Darn," Lydia said. "I’ve been here for half an hour. I ought to head back."
"Surely there aren’t too many customers at this hour?" Todd said, not quite pleading.
"No," Lydia answered as she set down her coffee mug and starting rifling through her stack of clothes, "No, there aren’t, but there’s always something for me to do. Besides, even if nothing happens, it happens more smoothly if I’m there." She paused and looked across the table at Todd, who had his eyebrows raised. He dropped them and smoothed his face into an I’m-not-saying-anything expression, but Lydia defensively said, "I know it sounds strange, but its true. Without work to do, they get argumentative sometimes. It’s always calmer when I’m there."
"Besides that," she said, sounding overly unconvincing even to her own ears, "I’m given an hour and a half for breaks, and I spent half an hour eating."
"Leaving you with another half-hour to spend here?" Todd said, eyebrows raised. Lydia glared at those eyebrows as though they had personally insulted her, or made complete nuisances of herself, before realizing herself and fumbling with her scarf.
"Ah, I have to walk, too, you know. That’s ten or fifteen minutes. So really, I have to be going," she said just a little quickly. "And besides," she rounded on Todd, "Don’t you have work to be doing?"
He waved an arm lazily around the café. "Look about you, Lydia. Do you see hordes of people lining up?"
"nooooo, but I know I heard the door open a few times."
"Rachel can deal with it. Smart girl, hard-working, I’m sure she appreciates the chance to show off her multi-tasking skills." Todd blinked, deadpan. "I, meanwhile, am monitering the ambiance of the café. Very important, ambiance. Very in need of monitering."
Lydia looked flatly at him. "I’m leaving," she pronounced, pulling on her gloves.
Todd gave a lazy, slightly insolent smile. "What about your coffee?" he drawled.
Staring at the object like it has grown devil’s horns, Lydia blinked twice before looking up at the grinning man sitting across from it.
"Um," she said, surprised.
Todd’s grin grew.
"Uh, you can have it," she said, and she turned and fled.
Halfway out the door she realized her keys were still in her uniform, and stumbled to a stop as she fished them out and put them back in her coat pocket.
The cold hit her like a wall, and her head was down and her strides long as she walked back to the diner.

That evening, home on a Friday, Lydia turned the heater up as high as it would go and sat near it in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks. She lay sprawled out on a few pillows, the merry, moisture-seeping warmth chapping her lips but relaxing her muscles. The kitschy curtain covering her window was pulled closed, to hide the depressing image of rain-splatters slowly dripping down the cold glass, the house across the street barely visible through the darkening gray.
Extension cords criss-crossed the room, as the heater and the lamp had been pulled as close to each other as they would go. Occasionally rolling over so that the heat would touch a different part of her body, Lydia turned the pages of her book immediately near the lamp.
With an impatient sigh, she took the half-skimmed book and set it on a pile behind the lamp. Two books sat there already; now, there were more sitting in the don’t-red, or possibly can’t-read, pile, then on the maybe-I-don’t-know-it’s-possible-since- they-haven’t-been-read-yet pile. Lydia picked up the next book sitting beside her right hand, and with a perfunctory glance at the title page, started to flip through the pages.
20 minutes later it, too, migrated behind the lamp. Puzzled, Lydia glanced at the pile.

Books are addictive, in their own way. The proper book at the right time can suck a person in, mind and soul suddenly far, far away from their immediate surroundings.
The proper book at the right time is an opiate and a temporary aphrodisiac, numbing sensation at the same time that it reminds one of what it is to feel.
When the book is shut, the proper story at the right time remains spinning around inside your head. Characters riding along with you and occasionally whispering words, advice, analysis in your ear, it is a semi-constant murmur, reminding you that outside this mundane that surrounds you there is a world of words. It is a world of imaginings and beliefs where what you think is real melts away, replaced by a universe built of skillfully wrought words – or even coarse, amateurish, or overwrought prose, that yet creates an image powerful enough that your own eyes are rendered superfluous.
The proper book at the proper time, to the proper person, can steal away what is tying you down to the world around you and reroot all your beliefs, faiths, fears and hopes to a different plane, to somewhere where they have fewer consequences and less power.

Lydia stared numbly at the cover of the last book.

It wasn’t working.

Not even glancing inside, she put the cheap science fiction novel on the top of her pile. The scantily-clad woman holding a gun the size of her torso stared up at her in distress, and Lydia almost chuckled. Rearranging the stack, she pulled an old green-clothe-covered book to the top, its gold-embossed words much easier on the eyes. With another sigh, she clamored up and carefully put the stack of books on the bookshelf.
Crossing to the window, Lydia ignored the chill that the cooler air ran down her arms and across her feet. Pulling open the faded yellow curtains, she placed first one palm, then the other upon the cold glass. While she watched, the glass fogged up around the shape of her palms, and then the mist slowly vanished. Placing her nose against the glass, she angled her head forward until her forehead touched as well.
Her breath left subtle white signatures upon the window with every exhale, and water droplets too close to focus on distorted her vision.
The world outside was gray, and it kept raining.
Lydia stood and watched as the world turned deeper and deeper until finally it was dark, the streetlights switching on one by one to create columns of light down the street, the raindrops beneath them illuminated as they fell, the sky above the inverted cones flat and somehow endless.
Lydia watched night and the rain fall, simultaneously and for as long as she could bear.