Seattle Coffee Co, Nelson Mandela Square

Sunday, July 11, 2004

Service: N/A
Food: N/A
Ambience: * * *
Babe Count: * * * *

I'm not sitting in the coffee-shop section of the store.

I'm at the main counter of the bookshop, chatting to Linda. She used to work at the Rosebank branch, and I was going to hire her as an intern to do marketing for Barefoot Press at some point, back in the days when I still had grandiose ambitions about getting Barefoot Press into the stratosphere.

"How's your love life?" she says. I've bought her a latte with half strawberry, half cinnamon syrup, no coffee. Just milk and the syrup. That's what she wanted. I'm sipping my way through a grande harmless latte. To the uninitiated, that's the biggest mug, with decaff coffee and skim milk.

"Jacqui and I broke up," I say. "About three or four months ago."

"Oh!" she says. "I broke up too. A week ago."

"Why'd you break up?" I ask.

"He broke up. I don't know why."

"Hmmmm," I say, "is THAT why you're flirting with me?"

She strikes a pose and glares at me, half seductively, half outraged. Then she winks.

"I'm turning twenty-one very soon," she says.

"Do you want to model for my portrait circle?" I say.

"Absolutely," she says.

Lets see. I'm only fifteen years older than her.