Free Wi-Fi

I feel good today. I woke up feeling different, and seem to be in an especially flirty mood. The coffee shop is busy, but relatively quiet.

“Yes, I’m going to drink it here.” I’m trying to let her know that we’re in this together today, me and her and whoever.

The cute, curly counter girl bounced off to get me my coffee.

“That’ll be 4.97,” she says.

I’m shocked. “For my coffee?”

She points down to my chocolate muffin.

“Oh,” I say shaking my head. “Sorry, it’s early.”

She giggles. “Tell me about it. At least you’re not at work.”

I pine grimly, “If only that were true.” I gesture with my laptop bag.

Her eyes widen and she smiles altruistically. “Let me get you the internet code!”

“Internet code?” My mind goes blank.

I can tell that she can’t tell if I’m joking. She says, half smirking, “Yeah—like—for the internet?”

Then, I almost joke. Trying to keep my composure, I try to be funny, but am sure I seem desperate. “Internet?”

She makes a widening gesture with both arms like ‘everywhere’ and says again, “Internet.”

I say nothing, studying her inquisitively. I hope my handsomeness will give her enough reason to trust that I’m just some classically misunderstood next-level type intelligence.

She keeps things professional. “Well, we do have free wi-fi with any purchase though, for future reference.”

“Free internet?” These words escape haplessly.

“Yup.” She nods progressively, popping the p sound.

My mood is dancing off with my sensibility. Sometimes there’s just no surrender. “Do you think that’s the kind of thing you should be giving away for free? With chocolate muffins?”

She looks quietly concerned then.

I try to explain. “It’s just the internet is quite a place. Are there any coffee house restrictions on what people can access? In public like this?”

“It’s the internet.” She’s trying to keep things light. “This isn’t—like—China.”

“China?” Now I’m back on track. She seems to settle, seems to know what this is.

She shines a playful light on my charade. “You don’t stay very well connected do you?”

“I came here to do work. The internet is just so distracting. People don’t find internet access distracting?”

She makes another sweeping gesture. There are rows of laptops, sets of wide eyes above each—under the tables and counters, hanging gardens of straps, cords and adapters.

“Oh wow,” I say genuinely. “Think people come buy muffins just for the internet?”

“To use it in communion maybe.” This is a beautiful sentiment, tinged with sadness. “But a muffin a day is more expensive than internet.”

“Hm.” I hand over a 5 dollar bill, briefly panic about waiting for the change and then find a seat at one of their tall, long window bars. Everyone’s mugs are steaming. There are caked up wrappers and crumby plates. Outside, cars whiz by the window at alarming speeds. In here people surf the planet in seconds. It is dizzying, all of this—so much travel, information exchange, heat transfer, digitally seeded clouds, clicking through people, through eras, through all catalogued experiences of the known universe—all within such a small area. I thought this coffee bar may be approaching critical mass, but I’m certainly not going to allow the internet to distract me while I’m not even using it.

This Fair Trade coffee is absurdly hot. The coffee molecules must be whirring at purely theoretical speeds. The girl next to me is aglow. Her Google search for ‘cruise Alaska’ bore invisibly through my brain and I lose my appetite. I push away my muffin and pull out my computer. Things become unexpectedly intimate as I lean under the counter to plug in. But, anything goes when we’re all trying to get onto the internet. We’re elbow to elbow on the counter, coffees and vegan quiches infringing upon one another. The distinctly human nature of the thought what are you doing necessarily unfolding itself into the more appropriate what am I doing and then, in these close quarters, compounding into the impossible what are we doing. I kind of want to talk to them about it, but that would be an act of insanity.

All this battery power, the wireless, airborne pathogens, this steam, all this plugging and brushing oh excuse me and unplugging, I need to get to work. It’s just so stuffy in here. The air is so crowded I can barely stay on track. I must get back to work on this detective novel though.

…

As I walked to the diner, the night fell from the sky in a billion little drops. The last few days hung on me like a wet trench coat, the last few hours fell almost imperceptibly before my eyes;  little translucent flashes, noticed and gone, gone and noticed. It was like these women, these lonely forgotten women, that now, gone, find the spotlight, framed in a camera, in a well lighted, room full of interested men. I’d never seen anything like it.

What kind of monster had this city bred? Where had he been hiding all these years?

Different boroughs, different names, different knives. All single, all lived alone. How’d he find them? How in the hell do I find him?  I knew I couldn’t eat, but I knew I couldn’t sleep and the boys would laugh if they knew, but I couldn’t be alone. My phone cut off and a week left in my shit apartment, I figured old Margie’d be the closest thing to home I’d be able to find at this hour. It was so dark and dreary; the diner was like a moon in the sky 5 blocks up.

Splashing through familiar puddles, sometimes I get to feeling like I’m part of the problem, lived here so long that I’m part of the city, that I am the city, part of the good in a city hell bent on going bad, a part that will be counterbalanced, negated with every move, every worked case. Some things I can’t wrap my head around. Hopefully, some things I’m not supposed to.

…

The chair scrapes along the tile next to me. The girl is gone, has been gone. This thin kid with really black hair pulls the chair under him and leans on the counter, cradling a cup of coffee. It’s steaming up over his face. His lips are pursed and he’s blowing ripples across the surface of the coffee. Probably he thinks this will cool it down. Probably, it’s because he’s seen other people do it. The fault-like veins are lava against the whites of his eyes, demon-red and crawling erratically. He’s unkempt, a scraggly beard giving way to days of stubble. He must’ve had to clean up for something over the weekend. I make the mistake of turning to read his yellow t-shirt. It said ‘Man at Work’ and it definitely wasn’t worth suffering conversation.

He mumbles something, turning only his mouth towards me.

“What was that?”

“Crowded in here,” He articulates, still staring out the window, still hunched down over his coffee.

“Yeah, sure is.”

“People love to be around people,” he says dramatically.

“Sure it’s not the free internet?”

“They have free internet?” He sits up straight at this and looks around as if he’s going to see the free internet streaming through the place.

“Yeah, but you have to buy something.”

“Have to remember that. Mind if I look something up on your computer?”

I’m slightly offended by this, but didn’t need to be defensive since, “I didn’t take the free code.”

“You didn’t want free internet?”

“Not particularly.”

His face explains that this is unbelievable.

“Just,” I say slowly, “Doing something else.”

“Whatever.”

I turn back to start typing.

“What if?” He trails off, wagging a finger at me profoundly. “What if I go up and get the code they owe me for the coffee? Then can I look something up?”

I want to pack up and leave. There are definitely people in here he could find who would appreciate a distraction. “Sorry, buddy. I’m really trying to get some work done.”

“Whatever,” he says getting up. I’m relieved until I notice he’s left his coffee.

Ok. Just start typing, I tell myself. And don’t stop no matter what. Nobody has no manners, he’ll get the picture. Alright-

….

“Thanks for the pie,” I said into a forkful I didn’t want.

“Sugar, somebody’s gotta eat it. Mr. Pawsley has had more lemon merengue than any dog ever should.”

Margie was always good for a laugh. God knows there was some good in this city yet, good that wasn’t always waging war with the bad. Good that just let the bad be, just stayed open, stayed fresh, stayed prepared. Good that waited for good instead of seeking out the bad. Am I good? Or is that a part I want to play? Am I playing good just to have an opponent? Do the bad ones come out because we’re here to chase them?

This feels like sense, but this headache is getting worse. These headaches are getting worse.

“Tell me about your trip to Tampa again, would you Margie?”

She pressed brew on the machine and let go of the pot. She walked over and leaned forward compassionately.

“Which part, Jimmy?”

“All of it. Tell me all of it Margie.”

…

I realize I’m being shaken.

Turning, I see this bloodshot, flakey, gaping face and then notice his hand on my shoulder.

“Hey,” he says in this desperately calm way. “I got that code.”

“Excuse me?” I say, unable as always to sound genuinely angry.

“I got that code. For the free wi-fi.”

“So?”

“So, mind if I check something real quick? I haven’t been able to get on in a while.”

I am silent, fingers hovering over the keys.

“Yeah?” he says, reaching and gripping the screen of my mini-laptop with two fingers, pulling it slowly. I feel my eyes following his actions slowly. I’m dumbstruck. This is pure social madness. I’m just not the person that can respond the way a situation like this demanded. He settled over my computer, dragging across the touch pad and clacking across the keyboard.

What just happened? I ask the invisible camera crew that simply has to be there.

He slides the computer back in front of me without a word. I’m not sure how long it has been. He also takes out a cell phone and sets it next to his coffee.

“New phone. No numbers. Gotta reconnect.”

Alright, I think. Just gonna let it go.

When I went to start writing again, Microsoft Word was closed and Facebook was open to Jackson Hollorat’s profile. At a glance, I see a number of response-less posts that are weeks old. In the box under News Feed, he’s typed “Uncrazy and finally out today. Hit me up.”

Out? I thought. Could he have been in prison? No way. Uncrazy?

“Hey,” I say. “You forgot to click to post it.”

“Oh shit,” he says. And, disingenuously, “Whoops.” He reached over, scrolled and clicked.

Silence between us.

Finally, he leans over. “Don’t worry, I’m not dangerous.”

“Yeah,” I say jovially. “You don’t seem dangerous.”

Silence again. He seems agitated, disinterested now in his coffee, tapping his fingers and kicking at the bottom of his chair.

“Crazy shit,” he blurts. “But, not my fault.”

“Okay, buddy, I’ll bite.”

“Excuse me?” he asks, playing at confusion. What a lunatic.

“Where’d you get out of?” I ask. He probably just needs someone to talk to.

“State remanded psychiatric custody,” he says matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“Looney bin.”

“Really?”

“Six months,” he says severely, sipping the coffee, eyebrows lifted.

“Geez. I’m sorry.” I really had no idea what to say anymore.

Silence again.

“The attention was nice,” he mentions.

“Pardon?”

“Attention. All the attention was nice.”

I’m in danger of forgetting who I am again, what image I’m pushing, what I think I am to all these people. “Attention? What? At the hospital?”

“At the asylum. Yeah, people really listen to you.”

“Oh.” I claim to hate small talk. Confronted with any random conversation of significance though, I can barely muster a word.

“Ironic, I know.”

“Yeah,”

“Not ironic like my shirt though.”

“No?”

“Nah, darker than that.”

I decide unconsciously to pack up my laptop. My hands work mechanically at it, while my face feigns interest.

He says, “It’s a real relief.”

“I’ll bet.” This is the ultimate response when you’ve been half-listening or when you have no idea what someone is talking about.

“No, I mean, it was a real relief, the doctors… the other patients… at least they believed me. They understood.”

My hands are still packing my stuff up, I’m zippering things, shaking my head, slinging my duffel strap over my shoulder— basically, I’m making a show of the fact that I was about to get going.

“Tough thing to prove,” he says, his eyes now slits looking out the window.

I freeze. My mind peeks through. “What?”

“I strangled my girlfriend in our sleep.”

I laughed then. Not because I thought he was joking. It was a reaction of commendable purity.

“Yeah, we were drinking and smoking and watching TV. We fell asleep. I woke up. I thought it had been a dream, but she wasn’t waking up. Her throat was dark green, grey and purple, she was blue. My fingers felt tired… like they do after you go bowling, you know? Police said I definitely did it. Seemed right… didn’t really know what to say about it… how to explain it… How do you explain that?”

“I… um…. I don’t know.” I am seated again somehow. I feel very heavy, like maybe I can actually see the internet streaming around here, filling me like a plaster mold.

“Me neither. Figured my life was over because of a weird dream that wasn’t a dream. Doctor said I have night terrors. Doctor said I couldn’t really be held totally accountable for it. They observed me in my sleep for weeks, measured brain activity and stuff and said I’m restless and that they spike more than normal people, but that they see alot of that kind of stuff now.”

“Alot of what? People strangling people in their sleep?”

He laughs now. “Guess so. The doctors weren’t really specific, but said I wasn’t a danger to myself. Condition of my release is that I have to sleep alone… be alone… it’s scary. I always thought the dreams weren’t real. Then I woke up and one was and I feel so different.” He’s quiet, speaks nervously, but with a sort of satisfaction.

“I guess I’d feel different too.” This is small talk I’m committing.

“You can’t guess. It was this self-discovery.”

At this, I’m grounded. I think, I think, I think. I admit, “Ok. I have no idea how I’d feel.”

“Different.” He says smirking, “You’d feel different.”

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