people watching at a bakery

I'm having an early dinner (cheddar broccoli soup) before the chemistry class starts. In front of me there's a guy with thinning hair, probably in his early forties, with a hand-free cell phone kit dangling form his left ear. He's having a heated conversation about some floor. "If you can't get the floor any cleaner, then it's not gonna work. The floor tile won't stick. Do you understand that? No, it doesn't have nothing to do with that." Apparently the person on the other side of the line is quite slow-witted. "Give it a thought over tonight, and call me tomorrow, okay?" He hangs up.

He takes a big bite into his oatmeal raisin cookie, opens up a Dell from Hell laptop, and stands up. He walks past me with long confident strides, to the soda fountain. (I take a sneak peek.) He chooses Diet Pepsi. Putting back the lid to the paper cup, he walks back to his table. The cell phone rings again, well, not rings, but blinks, and he takes it. "Did you go to the tassel place on route 20? No, not that one, the one next to Walgreen or something. Yeah. Okay." His large brown eyes bulge behind his black-rimmed glasses. He is dressed clean, with style, but not in excess--navy blue polo shirt on beige chino pants, black plaine loafers, no sox.

He scrathes his head. "I guess she emailed me a wrong one. It should be 30 inches wide and 16 inches tall. Yeah, that's too wide." His conversation drags on, with several others. He adjusts the yellow rubber band on his left wrist, probably exressing his support for troops, Christ, or some other cause. "Okay. I love you,too. Bye."

It's time to go to class. I was just killing time.