Woman In Front of Starbucks

Through the window at Starbucks I watch the woman seated outside smoking her cigarette at the front door. She has an old man’s face, aged and ruddy, weathered and wasted, and lonely. I imagine there was a time it might have been my dad sitting outside, except there was no Starbucks here on Houston Street then. He would have found a coffee shop in Fort Worth where he’d feel safe and accepted and everything was familiar and right with life. He’d watch people walking by, and he might utter words to himself, laughing aloud and something he’d find funny, and those passers-by would probably look down and pretend he wasn’t there. I don’t remember him wearing hats when he was younger, like in his forties, but toward the end as he realized he was losing all his hair I think he did, and this woman wears hers too small, the plastic strap button too tightly below the “New York Stock Exchange” insignia. She mutters more, turning occasionally to the old gentleman sitting to her right, apparently enjoying his flavored tea as a mere pit stop to wherever he was going. Her giveaway tee-shirt is rolled up on the bottom around her waist, revealing rolls of blubber above her cargo shorts, and the sight tells more tales of waste and neglect and abandonment. She carries her own water pitcher, although she doesn’t touch it, but only the firmly-grasped cigarette as she leans in, propped up with her elbow. And I wonder what her story is, what has brought her here to Starbucks tonight, what brought her to this city once upon a time, and what brought her to this point of life. She is somebody’s daughter, I think to myself. She might have been daddy’s little girl many years ago. Or maybe she wasn’t. A black man in a wheel chair tosses a wave her way as he rolls by, and in response she flicks her wrist to acknowledge him, an attempt to wave back without budging. Maybe he’s an interruption to the story unfolding in her mind, a fantasy for her survival. Or perhaps she makes plans, or recalls happier times, or dwells on a love lost, or wasted wealth. I’d noticed her inside before, so I ask the baristas whether she’s a regular here and what she drinks, which they try to recall, and then I deliver a grande coffee with hazelnut syrup. We exchange “God bless you’s” before I walk away, and I wish I’d said or done something that might have changed her life.