I heard her.  She doesn’t think I heard but I can hear better than most.  She whispered to her friends about me and as she leaned forward to speak her breasts nearly spilled out of her yellow print dress.  That’s what caught my attention.  So I tune in.  I surreptitiously admire her white leather sandals with straps wound around her ankles in the style of the ancient Greeks.  The white leather matches her hair.

            Her friends are dressed in jeans and T-shirts.  They still managed to look well heeled.

            “It’s great we all could make it.  Maureen, your e-mail was a delight.  I just couldn’t ignore it,” says the blue T-shirt.  Three old friends lured together on the HavaJava patio by Maureen’s electronic wizardry.

            Maureen’s the one who made the Bruegel comment.  Her pretty face has a small, satisfied smile.  How can one have such white hair and no wrinkles?

            I’m sure someone thinks that is a pretty cute name.  HavaJava that is, not Maureen.  It took me a couple of times coming here before I caught the gist.  I concentrate on the whispers around me not the ten-foot letters on the sign.

            “I’m thinking of quitting,” says the red T-shirt. “He’s never going to be promoted.  I just can’t stand working for him any more.  Jesus, it makes me sick to think he makes twice as much as I do.  He does absolutely nothing!”

            I hear the sympathetic sighs for the red T-shirt.  I can hear like a beaten mongrel, pricking up my big ears in the direction of faint whispers. Just as well, often people are talking about me.  Like this Bruegel stuff Maureen whispered to her friends.    My nose, ‘an overly generous olfactory endowment’ someone once whispered, is also sensitive.  In this summer heat, the smell of rotting garbage and sticky people almost makes me sick.  Good sight too, I wear no glasses.  No need to correct 20/20 vision.  Good senses, not good sense.  I don’t think anyone ever said that I had good sense.

            I enjoy listening on the patio having a java, pretty funny, but this morning I am not in my seat of choice.  The HavaJava patio has two types of tables and chairs.  The good ones are black metal seats connected to a wooden tabletop.  The first time here, I thought a metal seat would be uncomfortable but I was wrong.  I’ve sat for hours.

            The alternative is the plastic green chairs and green plastic tables.   That’s where I am sitting today.  If it is hot, the plastic makes you sweat and you stick to the seat, even though the umbrella does provide some shade.  The writing on my cup says it consists of non-ozone depleting substances and that, combined with the plastic furniture, makes the whole patio experience seem artificial.  I once heard two men talking.   Both were in strong agreement on the negative effects of man-made materials.  I began to monitor myself.

            On plastic, I become aggressive.  I focus anger at someone or something.  Like that kid over there seated on wood and metal, slouched in his seat with his electric blue RayBan sunglasses and his gray, popeye doyle hat.  A burning cigarette dangled from his fingers.  Smoke that thing; don’t just hang on to it like some theatrical prop.   Man, addiction isn’t a prop; it’s a basic need.  When I smoke, I smoke, draw deep, and let the nicotine give me a rush. 

            “Yo, bratboy,” I’d like to say and give him a good slap on the side of his goddamn head sending his glasses and hat flying.

            “What?  I ain’t done nothing to you,” he would say.

            “I don’t like you, don’t know you, don’t like the way you smoke,” I would say.       

            “Yes, we’re still together.  Jacques has really changed since we last talked.  More attentive, more time for us.  It’s a lot better.”

            That’s good.  Maureen’s life sounds like it is back on track.  Back from what, I don’t know.  But I can imagine.  I’ve overheard all sorts of problems on the patio.  Women talk much more freely than men do.

            I need another coffee and maybe a bagel.  The doctor always advised me to avoid coffee.

            “You should drink herbal tea,” he always said.  “You need to relax.  Coffee will only aggravate things.”

            I tried the herbal tea including zingers and sleepy time; teas made from purple Swiss weeds with drawings of contented black bears in fancy pajamas on the box.  I hated the teas and the goddamned bears.  Cigarettes and coffee, coffee and cigarettes, that’s how I relax.

            I’ll ask the counter girl about Bruegel, she goes to university.   She and I started off badly.  Her first day at HavaJava, I asked for a double, double.   That’s double, double as in double sugar, double cream, not the little cup filled with concentrated coffee that she gave me.

            “Wake up counter girl, I’ve been drinking coffee for 25 years,” I had shouted at her.  “You know what I meant, I want American coffee.”

            “There is no such thing as American coffee, it’s too cold to grow here.  That’s espresso.  It’s good,” she said.

            “Hey, you know, I mean normal coffee from that drip thing not from some goddamned steam engine.  Haven’t you ever heard of double, double coffee?”

            “Double, double, toil and trouble,” she chanted and picked up the broom and rode in circles behind the counter.

            They’ve recently rearranged the counter and now you have to put the cream and sugar in yourself.  It’s on the table at the back of the store. I guess that’s all right.  I was getting tired of these people screwing up my coffee. Not enough cream, not enough sugar.  Now I can put in my own.

            “Hi Ralph.  Another American coffee?” she asks.

            She always says that when I go up to the counter.  I never said I was sorry for shouting but I think she knows that I am.  She smiles at me.

            “Yes, please.  And I would like a toasted bagel with butter too,” I said.

            I count the teaspoons of sugar as I dump them in the cup, one, two, and one quarter.  Add the cream, wait for just the right colour and stop.  Stir, stir, stir, and stop.  It really is better that I create my own double, double or more specifically my own double and a quarter, double.

            “Here’s your Bruegel,” the counter girl says.

            “Did you say Bruegel?” I ask.

            “No, I said ‘Here’s your bagel.’”

            “I thought you said Bruegel.”

            “You didn’t tell me you wanted a toasted, buttered Bruegel.  Anyway we’re out of Bruegels, we only have day old Chagalls left.”

            “Who is this Bruegel?” I ask.  “I know he paints.”

            “Painted. He’s long dead.  He was from Belgium.  There was a father and some sons, all Bruegels, all painters.  One of the sons hung out with Rubens.  You know Rubens?  See that woman out there.  On the patio, right there in the yellow dress with the other two women.  That is Rubenesque.”

            “What about the Bruegels?  What did they paint?”

            “Paintings of peasants at work, at a wedding, something like that.   You could be in a Bruegel painting.”

            “I think I wandered out of one.  But I’m not Belgian.”

            “There’s nothing wrong with having a Continental look.  You have a definite Continental look.  I should start calling you Rolf.  It’s cool to look definitely Continental.”

            I nod thanks and take my coffee and bagel to the patio.  Still no wooden table available.  Back to my green plastic.  I look over at Maureen.  She really is quite Rubenesque I would say.  She and her friends are laughing at something.

            “It’s very simple, I told him,” says Maureen’s friend in the blue T-shirt.  “If we’re friends, we don’t, but if we’re an item, we do.  Friends are much harder to replace than lovers are.  If we’re just good friends you’ll have to look around to find a place to park your extended friendship.”

            The red T-shirt and Maureen laugh even harder, Maureen’s Rubenesque breasts are quivering at the top of her scooped neckline.  Rubens probably had more fun painting women that looked like Maureen than the Bruegels had painting peasants that looked like me.

            At the end of a hard day of painting Rubens and Bruegel sat down together to share some ale.  Rubens spoke of the new model he found, expounding upon her beauty, her perfect face, flawless skin, the size and shape of her breasts, the curve of her hips and buttocks.  Bruegel sat bored, not listening, and staring into space.

            “And you my friend Bruegel, how was your day?” asked Rubens.

            “My day?” suddenly Bruegel became very animated and he blurted out that, “Today, I found Rolf, a man with a nose like a potato, ears the size of platters and as red as a radish.  His expression says ‘I am a dumb peasant and I know nothing.’  He is perfect, he is beautiful, he is definitely Continental.  I will paint him, his wife, his children.”

            Bratboy is finally leaving.  I quickly move over and claim the seat and table composed of natural substances.   Calmer, it’s true, I am much calmer now.  A sense of peace settles upon me.  Once I overheard a man chanting, repeating his mantra.  I plucked it out of the air.  I tried to use it to reach a state of meditation but that is a difficult state to reach for one who drinks ten cups of coffee a day.  Maybe I should take the doctor’s advice and switch to herbal tea.

            “Just what are you playing at?” the doctor snapped.  It was near the end of my first session after Christmas.   I hadn’t seen him for more than three weeks.  It was odd; he always spoke softly and slowly.

            “I don’t know,” I whispered, my eyes darting between his face and the gray carpet at my feet.

            “I’m sorry Ralph,” he said, as he took off his gold glasses and rubbed his forehead.  There were deep black rings under his eyes.  He looked exhausted.

            “That was a stupid question,” he said softly.  “Come see me next Tuesday, same time.  We’ll talk.  We’re going places now.”

            I went on Tuesday but he was not in the office.

            “He’s sick and will be off indefinitely,” the red haired receptionist said, sounding very concerned.

            “I never thought of doctors getting sick,” I replied.

            “Well, they’re human.  I can set up an appointment with another doctor.  Do you want a specific time?”

            “No.  Anytime is good.”

            “I’ll book you for this Thursday morning at 9:30 with Dr. Broughton.”

            I didn’t show up.  I’ve never been back.

            Through the HavaJava window I watch the counter girl writing the specials on the chalkboard.  She told me that she had taken a course on calligraphy when I commented on her fine handwriting.   She always draws pictures on the board to go with the menu.  Today the picture is a Rubenesque nude holding a scroll that says,

FLEMISH LUNCH SPECIALS

Rubens sandwich and salad

4.95

Toasted Bruegel and Cream Cheese

1.90

            It’s only 11:30.  Still lots of time for listening and then after one, order the Bruegel and cream cheese for lunch.  I heard a couple talking about living in France and they said luncheon was always served after one.  Probably the same time as in Belgium.

            A surprise for the counter girl when she asks, “American coffee?”

            “No. An espresso, please.  Make it a double,” I will coolly reply.

            I am Rolf.