fünf

Pete sits, his laptop unfolded across his thighs, one leg crossing the other, hating the patrons of the Main St. Starbucks, resenting them and their lazy, mundane convictions, their Europeanized coffee orders, their windbreakers and bicycle shorts, their sporty loafers.  He shortly turned that same burning eye of antipathy to his own image reflected in the gleaming copper of the espresso machine.  His face widened and simultaneously lengthened there, like in a funhouse mirror, his complexion yellowing.  He bared his teeth and a small girl in black tights and pink sandals with blinking LED lights implanted in the straps giggled but then frowned with uncertainty when he shifted his gaze to her.  

"Fuck you, you little shit," he thought.  

The door hung open an extra beat and a gust of too-cold-for-April air sapped away any cored warmth he had stored in the folds of his jacket and down in the coffee stained upholstery of the cushioned chair he sank into with his "venti americano" blending into the purple and green leaves of the jungle pattern like a bloated jaguar left out in the bleaching sun of some equatorial tropic.  A blond wraithlike man held the door for a trio of post-workout suburban 40-someodd's bellying their leotards up to the glass-encased fat-free pastries.  He grinned seemingly without context or judgement and stepped in and off to the side, out of the way of all the other customers in the store, either ordering or waiting for delivery, and had the appearance of taking in the entire scene all at once, including Pete, and indeed centering on him as he pulled a wooden chair to his side and sat.  

"We're going to have to slow down if there's ever going to be any hope I think," he says out the side of his mouth, not making any eye contact, his head sweeping from side to side smiling in a stylized expression of wonder, Pete presumed, at the whole human condition.  

"I'm sorry?" Pete blurts in reply.  Getting a closer look at the younger man's skin he is distracted by what seems to be a discernible constellation in the man's acne scars. Is it Taurus?  Hercules?