Waiting

I arrived at the cafeteria at exactly 3:58. Two minutes to spare. I looked around at the people passing by, an old lady in a pink poka dot dress looked oddly out of place, perhaps she had already started reliving her years as a young girl. A large pregnant looking man with green shoes was brought to my attention, he squeaked and squawked when he walked past me. A little red head boy next to a water fountain with his mouth full of chocolate ice-cream was screaming like a little red fire engine.

Smiths was within eyesight as I stood with my back leaning on the window of the cafeteria. Two minutes passed and then it was four no sign of Samantha, I recalled the conversation on the phone checking and rechecking in my head what she had. Over-thinking was beginning to take over.

“Meet me at four at Smiths, I’ll be by the cafeteria, and bring the book.”

“Meet me at four at Smiths, I’ll be by the cafeteria, and bring the book.”

“Meet me at four at Smiths, I’ll be by the cafeteria, and bring the book.”

It was starting to annoy me this sentence playing and replaying inside my brain.

Maybe she said, “Meet me at five at Smiths.”

Maybe I dreamt it. Maybe…maybe… I blinked my eyes a few times realising there was this young kid with a red baseball cap and and a wine coloured apron around his waist. He was standing in front of me, trying to get my attention and break my gaze.

“Excuse me, excuse me…”

I drew back, his pimply adolescent face was too close to mine for comfort.

“Heh?”

“I just cleaned those windows a half hour ago, you know how long it takes to get smudges off…?”

I stopped listening and tried to survey the scene behind his head, looking out for Samantha. I looked at my watch – 4:03.

I focused my eyes on the boy in front of me and said: “Sorry, just waiting for someone didn’t mean to be a prick and all messing your windows up that took you so long to clean.”

He scowled somewhat, sensing the sarcasm in my voice.

But he ignored offering a curt answer back and replied, “Waiting for someone?”

“Yeah, just waiting, didn’t mean any trouble.”

“Don’t worry man, I mean no harm just my boss is a bit of a bitch sometimes always getting on my case, you know I think she had it in for me at the start and she’s just looking for an excuse to fire me.”

“Yeah, I know what that’s like,” I smiled.

“Well now that you mentioned it there was a woman waiting for someone in pretty much the same place you’re standing in not long ago, she had a coffee inside and then she took up her waiting position here.”

“What did she look like?”

“She had blonde wavy hair, kind of reddish and brown if you ask me. She was about your height and slim. I’d say on a rating from one to ten, I’d give her an eight, and I don’t give girls eights very often.”

I smiled ahhh the good old days of puberty.

“So you scoring with her?” he gave me a playful nudge on the shoulder.

“Huh?” I replied a little disarmed, my eyes fluttering around the shops trying to keep a look out for Samantha and then return my attention to the boy I was talking to.

“Or is she just some project you are currently working on.” He chuckled to himself. A roar came out of the café, a loud bark of a roar that made him turn his head inwards.

“My boss, got to go. But if it helps any she left with a man, she looked frightened, he had a firm grip on her arm, don’t know why. When I cleaned up her table there was something written on her serviette like she was trying to get a message out, I put it in my pocket for some strange reason. I thought maybe she was leaving me her number or something, but it's some strange long number sequence like God knows what.”

He took the napkin out of his pocket, it was all crumbled up now. I took it from him and said thanks and let him get back to his job.

It was 4:10