Coffee Shop Ramble

Sitting in the Mad City Cafe, the old Columbia stamping ground, the first former Riverside, beneath Salvador Dali exclaiming the lone difference between he and a madman (he is not mad) and the neon Open sign. Two high school girs practice French, sounding American (like I did when I was their age, like I would, could I speak French), a man plugs in the ubiquitous laptop (is any coffee shop scene complete sans laptop? Perhaps that's the last bastion of a forgotten age, the wireless cafe), a cell phone rings. The door swings open, a blast of fresh and bitter January, a man pours unsteeped, steaming tea into a trash can, he did say room for cream. I've read Baltimore's Alternative Weekly (City Paper) cover to cover, waiting for my phone to ring.