Mood For the Day
Today's Mood on Mon, 5 Jan 1998
She stood by the new arrival and scolded the flustered boy briefly before remembering to mask her disappointment. She finished what she had to say curtly before retiring back to her lair, behind the ovens in the kitchen. She thought her job as day manager was demanding (and perhaps unreasonable at times) but it was, after all, her job to do.
The song played over the speakers in the coffee shop and the surly old man in the corner suddenly sat up, alert and attentive for perhaps the first time any in there had ever seen. The song, a favorite in his youth, found him now him as an old man musing the frivolity of youth. The time shock was almost more than the ol' ticker could stand, which made him forget the moment entirely in the immediate attempt to restore his blood pressure.
Speaking of sanity, the counter staff now raced to restore sanity to the other side of the counter. Now that the new boy had arrived, there were five of them: it was late in the morning and the whole world seemed to want coffee and something to go with it. For all their youth (the oldest was perhaps seventeen), the staff moved together with grace and reasonable efficiency, only very occasionally getting in each other's way.
Presently a break in the action arrived, and two of the counter-workers moved to a table to sit with some of their friends. Mild modern music played throughout the shop; anyone working behind the counter that season would no doubt remember these songs forever. Even if they somehow forgot the songs, if they heard them again they'd surely remember that sense of shared experience and shared accomplishment which comes so naturally to those who work with, rather than despite, each other.
The shop quieted once again into a lull. The old man, long since having sank back into his accustomed cynical apathy, continued to eat marmalade from a small tin using chopsticks makeshift from wooden coffee-stirrers. The crazy old man would usually be found eating something from the pages of a children's book: lately he happened to've read the book Paddington Bear.
The two clerks went back behind the counter while two others took their break. Their friends had left, and the next ninety-minute cycle of rush and lull began to rotate slowly into position as the old man, having finished with his tin of marmalade, slouched in his chair and began practicing his growl.
The old man looked up slowly to see the clock spin faster and the coffee shop reacting: the walls stained themselves gradually to shift from white to a natural wood finish. The floor grew wider just as imperceptibly as the walls, although the floor kept moving long after the colors of the room had melted into one another. The light darkened as the drinks themselves mutated from coffee to cocktails.
The music changed from insipid modern rock to intricate timeless jazz fusion. The fusion modified itself with each new tune that the band played, for the medium had changed as well: no longer piped through a tired speaker mounted on the ceiling, the room was now a popular nightclub and the music was live. The band on stage was overflowing with accomplished musicians, like something out of a old-fashioned war movie.
Most remarkable by far, however, was the attire of the clientele: as they moved into groups, standing in that pose peculiar to those with a drink in one hand and social inanities on the lips, their clothes seemed to shift upon their very bodies. As rapidly as they spoke their dress seemed to shimmer and fade from fashion to fashion, surrounding styles and traversing temporal custom.
One moment the keyboard player would be wearing tails and powdered wig; the next moment his hair was in dreadlocked mohawk: and, clothed in cotton shirt and chains, he perched before a Yamaha DX-70. Likewise the bartender's attire moved from barbershop to heavy metal concert, while the patrons he served shifted even more alarmingly across all eons and styles. The old man heard pieces of a conversation behind him.
"That's ridiculous," he heard a man say, "I haven't lived many lives. I've just studied the way other people live -- very briefly! -- and paid attention during this life. But I haven't lived any more lives than anyone else. Just one."
"I've been born again," the old man heard a female voice reply crisply. "Have I then lived more lives than you?" The old man turned around slightly, and saw a young lady in petticoat and lace addressing a young man in a toga with a purple hem.
"As much respect as I have for the born again," the man replied, twirling a moustache which grew on his face as he spoke, " -- and it is unlimited respect -- I speak only of the time stretching from the birth of the body until it stops for the last time." The young man bowed slightly to the lady, smoothing the vest which nestled under a three-piece suit not seen since just after the Great Depression. His toga was but a memory, and as the old man turned back to his drink he caught the hint of a three-cornered hat upon the man's head.
Before the conversationalists, the keyboard player hit the groove of the band so well it was hard to believe he had just two hands and not ten independent mallets on a miniature marimba. The band, for their part, picked up on the track he gave them and cut that groove with authority. The room responded just as completely: not just the people but the amplifiers, even the walls themselves, would sway and stagger, but all arguing in assent, whether in company or, like the old man, in a desolate corner in public isolation.
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