The Baron

10/25/14

            Baron the barista thought he had won again. But you could forgive him this time. The girl had the persistent problem of losing track, of staring at objects not as they were traditionally, but differently, and intensely as impressions and shapes. Colors not animated by anything she would call human, but moving independently nonetheless.  She would obsess over these shapes: groups of things, patches of dead grass, building facades; but more often what caught her eye was the face. And so as she pays for her coffee, she looks at what is the upper right quadrant of the barista’s face, how it squinted like the squat penis of the chubby high school counselor she slept with in high school. And though her true senses fixate on the erotic patch of skin at the angle of his chin where there is no trace of stubble, her secondary senses, dulled by neglect; senses that compel us to  finally release the hand of the stranger we have just met—these senses quietly urged her to look away.  But she could not. And when the barista, who called himself The Baron, caught her stare, the electro-thump pumping through the cafe speakers became his  own personal soundtrack. It seeped into the foreground inspiring high pours and behind the back theatrics. He announced his drinks as if he were narrating a documentary.  The cashier placed change in her hand which reminded the girl vaguely of the world outside the world she existed in at this moment, which was populated explicitly by The Baron’s nose.  She dropped the change in her purse. Just one nose that provided enough canvas for an entirely new person, an additional face on The Baron’s face. Light struggled to escape the vacuum of its blown out pores. This was a living, breathing entity that deserved autonomy, independence, women’s suffrage. Revolutionary lines traced this appendage-creature like a Mexican mountain road.  The Baron pretended he was alone, a rebel working in the confines of a corporate structure, but her intense attention forced him to check his fly and thumb that nose like a feather weight boxer.  It moves, she said to herself, which broke the spell. The Baron called her latte.  The back of his neck tingled as he recited the exotic name that was written on the cup. He leaned toward and pointed to his ear.  “What’re you listening to?” She watched his two lips move underneath that nose and just a moment too late, nodded and said “Thanks.”