jamie doom

Again, I pause briefly to refresh you about why any male my age goes into Cafe Old Europe. Hint: it’s not the coffee, or the tea, or the scones, or the baklava or the old Continental charm. Whoever owns Old Europe has realized one thing, and all Asheville is the better for it. Pretty girls making coffee, makes the coffee taste better. When a pretty girl hands me a bit of lemon meringue and smiles, I’m sure to return for the meringue but more importantly…for the smile. Two pretty girls were working tonight and for the purpose of this non-sexist anecdote I will call them “short pretty girl” and “tall pretty girl”.

As I entered, the first person that catches my eye is “short pretty girl.” Ah, “short pretty girl”, blonde, with kind of a freaky little Asheville avant-garde style going on. She’s bussing tables, and she looks at my eyes and smiles like she means it. I’m happy. I say “hey.” She nods and mouths “hey.” Maybe I’m crazy, but I find no need for girls ever to actually say anything out loud to me again. Heaven must be pretty girls from every country mouthing “hey” in a thousand languages when they pass you on the street.

I’m the second person in line. “Tall pretty girl” is taking orders. I remembered “tall pretty girl” from the other times. Talking to “tall pretty girl” is like briefly communicating with an angel. I barely manage to keep it together while I’m talking, and once I’m away from her and thinking about it, I think to myself….”Mmm, I was a blubbering idiot, just then.”

I asked her about the tea selection, and we flirt. I ordered two green tea bags for my tea, and we flirted twice as much. She rang the tea up and told me the grand total for my purchase. What does the perfect drink from the perfect girl on a perfectly wonderful Asheville evening in September cost? $1.22 apparently. I tipped her two dollars. And we just stood grinning at each other for a moment—her like an otherworldly creature, me like fool. Then, I clumsily shuffled to my table. On the way to my table, whom should I see but “short pretty girl”. And she smiled again, this time meaning it even more than the first time.

At this point, I feel so full of life that it’s hard for me to breath. I’m absolutely, freaking happy just to be alive and holding green tea in the middle of a cafe in Asheville, North Carolina. Is this simple bliss? And get this, I still had $1.78 sliding around my cargo shorts should I need to return to the counter under the pretense of more tea to commune with “tall pretty girl”.

I’m sitting at my little table inside Old Europe, and swing music is swirling from speakers around the café, and all these ladies keep dancing out of the bathroom which is located across from where I’m sitting. They are doing soft little jigs, stepping lightly, maybe moving their arms mysteriously to the music as only women can do. And these ladies are all different, but they same. They dance to the bathroom, and then a few minutes later they dance back out. There are rich ones with slick chic hair, and young hippy ones in dreadlocks, but all of them are just dancing like fools. I begin to concentrate on my book, but even while I read I hear the music and feel dancing ladies sweeping past me. Meanwhile around me, conversations are just humming along beautifully.

I settle in to read An American Childhood, and this book just sings to me. I greedily reread entire chapters careful not to miss one word. Annie Dillard was one of those lucky ones. She remembers what seems like every detail of her breathtakingly innocent childhood. I’m reading this book, and I’m getting it. I’m seeing everything she saw. I’m lost in the pages of a stranger’s childhood, and I don’t ever want to find my way home. You know what I mean? When we get older, it’s almost like we cease really seeing things. We feel like its all been done. We would rather sigh impatiently. We would rather yawn and brush it aside than look closer and lose ourselves in the pure simple pleasures of being alive. I hate that.

So, I’m in this book, smiling and shaking my head. Half the time my mouth is just open in awe. From time to time, my fingers feel blindly around the table for my tea cup, and I take a swig and make a happy swallow sound. Then after my brain consumes each page, I make the same sound. When I do look up, it’s to see another beautiful lady dance out of the bathroom. Then an impossible thought hit me. It’s a somewhat egocentric one too, I guess. But I really wanted to walk out of the bathroom and see myself there, reading my book, smiling, enjoying my tea contentedly. I wanted to be able see myself there more than anything in the world at that moment, but I couldn’t. I looked around the room for someone else to enjoy seeing when I walked out of the bathroom, but nobody was really shining that moment like I felt I was. So, I didn’t go to the bathroom.