Mecca at Starbucks

I did not hear the greeting at first; he said hello quickly in his low voice. I heard it again and lifted my head; my face had been buried in the article I was reading. At first I could not see his face. His tight white t-shirt was dazzling in the sudden brilliance of the neon streetlamp. His dark face was lost in the solid white until he smiled and then I recognized him.

In the mere seconds of this exchange I could only manage a slow but polite hello. By the time the smile was completed on my face, he had entered the cafe, no doubt to get his coffee before coming back out to sit here among the sidewalk tables.

My mind traveled backward across the months, reluctantly recalling the many times we had seen each other at this cafe and smiled politely, said a few words of greeting on occasion, even once engaging in two or three minutes of small talk. I traveled back across the months to the numerous times that I had seen him elsewhere, passing by on the sidewalk plugged into his music device, in the gym - sweating at the machines and plugged into his music device - at the gym showers, wrapped in his towel walking to a stall with his smooth black skin glistening. Always there was the polite smile and nod of the head but nothing more. His smiles were like tonight, noncommittal, like smiling to a fellow passenger on a train bound into the caffeine night.

Back in those days, I was the disciple of Beauty; wherever She was rumored to be holding forth, teaching Her devotees by way of example, I would seek Her out.

My face was buried again in the article. I sensed him pass behind me and pick a table near the end of the outdoor seating area.

Like all poor disciples, there came the time when I too grew disillusioned with my Prophet. Beauty had ultimately failed; Her teachings proved fleeting, the promised meaning never appearing with each disappointing glimpse. Still, distant as this Avatar of Beauty had been, I held the hope that I could one day say more than hello, sit comfortably and talk with him a while under the black sky and the neon streetlamps with all the people rushing by as they did just now, the constant tumult of pedestrians causing me to read the same sentence three times:

"L'Abri, though intense and strange, had not prepared Frank for the open money-grubbing cynicism of Big Religion in America, for the outright contempt many of the big pastors felt toward their followers and the commercialization of everything Jesus."

Or was it something else distracting me; yes, there it was, the thought that I should get up, walk over to him and offer him the magazine, talk about the book review on a founder of the Religious Right, or about the article on the Iraq War veterans who were routinely denied medical benefits.

I stood up. There, at my feet, I could almost see lines radiating from them along the ground in all directions, like spokes on a great wheel - lines that represented possible futures - one such line leading directly to the table at the far end, a return pilgrimage to the Prophet Beauty.

Then the French people arrived. The wheel began to turn. But tonight I would be crushed under the wheel if I stayed. The French people always came, a community of expatriates who talked long and loud and smoked incessantly, probably comfortable that no American would understand their conversation - they did not know that I understood them fully but had never responded to their greetings in anything other than English. Tonight the French would detain me with their talk and I would be rooted to the spot, glancing up as he left the cafe before I could say anything.

As I got up to leave, one of the Frenchmen greeted me; we engaged in polite small talk about the long days of work. Then I wished him goodnight and walked away, in the opposite direction of Mecca.