He didn’t remember when he noticed the difference. He was just as thoughtful as he’d always been as he’d make his regular order—tall mocha extra whip…like he needed the extra calories! Ever since he’d started his consultancy, he’d been moving less physically, though his personal pace only seemed to quicken as the challenges he faced quickly retreated in his professional rear view mirror. People came to him desperate for solutions; he’d listen and as they spoke, the answer would announce itself. They always wanted him to tell them his insights slowly, make him beg for details, or contradict his nearly immediate proposals. But he’d never seem to notice; when we first started he hadn’t even written down anything, thinking they’d wanted to get help right at the moment they asked. But now it seemed, more often than not, that they just wanted to complain, to explain why their future seemed so opaque to anyone’s understanding. He’d tried to explain that it wasn’t so—he’d start to give them an explanation of how he saw their solutions. “No”, they’d say, “you don’t get it—you’re just looking at the ‘wave tops’, you don’t get the complexity I’m facing”. But complexity was only apparent at close range, he’d wanted to tell them; just pull back, get a little altitude and everything smoothed right out like in Google Earth.
But all that didn’t matter now. The soft, comfortable embrace of fabric still seemed like an enveloping hug. Yet it wasn’t the comfort it once had been. The caffeine just turned up the clarity, sped the processing and sharpened the focus—like he’d needed any of that! Nowadays, he ordered a decaf mocha, just savoring the richness of coffee bean and cocoa nut. Now he spent more of his attention along the track the other way—seeking sleep, rest and mental recuperation. But sleep without dreams didn’t get the answers out of his mind, it seemed to only keep them piling up. What to do? Where to go so he “did no harm?” For giving people answers only made them mad. He would have asked himself or someone else like himself. Where’d that be?
Making lattes and cappuccinos helped to take his mind off. He could let his mind just focus on their faces; the ones that matched their drinks. What he couldn’t bring himself to do was to admit how he knew them. It was the fact that they told him before the words found their way to his ears. He’d become a legend in the neighborhood—the barista who always seemed to be psychic with just the right drink for their day. He’d just chuckled and said he heard that…but the guy in the corner armchair—what to do about him? He didn’t seem to know that he wasn’t alone or did he? He could never be certain but it seemed to him that every time he let his mind wander over near the armchair, he’d hear his own voice and it scared him. What were those thoughts, what was he going to do with them?
Sideways and back,…what did it mean? He knew, of course. It was the way he worked when he tuned in to others’ take a parallel perspective and then step back in time to let the story play itself out slow. It gave one time to look at all the angles, realize the point before it faded with the rush that always overwhelmed most professional’s reflections. But what did that have to do with him? What was the young man behind the bar trying to tell him, when he wandered over in his mind and offered help?
The young woman stood in the rain, the warm downpour washing her skin with its soft tickle as the cotton fabric of her dress soaked itself to the curves others found so mesmerizing. She tipped her head back, opening her mouth wide so that the sweet clean of the storm overhead could fill her taste with its crisp ozone neutrality. As she swallowed, a slow smile spread across her freckled face. It was a smile usually called a smirk by those who knew her well. She’d always disagreed. Her smile was just the personal sense of knowing, not the compliment others thought they gave when they called it beatific—she called that thought “just stupid” and refused to put such a vacant thing onto her face.
He never came back to the corner green armchair; some said he’d moved or been transferred to another city. But the barista behind the bar knew where he’d gone; he’d gone to join Lao Tzu who’d done the same thing one afternoon back in the sixth century B.C. He’d just gotten on his ox and ridden off…never to be seen again. In Christian lore, he would have been one who had followed Enoch and “walked with God until he was no more, for God took him…” But it all meant the same, one way or the other those who saw the future often seemed to decide to go and live there. How? By stepping across the timeline and back a bit so they could decide just where they wanted to come in. He’d thought about it once or twice himself, but that’s all it’d been. How could he know for sure it’d work? What if he couldn’t come back? He put a sleeve around another latte and sighed. He’d miss that man in the velvet armchair.
She felt him watching her, but she didn’t mind. It was what she did, after all. She took another mouthful of rain, as her auburn curls twisted themselves around her ears, showing off the Celtic knot silver earrings she loved so much right now. But then she decided it was time to greet him. After all, he’d been here so often by himself in other people’s thoughts, solving other people’s problems. Trouble was, he was always in such a rush. He’d never stopped to notice her. So she’d tried to get his attention; sometimes she had gone skinny dipping in a mountain pool as the waterfall plashed in the background, other times she had tried lying nude on some powdery-white sandy shore adding to her skin’s freckle count. It didn’t matter—he’d been intent on something else, gazing off into someone else’s world seeking clarity, finding answers for other people’s struggles but now…something seemed to have happened. He was looking right at her and -- by God!-- if he didn’t have a smirk on his face! All right, he’d earned it. She shrugged off the simple pullover dress she’d put on earlier and opened her green velvet eyes. “Yes”, she said, “this is sideways…and back. Welcome!”
Written: on an Air Tran flight enroute from
