Louise and The Men of Transit

New Day

Louise grasped the Robin's-egg blue mug by its handle. With her left hand, she cradled its smooth curves. She stared into its amber-stained depths, down down the empty sides to the last pool of cold tea left. The colour of the tea reflected the lightness of her tawny eyes. Her hair had regrown into its natural colour, its natural state. Brown, curly hair, short, like that of a woman from another era. That was her. She'd arrayed herself in her favourite white short-sleeved shirt under her periwinkle blue cardigan, buttoned up to the bottom of its V-neck, its hem overlapping the waist of her relaxed navy blue pants. Her feet in her black lace-ups were set firmly on the oak planked floor of the cafe. Her bum had warmed up the smooth midnight-blue leather of the cafe's banquette hours earlier when she'd first walked in at 9:00 AM instead of going to work. She couldn't face the Customer Convenience Team Vision office.

For this was the day.

This was the day the customer vision campaign would start. We're going to start it with a bang, Jeremy had declared. She'd been high fiving him that day when he and Shireen had stepped her through the final version. High fiving! Her! Louise smiled into the almost transparent liquid, the blue of the mug showing faintly through the brown. Anticipation for this morning had etched bubbles of eagerness into her heart as every evening she'd crossed off another day closer to launch on her wall calendar with Marcia smugly watching. She'd covered all the number tags on her TTC wall map with name tags. She'd printed, in visually distinct shades of yellow, green, blue, red, the names of each line, each route in large discernible letters. She'd mapped out a route each weekend that she'd wanted to learn and then ridden it. It helped her get through the tedious weekdays of waiting.

Marcia had stopped shredding the map.

Instead, she'd rub first one furry side up and over the bottom of the map and the wall underneath it, then the other, stretching up on her tippy toes, her body rumbling bliss, her white nose marking the torn-and-taped paper.

Louise giggled as she re-played in her head Marcia's change towards the map. Last night, eagerness to see the campaign launch this morning had kept Louise awake, but then as she'd left her apartment, her legs had shook. She'd gotten as far as lifting her right foot to step onto the streetcar. She'd stalled. She'd veered off and rushed down a block, or maybe two, past the Starbucks she'd frequented during her blonde condition, until she'd spotted a cafe she didn't know. She'd hurried inside, ordered breakfast tea and a large blueberry muffin. The tea hadn't wet her palate; the muffin hadn't tasted of anything to her dry tongue.

Louise lifted her empty mug and tilted it up so a drop of tasteless liquid could moisten her tongue. With her eyes, she followed her hand holding the mug back down to the table. She leaned her wool-covered forearms on the scarred wooden top of her little round table. Her head dropped. Her purse with its worn greying-black leather sat hidden on the wooden chair opposite her, puffing out into some sort of cushion. The cafe door opened, letting in a rush of traffic noise that washed through Louise's ears into her consciousness. A car accelerated past a streetcar as it growled vibrations through the roadbed. The door closed on its hydraulic hinge, shutting out the traffic.

Louise leaned back against the banquette's firm back. Brick walls in hues of rose and cherry, with thick mortar oozing like whipped cream between the craggy bricks, lined the walls. Louise pondered the bricks. Were they fake? They looked real. Her wandering gaze caught sight of a white Apple logo on the back of the silver laptop opposite her. Why was every laptop in a cafe an Apple? As she clasped her mug tighter, Louise lifted her eyes higher to contemplate the person on the other side of the laptop. The woman opposite was frowning down at her screen. Louise became aware of a harmony of clicking keys to the left of her, to the right of her, across from her, and — she turned her head to the right — down at the other end where several tables for two lined the tall wooden-framed windows. Singles occupied them. Louise turned her head slightly to the left to take in the swooping coffee bar behind which two baristas gossiped. Ordinary life continued on. The rapid, rhythmic clicking of laptop keys comforted her. Louise's gaze drifted towards the cafe's front door that stood shut yet seemed to dare her to leave.