A Stranger in a Cafe by Kateryna Kishchynska

An elderly woman asks me

for some good liquor. I have to inform her in my best customer service voice that this is a coffee shop, and we do not serve alcoholic beverages. Can I interest her in a good coffee or some nice craft tea? She tells me to choose something for her because she doesn’t get all those fancy cappuccinos. I am trying to choose an item from our menu, expensive but not the most expensive and something I think a person asking for liquor at 2 p.m. on a workday will like. I bring her a raf with some syrup, she says: thanks, honey. It isn’t that her voice is very deep, it just sounds as if it was worked on with sandpaper. Maybe she smokes. Maybe she had been a smoker for a long time. It isn’t an unpleasant voice, but it does make me want to invest in some nicotine patches.

I watch her. Because it’s Tuesday and nothing ever happens on Tuesdays, so I am bored, and I am trying to spy on an elderly woman sitting in a nearly empty coffee shop. She is wearing a perfectly fitted brown coat, and she keeps it on even inside, I assume because what is underneath is obviously a home dress. Nothing unusual. Students come here in their pyjamas all the time. She has a perfect posture and doesn’t slouch when she drinks her coffee. She seems to like it. Maybe I’ll get good tips. She doesn’t have any make-up on, her hair is grey, still, she looks quite put together. It’s the aura and a kind of determination in her eyes.

She doesn’t read a book or look at her phone or write down anything. Just drinks her coffee. I think she doesn’t work, but she used to. Some highly intellectual work. Maybe she was in the mafia, that’s why her coat is so good. Nonsense. There is no mafia where we leave. Maybe her annoying relatives are visiting, so she's just hiding here from them. Maybe she used to go here, before I was an employee, with someone who’s gone now. She looks like a person who grieved. Has one of those smiles: “I have been through something” smiles.

She spills some coffee on the table, she cleans it up with napkins before I could get to it. She reaches in her pocket and leaves something on the table, then takes the dirty napkins and goes out the door. I rush to the table. Nothing ever happens on Tuesdays. There aren’t any tips, there is an old-time key. A nice little mystery.