Boulevard Cafe by Nataliya Zaboychenko

When the sun is out Mary Jane goes around the city,

searching for the memories to steal. When Mary finds the perfect ones, she stores them m a glass jars and clutters them in her inconspicuous shop for sale. Customers come late, usually at night, for a new jar or two. Some of the clients know about Marys magic, but the rest of them call it a "new kind of dope acid" and smash a wad of money on the table. Mary does not mind. She is a professional memorie-dealer.

Оver the years, Mary has learned how to select places for harvesting. For example, a subway or an office is not the best choice. People there do not think about anything, do not remember anyone. In their heads, you can barely hear a quiet rumbling, white noise, or. even worse, pop songs thundering from the headphones. Cinemas, libraries and concerts are out too. The crowd is too keen on films, books and operas to think about themselves. Often, people forget about themselves at such moments, turning into a fictional James Bond or Martin Eden. In her youth. Mary spent quite a few weeks in such places looking for the memories before realizing her mistake.

Now, many years later, having her own client base and proven tactics, Mary knows that the best place to collect memories is a cafe. In coffee shops people are not too involved in what is happening around them, and often stare with empty eyes at the glass of the window, thinking about the past. Thinkings about what happened and what could have happened. On rainy days Mary can collect more than five jars of melancholic love stories. Her older clients adore them.

Mary knows her regular customers, and. fumbling in the head of another stranger, she already knows who will be interested in a particular memory. Young guys, too narrow-minded and skeptical, those who call her magic a drug, buy up other people's sexual fantasies, stories and experiences. Single women return once a month for a couple of love stories that Mary stole from another young girl. Some depressed clients may be interested in happy childhood memories. Curious newcomers ask for horror stories to tickle their nerves.

"Full immersion!" Mary laughs in their faces, and twirls the lead tighter to secure the jar.

Today she sits in the "Boulevard Cafe", which is not even located on the boulevard, and drinks mint tea, which doesn't taste like mint at all. It is her first time here.

It is useful to change the location from time to time. In poor neighborhoods, sitting at a swaying table. Mary can collect a lot of love and horror stories. There is always good sex and pride at high-end coffee shops near luxury private neighborhoods. The "Boulevard Cafe" could not be attributed to either the first or the second type. It was located in one of the side-streets, which flowed in tangled streams from the central alley of the city. It was crowded enough on Saturday afternoon that Mary would not leave empty-handed, but also not as noisy as on Monday morning, when nothing but panic about being late could be made out.

A waitress in a cotton shirt has been mindlessly rubbing the same cup for six minutes already. A ballpoint pen was tucked unevenly in her breast pocket. She seemed nervous, but in a subtle way. It seemed to Mary, that being tense was a constant state of the waitress. She looked like she was living several lifes at once and was failing in each of them. Her pale fingers were dancing around the rim of the freshly washed cup. Thin, dry lips were pressed together, bright eyes were hiding behind the spare bangs. She looked more like a client to Mary, than a victim. She is a good whitch, she doesn't touch the week ones of the world. Partly, because it makes her feel batter, partly, because they usually have nothing do give.

Just to prove her pomt Mary closed her eyes and dived into the waitress' head. It was easy and natural for Mary, to bury herself in someones memories. All that she needed was a bit of concentration, quiet space and a person. As she did a we of feelings washed over her. Mary could see little pictures of different people smiling and crying, she goes through the memories like an experienced librarian goes through the customer cards. She finds a card where a middle-aged women cooks angrily, looking from time to time over her shoulder to say something. Women looks like a waitress, but older and stronger. She mixes macaroni on the stove so passive-agrassivly, that Mary does not want to watch anymore. So she flips.

Mary goes through the girls puberty, dance competitions and her first break up. There is nothing much to see. she finds a few of the warm memories of a little puppy, some Christmas morning and disneyland trip. But just like Mary though — there is nothing good to sell.

She breathes in deeper, shouts her eyes open and finds herself back in the cafe with a half-empty cup of the mint tea. Waitress blinks like after the fleshlight, looks around and seems quite lost. Mary can’t blame her. that happens every time after the memorie search. Waitress fixes her wavy hair and. finally, puts a cup back on the table.

Her colleague, a barista guy. who was leaning lazily on the counter, doodling something in the notebook, looks up. follows her movement with his eyes and gets back to doodling. He has dark curls and a pierced ear. which he thoughtlessly touches with his left hand, twirling the earing with his fingers. If not for his face expression, he could have reminded Mary of a prince from a french fairytale, but because of the arrogant and slothful smile he resembled of a student who works, clubs all night, and then sleeps in class, waking up from time to time to flirt with girls. A shirt was covering his hands to the wrists, and Mary did not know, but was ahnost sure, that somewhere under the white cotton of the uniform were hiding a couple of tattoos. She might get some good love stories from him or maybe a few of the one-night-stand memories.

She closes her eyes again.

Just like she suspected, when Mary goes into his head, she scoops up a hand full of sleepless nights. She picks a few of them, choosmg the party night with an asian classmate and a summer evening with a loud baywatcher. She would not be able to remember more than five or six of someones memories at once, with out storing it into jars, so she had to be picky. Mary will have time later to sort out her finds and a public cafe was not the best place to do it. She slips two memories from the barista and goes back to reality to finish her tea. As she takes her sip. Mary looks around the cafe to choose a new possible victim.

A space near the window is flooded with sunlight, it shines on the little teapot illuminating a swirl of steam. An old gentleman is sitting at the table, reading a book. He has a faded web of veins on his wrinkled hands and a dark brown coat near him. Mary wonders if he is a professor. He has a witty, lively look in his filled with smoke greish eyes. Salt-and-pepper hair is cut shortly. Mary would not be surprised if he wore a fedora hat on a daily basis.

Next to him there is a couple of teenage girls. They whisper, giggle and look around checking, if someone is listening. There is two glass bottles of coke on the table among the phones, wallets, chapsticks and headsets. The one with a snub nose is telling something passionately, gesturing with her hands and making faces from time to time. The other is leaning over the table to hear better, she covers her mouth with a hand full of rings. Mary is not sure if there is a horror or a delight in girls eyes. but. likely, girl does not know either. Times goes buy as they talk and talk.

When an old fashioned clock on the wall strikes four in the afternoon. Mary is tired but proud. Her cup is fully empty and she has some good selling memories in her head. The old gentleman had a few of the wonderful love stories and yes. he turned out to be a professor. One of the teenage girls had a scary memory from the summer camp, where she went to the forest at night with her friends and all of them heard a howling. The girl believes to this day that that was a werewolf. Well, good for Mary, her clients love jars with supernatural.

When she was done and ready to head home to store the freshly found memories, her eyes got caught by a child. A little girl was sitting beside her very business-looking mother, picking a cupcake apart, instead of eating it. Ponytail of ginger curls, large forehead, wide-set eyes. There was something strange about her, but Mary could not quite place it. She was barely six years old. chewing on her lip. rippmg the cupcake mto smaller and smaller pieces. Her mother was to absorbed in texting on her phone to pay any attention to her child. It seemed like girl did not mind and was busy on her own.

Mary did not pay her much attention before — she has never stolen memories from kids. It was messy in their heads, real fife memories were mixed with dreams and fantasies. linages were to bright, sounds were to loud. Noone would buy a jar like this. But at this particular moment she wanted to see what was going on in the girls head. She closed her eyes one last time concentrating on ginger curls and add expression.

If adult memories were stored quite particularly, wether it was an imaginable library, a pantry, or even a menu. Kids memories looked like a whirlpool of confetti. At list that what it looked like inside this kid. Mary reached for a random memorie and pulled out a birthday party. She saw a swarm of kids playing in the backyard, a cake with five candles, and a glass of juice spilled on a dress. Everything looked big and colourful, sky was filed with rainbow colors, guests looked beautiful, some of them had fairy-wings or little homes. A memory was like a carnival, it smelled of cotton candy, it sounded like laugh.

Mary could not resist it. She hided that memorie in her imaginable pocket and went back to the cafe. Barista and a waitress were still bored, an old gentleman was reading his book, teenage girls were giggling, business-mother was texting. A wide-set pair of bright eyes were staring right at Mary.

Ginger girl did not smile, she looked focused and puzzled, like she was solving a math equation in her head. Seconds of Marys life suddenly turned into hours when ginger girl pushed her chair from the table, jumped on the floor and headed towards Mary. Mary Jane was an experienced witch, but she froze when the girl ordered with her cartoonish voice:

"Give it back.