Thursday, September 22, 2016

Coffee Shop Misfortune


Olive runs into the coffee shop frantically looking for her keys. She swore that she left them here earlier when she had come in to order an espresso, after staying up the night before to write her research paper. She realizes she must look like a mad woman. Her long curly black hair so frizzy that it resembles the top of a muffin, the dark circles under her eyes due to lack of sleep, and of course the mascara running down her face from the crying session which occurred after she realized what she had lost. Due to the power outage, she’s forced to use the flashlight on her phone to look for the keys to the apartment. She looks under all the little brown tables, couch cushions, and in the bathroom as the other customers seem to be staring with confused and slightly frightened expressions. "Great," she thought, "These people think I've lost it." Olive asks the workers if anything had been returned, to which they reply, “No.” The owners refuse to allow her to stay longer, as they insist they hadn’t seen the keys, and that they were tired as it was past closing time. After moving from her small town to the city she realizes life would be much different here, beginning with the self-centered, unhelpful, and ill-mannered attitudes that seemed to consume this shop, but course she was deflecting her horrible day onto these poor exhausted people. Leaving frustrated and out of luck, Olive decides to find a bench on Park Row to rest for the night. Although this wasn't ideal what other choice did she have?