catalyst: chapter 30
The Women in the Cafe
Every week the little gathering met at the café and dissected whatever they could set their gaze at. Pop culture that was “far too young for them to understand” and complained that nothing had value anymore. Not like when they were younger when everything had more integrity and backing.
“Back when things meant something. When people had values.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Occasionally, the group saw the smiling woman come into the café and order something small and leave, and a select few always wondered why she didn’t stay. The group had been together for a while, taking fitness classes together every Tuesday at the recreational center, but they were in desperate need of new influence. The same three women talked while the others passively sat and observed, but they hadn’t offered anything new to the conversation in years, and the talkative ones were sick of hearing each other’s voices and opinions. The cycle never changed.
The smiling woman had caught their attention, hoping one morning that she would sit and stay or join in on the conversation. They always increased their volume when they saw her walking up to the shop, in hopes that something would catch her ear and she’d offer input. They could get her to slide over a chair and sit down with them. They would have a new friend. But the smiling woman never paid them any mind. No little sign of listening, nor was there a smirk or frown on anything they would say.
“You know, would it kill her to be social?”
“Maybe she just doesn’t want to be,” one of the meeker women responded, double checking the woman couldn’t hear them.
There was another long silence that cast over them and the group watched as the woman grabbed her stuff and walked out of the shop, never removing her sunglass. The smiling woman of course noticed the women and their desperation for her attention. She was getting more joy out of watching them miss her and long for her than she would have from sitting with them and their inane conversations. She had played the game of small group chit-chat for long enough that she couldn’t do it anymore. The same women at the same table every Tuesday reminded her of her small life back home, the way their friends never expanded themselves, the way the community kept everyone small. She had grown far beyond what she had ever imagined, had power beyond what their little group could fathom. These women meant nothing to her.
The women finished their morning round of meeting earlier than normal, the conversation dying and being drowned out by screaming children in the restaurant. The aged women tsked and shook their heads at one another, commiserating about how people didn’t know how to raise children anymore, that they had been the last generation to do it right. They all shuffled to their respective cars and took off down the road assured of their own superiority. Others carried a little bit of shame from being ignored and not being themselves in favor of fitting in. The meeker woman that had offered the earlier rebuttal was the last to leave, her friends spotting her focused into her own lap and breathing slowly. One wondered if she should check on her but drove off towards her hair appointment that was a more pressing matter. She wouldn’t have known what to do, same as the meek woman, had she looked into the car at her morning friend, couldn’t have processed what was happening to the other woman.
Despite the shapes she saw scrawling across her hands, the petals of poppy flowers flowing across them and up her arms like a dancing tattoo, she calmed her shaking and placed her hands on the wheel, backing out from the last morning meeting she would attend.