cafe con leche

I’m waiting for the waitress to ask for my order. Un café con leche descremada y dos medialunas. I still haven’t heard back from Carlos, who asked me out via facebook. I figure coffee is better than drinks. He’s harmless, but I can’t decide if it’s worse to be nice to him now and allow him false hopes or flat out reject him now. Waitress? I like my routine here, coffee and a book for breakfast, wine with pizza for dinner. They know me now. Waitress? It’s slow today but it might rain. I move inside, hope for better service. Went for a run earlier. Different route than yesterday. I’m grouchy from lack of food and US gossip. (The food is cheaper inside by 50 centavos)

The coffee is warm and tastes dark, but it is blonde like I like it. She brought me a juguito de naranja, which I didn’t order, but I wonder if she remembers she owes me one from the first time. (She doesn’t. I pay a couple pesos extra.) My waitress is bottle blonde, not platinum, but dyed. I see a man get the newspaper from a corner. Oh, so you can do that here. I still like to sit and write in the café. I feel very Hemingway, except if I were Hemingway I’d be drunk.

My hands are sticky from the medialunas dulces. I tried wrapping a napkin around the bottom and eating it like a hotdog, but I prefer to tear it apart in tiny bites, from the curly tails and then saving the large soft center piece for last. I’ve always liked to take small bites, savoring each taste. For some reason it has always reminded me of Alice in Wonderland with the mushroom pieces. (Two people next to me are talking about Texas, pronounced Tex-as, not Tejas, here.) I was a weird kid, I used t think I was in a Truman Show type program and would sing out loud when I was alone on the swing-set so the people watching from the clouds wouldn’t get bored. And I thought my teachers and parents were in a vocabulary conspiracy before I ever knew what a conspiracy was:
“Today Meg learned the following words today. Please try to use them in a sentence at least three times this week.”

I guess I’ve always been a freak. And not just because when I hear “Crank Dat” in an Argentine Hip Hop club I get up and start doing the Soulja Boy dance, which no one else in the club knows. Probably not even Ben.