A Laptop Maiden
An Internet café? No. Just a café. Mostly writers. ‘Script’ writers. The prose people are somewhere east of here, far east. Some students. But, mostly scripts.
The story? Product. Well, how to sell. How to be ‘it.’ How to be the one, who is ‘different.’ Depth? Maybe. But, mostly image. Well, image and a name. Well, at least, a name. Some students feel déjà vu.
A coffee, please? Large. No cream, no sugar. Black. Plain. Simple. A quarter profile emerges from behind the glow of a laptop. A PC, not a Mac. A lady hard at work. Frustrated. Intent on perfection. A flapping eye blink, a shift of her open-toed shoes, a stretch, some lip gloss, a turn over her left shoulder, staring, staring, wondering where her next thought will emerge.
She picks up her cell phone waiting, waiting, waiting. No one’s there. Pouting. Fixes her hair. She closes the laptop in latitude frustration, and opens a book. A book of “ZEN.” She talks to a stranger---another female---about her shirt (she has one just like it at home). She hunches back over her book, “ZEN,” taking on the position of prayer. Well, folding her hands on the table. She jots down a few notes---she’s left handed, by the way---holds, seductively strokes her pencil, and continues to read, intently read. The stroking has ceased as she has lifted her pencil near her forehead, then, another note. She drops the pencil, still focused on the written word, the prose, the book.
Her laptop remains closed.
- gypsy george.
