cafe velo

“Where are you headed?”

I tend to keep my Saturdays for myself.  The long week is for the office, and Friday nights are for goofing off with my friends, and I might even be convinced to see people on a Saturday night if I’m up to it, but Saturdays I tend to keep to myself all day, walking anonymously through crowds, sitting in parks with a good book, holing up in coffee shops with my journal.

“Down to Powell’s, probably.”  Bookstores are another good place for me to go and be alone with my thoughts.  Even if I’m in no mood to buy there’s something comforting about walking among the stacks of books, running my fingers along their spines, breathing in all the words printed on all those pages.  It seems like a perfect place to spend a few hours, especially since the sky is mere minutes from really opening up and drenching us.

“I don’t really have to be anywhere for a while,” Jay says.  I hadn’t planned on meeting him here, but I’d tweeted that I was heading to Farmer’s Market before leaving the house and he’d honed in on me there, and we’d chatted a bit over breakfast purchased from the stalls.  Afterwards I’d walked with him to his truck, where he had just finished buckling his son into his car seat.  ”Do you want to go get a coffee or anything?”

Saturdays I tend to keep for myself, but I don’t get to see my friends nearly enough, now that we’re all playing at being grown-ups.  ”Yeah, let’s do that.”  We hop into his truck and we’re off.

With old friends I think no conversation really ever ends, so I know exactly what he’s talking about when he picks one up where we left it six months ago.  ”If you wanted to write and draw comic books, why’d you pick computer science?”

I look over at him, wondering if there’s a question within a question here.  Most of our college friends that I still kept in touch with had no small amount of burning discontent with our chosen field, chafing against jobs they didn’t find challenging, careers they didn’t find rewarding, yet didn’t seem to know what else to do.  Jay alone out of our group seemed to be the only one who’d found a professional niche he enjoyed.

I decide he’s not asking me because he’s looking for an answer for himself.  I take the question at face value and see if I know the answer.  Because it’s where I fit.  Because it was the hardest thing I knew how to do.  Because I didn’t think I was cut out for med school.  Because I thought it would make my dad proud, and god if that isn’t just a pathetic reason.  Words always come to me later when I write them, but not always when I am driving in the rain, so when I open my mouth to answer all I say is, “I don’t really know.  I used to have a reason, I guess.  But a lot of my reasons changed.  And anyway you and I wouldn’t have met if we hadn’t had that assembly language class.”

He nods, accepting this.  ”You think you’ll look for a coding gig you like?  Maybe move down to San Diego, get that job with Todd?”

“I don’t think so.  In fact I think I’d like to do something else entirely.”

“But what?”

Scribbles in notebooks, pages turned and highlighted, numbers crunched, clockwork turning, figures moving across a map.

“You’ll see.”

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