Matchbook

He reads at his favorite coffee shop, that one close to him around the corner. Sipping an iced Thai coffee on a finally beautiful day, he makes his way through page by page. There are a few people there and he's surprised that there aren't more, on a gorgeous day like this? But he found a table, and he can concentrate, and he can enjoy his book.

A big black food truck, emblazoned with the Hellman's crest, pulls up. The Ogilvy team gets out. They seemingly come from everywhere and in an instant. The coffee shop manager—My god, he couldn't be any older than I am, he thinks—jumps outside and greets the creatives. It's testimonials they're there to shoot, about today's event, about the mayonnaise, how the goddamn mayonnaise unites us all.

The manager goes first, repeating every question before answering. "How did the event go today? The event today went really good." "Did we give away a lot of sandwiches? Oh yeah, we gave away lots of sandwiches."

A girl walks up in between shots. She catches the reader's eye. Short black shorts, short black hair, some speckled mustard three-quarter top, a white tank underneath that shows a crescent of skin. She goes inside the coffee shop. He watches the door. "Can we get this bike moved?" someone asks. The manager goes in and out and around but the bike apparently belongs to no one.

The girl emerges, without any beverage. Instead she holds a cigarette, which she lights with a match as she walks by him, by him and out of sight. He smells the smoke, taking breath after breath, but soon the smoke, and the girl, are gone. A local, dreadlocksed, bearded fellow tells a story of a patron. "If that's craft mayo," the patron supposedly said, "I'll cut your motherfucking balls off." The creatives stifle laughs that they let loose when cut is called. Everyone finds it very funny, especially the director, who has the man retell the story with different severe and violent endings. Our reader, he sips his iced Thai and ignores them.

The crew preps another shot. But then he smells the smoke again. His head turns and sees the girl. She crosses through the creatives and waits on the other side. She smokes her cigarette casually. She holds her matchbook like a master and he thinks how sexy it is that she even has a matchbook in the first place. Something brought her back, he thinks. Perhaps she wanted a glimpse of the business, see the crew at work, hear some of those stories they were capturing. Maybe it was me, but why would it be me? Maybe she was just wasting time, like he was. And if she didn't buy a drink, what did she buy? He goes through the list: a piece of fruit, a pastry, a bagel, a bottle of water that she put in her purse. Maybe she gave a look and got to use the restroom without buying anything. He wondered how old she was. With the college nearby he supposed she could be of that age, maybe younger, maybe older, he could never tell and she seemed timeless. He typically used height and bust to determine age but they were not always the most truthful criteria. She looks so cool, smoking there with her matchbook, she looks in control. He had kissed a smoker once, deeply and passionately, too. And it was pretty much true what they said, that it's like kissing an ashtray, or at least what your mind thinks an ashtray tastes like. Smell and memory and all that. But he doesn't care, he thinks about kissing this girl. What harm in thinking? And perhaps she was just a casual smoker, gotten some bad news, perhaps she was feeling rebellious, perhaps it didn't matter.

Suddenly the creatives all move at once so that each one is perfectly placed to keep this girl from view. Conspiracy! Collusion! he thinks. He tries to look through to her, to not look like he's looking for her, like he hasn't completely forgotten his book. And as the crowd shifts again he can see that she's gone. Like a phantom, a ghost, a memory, all she ever was and will be. The Hellman's people, the Ogilvy people, whoever these people are, pack up and disperse. "Yeah," he hears, "it would've been really nice to not have that bike in every shot." The reader wishes the bike were his, that his silence meant something more. He sees the reflection of the overhead leaves on the glass face of his phone and he looks at them for a very long time. All that remains in his cup are a few straggling pieces of ice and the last milky-white drop. He wants to keep this spot, so he goes in to buy a bottle of soda. He takes it outside, and reads, and drinks very slowly. After that he gets another coffee, hot and black this time. He drinks that, too, as the cool evening air comes in, as all the people pass by, on their way home, on their way to their loved ones.