Eccentric Tea Woman

  Thursday at Cafe Siren. The day begins, as always, with the doors being unlocked by a quiet server dressed in ripped jeans and a black shirt with her traditional combat boots. And, every time she opens the door, she always looks out to the busy street and smiles at the raggedy looking man across the street who draws whimsical pictures in watercolour. He looks up, sees her red lipstick framed smile, and waves once. She nods and then returns inside.  The server, whose name for today is Nina, wraps a dirty apron around her waist and begins her regular set up of the espresso machine. When she's ready to prepare the tea for the day, she turns on the turntable located by the front door and puts on a jazz record. This will be the first of ten albums played during the day. However, she doesn't realize that today, there will be an eleventh.  An hour later, the first customer comes into the cafe to the welcoming tune of some female jazz singer who looks as though she came from the 1930

  He told me that magick was real. Not the kind that you would see in some cheesy Las Vegas show, but the kind that comes from far-off places, in languages not known to humanity. He wanted me to believe in the impossible, and honestly, I just couldn't. I had been raised to believe in what I could see and touch with my two rough hands. I had grown up in a family that despised imagination and creativity. Books were forbidden to me, as they would lead to me wanting to think for myself. And so, in my 40 plus years of living to date, I never opened a book, never visited an art museum, and never daydreamed about anything. I woke up, ate my breakfast, did my work with barely any communication with others, returned home to a bland meal, and fell asleep because I had nothing better to do. One day, while walking to the post office, I saw a man seated on a limb of a tree. I stopped and stared at him with dull eyes, then looked around to see if anyone else had seen him. They aren't awake y

Phil woke up with the sun beaming on his face as it filtered through the window. He rolled over and cursed softly as he pulled out his latest read from under him. He chuckled and set the book on the side table, then got up to get himself ready for his weekly meeting with his best friend, Jackson. They had met while students at Tulane University five years ago - both aspiring novelists, inspired by the ghosts of writers who made New Orleans their home and Muse. After college, both remained in New Orleans and assimilated themselves into the city and everything it had to offer. Phil left his apartment in Gentilly and made his way to the Garden District, where Jackson, thanks to his first book doing rather well, lived in a somewhat crumbling yet still glorious house. Today was their day of brunch, followed by spending time and money in Octavia Books. As Phil pulled up to Jackson's house, he noticed his friend sitting on the front porch with a woman who threw her head back to laugh at s

Truth be told, Daniel hated art. He hated seeing the artists dressed in clothes that showed both their so-called uncouth lifestyle as well as their desire to be accepted. His girlfriend of six months broke up with him because he claimed that her job of being a painter wasn't really a job. What's the big deal, he said during their last fight, with you and paint? It's not like it's a real talent. Nicole merely stood before him, staring down at her paint-stained hands, as tears fell from her eyes. How hard is it, Daniel vented on, to paint some strokes and lines and then charge someone $1200 for it?  Nicole left before he could do any further damage to her mental state. For the next three days, he sulked and drank cheap beer in his bare apartment, not wanting to think of her or anything that had to do with art. He was "in-between" jobs and therefore didn't care how his hours whittled away. He was one of those kinds of people who didn't care about anything

  He sipped his coffee and wondered where the time went. It wasn't so much that he needed to get somewhere, only that he needed to know that the time, his time, passed him by. He took another sip and then added more sugar. He jokingly said once that he loved his coffee like he liked his women - hot, sweet, and bitter at the end. He sat alone at his living room table and stared out of the window that revealed his dying garden. He wanted to try to bring his flowers back to life one day, maybe never, possibly some time. On his third sip, he thought about Claire. Claire, the woman he met that night at the book signing in Boulder. Claire, the woman who said she loved him and only him after their first night of sweaty lovemaking, followed by her smoking a French cigarette and him hating her for it. Claire, the woman who left her dark home and past to be with him and his "chance of a better life". She came to him, loved him, and now slept in his bed after a long night of working