I had a coffee at Starbucks on my way home (I'm doing important urban-anthropological research there, so shush). I’d had a couple of beers at a late lunch and knew I’d fag out by eight—if not earlier—if I didn’t get some caffeine in me, and I certainly did not want to miss the musical Scrubs episode that was on at nine.

I got my coffee and surveyed the scene for a seat.  There was a supersize middle age fellow with a grizzly beard sitting at the table across from the armchair I wanted.  When I got there to stake my claim he was just sitting, disturbingly inert, having apparently finished his coffee—maybe hours before, and he'd just crashed.  He seemed to me, on cursory inspection, to be seriously contemplating getting up, maybe, sometime in the not too far off and distant future.  But it was still just a dream.  He had not quite worked out the logistics of it.

There was something menacing about him.  At times, from the corner of my eye, I noticed him surveying the landscape like The Grinch looking down on Whoville.  Now, I know some natural-born loiterers are understandably annoyed by busy-ness around them.  It doesn't jibe with their vibe.  Myself, when I have nothing to do I like nothing better than to watch people work.  But I have to say I prefer manual laborers to their white collar counterparts, who even when working their little hearts out look to all the world like they're sitting there doing nothing, too. 

But the menace got more menacing when I sat down and sunk into my big purple velour armchair and he turned his gaze on me. And to be honest I had come here to loiter a while and have a good look around myself, and didn't want to be looked at while doing it, thank you very much. 

But we couldn't both very well just sit there looking around, could we?  Or one of us looking at the other while the other looked around?  I think he may have been trying to tell me that he was here looking around first and that he wanted me to cease and desist.   

Well, I wasn't spoiling for a staring contest or anything, and was happy to be able to oblige.  Luckily there was a paper on a little table in front of my chair.  I picked it up and read a couple of stories, one about a certain Manhattanville college student who’d just been found at the bottom of a frozen lake. 

Then I looked over to see if he was still staring at me.  He was.  I raised both eyebrows in a kind of greeting, and snapped my paper.  Then I read about a Boston PE teacher who had been using his dead brother's driver's license when he got pulled over on a DUI.

I could feel him still staring at me.  I glanced over involuntarily.  He reminded me of a big, three-hundred pound Persian cat sitting there eyeing me. But I didn’t feel like a cornered mouse or a ball of yarn or anything, and he was not about to make me.  I went back to my paper, where "A Plainfield man fighting tax evasion charges has barricaded himself in his hilltop house, saying he is prepared for an armed standoff."  Mercy, what a world.

There was a Somerville Journal under The Globe, and a police sketch caught my eye:

Handsome enough lad, I thought.  What's he done, I wonder?  I read the headline: "Break-in suspect followed woman home." Oh dear.  And then what?  Nothing untoward, I hoped.

The suspect allegedly followed the female victim from the area of the Davis Square MBTA station, up College Avenue toward Broadway at around 8:30 p.m. The suspect began to walk beside her and tried to strike up a conversation. The victim then continued to walk and went to her nearby home. The suspect was watching her as she arrived home.

About two hours later, the victim heard noises from inside her home. It was later learned that the noise she heard was her back door being forced open. The victim then heard a knock on her bedroom door and opened it to find the same person who had been walking beside her two hours earlier. The victim screamed and the suspect fled the area.

Funny that he broke in and then knocked on the door of her boudoir. That was polite, wasn't it?

Right about the time I was picturing that scene, after what must have been epic deliberations and a near herculean effort, the man at the table finally got up to go. He had one crutch with him—whether this was for a temporary condition or a permanent one, I don’t know. But it took quite an effort on his part to get upright—it occurred to me then that maybe he was giving me the evil eye because I could sit in that deep, warm, comfy velour chair and get back up out of it without a care, and he couldn’t.  I felt a little guilty then for taking things like armchairs for granted, and resolved to work on that this week in group. 

Watching—out of the corner of my eye, mind you—how difficult it was for him to get up and around, I had a sudden pang of cheap pity, too.  As he stood up awkwardly he dropped something—or it fell out of one of his pockets. I don’t think he noticed. 

And I was about to do my good deed of the day: either tell him he'd dropped something or go over and pick it up for him, but then I saw that it was one of those little black combs, and stopped myself.  I thought, well, if I tell him he won’t be able to bend over and pick it up himself, and I sure as hell am not going to touch it, so what's the point? It would all have been very awkward and served no purpose whatever. 

And then I further rationalized my inaction by telling myself it’s just a cheap plastic comb—they’re going for less than half a cent each—on ebay the winning bid on a box of 144 was 99 cents (though it was $9.95 to ship it). He's probably got a crate full of them at home, anyway.

So he left without it, maybe without even knowing he'd lost it.  And I left without having done my good deed. 

I'll just have to do two tomorrow, I guess.