Viernes

The high school boy with the skateboard comes by the café where his mother is having an iced coffee with her lover. Bees buzz among the potted daffodils, and yellow canvas umbrellas shade the tables on the sidewalk. He is tall and lithe, he is lovely to look at with his bronze curls, his freckled tan, his worn canvas shoes and rumpled graphic tee. And his voice, when he speaks, balances on that boy-man threshold, especially when he asks his mother if he can spend the night somewhere with his friends: just a movie, shoot some pool, something like that. I cannot hear but see her refusal, the shaking of her ponytail, her finger twisting one end of her crocheted vest into a determined ball. He doesn’t want to whine but pleads again— to no avail. The young French girls in off-the-shoulder blouses and gauzy tops who are always in a huddle at the café, chic expatriates, are laughing and gesturing with their hands. They talk fast, very fast; they light their cigarettes and smoke, not paying attention to anything or anyone else. They don’t even glance up when the boy stalks off in a huff, then leans away into the curb on his board.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.