It takes a lot of patience to watch a flower bloom, yet there she sat coffee in hand staring through the metal bars that lined the patio of the coffee shop. She would wait.
The flower in question is a tulip, or rather a cluster of almost tulips competing to be seen. The coffee shop sits on the southwest corner of an averagely busy intersection in a college town where most people walk, ride bikes, or skateboard to get from here to there. People using all modes of transport attempt to disrupt her gaze; classes are in session and the college campus just a block away. The sidewalk stays busy, but her stare remains fixed straight ahead, focused on the small circle of green stems, leaves, and buds still encased as they rally around the tree also waking from hibernation in small green bursts.
That southwest exposure means near continuous daylight hits this particular cluster, so she knows her best prospect of a sighting is here on this unseasonably cool May afternoon.
The brass bell on the door rings as each customer enters. Students, professors, and townies alike greet her by name as they pass from patio to interior, but they don’t expect a reply, nor her assistance, not today—even if her apron might identify her as employee to a stranger. Strangers rarely come here.
An acquaintance offers her a cigarette, which she takes and places between her lips, then forgets to light and eventually forgets altogether. It slips to the ground and the soft tap reminds her to sip her now cold coffee.
It appears her yellow tulip has taken the lead—his red might lose this year after all. She suspects this as the sepals loosen their grip, but still she waits— this far north the light of day in May can stretch on forever.
The first year she did this, it served as a fabricated distraction. Earlier in the day, she’d propped herself up against the coffee bar, just as the students did just a dozen feet from where she sits now. That day she sighed with resignation; when asked about her utterance, she sighed an explanation: it was her first birthday away from home. Funny, it was his birthday too; the man-boy barista laughed and smiled his perfect smile, while fastening a rebellious lock of hair behind his red bandana.
By the time she had ordered her fourth coffee that day—order three the fourth one’s free—they’d discovered their mutual infatuation with tulips. She described the large plate glass in front of her home in Illinois as a child. The tulips blooming each year told her that her birthday was near, long before she could read the tiny boxes delineating dates and time. For him, the tulips let him know that he’d made it one year beyond the year he wasn’t supposed to make it—before he understood the length of days, seasons, and years. So that afternoon, that year, they waited on their tulips together, his red, hers yellow. And for each year after, they spent their birthdays watching their own personal groundhog, but one much more immediate, more reliable.
She watches through the bars—yellow appears to be making a formidable effort. Perseverance may win out after all, but then disaster. A thoughtless teen chains his bike to the tree—though there’s a bike rack not ten feet away. In his haste he steps on the cluster. One red tulip, the one in the lead, is broken and sags, just before it declares victory.
The yellow tulip opens first, but she knows it doesn’t matter. Still she remains until the barista on duty brings her a fourth cup free, and the sky begins to turn pink. The sign on the door turns from open to closed, and only then as she leaves does she spot it, lit by the incandescent streetlight, a rebel among the others, a small red tulip. He smiles.
INSTANT NOODLES 