Tuesday
by Jim B.

     I frequent a coffee bar just north of my house and a few blocks over. I live in a richly populated, wealthy economically, once (maybe twenty years ago), neighborhood. Now it is run down and shoddy and the only way to recognize the glamorous past of this place are the islands that run down the center of the streets.
     And a few blocks north of my house is a coffee bar I frequent. 
Small, little and cozy coffee bar that has a couple tables inside and a patio with half-a-dozen tables with umbrellas sticking up out of the center like lightning rods. I equate bar with alcohol but the closest to a bar this place gets is these umbrellas. 
     Customers can smoke inside. 
     I usually try to get the table next to the window, on the alley side of the building. The bar serves a menagerie of coffee items (at least fifty different ways to get coffee) and the simplest is drip. 
     On an exceptionally early morning I sat in my spot by the window, the only customer, until another walked in. I thought the customer incredibly unattractive. Such an eyesore. Such a goddess. She ordered drip coffee, like me, for here with three refills. She must be nervous, I thought, of sitting within eyesight of me because she walked past me to another table behind me where I couldn't see her. That wasn't the only thought. I had a rush of them. A certain anxiety overcame me. 
     And for some reason I pushed my coffee off the table. 
     Ceramic. Broken. The cup split in so many directions only an autistic could describe the sensation of knowing how many exact pieces lay there to the side of me on the ground. 
     Both the barista and my ugly goddess watched me stare down at what was once my beverage. I caught both sets of eyes. What timing! 
I mumbled out some words. Tripped and stumbled and stuttered them; it was a magnificent performance! 
     They both came to my side when I knelt down and my fancy surely tickled when I thought of them both bumping heads as they reached for the same shard. 
     The barista mentioned something about a broom but I was busy staring at my ugly goddess. I said hello. I noticed the book in her hand that she poignantly placed back on the table next to the coffee. 
I stood up when she came back to help and the barista followed suit so we were a threesome again. Unfortunately, my ugly goddess stepped back away from me before I could catch the smell that was her scent. I made a stride over broken and found myself unbalanced. I reached over to her and happened my hand upon her shoulder. I was no sooner steady when her scent sent me into a flurry of excitement. I almost fell again. 
     I apologized for my clumsiness. To both ladies. The barista offered me another cup, no charge. I told her I would break the cup again. She laughed and went to carry out her little mission. My ugly goddess went back to her table but not before I could introduce myself. 
     Her name is Tuesday. 
     The insinuations; the many sentences I could do with the name Tuesday. No longer just a day but a physical representation I could call from my mind. 'I'd like to be on Tuesday.' I could say in the middle of a conversation. 
     The many sentences I could write now about Tuesday: 
     Tuesday strapped in leather; 
     Tuesday on a bike ride; 
     Tuesday with lips I could see myself kissing. 
     On Tuesday with Tuesday, possibly on Wednesday, humpday. 
     Then my cup of coffee came and Tuesday and I could find no reason to continue talking. I had to go back to my table and smoke my cigarette and drink my coffee. Without Tuesday. The lack of courage I showed would make the Lion cringe. 
     Would you like to share a table? The answer: no. 
     Can I offer you a cigarette? The answer: no. 
     What kind of coffee do you drink? No. 
     Do I have a chance? No. 
     Would you. . . No. 
     No was all I could hear her saying in reply to any question I might ask. 
     So. Maybe I should count on seeing Tuesday, my ugly goddess, another day. There was nothing I could do I had been so incapacitated by my own testosterone. I should finish my coffee, I thought, which I did, and get a refill to go. 
     Walking home I kept looking into the storefront doorways at the open signs-- Tuesday eight a.m. to eight p.m. 
     Tuesday. 
     For two blocks. 
     For two weeks.