I went and got a mocha from the Batdorf and Bronson. As I waited, I watched the barista with the gauge-less earlobes, creeped out by how the skin just hung down. Saggy and empty. The ice cream truck melody resounded painfully in my head, “do your ears hang low…” and I made myself look away.

The barista asked how I was doing, the way most students ask that question. In-between bored and polite. Like they already know I’ll reply with “Pretty good,” but ask because they’d be more bored if they didn’t interact with customers.

His forearms were littered with tattoos, unidentifiable to me. I paused when I noticed the narrow cast of his face. The cheekbones and sunken eyes reminded me, quite abrasively as I stood waiting, of a friend’s stepbrother. The last time I heard of Jeremy, he was being transferred to San Quintin for a robbery gone wrong. The numb nut was so drugged out of his drug-fried skull, he accidentally shot his friend in the foot. Not to do this harmless barista the disservice of a comparison with Jeremy in any other way aside from the shape of his face. Strange the way we can see other people in strangers sometimes.

With a clang, the barista’s expression contorted into a comic rendering of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”. He’d burned his hand on the expresso machine and was subsequently trying to wag the pain from his fingers. He glanced up, and I pretended I didn’t see and fixated on a floor tile until my order was called.