The café, again

It's the same café, a few weeks on, and the window table's free. You've got the coffee and the book. You look at the route, past the couple and the laptop and the two women, and the heat starts, and you make the headcount, and it's two, which is lower than it used to be. Then you look. The couple are talking. The laptop man is on a call. One of the women glances at you because you've passed her bag, and is back with her friend before you've finished the thought. Nobody else. The shoe count is one, for a second.

You sit at the window. The beam's still faintly on for a minute, and you count the street, and it's people walking past looking at their phones and at the pavement and at nothing. Then the book's good, and you forget to monitor your arms, and forty minutes go. On the way home there's no sting, because there was nothing to review, and what you can recall of the room is the coffee and the chapter and the woman's bag.

That's all. The room was what it always was. What changed is that you counted it, and having counted it a few times you couldn't keep believing the number the beam gave you. There's a walk to a bar somewhere in your future, and a meeting with a point in it, and a class you might join, and in each of them the beam will come on, because it does, and you'll count, because you've decided to.

Do one thing. This week, walk into one room where the beam comes on, make the headcount, and count the shoes. That's the whole of it. Everyone was looking at their own.