The People You Meet

The Fifth In A Series of True Stories

“You practically hit me in the face with that magazine,” he said. We were standing in the cafe section of a bookstore, a place where people sometimes joke or flirt or, at the very least, tolerate each other. He wasn’t doing any of those things; he was mad.

He was also wrong. What I’d actually done was reach for a copy of The New Yorker, which was sort of near him. “I’m sorry,” I said for no reason. “I didn’t realize.” I flipped open the magazine, then, and feigned complete absorption in The Talk of the Town. If I ignored him he’d go away, wouldn’t he?

No, he wouldn’t.

Instead, he stared at me for several seconds. He was a tall and imposing person, but otherwise run-of-the-mill: white, 35-years-old or so, dark hair, jeans. And yet he managed to radiate an energy so repellant that I soon dropped my fake-reading ruse and moved quickly to the other side of the magazine stand. This did nothing to prevent his continued staring. It also did nothing to keep him from mumbling under his breath in my direction. Now that a physical barrier stood between us, I felt emboldened. “Excuse me? What’s the problem?’ I asked. I threw my hands in the air, exasperated.

I blinked, and he was suddenly in my face. He leaned over me, pointing. “Do you even have a green card? Because it doesn’t look like you have a green card.”

“What?! You are going to stop talking to me right now,” I said. My voice shook; my body shook. Why did I say that? It was the most ridiculous thing I could have said.

“I’m from immigration, and I want to see your green card.”

I’ve long weaned myself from the habit, but at certain times I used to look around to see who might be standing at the ready to help me handle my various life situations. At this particular moment, things looked promising. I was, after all, surrounded by other browsing, coffee-drinking customers. Unfortunately, no one seemed interested in knocking this guy over the head while I stood demurely out of the muck.

Fair enough.

I rushed to the cafe counter without knowing why, really, or what I would say. “That man is harassing me,” I blurted out. Afraid that I sounded crazy, I arranged my face to look as sane as possible.

“I’ll call a manager,” the barista said. Meanwhile, my nemesis yelled one last something-or-other in my direction.

A few minutes later, the manager approached the man. Seeing this calmed me down considerably, as I was sure he’d be thrown out of the store right away. I bought a bottle of water, sat down at a table, took out my laptop, and went through the motions of doing what I had come to do in the first place: write. Soon, the manager joined me.

“So I talked to that customer,” he said. “And I guess…you hit him?”

I spoke slowly as a precaution against shrieking. “I did not hit him,” I said. “He was standing near a magazine that I grabbed.”

“Oh. Well, I told him if anything like that ever happened again, he should come and find a manager.”

That’s nice, I wanted to say. And what should people like me do when racists vomit their racist bullshit all over us?

But I didn’t say that. I said, “He was making offensive racial remarks.”

“Oh.” Temporarily flummoxed, he took a moment to flip through his mental store manager’s handbook. Finally he said, “Well, then, I should ask him to leave. I’ll ask him to leave.”

“Fine.”

Of course the man didn’t go anywhere. He just skirted the edge of the cafe staring at me some more. I wanted to get out of there, but I was worried he might follow me into the dark to my car.

And so I sat. And sat and sat and slowly realized that I’d let him win this sick, stupid game.

Eventually, the barista walked over to my table. “I’m really sorry,” she said. She looked briefly in the man’s direction. “Here’s a coupon for a free drink.”

A free drink? I wanted to say. Are you serious?

But I didn’t say that. I said, “Thanks.”