The best seat faces the glass at a slight angle. Straight on, you see the street. Turn a little and the room begins to appear in it: a pale lamp over the crossing, a shelf of bottles suspended above a parked car. The window holds both views, although your eyes keep choosing one.
At the table beside mine, someone folds a newspaper into a rectangle small enough to leave room for a plate. Outside, a delivery rider rests one foot on the curb. For a moment the two figures share the same narrow strip of glass. Then a bus passes and replaces them with a wall of blue.
I move my cup away from the window to see whether its reflection will follow. It does, becoming fainter as it approaches the dark edge of the frame. A mark left by a previous cup stays where it is. These small distinctions are easier to read from a chair than while walking, when everything in the window seems to slide at once.
Rain would make a different picture. Water on the pavement would carry the color of the awning beyond its proper boundary. Today the road is dry, and the reflections belong mostly to the glass. A person in a light coat crosses behind the reflected lamp, briefly making its shade look solid enough to stand in the street.
There is a photograph somewhere in this overlap, but I’m reluctant to take out my phone. A bright screen would add another rectangle to the view. I try framing it with my eyes instead, using the window’s metal divider as one edge and a stack of saucers as the other. The frame keeps changing because people keep entering it.
Rain would make a different picture. Water on the pavement would carry the color of the awning beyond its proper boundary. Today the road is dry, and the reflections belong mostly to the glass. A person in a light coat crosses behind the reflected lamp, briefly making its shade look solid enough to stand in the street.
From this side of the window, I can’t hear the conversation at the crossing. I see someone laugh and a companion turn to check the traffic. It would be easy to attach a story to them. Their gestures are already interesting without one, especially the awkward pause when they both step forward and then stop.
The table begins to fill as I sit. A spoon arrives with the second coffee. My coat slips from the chair and hangs across the view of the lower window. When I reach down to gather it, I notice that the reflected room has almost disappeared. Outside has grown brighter, while the lamps above the counter are still the same pale yellow.
I leave the chair turned toward the window. Whoever sits here next will have to move it a few inches to fit their knees beneath the table. From that position, the shelf of bottles will probably line up with an entirely different building.
