Mary Anne Rose - Chapter 3: ‘JO / Just Opened’
3. ‘JO / Just Opened’
‘JO / Just Opened’, Upper West Side, New York; it was easy for customers to remember the name of the coffeehouse, but most of them wondered why the owner named the place like that. If the place stayed in business for a year, its name would sound rather funny. This became a popular hangout in the area, nonetheless, while it opened only a month ago. Its storefront was about 4 meters (13 feet) wide and it stretched into its tenant building about 20 meters (66 feet) long. It had the raw concrete floor and the coffee bar was set up using plywood. While the entrance was made using steel and glass, a couple of different colors were used to paint the interior; blue, sky blue, light yellow and white. Chairs were lined up along the bar and couches were placed in the far side from the entrance. Chairs had round seats and single legs; they looked like the kind that you saw in 60s style American diners, the kind of places that you ordered drinks and foods like coffee, milk shake, burgers and fries, French toasts, pancakes and cheese cakes. There were two types of couches, one seater and two seater ones; they looked like used, but you couldn’t tell whether the coffeehouse bought used or they had used them for a long time, and, as a result, they looked used. Some could call the design of the place ‘modern’, while others could call the same design ‘chaotic’. In the center was there a computer connected to the Internet. Many coffeehouses had similar setups, and this particular set up in ‘JO’ was not uncommon; it was made available to customers for free. Right next to it was there a one seater red couch, and that was where Mary Anne Rose sat.
As one could figure out by looking the design of the place, it was not one of corporate coffeehouses; they would not make a place like this. It would be a slight exaggeration to say that those who came here were the kind who resisted the corporate control and attempted to restore human dynamics and creativity, but one thing was sure; they were the kind who recognized the world of compliance consciously or subconsciously but decided to not so easily give in. This was probably also a slight exaggeration, but she must not have been just another ordinary girl; she must have had a story.
She was reading the personnel section of Village Voice, the most popular town paper in the city. There were a number of ads of presumably single men and women, looking for friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, potential husbands and wives. She was single at the moment but was not looking for a boyfriend or a husband; she was just looking at it and killing time. It was actually quite entertaining to look at those ads. Some said that they looked very attractive, while others said that they looked average. She found it rather funny; while New Yorkers dressed more fashionably and kept in better shape than Americans in the rest of the country, all of them couldn’t possibly be above average. She smirked and kept on reading. Some described that they were well off, while others said that they had great incomes. She was not an economist but she found it rather peculiar also; there were many very wealthy men and women in New York City, and in fact, many of the richest in the nation lived here, but the average American had 9k credit card debts. That’s a fact and 9k was just the credit card debt. Many had car loans, student loans and mortgages. So, statistically speaking, many of them listed in the personnel could not possibly be well off; she had no expression on her face this time. She kept reading ads and found one ad by a twenty-nine years old man saying, “Let’s not get tense about this. I want us to become friends and get to know each other. No rush and let’s take it slow first. And then, we’ll see what happens …” She grinned at the ad, closed her eyes just for a second and sighed only slightly. There were two possibilities. One was that whoever wrote this was just like most men; they definitely thought about getting in bed when they met a young woman for the first time. They would certainly not mind getting into the action just a couple of hours after they met if possible; in fact, they would prefer it. In other words, the ad was intended to play with many women’s wishful thinking that he was not that kind; the tactic was nothing new or original. The other possibility was that he meant what he said. But whichever the case was, the ad did not appeal to her. She understood that appealing to women’s wishful thinking was a part of the game, but she was just not into it. Nonetheless, she was not interested in going on a date so many times before she and her new boyfriend decided what to do next; it seemed too ritualistic. She felt that there ought to be certain spontaneity. She put down Village Voice and she sipped her Mocha. She thought about what her ideal date would be like for a few minutes, and she suddenly recalled a guy that she met about seven years ago. She was twenty-two then, and the guy was a year younger than her, so he was twenty-one. She spent several days with him, and at that time, she did not think much of him. She kind of liked him, but when she was with him seven years ago, she felt that he was just one of a dozen men that she met, got to know and spent some time with. But, as seven years passed, she realized that meeting him was the turning point of her life. And it was spontaneous and not ritualistic; neither she nor he played any game and she enjoyed that.
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Mary Anne looked like a real New Yorker; she dressed and walked like them. She assimilated in the crowd. She didn’t have New York accent, but her English sounded very much like American accent today, so most people assumed that she’d been in the city or in this country for some years though they suspected that she was not originally from this region. Obviously, people didn’t know how she spoke unless they heard her speaking, so most of them didn’t even suspect that she was from elsewhere when they first saw her. Given that she looked very comfortable as she walked around the city, they assumed that she’d been here for several years or so, if not, longer. The last assumption was correct; she’d been in New York for six years now. The second assumption about her having been in U.S. for some years was not entirely correct; she’d been in the country for six years and that was it. She only lived in this city, though she visited a couple of different places out of the state. The first assumption about her being a real New Yorker was sort of correct since this was her town now, but most people didn’t guess where she originally came from. She was from Caribbean; she was born and grew up in a small island called ‘Jamaica.’
Her memory flashed back and remembered her last days in the island. She remembered that her last days started just like any other day; she was hanging out in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She was thinking that it was going to be like any other day, but, as she looked back, that was the day that her life started turning to a different direction.
