We parked in front of Goodfella’s, where inside someone had just ordered a pizza with lettuce and would soon walk out with a pie and a dime bag for $19.95. Even though there was almost always a police cruiser passing by or even parked out front, everyone seemed to have a tacit understanding that this was preferable to inviting downtown drug dealers onto the Chinese-food-at-midnight, flip-flops-in-the-winter campus.

         “Want to grab a salad before we go up?” I said as Liz ritualistically pounded the dashboard in an effort to turn off her right blinker.

         “Yeah, right. I won’t be able to hold it together if we smoke now.”

         “Oh please. I bet you he’s sitting in his car hitting a bowl as we speak.”

         “You bet what?”

         “Huh?”

         “You said you bet. What do you bet?”

         “A beer.”

         “Ew, no. Giant margarita from the Frog.”

         “That’s like ten bucks! But fine.”

‘He’ was our creative writing professor, Dr. Golla, who was reading some of his poetry tonight at Anne Frank’s Attic, a bookstore above a Cambodian restaurant whose awning featured a blue chicken being hit with a pot. We had never been to either establishment, but judging by the four mopeds parked out front, we had stumbled into a hipster ground zero. “Come on,” she said as she grabbed by arm to pull me up the stairs. The stairwell was adorned by black and white photos of Beat poets on the walls, red over-priced-hotel carpet on the steps, and unsettlingly-cheery, foot-tall wood carvings of conquistadors on the landing.

These things considered, it did not really surprise me when we walked in and found very few actual books. The back of the store was occupied almost-entirely by a coffee bar and pastry shop that appeared to be serving all of their refreshments in and on items plucked from a mad scientist’s lair: coffee in a beaker, churros stuffed in test tubes, and – my personal favorite – a sticky bun served on the hard cover of a ‘50s-era health textbook. At the opposite end of the store, a stage two-by-four in its composition and dimensions had been placed in front of a large, pane-less window and facing an assortment of chairs that appeared to have been cobbled from hotel lobbies, college dorms, catering halls, and the occasional patio.

Front and center, sitting in two monstrous brown chairs, were the co-chairs of the English department: a 50-something woman who still retained the poise and hair color of her cheerleader days and a diminutive, effeminate, bearded man whom every sophomore girl found inexplicably attractive until he told her that her writing was too trashy or too emotional (and sometimes both). Each of the two had a spouse and children but they always and only appeared together at every vaguely-college-related event. Tonight, they were sipping espresso served in kitschy shot glasses and laughing pretentiously at jokes no one was telling. “Do you think they’re having an affair?” Liz asked as we sat down in two white patio chairs to the left of the stage.

         “Only an intellectual one, honey” replied a high-pitched but vaguely-male voice from behind us. We turned around, the flimsy legs of the patio chairs twisting beneath us, to find a man who should have been the love-child of Paris Hilton and Patrick Stump. He wore a neon green truckers’ hat above a violently-orange and black flannel shirt that was complemented by faded black skinny jeans and beige, knee-high cowboy boots. In his soft-looking, manicured hands he held a recently-retired jelly jar filled halfway with chocolate milk that was only an inhalation away from creeping up a windy lavender straw.

         “Oh yeah?” Liz said to him.

         “Sweetie, you should see Melissa’s husband. He’s delicious.”

As he said this, he seemed to intentionally drag out the last syllable such that I got a mental image of him as a snake about to unhinge its jaw and engulf a small animal. Not quite sure how to respond to his remark, I turned around and began to scan the room for people I wanted to avoid.

At a high table near the coffee bar, Smurf and Meatball were splitting a sundae served in a faux goblet. The former was a 30-but-looks-45, chain-smoking single mother of two who had the good fortune of being stepdaughter to an anti-social but well-respected psychology professor. During the winter, she without fail would come into every class we had together wearing an electric-blue hoodie and a puffy white hat. My amateur-psychologist roommate – I say amateur because he got a D- in Psych 201 – theorized once that she clung to the sweatshirt to compensate for not having a husband, but as I watched her slouch on the table I was convinced that she was probably just too lazy to bother finding a different sweatshirt each day.

To her left was Meatball, whose poems told the story of a young woman in-shape-enough to run half marathons but now at nearly-60 was a shape covered by skin the color of uncooked pork. A classroom aide by day and aspiring MFA student by night, she was unflinchingly kind even to the classmates who snickered at her stories of prescient dreams and encounters with the ghost of a mercenary in her computer room. I must have caught her eye in my survey of the room because she began to flourish her oversized, chocolate-syrup-stained hand at us like an inverted pendulum until both Liz and I had given an equally-enthusiastic wave.

         “Excuse me, watch my seat. I need to another one of these,” slithered the man behind us while shaking the now-empty jelly jar. This wasn’t the kind of question – if it even was – that required an answer, but she responded with a sugary “Sure!”

         “That was awfully chipper.”

         “Yeah, but he seemed kinda weird, figured I should be nice. If I were weird, I’d want people to be nice to me.”

         “If…”

         “You’re so mean. Go buy me something.”

         “I just bought you Swedish Fish the other day.”

         “Yeah, but that’s because you were drunk and being a jerk the night before.”

         “I’m nicer to you than the girls I’m sleeping with.”

         “That’s why we’re best friends,” she said and pecked me on the cheek. “Now go buy something for your BFF.”

         “Fine, but I’m picking it.”

I got up and darted my eyes around the room, hoping not to see anyone staring at Liz’s display of affection. It’s not that I would mind if people got the impression we were together – I used to spend hours daydreaming increasingly post-modern circumstances under which that might happen – but more that PDAs are the LCDs of romantic interaction. If people were going get the wrong idea, I much preferred it be because my roommate found a stray long, blonde hair in our shower.

Above the coffee counter was an oversized chalk board with dozens of food and drink choices, each with a name as weird as the manner in which it was served, things like GINASFS, DOA, and West Coast Smoker. I continued staring absently at the menu while the girl behind the counter, a skinny brunette with a serious-but-cute face, ostensibly was reading an article in Playboy. Surreptitiously, however, she was flipping to the spreads as if the bronzed bodies of the models contained essential footnotes.

         “That girl’s gonna want something pink.”

         “Huh?” I said, completely thrown off by her voice; it was unlike any other I had ever heard. I imagined it was the kind of voice of a phone-sex operator would have – not in a sleazy way – just genuinely and effortlessly sexy.

         “That girl you’re clearly in love but who more clearly won’t sleep with you. She’s gonna want something that looks pretty.”          “I guess you would know.”
         “What, this?” she replied, holding up the magazine. “Updike has a story in here, but I can’t not take a look at the pics. I mean, you wouldn’t watch a Rambo movie and turn away every time a guy is shirtless, right?”

         “Touché, coffee girl.”

         “Please, don’t call me by my stage name,” she answered coyly. “I’m Michelle.”

         “Kenny.”

         “Well, Kenneth, what will it be?”

         “Honestly, I don’t even know what half of these things are.”

         “Oh, well, GINASFS is ginger-bread-flavored coffee with sugar-cookie sticks in it, cuz gingerbread is not a substitute for sugar. Get it?”

         “So, then DOA must be decaf coffee?”

         “With cinnamon – blood spatter. She’ll probs like the Twenty-Dollar Nose Bleed. It’s basically cherry cheesecake.”

         “Works for me.”

         “What about you? What do you want besides her boobs in your mouth?”

         “You talk a mighty big game, Coffee Girl.”

         “Pretty much all I do is get paid to watch people here and at the pub; I notice things. Did you see those two sitting in medieval arm chairs at front?”

         “Yeah.”

         “They hate each other. They tripped over each other’s words when they were ordering and not in the ‘O-M-G that’s cute way’ either. I heard them say something about the department; they work together?”

         “Yup.”

         “Ha, then I bet you could find them at every event together. God forbid one of them gets noticed somewhere and the other isn’t there also.”

         “So what about me?” I asked as she bent down to pull Liz’s cheesecake from the small refrigerator.

         “Well,” she began as I made eye contact with her low-rider jeans, “you have all the makings of a guy who knows what he wants and it’s her. I don’t get the same vibe from her. I don’t doubt she loves you, but you’re not getting into those A&Fs just yet.”

         “Ok, assuming you’re right, why do I stay with her?”

         “You mean besides the obvious answer that she’s gorgeous and bubbly and funny? I totally get that, bro. Hell, I’d hit it a few times if I had the chance. But I think you stay because you think you still have a shot.”

         “Do I?” I asked, no longer trying to be subtle.

         “Let me give you a bit of advice I once got from a fortune cookie: ‘Heads, you do it. Tails, you go home.’ Make of that what you will,” she said handing me the ceramic boxing glove that held a lump of dripping-red cheesecake. “But hey, I’ve gotta go hit a bowl so I can get psyched up to read. This one’s on the casa, bro.”

I won the bet: Dr. Golla’s first poem was an improvised piece about the difficulty of rolling a joint on the dashboard of an ’04 Subaru. As we pushed our way through the crowd that was listening intently to his story of doing blow with Mia Farrow, I hoped to find Michelle but instead noticed a man behind the counter who bore a striking resemblance to Ellen DeGeneres.

         “What are you staring at?” Liz asked impatiently as I lingered at the door.

         “Nothing. Let’s go to the Frog. I love when I’m not the one paying for a change.”

The Frog was one of those rare places that was a perfect stereotype. A complete dive, its only draft beer was PBR and its only liquor – besides the tequila and triple sec that was used in the margaritas but that could not be ordered apart from said margarita – was Jim Beam. The bar was one large room that was occupied by about a dozen stools, two tables that had not been cleaned since the ‘80s, a billiards table that doubled as an ash tray, and a Ms. Pac-Man machine about which an overall-clad woman was ranting when we walked in.

         “Artie, when are you gonna git rid of that damn Pac-Man machine?” she growled at the bartender.

         “What’s the problem? People like it, Eileen.”

         “That woman got no self-respect.”

         “Who, Ms. Pac-Man?”

         “Exactly. Floating aroun’ lettin’ ev’yone call her ‘Ms.’ An’yone call me ‘Ms.’ n' I’ll slap ‘em. I’m a lady, Artie. Call me ‘Ms.’ might as well be callin’ me a whore; I am MISS Eileen Geagan.”

         “You’re something, that’s for sure. What can I get y’all?” he said, turning to us.

Two margaritas and half-a-dozen second-hand cigarettes later, we left the Frog to the sound of beer splattering on the peanut-shell-littered floor as the regulars did their best rendition of The Pretenders’ song spilling out of the jukebox. While we were inside, it had begun to snow just enough that the flakes were sticking to the plastic paneling of her car. We started slowly back to campus, taking advantage of the deserted streets to appreciate the fluttering flakes and the occasional flash of lightening that accompanied the storm.

         “That used to weird me out so much when I first moved here,” I remarked.

         “You should see it at my house. We get the storms coming over the mountains when they’re first forming. It’s so pretty to sit outside and watch.

         “You’ll have to take me home some time and show me.”

         “Do you wanna come on Sunday? I’m going home for the day to have breakfast with the Mennonites.”

         “Breakfast with the Mennonites?”

         “Yeah, I dunno, some VFW thing my parents always go to. You should come.”

         “I –”

         “Whoa, what’s that?!” she said, slamming on the brakes.

In front of us was a black upright piano covered almost-entirely with band stickers. I got out of the car to take a closer look and as I was fingering a Four Year Strong sticker I had never seen, I heard a familiar voice call out behind me: “Duuuude, I called dibs on that shit already.”

         “Coffee Girl?”

         “Yo! Kenneth! What up?”

         “You’re the one running after a piano in the street. You tell me.”

         “My neighbor was tossing it. I wanted to rescue it from the snow. I’m more of a bass girl, but I can learn.”

         “How far down are you?”

         “Like 3 houses. I can get it.”

         “Hellllo,” Liz called from the car, “what are you doing?”

         “I’m gonna help her get this piano inside. Ok?”

         “Ugh, fine. If it makes us mover quicker.”

         “She asked me to go to breakfast with the Mennonites tomorrow,” I said as we started pushing the piano through the unplowed snow.

         “Seriously? Who does that?”

         “Her. I dunno if I want to go. Not sure if this is one of those things that’ll be worth it.”

         “Do you have a quarter?”

         “Oh what, are you gonna do your ‘Heads, you do it’ thing?”

         “Just give me it.”

         “Here…”

         “The point isn’t to let it make the choice for you,” she said as she threw the coin behind her in the snow, “it’s to make you stop and think. What did you want it to be?”