Bittersweet

The lyrics are from Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve

Marguerite drinks two flat whites with three raw sugars every morning at La Victoire. It’s the “it” place to be for the intellectual college kids- girls who carry Burberry purses and quote Aristotle as their idol, who have trust funds and fuck away their problems.

Marguerite is in the corner booth, eying the masses. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out she doesn’t fit in, even with the other intellectuals. Her clothes never seem to hang right on her bony frame, her hair is frizzy and unkempt and her glasses make her eyes seem too big for her face. Mascara globules cling to the lashes and her $10 drugstore lipstick is smeared on her veneers like war paint. Her backpack is splitting at the seams, filled with books by Chekhov, Gogol, Lermontov and Tolstoy. No one would peg her as a Russian Lit major, not the little Mexican girl with the mismatching clothes. Even her roommate thought she wanted to be a doctor.

Her daily routine is to observe the other people in the coffee shop, some familiar, some not, while the radio hums 90s garage rock and the sugar dissolves in her coffee, a bittersweet symphony.

She listens to the college grads in the next booth fight about money. She knows they’re fighting about money because when they’re not fighting the woman reads American Banker and the man works two jobs. Trying to make ends meet, trying to find some money then you die, she thinks to herself in a sing-song voice. She feels bad for them, but since she sees them every Friday at the movie theater she works at, she can’t feel too bad for them.

She watches the Nepalese waiter smile at her, a crinkle-eyed smile. She likes him because he is borderline-illiterate and whenever he gets her order wrong, he says “that’s my bad,” which makes her giggle.

She watches her countless girl-crushes parade past like a Congo line. She sees the girl in the corner reading Nietzsche and nursing a broken heart. She wants to sit next to her, ask her what are dreams are, and say, “I know you read Nietzsche, darling, but do you enjoy it?” but she knows the girl would just stare blankly and maybe tell her to fuck off.

She thinks that maybe in a year or two, she might have the nerve to converse with these people- these confident bright-eyed teenagers, as bold as brass. Maybe one day she will be one half of the fighting couple, or the struggling waiter, or – god, forbid – the girl reading Nietzsche, squinting at the pages as if they are screaming insults at her. But for now, she remains the observer, the quiet girl who drinks in their lives like her two-sweet coffee and feels more alive from what she sees.

A/N: To the sad girl who frequents my coffee shop and reads Tolstoy… I wish you had friends!