She was so old she didn’t remember the year she was born or the name her parents had given her. This is what she remembered: nine songs, two jokes, all the people she’d ever loved, and her favorite color. Everyday she went to the cafe, no matter the weather, and what she ate there was always delicious, though she could never recall after what kind of food it was.

She watched the girl come in and sit at the counter — poor thing, so young she probably believed everything that happened was of immense importance. She was like a newspaper in the rain, thought the old woman, absorbing everything until she was sodden with feelings. Hard to be that new in the world. She started to sing one of the songs she remembered — “Whatever will be, will be…” — but then her meal came. She pulled the plate to her, doused the food in hot sauce, and eagerly began to eat.

I had thirty one dollars to last me until Tuesday, when my final paycheck would be deposited in my account. Smart thing to do would have been to buy groceries, some grains and beans and a chunk of cheap cheese, a couple cans of soup maybe. Yeah, that would have been the smart thing, but the grocery store on the corner had been shut for weeks and the closest one was a 15 minute walk away and it had just started to rain and besides, it seemed to me that being smart hadn’t done me much good lately. So when I noticed a café a couple of blocks from my place I walked in and sat at the counter.

The only other customer was an old woman at a back table. She was wearing a black dress and some kind of vivid purple coat. Bruise colors, I thought. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t figure what it was.

The counterman was in front of me. I hadn’t noticed him coming out from anywhere, so it startled me a little. I heard the old woman laugh.

“Yeah?”

“Uh, may I see a menu?”

“No menu. House special.”

“There’s no menu?”

“House special! Want it or not?”

“How much?”

“Seven fifty.”

The rain outside had gotten harder, it sounded like someone was throwing peanuts against the windows. I hadn’t eaten since last night.

“Fine,” I said. “I;ll take it.”

It must have been Dump Month, only I didn’t get the email. First my boyfriend — not that he was so great, I might have done that dumping myself if he didn’t owe me 300 bucks — then my crappy job, and finally my landlord. It’s true the place was a shithole, but it had been my shithole, and tell the truth it hurt a bit to see my stuff — everything that wasn’t worth Benzooie trying to sell — in a sloppy little pile out in the hall. There it was, the ragged detritus of my life — shirts, socks, sheets, curtains, a brown towel. The material measure of me.
Stripped of fabric my ex-room looked angular and hungry. like the City crouched outside it. There was only one thing of mine remaining, a half bottle of pomegranate soda I’d bought about a week before. It’d been flat for days. I wondered why Benzooie had overlooked it. The label claimed that consuming pomegranates helped you live longer. “Yeah, that’s what I want,” I said to nobody as I walked out, to where I didn’t know. “A longer This.”