[ WP ] You 're sitting in a coffee shop watching a man type on his computer . He types the words , `` It begins raining outside '' , and it instantly starts raining .

The man is here nearly as often as I am. 
 
 Or, maybe, I'm here nearly as often as the man. 
 
 I know there are times that I am here and he is not. The opposite is true as well, I suppose. Anyway. 
 
 We sit two tables apart, left shoulders against the wall, facing the door. Our usual posts. I come here every day after work and it's 11 a.m. and I ca n't help but be exhausted, having the night shift, even with the sunlight. This is my ritual, six days a week. One small coffee to keep me awake until my neighbor is done, no shit, giving trumpet lessons at 1. 
 
 Two years ago I knocked on my landlord's door. 
 
 “ Mr. Shah, I'm not trying to be unreasonable. All I'm saying is I work nights and I need to get some sleep and I ca n't do that if she's giving trumpet lessons until 1. ” 
 
 “ I tell her she can. ” 
 
 “ Yeah, but it's goddamn trumpet lessons! ” 
 
 “ I tell her she can. She need make money and pay rent. ” 
 
 “ Well I need sleep so I make money, too! ” 
 
 “ What I do? Is not unreasonable hour for that trumpet lesson. ” 
 
 “ It's sure as fuck an unreasonable two hours, though! ” 
 
 “ You do n't have anything to do! What you want sleep? Well I want sleep but tell that to my child's tuition and my wife's cancer. You have nothing to do important at that time. Tell me: When is last time you do something important at 11 a.m.? ” 
 
 I could n't answer and he slammed the door in my face. A week later and I begged him and asked, for the love of God, how many people need trumpet lessons in this city. 
 
 “ Is big city. ” Slam. 
 
 And the universe, in its unerring way, deemed it fit to raise rent prices everywhere in the city that summer. I was stuck. And six months later when Shah's wife died, it did n't take very long for him to move in with trumpet lady. 
 
 And now it's almost two years later and I hate where I live. But at least the people in the cafe are accommodating. It's essentially my second home. Which does n't take me long to get over when I realize that for some of the bums that frequent the place it's just a long line in a procession of no homes. Jimmy is the old man who runs it. When he's working the register and business is light I take some time to chat with him. I found out through Jimmy that apparently some big-name writers used to frequent the place. When his dad owned it and he was a kid. Vonnegut. Ellison. Sturgeon. Hubbard. When I told him that the latter was more of a religious figure, Jimmy looked confused so I left it at that. 
 
 Anyway, Jimmy said that the old man was among their number. It would stand to reason. He is a writer. Or anyway, he writes. Between sips of coffee, he hunches over two stacks of paper. One a stack of sheets covered in petulant scrawl and smudge. The other a stack of unmolested paper that remains so until he gets his hands on it. Then it is subjected to the lashings of either a Mont Blanc or Lamy, either a thick line or a fat line, respectively, depending on his mood. He writes with his shoulder instead of his wrist. I can tell when there's some good action in the story by the way his shoulder will start pumping out of control and I wonder if the characters are fighting or fucking. 
 
 That's how he usually writes. Today, and I really appreciate it since it's a break from my usual routine, he arrives very shortly after I do. I actually do n't know he's arrived until I can hear him behind me, ordering his coffee. I do n't know he's kind of just appeared like that. I had been looking outside the window for some time. My attention, surely, fixed upon the girl outside in a sundress, the light and wind playing with it in such ways that I can almost make out the form beneath. It really is a beautiful day. 
 
 A plain black coffee, his words. Maybe he did n't even say it and it's a Pavlovian thing I have now that when I hear him sidle up to the counter, drumming his fingers, and I just hear that phrase in my head. 
 
 He gets his coffee. This is where things go different. As he walks by to get to his usual seat, his breathing sounds slightly labored. My heart jumps for a moment. I worry about his health, this stranger, until I see that he's walking with a slight limp to his right side and I realize his briefcase is heavier than usual. 
 
 Curious. 
 
 He usually tears everything out of his briefcase with no order, only to arrange his single stack of clean paper afterward, but today there is almost a ritual. Before he sits, he sets the briefcase on the table across from him, as though inviting a beautiful woman to join him. He slowly unzips her clothing. It's a laptop. 
 
 The machine he pulls out is an IBM 701 Butterfly with a foldout keyboard. My father's first laptop was the same model. I think I could navigate the thing blind with all the time I spent on it. 
 
 It's twenty years old, so ancient. It's pristine. I am in awe. 
 
 He places it on the table. He dodders excitedly with the power cord held before him like an alms. He plugs it into the wall. He returns to his seat and while doing so, though he is facing me directly, does not see me at all. There is pure, mad glee across his face. He settles. He lifts the screen, the keyboard blossoming out and he presses the power button. I bring my ass out of the seat and am now totally jonesing for the nostalgia hit I'm about to receive. 
 
 The opening splash of Windows 95 brings shivers. I hear it groan to life and the sounds it makes are singular. Or as singular a sound as a thing that was mass-produced can be. 
 
 He navigates to Start. The red track nub beneath his finger is the red track nub beneath my finger. In my mind's-eye ( or mind's-finger maybe ) I can feel the firm resistance of it. I lick my lips. I feel kind of perverted or at least voyeuristic. He navigates to NotePad. I want to tell him that WordPad is more fully featured but what the hell. 
 
 The cursor blinks. His fingers gnarl over the keyboard and hover there and I'm reminded of Beethoven. He types. 
 
 “ It begins raining outside. ” 
 
 The thunderclap is instantaneous. The girl outside reflexively covers her head with her hands, then does kind of a squat walk into the shop against the immediately driving rain. The water, believe me, does not lessen the effect to which I was earlier partial. 
 
 “ There are gusts of wind and trash blows general through the streets. ” 
 
 I look out of the window, into the gusting wind and airborne trash. I raise one eyebrow. 
 
 “ And it is in this way that our protagonist's birth is announced to this world. But nevermind the ambulance wail- ” 
 
 Cue, of course, an ambulance wail outside. My mouth is dry. 
 
 “ -nevermind the crimes, huge nor petty, on the television- ” 
 
 The TV flicks on. I turn around. Jimmy is aiming the remote and squinting. “ Fuckin' weather, ” he says. I look at the TV. The main news is of a plain crash. Across the bottom of screen scrolls “ Historic Laptop Stolen from Museum of Modern Art –'Nothing Else Missing,' says Puzzled Curator. ” 
 
 “ -nevermind the turmoil in the father's homeland, nor the psychic pain experienced, sometimes, by the poor infant's mother. Right now, their world is perfect. In this hospital room with the beautiful child they both feel, even despite his own children by a first wife, is the child that they were meant to have, everything is perfect. The father reaches into a worn duffel and removes the child's first piece of clothing. It is a onesie with a trumpet on it and, spelled out in blocks,'Mommy's Jazz Star'. The mother beams at the father, whose smile is made wider. Everything is perfect. They do not know, nor would they ever want to know, that their child – eight years hence – will die a perfectly tragic, but entirely significant death. ” 
 
 “ Uh. ” That's the only thing I can say. At this, the old man turns and looks at me sharply. He glares. I kind of nod at him and get up. My heart is pounding. 
 
 On my way back home I do n't know what I'm doing but I stop in a bodega and pick up a couple of cans of formula. Then two days later I get home and Shah and trumpet lady are back from the hospital with the baby I never knew they were expecting and I give them the formula that I'm really hesitant and confused to give them because holy shit how accurate could that guy have been and they're all smiles and thank yous and Shah says “ What is saying? Bridge over troubled water? ” 
 
 I smile. “ It's, uh, water under the bridge. I think. Yeah. Water under the bridge. ” 
 
 I have n't seen the writer in months now. Everyday I hear the happy family next door. I begin to count the years.
