Crosswords

CROSSWORDS

         I had been meaning to go into that coffee place for weeks.  Ever since I had first seen it while driving around, exploring the town I had moved to after the divorce.  I’d tell myself I was just too busy, but really it was because I hated going anywhere alone now.  Which was ironic since I didn’t know anyone here and went everywhere alone anyway.  I just avoided doing it on purpose as much as I could.  Especially if it meant going somewhere or doing something that most people normally thought of as a social thing.  Like going to a coffee shop for coffee.  After what I had been through, I didn’t need any extra confirmation that I was a total loser.
         That morning I finally decided to stop.  Maybe it was because I hadn’t had any human interaction for three days.  I don’t know.  I was tired of just driving around, and for once it didn’t look like there were so many college kids hanging around outside, sitting on the deck, playing guitars.  Seemed like the time.  I walked in the front door and went up to the counter and ordered a mug of house coffee.  I picked up the local newspaper that was laid out on a table by the front door and sat down at a booth.  There were a few women scattered around, some talking and others reading.  I was glad for the other loners there, it made me feel a little better.
         I had been meaning to get a subscription to the paper.  I had been meaning to do a lot of things.  There wasn’t much to it.  The same national news that I barely paid attention to every morning while I let the TV run in the bedroom while I showered and dressed.  Local stuff that I knew nothing about.  I tried to read the funnies but just couldn’t do it.  Then I saw the crossword puzzle.
         I realized that, since moving, and not having a newspaper in my own driveway anymore, I hadn’t done a crossword puzzle in weeks.  Funny.  I had done the crossword first thing every morning.  Hadn’t even missed it.  I felt around in my pockets and jacket but didn’t have anything to write with.  I got up and walked over to the counter.
“Is it OK if I borrow one of these pens?” I asked the girl making an espresso behind the counter.  She looked over at me.
“Sure, I guess.”  She shrugged her shoulders and turned back around.
When I got back to my seat and smoothed out the paper on the tabletop, I looked to see who had created the puzzle.  No one I had heard of.  At least it was a NYT grid though.  Let’s see, what is today?  Wednesday.  I wonder if it will be easy or hard, or in between?
After the first three or four clues, I realized it was going to be easy.  Very easy.  Oh well, I guess that’s the way a small-town paper wants it.  I finished it in about ten minutes.  I probably could have done it faster, but for one thing, I had never worked a crossword puzzle by that constructor before, I didn’t have a pencil (just the pen) and, mostly, I wanted the whole experience to last at least a little while.
I decided against another cup of coffee.  The place was starting to get more crowded, and it seemed like everyone was there with someone else or a group of people.  Loner time was over.  I put my mug in the bin and put the newspaper back on the table by the front door on my way out.  I was careful to put it back together and fold it so it could have passed as unread.  That’s just me.  I walked out the front door, through a knot of teenagers and to my car.
The next morning I decided to go back.  It hadn’t been so awful, being there alone.  The coffee was pretty good.  Cheap.  I didn’t have to get a subscription to the local paper if I could just go there and read it.  And do the crossword puzzle.  There was that too.  Seemed like earlier in the morning was a better time to go if you were a loner, didn’t have any friends.
         The same girl was behind the counter.  I tried to say something that would let her know I recognized her.
“Me again!” I said.  She just shrugged and halfway tried to smile.
“What can I get you?”
“Just a mug for coffee again, thanks.”
The price was twenty cents higher this time.  I started to ask why, but decided it wasn’t worth it.  Like yesterday, I just dropped the change into the tip jar; less for her now.  Miss Personality.
I got my coffee ready and sat down in the same booth as the day before.  I fall into habits pretty quickly.  Then I realized I hadn’t gotten the newspaper from the table at the front door, so I stood back up and walked over to it.  The paper from the day before was still there, so I grabbed it too.  I can’t help myself, I have to know if I made any mistakes, and since the solution would be in the new paper I figured I would check it out.
I glanced through the paper again.  Not so much to see what the news was (there wasn’t any, really, just rehashes of the things that were being reported the day before) as to put off getting to the crossword puzzle, knocking it out too quickly, and spending the rest of the time with my coffee wishing I had something to do instead of looking lonely.  Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and turned to the new puzzle.  I saw the solution for the day before and remembered the paper I had set in the booth next to me.  I opened it to yesterday’s puzzle.
Someone had written, in the margins next to the puzzle, and in all capital letters, “WHO DID MY CROSSWORD!?!?!?”  I looked up and then around at the few people sitting around the room.  No one was looking back.  They were all buried in their laptops or magazines or books.  Oh dear.  Clearly someone who was not as much of an early bird as I was had some very possessive feelings about this little crossword puzzle, in this little paper, and in this little coffee shop.
I turned back to the new puzzle and pondered for a moment.  Should I work it, or leave it for this someone?  I looked at the first clue, “Cave sound,” and saw that the answer was four letters; clearly it had to be “echo.”  A quick look at one-down, “The Emerald Isle,” also four letters, confirmed it (that answer would be “Eire,” of course).  Oh well, can’t stop now.  Sorry, my friend, but I got here first.  I had a pencil with me this time, but it wasn’t important.  This puzzle was also extremely easy, and I finished it before I had a chance to drink half my coffee.  Before I folded the paper back up, however, I added my own little note in the margin.  “Sorry.”  I got up and laid it, and the one from the day before, back on the table by the front door, refilled my cup, and sat back down.
I tried reading my book, but every time someone came in I had to look up to see if he or she picked up the newspapers.  Finally, I gave up and put my half-finished cup in the bin and left.  It’s not that I didn’t want to face my competitor; well, yes it was.  There weren’t that many other people in the shop, and anyway I was the only one there by myself, so it was pretty obvious who the culprit would have been.  I don’t like confrontation.
The third morning (like I said, I fall into habits easily) there I was again.  New girl this time.
“Hello and good morning to you!  I hope you’re having a wonderful day!”  Oh dear, Miss Perky is here.
“Hi, um, I’d just like a mug for the house coffee.”
“Sure!  It’s a Brazilian Roast today.  Very strong I hear, is that OK?”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
“Here you go.  Hope you like it!  Let me know!”
I smiled back at her, trying to decide if she was flirting or was really just that perky and sweet.  Don’t kid yourself.  She’s just perky and sweet.  At least she got the price right; more tip for her.
The new paper and the previous day’s paper were on the table by the front door.  I grabbed them both and went over to my booth.  Before I opened yesterday’s paper I looked around the coffee shop.  There were a few couples and groups, but only two other people there by themselves, and they both seemed engrossed in their laptops.  I opened the old paper to the crossword puzzle.  Above my “sorry” someone had written “NOOO!!”
It didn’t seem exactly mad.  More like anguished.  Whoever it was could have said something much worse.  I thought I would feel defensive, but instead I felt a little sorry for him or her.  I wondered, was it a man or woman?  How old?  I opened up the new paper to the puzzle and pulled my pencil out of my jacket.
Like I always do, I started just reading the clues and looking at the grid to see if my first few guesses worked.  Somewhere around three clues in, if all is working out, I start writing them in.  I’m not one of those people who only does the across clues first, then goes to the down ones.  If my across guess looks right because the down clues need those letters, I just start filling in that part of the grid until I either finish it or have enough doubt to want to go on to another part.  I also use a pencil, unless I just can’t get my hands on one.  Not because I’m that worried about mistakes.  For anything less than a Friday or Saturday level puzzle, I could probably do just fine with a pen.  It’s just that I HATE having to try to correct the rare instance when I AM wrong and I used a pen.  It makes the puzzle look so messy having that inked-over answer, trying to turn a “C” into an “S.”  I would rather have to occasionally erase an answer and have a neat, finished puzzle, at the cost of whatever bragging rights those pen users find so important.
This one was going to be another ridiculously easy puzzle, at least after seeing the first few clues.  I was beginning to get a little frustrated.  This was Friday and the puzzles hadn’t gotten one bit harder.  I had a sinking feeling that they were never going to get more challenging, that this constructor (it was the same person as the past two days) wrote for a pretty basic market and that this little newspaper didn’t want to give its readers too much of a challenge.  I started to write in the answers to the first few across and down clues, but then stopped myself.
What about my late-arriving compatriot?  Maybe I should just leave this one alone, let him, or her, take a crack at it?  That got me to thinking, I wonder if they find these puzzles to be so easy?  My pencil hovered over the first answer.  Then I had an idea.
Above the puzzle, in the space between it and the Sudoku puzzle (who in the hell does those, anyway? Math people!?) I wrote, “Your turn” and folded the paper back up.  I finished my coffee and left the papers on the table on my way out.
Of course, this meant that I was obsessed with my little drama until the next day.  And, as luck would have it, I wasn’t able to get back to the coffee shop until late that afternoon.  Something about a job interview and the need to start earning money got in the way.  I don’t usually drink coffee in the afternoon.  My insomnia doesn’t need any help, and at any rate I figured there would be a much larger crowd there than in the mornings, which was confirmed when I pulled into the parking lot.  I sat in my car and watched all the college kids coming and going, the large knot of them on the deck listening to some dude playing his guitar, and decided to forget it.
When I saw a very nice looking gray-haired woman come out the front door with a newspaper under her arm, I changed my mind.  I figured the paper wouldn’t be there when I walked in, that the woman was my crossword competitor and had taken it with her, but sure enough, there it was, next to the one for today.  Neither one was folded neatly, as if it hadn’t been read, but what could I expect by this time of day?  Miss Personality was at the register, but this time she charged me the lesser amount for my cup and got her full tip.
My booth was jammed with a half dozen teenagers, girls, and the only place to sit was in a couch, next to a lady knitting something.
“Hello, mind if I sit here,” I asked.
“No, go right ahead!”  She responded.
“Thanks.”
I set my coffee on the table next to me and opened yesterday’s paper to the crossword puzzle.  It was only partially completed.  Next to my “your turn,” someone had written in all capital letters, “THANK YOU!”  Then, at the bottom of the puzzle, next to the lower right section that was uncompleted, they had added, “I’m stuck!”  I could see where he or she had tried some answers and then erased them.  I looked back up at the beginning of the puzzle and began checking the answers.  They had done fine until the long across clue that spanned the puzzle.  That’s where he or she had tripped up.  It was an easy mistake, probably something the constructor meant to throw out to trip folks up, and I had seen it before.  But it meant that you were going to have a heck of time completing the rest of the puzzle.  I fixed the error, and then erased and corrected the mistakes in the lower half of the puzzle that it had caused, and finished the whole thing.  Before folding the paper back up, I added my own note, “how’s this?” and set it back on the table.  I went back to the couch and got my coffee cup and refilled it and sat back down.  The woman was still knitting.
“You like doing crosswords?” she asked.
“Hmm?  Oh! yes, I do.”
“Looks like you’re pretty good at them.”
I smiled, took a sip of my coffee, “Yeah, I guess.”  I worried I sounded like some sort of snob.
“I’m not.  I try, but I’m always getting stuck and can’t finish,” she said.  “I think I’ll just stick to my knitting.”
I smiled again, but didn’t say anything.  After a few seconds of silence I set my cup down and picked up the paper with today’s crossword in it.  I expected it would already be done, or at least started, by my unknown puzzle lover, but instead, they had written across the top, “YOUR turn!”  I smiled to myself.
This one was harder than the past three (it was Saturday, after all, and I had been kind of hoping that at least on this day the puzzle would be more challenging).  A couple of long across clues were tricks, and I got taken in, thinking that the constructor wouldn’t have done something like that, based on my experience.  I had to erase them when I realized that the down answers weren’t going to work.  And about then I remembered that, yes, this constructor DID use tricks like that; just look at yesterday’s puzzle.  All in all, it took about thirty minutes to solve.  When I finished it, I wrote “thanks” along the bottom, then added, “You do the next one!”  I put the paper on the table by the front door, and started to leave, when I realized that I hadn’t put my cup away.  I went back to the couch and grabbed it, but instead of dropping it in the bin, I decided to have another cup and sat back down on the couch.  I had just started to pick up a “People” magazine off the coffee table.
“Excuse me,” the lady next to me tapped me on the arm.
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry, but would you mind if I measured this sleeve on you?  You’re about my son’s size and I’m knitting him a sweater.”  She was holding out a length of knitted yarn.
“Sure!” I moved over so she could lay the fabric on my right arm.  She began smoothing the upper end over my shoulder, pulling the rest of it down along my arm to my wrist.  I tried to help by lifting my arm.  She frowned a little and let go of the end that was at my wrist.  Her fingers were light and it felt good as she ran her hand up and down my arm, pressing the knitted fabric on my sleeve.  When was the last time someone had touched me?
“You were finished with your puzzles, weren’t you?” she asked?
“Oh, yeah.”
“I thought so.  Didn’t take you long, did it?  Still needs a few more rows, I think,” she said.  “His arms are maybe just a little bit longer than yours.  Thank you so much!”
“No problem.  It looks really nice!” I said.  She smiled back at me, and then turned back to her knitting.
I read for a few more minutes and decided that I just didn’t need to know if and when the Duchess of York would be getting pregnant.  Or what dress she was recycling.  I put my cup away, and as I was walking past the couch towards the front door, the knitting lady looked up and smiled.
“Bye!  Have nice day!  Thanks for letting me use you as a model,” she said.
“Any time!” I said.