The Spring of Our Disconnect

Midday, rising from my chair. Exiting the building I caught a whiff of the city on a strangely pleasant spring afternoon. The woes of being inside. A strange woman dressed much like a Peruvian panflute player was ordering a coffee in front of me but kept looking out the window with a gaze of pure horror, like she knew an ancient Incan curse was coming. I looked too. There was nothing. She left. The two ex-bikers, I'm certain, that now work as baristas took my order and delivered my order as I was rung up by the teen or post-teen person at the counter. A dollar seventy-five later, back in the open air with my cup full. Strolling across the street while people are bewildered as to why a bus is stopped and fail to realize that it is because they are in the street. The doors were doused last night or in recent memory with vagrant urine and the smell of ammonia mixes with the scent of new paint in the corridor by the elevator. Old and new, dirty and clean. Both a murky puce.