People is always busy. Always rushin. Like they’s got buses to catch or trains. Like they’s late for somewhere important. And everythin’s so darned serious with ‘em. They don’t never take the time to just be. Look at children. They know. They know to just lay back sometimes, lettin the sun run its fingers all over ‘em every once in a while. It does ‘em good to do that. But peole don’t get it.
I aint like people. No, sir. I got everythin real sorted in my head. I got perspective, you know. I got everythin balanced. I got me a child’s eye view of the world.
That’s why I’s glad there’s Brindle’s café at the back of Calder Street. It’s small and maybe only three tables and none of ‘em sits easy on they’s legs. And the coffee ain’t the best exactly, and the house wine is nothin to write home about. But it’s a reg’lar sun-trap there and they got all sorts of chairs so you can take your pick and shift ‘em out onto the bit of street – easy chairs with cushions, or loungers, or deck chairs, or a sofa with the stuffin knocked into the shape of hundred different people. And ‘em that goes there go just to take in the sun and just to be.
Aint no shame in strippin down to your shorts if that’s what you’ve a mind to, and kickin back, and orderin a Long Island iced tea, and takin the time to appreciate what you’ve got. That’s what I do some days, when I open the curtains on my mid-town apartment and the sky is so blue it hurts to look at and the streets is sweatin. I just call up the office where I work and I tell ‘em I’s takin a personal day and they probably know I’ll be laid out in the sun outside Brindle’s but they don’t never say no.
I call up Maisie, too. I tell her over the phone that it’s gonna be in the thirties today and I make a date with her. Maisie’s as pretty as kittens and she wears cotton summer dresses white as clouds and lookin like she belongs to another time. It’s like a day at the beach when we is at Brindle’s together and Maisie lays back alongside me, her dress hitched up ‘bove her knees and her head tilted to the sun. Not lookin to see if I is listenin, she talks forever, about somethin and nothin, and her voice is like soft music playin.
‘Be careful you don’t burn, now,’ she says. ‘I hear that can’t be good for a person, gettin all red and burned.’
And I like that Maisie looks out for me like that. I reach over sometimes and I hold her hand in mine. There aint nothin better in the whole blessed world. I swear. Nothin better than sunlight makin patterns on the lids of my closed eyes, and Maisie sayin things to show she cares, and holding her hand in mine. Nothin better on the whole of God’s earth than a slow as slow Long Island iced tea and Maisie talkin and talkin just for the sake of it and Brindle’s café in the sunlight.
Patricia Ann McNair 
People is always busy. Always rushin. Like they’s got buses to catch or trains. Like they’s late for somewhere important. And everythin’s so darned serious with ‘em. They don’t never take the time to just be. Look at children. They know. They know to just lay back sometimes, lettin the sun run its fingers all over ‘em every once in a while. It does ‘em good to do that. But peole don’t get it.
I aint like people. No, sir. I got everythin real sorted in my head. I got perspective, you know. I got everythin balanced. I got me a child’s eye view of the world.
That’s why I’s glad there’s Brindle’s café at the back of Calder Street. It’s small and maybe only three tables and none of ‘em sits easy on they’s legs. And the coffee ain’t the best exactly, and the house wine is nothin to write home about. But it’s a reg’lar sun-trap there and they got all sorts of chairs so you can take your pick and shift ‘em out onto the bit of street – easy chairs with cushions, or loungers, or deck chairs, or a sofa with the stuffin knocked into the shape of hundred different people. And ‘em that goes there go just to take in the sun and just to be.
Aint no shame in strippin down to your shorts if that’s what you’ve a mind to, and kickin back, and orderin a Long Island iced tea, and takin the time to appreciate what you’ve got. That’s what I do some days, when I open the curtains on my mid-town apartment and the sky is so blue it hurts to look at and the streets is sweatin. I just call up the office where I work and I tell ‘em I’s takin a personal day and they probably know I’ll be laid out in the sun outside Brindle’s but they don’t never say no.
I call up Maisie, too. I tell her over the phone that it’s gonna be in the thirties today and I make a date with her. Maisie’s as pretty as kittens and she wears cotton summer dresses white as clouds and lookin like she belongs to another time. It’s like a day at the beach when we is at Brindle’s together and Maisie lays back alongside me, her dress hitched up ‘bove her knees and her head tilted to the sun. Not lookin to see if I is listenin, she talks forever, about somethin and nothin, and her voice is like soft music playin.
‘Be careful you don’t burn, now,’ she says. ‘I hear that can’t be good for a person, gettin all red and burned.’
And I like that Maisie looks out for me like that. I reach over sometimes and I hold her hand in mine. There aint nothin better in the whole blessed world. I swear. Nothin better than sunlight makin patterns on the lids of my closed eyes, and Maisie sayin things to show she cares, and holding her hand in mine. Nothin better on the whole of God’s earth than a slow as slow Long Island iced tea and Maisie talkin and talkin just for the sake of it and Brindle’s café in the sunlight.