Picture Taker

It was one of those Mondays when even the thick caffeinated sludge that passed for coffee at the train station coffee shop wasn’t cutting through the fog in Dave’s head. The morning had started rough. Just before 4:00 AM the cats had smashed the clock-radio to pieces by dragging it off the bedside table. The noise woke Del up and her first reaction was to punch Dave with an arm flung across the bed.

“What was that?” she asked.

“The cats broke the clock,” Dave said, “but what’s up with the hitting? That’s  not helpful.”

She rolled over. “I was dreaming. It made sense if you knew what I was dreaming.” A minute later she was snoring again.

Dave failed to fall back asleep so he got up and answered some email before feeding the cats, only to hear Capt. Jax puking in the bedroom right after he’d finished scarfing down a can of food. If Del had been unhappy about the clock incident, she was even more put out by the smell of cat puke on the comforter.

They managed to get to the station on time only to find her train running late and his bus broke down, smoke rising from the engine compartment. Del stood on the platform and Dave dragged into the coffee shop.

He hadn’t been there a minute before he noticed the man taking pictures. He used his cell phone to snap a picture of just about anything: the menu, the register, Rob behind the counter giving him a weird look, a coffee cup, a package of cookies, the art on the walls. Dave watched as the man stepped outside and took a picture of the door, the open sign, the train schedule posted on the wall, the black metal bench, the trash cans.

Rob and Dave watched as he crossed the street to get a long shot of the station. “He’s casing the joint,” Dave surmised.

Rob shook his head. “No, he’s documenting the mundane,” Rob guessed. “Paparazzi of the plain and ordinary.”

Dave nodded. “He has a peculiar obsession with train station coffee shops. He has a website dedicated to his fixation.”

“It’s a sex thing, like that woman in love with the roller coaster. He’ll be going home soon to get off on his building porn.”

“Yeah but he took your picture too,” Dave pointed out. “Maybe you don’t want that to be the real story.”

“Oh yeah,” Rob nodded, “that might be a little creepy. What’s he doing now?”

Dave leaned back so he could see around the brick column. Outside in the driveway the bus driver sprayed the smoking engine with a fire extinguisher, his face slack and expressionless as if he were picking lint from his ear instead. “He’s taking pictures of this latest bus disaster.”

“Speaking of which, how are you getting to work if the bus is on fire?”

“Given the morning so far, I might be better off taking pictures like our friend out there, instead of making motions of moving through the routine of life.”