I sit on a too low stool, or it might just be the table is too high. Two saleswomen serve the customers who walk in with their questions and intentions to shop quickly. I take bites of my Apfel-Steusel (poised favorably close to my mouth, due to the table) and swigs of a cappuccino (the everyday bakery variety, not the broad cup and opulent foam of the fancy coffee places).
A woman enters wearing reinforced work pants and paint-spattered shoes. It's 3:30 pm, but she looks done with her workday. Affectless. She buys a loaf that's wound in paper and takes her leave. The bakery saleslady reaches behind her to remove the price sign for that type of bread. Sold out for today.
In the adjoining shop there's a butcher, and voices bounce off the shiny stone floor. I see a dad and a young boy, who's riding a wooden rocking horse. Now they're at the counter. The saleswoman has given the boy a slice of Lyoner (really fine-grained baloney) to munch on; they always do. The boy returns to the rocking horse, mussy haired and staring quietly out the window while the dad shops.
"Is that one a kilo?" asks the next man in the bakery. "And what about the rye? A kilo?" He settled on the rye, not sliced, and left.
More paint-spattered folks in for coffee to go. The machine hums and presses out the drinks. The ladies mop the floor during a lull. Suddenly we're all quiet. Deeply colored Easter eggs fill a glass bowl. The remaining loaves get rearranged. Another workman grabs cold drinks. Tschüss, auf Wiedersehen, we all say when someone leaves.
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