I did the holy macarena of anxiety before I went in: pat on the back right pocket for wallet, pat on the left front pocket for phone, a reach around the side of the backpack to feel for the water bottle, and a tap to my chest for the key lanyard. All the necessities were present, checked for the hundredth time. I’d check if I remembered the backpack too if it wasn’t so apparent it was already on my back (or was it?).
‘FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS DRINK STARBUCKS’ screamed the sign on the door. It always made me imagine batting a Starbucks cup from someone’s hand and wagging my finger Dikembe Mutombo style. The bell of the coffee shop door jangled and induced my own Pavlovian response to caffeine, which was to feel my chest clench up in a way that was erotically asphyxiating, a bodily simulation of panic which served to paradoxically stimulate and defy stasis in an unhealthy way I couldn’t live without.
The coffee shop itself was anxiety-inducing because it combined two of my most feared things: pretty women and hot liquids precariously stood near laptops.
But I went there some days before work regardless because it was good to go places sometimes (according to my therapist, anyway) and with the life I led, I could often go long periods without talking to another human being, to the point where I would go without talking for days and then actively begin to avoid people to continue the streak of not talking for the sake of continuing it and later be able to brag to myself about not having spoken for days. Whenever that happened, though, it took time for my vocal cords to warm back up. They sputtered when I ordered coffee from one of the aforementioned pretty women.
“I’m sorry, what?” she asked, rightfully.
I put a hand to my neck and rubbed the pipes back to life.
“Small, medium-roast,” I ordered again. Three words. If my boss didn’t say hi to me at work, I could make it until the next day with maybe only a handful more. She told me the usual price and I went for my wallet.
The heat of embarrassment rose to my face and my underarms got moist as I opened it and recalled spending my final few dollar bills at the vending machine in the break room.
CASH ONLY FOR PURCHASES UNDER 5 DOLLARS.
I saw this sign by the cash register in my nightmares, the empty mouth of my wallet yelling into eternity: ‘ALWAYS HAVE CASH FOR YOUR COFFEE’.
“Uhm, only card,” I had to say.
“You could just get something else, too,” the barista said, bored with whatever was wrong with me.
Right. I could. Get something else, that is. My eyes scanned the case but I gave up identifying anything I could possibly want as another customer lined up behind me and I felt the pressure to decide quickly.
“Lemon scone,” my mouth squeezed out, the last thing I saw. I forgot to add ‘please’.
I hated lemon-flavored things, especially scones, which I was convinced were invented by the British to be as dry as their humor. She gave it to me in one of those crinkly little bakery bags and I paid with my card like a chump. A six-dollar small coffee.
As I exited the coffee shop I remembered what my therapist told me about confronting my ‘anxiety’ in such situations. Every time I stepped through the door of the coffee shop, I was stepping into fear. And fear—I knew this without my therapist telling me—was what I needed to step into, and continually step into it, if I could, if I were to ever recover the use of my vocal cords again, despite my perverse addiction to silence.
Of course, I had forgotten this mindset when I went to the coffee shop that morning, and instead of treating it like a challenge to be conquered I had allowed myself to feel the fear absorbed and transposed to shame.
I needed something else, I decided, to give myself a chance that day. A chance to be a real human instead of whatever else I was pretending to be.
The chance presented itself sooner than expected in a scene happening across the road from where I was parked. There was a tow-truck pulling up to a Volkswagen Jetta with an open hood. I might not have given it much thought except that I saw the driver was still in the car, facing forward and looking through the windshield, motionless, stone-faced, not even bothered to look at their phone, clearly in the throes of a crisis, the same face I would wear in that situation.
Empathy.
That’s what I needed if I were to rejoin the living. Knowing that others with thoughts and minds of their own existed outside the bounds of my body. Knowing that real problems existed besides the petty ones I invented for myself within my head.
I readied myself in a way I did not before entering the coffee shop (my therapist called this presetting) and went to the window and gently tapped it with the knuckle of my scone-grasping hand. I believe all car windows roll down at the same speed now, but this one seemed reluctant.
The added challenge was that this was a beautiful woman around the same age as me, much like the coffee shop barista.
“Hi,” I said, trying to say the words like recitations of a movie script. “It seems like you’re having a bad day. Car problems. They’re the worst. Think you’re having a normal day, key in the ignition, then all the sudden...anyways, it looks like you’re real upset, which I can understand. I would be too. But yea, I go to this coffee shop across the way when I can, not too often because, you know, it’s expensive and you can just have it at home. But it’s a nice little treat, you know. Point is, they’re cash only under five dollars and typically I get a small coffee which is under five dollars because if I get any more caffeine than that it kinda freaks me out. Today I didn’t have any cash though so I had to get this scone too, and honestly, I don’t like scones. And I especially don’t like lemon flavor. It’s lemon flavor. Anyways, I won’t eat it and I figured you’re having a bad day and...yeah. Maybe you will."
Much of why I avoided talking was because when I did not avoid it, I struggled to find a balance between measured and cacophony.
She wordlessly watched me talk with sad eyes, then took the scone in its wrapper as though it were a gun and began to roll up the window. She didn’t even say thank you.
I nodded and waved, hating myself for the verbosity and knowing that, if possible, I’d then remain silent for days.
As I drove to work, I wondered if she thought I was a creep. I wondered if she would tell her friends or parents about me, the backpack guy who gave her a lemon scone. If ten years from now she’d remember the day her car broke down and a stranger gave her a dry, citrus-flavored baked good.
All our lives are is memory of memories, wrapped up in an elaborate web with the rest of humanity, yet we only ever get to occupy one small thread, and are unable to escape it.
I really hoped she liked lemon scones.
thanks for reading this story about an unwanted baked good. even if you didn’t like it, maybe click the little heart button so that people who might will find it.
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS:
What do you think the lemon scone symbolizes?
Giving the woman in the car the scone was both an attempt at empathy and an awkward overshare. Do you think the narrator’s action was helpful, creepy, or somewhere in between?
thanks for reading PNP, where we actually love lemon-flavored baked goods and hate coffee. if you liked this story, you might also like my novel, the big T, posted here on Substack:
Lemony scones are rather obtuse
Trying to eat one is of no use
If you give it away
It could end in dismay
Oversharing is a form of abuse
What's a lemon scone? I have never had one of these, and now I fancy a scone with cream and lemon curd.