A tall woman with dark skin and straight black hair well past her shoulders walked into the Christian coffee shop. She wore tight white jeans, a loose black top and black and white sneakers. Quite the look.<\/p>\n
The one-armed barista greeted her and began preparing her order: white chocolate mocha.<\/p>\n
Christian rock played softly on the PA.<\/p>\n
I sat near the window and dreamed of a reunion with an old friend. I picked up and perused a handout with the title \u201cRelational Vampires.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman launched into a story about her recent attendance at a Pentecostal service that went full tilt with touching, speaking in tongues, wrapping up a sinner in blanket, the works. There was a rock band playing, too! \u201cSympathy for the Devil\u201d no doubt. No, probably Otis Redding.<\/p>\n
The woman wrapped up her story and then gathered up the returnable cans and bottles from the recycling bin. She left the shop and I saw her mount a bicycle with a little trailer full of cans and bottles and ride away. How could I not?<\/p>\n
The barista came out from behind the counter with a phone book! He started looking up something. I hadn’t seen anyone use a phone book in 20 years. It was bracing. It was out of time. (Story idea: high tech private detective has to consult a phone book to solve a murder. He’s utterly baffled by the book. It confounds him. He hates it, but the murderer keeps leaving them next to the bodies with exactly one listing circled.)<\/p>\n
I took out an Oregon map. Where would I go in 2019? Where had I never been? Where were the compelling and crazy untold stories lurking? I always seem to find them.<\/p>\n
I drank my coffee and looked around the coffee shop. My mind drifted back to the possible reunion. It probably wasn’t going to happen.<\/p>\n\n
A tall woman with dark skin and straight black hair well past her shoulders walked into the Christian coffee shop. She wore tight white jeans, a loose black top and black and white sneakers. Quite the look. The one-armed barista greeted her and began preparing her order: white chocolate mocha. Christian rock played softly on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[809,806,7],"class_list":["post-4477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","tag-christian","tag-coffee-shop-novel","tag-writing","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4477"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4480,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4477\/revisions\/4480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}