Halo Lights

Posted on May 7, 2003 in Cafes

Barnes and Noble Cafe, Aliso Viejo: Circles in a line, illuminating the places between the workspace and where the customers stand. A black base supporting each light, a halo fastened to a low khaki ceiling. They glow off the maroon streaks in the hair of a girl with dark brown hair; they glow off the tall barriste with short black monkey hair, big ears, acne on his chin, and an annoying silver ring in his lip.

He serves customers who don’t look at him — who look at the tea rack, at the juice box, at the fancy macadamia and chocolate rounds, the sugar cookies shaped like spoons, the carrot and cheese cakes, and the brownies cut in triangles.

All these things are held in the light as holy objects, relics to be sent on the pilgrimage across the tongue and down the throat to the place where polyps divide the acid-dissolved offerings and parcel them out among the hungry nations of the flesh.

The lights crown the consumers who pay in the shine of coins and American Express Gold Cards. The exchange that makes for peace between those who have coffee and those who want to be drinking it.