"Yes! We're open." So many meanings, in so few words. I’d never thought about it until that moment.
I pushed the door and was inside. Inside this story.
I was afraid of bursting into the café as happens in Westerns, when the good guy — but sometimes also the bad one — enters the saloon.
The piano player stops playing, the bartender stops drying the glass, the four at the poker table stop playing, the cowboys at the counter stop drinking. Everyone's eyes on me, an instant before guns are drawn.
But none of this happened here.
It was as if everyone was part of the same tableau, without being close enough to touch: the lady who lowered her glasses to spy on a young man, the boy with the walkman and the helmet catapulted into the present day from who knows what era, the girl making bubbles with chewing gum, and at least a hundred other stories. Lives and colours mingling happily and I caught myself smiling.
I'd found my perfect spot, without even looking for it.