15.
Ten AM. Mac time. Twelve of them open on tables, plus two iPads. Where, Marea wondered, did all the PC users go? And should she take a photo of the cafe and ship it to Apple? She would like to peek at the individual screens, to see who was looking at what. But the screens faced away. Not like at the other cafe, where the tables were situated so that customers did not have their backs against a wall, hence it was inevitable that the baristas, or anyone walking past, could see what people were looking at online. This had been the case five years ago, when Marea passed a table and found herself seeing porn. It was a slow Sunday afternoon, no little kids in the cafe, but still.
Marea had called the barista on-duty to the back. The customer, the barsita said, came often. He never spoke to any of the baristas, all young women then, beyond ordering a cup of coffee, which he nursed for hours. He seemed harmless, but for the bug-eyed looks he sometimes gave the girls.
"And once," the barista said, "he was on at a site called, How to Kiss a Woman."
Okay, Marea thought. It's sad, yes, it is, that some men reach sixty and do not know how to do that. But porn? Go home and do that, like the rest of humanity.
"Excuse me."
Marea was at the man's shoulder. He shielded his laptop. "I am going to have to ask you to not look at that here."
The man blinked. His eyes were gluey behind his glasses, pleading and defiant at once.
"Seriously," Marea said. "You can't do that here. I think you better go."
The man had clicked closed his PC and left. Marea had seen him once since; she did not kick him out again; he did not give her reason. And in truth it was not the porn she found provoking, it was the how to kiss a woman. Had he just wanted the girls working to see? Did he really not know how?
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