The Werecorgi

The cool, crisp morning air still held the weight of the storm from the night before.  Steven pedaled idly, his mind wandering over old poetry.  Her smile was as the morning sun, he thought to himself.  Lazy and slow and, as it dawned, it set her cheeks aglow.  He smiled to himself, lips pursing slightly at the corners.  Oh.  That's good.  I need to remember that one.  It even rhymes.  But, like, in the same sentence.

"Hey, asshole!  Get the fuck off the street!" screamed a driver behind him.  The single lane road wound through the heart of the city.  Fourteen cars crawled slowly behind Steven.  Occasionally a driver would threaten or plead with Steven to move to the side but the young man barely noticed.

What's another word for cheeks?  It sounds so pedestrian, Steven mused.  The swell of her... face?  No.  That's worse.  The constant clatter of the hard plastic case attached to the side of his fixed gear bike kept beat with the horns blaring from angry drivers.

Finally, Steven swerved his little bicycle to the side, ignoring the creative death threats from passing cars.  His feet bumped over the cobblestones showing through the ill-repaired pavement.  He had no brakes on his bicycle and so his feet slowed him down.  The road secretly pleased him.  He often thought of it as the deconstruction of society.  Cracks showing through humanity, exposing the inner, true behavior.

Steven leaned his bicycle against a small, nondescript gray building.  The store was sandwiched between an old bookstore and a small café.  Unhooking the hard case at the side of his bicycle, he hefted it with a grunt and walked inside.  A young, thin man stood behind a low counter.  Steven lurched to the counter and waited, silently.  He knew the other man's name because he'd once overheard another patron use it and explain it to a friend:  Cherry, only the 'ch' was a hard 'k' sound.    Steven had been incredibly jealous and ashamed of his own name after that.  He'd occasionally thought of changing his name but it just wasn't the same.  Eventually, the other man looked up at Steven.

"Coffee.  Black," Cherry (with the hard 'k' sound) said.  You didn't order your own coffee here.  Cherry (with the hard 'k') looked into you, judging your appearance, mental and emotional states and told you what you needed.  Only, sometimes, Steven wished he'd needed a cappuccino instead of the coffee he was given every single time.  Cherry (with a 'k') vanished into the back room, returning with a small paper cup.  Steven passed the man a five dollar bill and received no change in return.  No prices were ever listed or mentioned.

Coffee cup in one hand, hard case in another, Steven made his way to one of three small tables.  The case, placed in the center of the table, unlatched to reveal an old style typewriter.  Sleek black lines and gold lettered keys gleamed dully in the morning sun.  Steven lowered himself into the large stuffed chair facing the table.  He rested his arms on the chair and sipped at his coffee while mentally preparing himself for the morning.  He felt cheered when he barely winced at the predictably bitter coffee.  Cherry ('k', not 'ch') closed his store the last two weeks of each month to fly down to South America to pick his own beans.  The bitterness was authentic.

Steven fed a piece of paper carefully into the typewriter.  The paper was the color of dirty cream, all handmade valleys and ridges rather than the smooth pure white of commercially produced paper.  He'd traded ten sheets of it for a jar of orange juice he'd squeezed himself.

A young couple walked by the store, pausing to look in before continuing their walk.  Steven watched them go before pushing at his glasses in righteous indignation.  A faint blush crept up his cheeks as he realized he wasn't wearing his glasses yet.  Stealing a glance at Cherry (not pronounced with a 'ch' sound), he pulled a pair of glasses and a small book from the threadbare inner pocket of his jacket.  Settling the glasses on his nose and the book open on the side of the table, he began slowly typing.