Pool_1

Upstairs, in the coffee shop, people actually chewed before they swallowed their food. They gazed dreamily over coffee or soda speculating on the future of the new baby in the nursery, about who will take care of Aunt Jennie after her gall bladder surgery, recollecting just how the car went out of control and how much should you actually tell medical people about what happened. They met the chaplain or the rabbi there. There are endless things thought of, wished for, or spoken about in the coffee shop. After they were finished and only when they were ready, guests walked out. If you stood in the downstairs cafeteria doorway, its even money that you'd be trampled with a food spitting garble of apology on the run, "Ooots, hwary," by somebody with obviously stuffed cheeks. Finishing and leaving were unrelated. So, on the way in, downstairs, keep well to the left . At noon, the shoe box became a long rumpus of hustling professionals knowing better but talking through stuffed mouths, of those straddling chairs backward to denote being on the run - projecting "Don't start any new conversation, I'm leaving", of others sitting two to a seat in even more ready to jolt postures, of the dropping of sentences midstream to the call of a pager, while others groped at their beepers in a chorus of "not mines". A palette of gestures of transience colored the aura of consequence and reverence. The periphery of the long space was fitted with diner-like booths, seating groups of four or maybe five with free chairs pulled up. The room's middle ground was a fluidly changing pattern of small square and round tables in ad lib groupings. At the rear stood austere stainless steel roller racks for depositing used food trays. The room's center island provided paper napkins, plastic spoons, forks, and knives plus the usual condiments with a splash of seasonal decorative color consisting of paper figures -