He’d sit and look at people all day…perched on a stool at the counter of a coffee shop…counted ’em as they came through the door…made a game of it…

Sometimes he’d just count the blonde ladies with thick ankles…other times the old man would only count men wearing wool caps…it was winter…there were a lot of ’em…

And he sat quietly with his pencil and pad of paper tallying up scores…markin’ off the women with thick ankles and men in wool caps as if they were days in prison…up and down lines with a mark across when he got to five…rarely did he get five women with blonde hair and thick ankles…score would always be lopsided…

It was as if his mind was fixated on this game…didn’t talk ’bout it…kept it quiet…he kept everything to himself…his whole life was a closed book…a lengthy novel too thick to read…people were intimidated by the page count…like Ulysses…or…War And Peace….he was not for simpletons…

So…he continued counting…it’s how he spent his days…his days were winding down…a whole life coming down to this…just an old man sitting in a coffee shop…secretly takin’ a tally…