One hundred cups of coffee with 100 men.

I got the idea from a lawyer friend, who married a handsome furnituremaker in Maine, a man who owned more books than she did. "Sometimes," she said, "I met three a day. You only need 15 minutes." It took her two months. She quickly lost count.

After six months, I am at four.

We meet in a coffee shop parking lot. He springs out of his enormous red convertible, more like a boat than a car, and thrusts into my hands a fat library book. He looks ten years older than his photo and roughened, like someone has taken the smooth young version he posted and rubbed sandpaper over it. I stare at the book he's handed me, turn it over. It is a book of ideas and complaint. He is ranging around the parking lot on foot — big loops. Why is he ranging around the parking lot? Why am I holding a fat library book? "Finally," he says, rovering up to me, beaming. "Finally someone in this godforsaken place gets me." I kneel down, set the book on the pavement, pretend to tie my shoe.

The next man wants to go out again. I tell him about the coffees. He wants to know what number he is. "I want the T-shirt," he says. "Number X, with the cup, you know. That's what I want." He pats his front. He says he wants to be 99. He, too, has books, paperbacks in his backpack. Two backpacks. One is his office.

I feel so bad for them all. The man with a part in a play who could talk of nothing but the play. The play is his life. Both will start soon. The man in white kneesocks and black sneakers who chose a coffee shop across from the mental institution. It was very distracting. The whole time he talked, I kept trying not to think he'd come from across the street on a pass. Then, when I talked, at the end, I felt I was the one on the pass.


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Wow, that was pretty cool.