Margen
He moved into the neighborhood on a Monday afternoon. On Tuesday morning he went down for bread and the baker didn't let him speak: "He's here," she called toward the back, and handed him a wrapped baguette and two croissants. "The usual." He paid without correcting her, out of shyness, and decided she had mistaken him for someone else.
But on Thursday the man at the newsstand set aside "his" magazine. On Friday, the waitress at the bar brought him his coffee without asking: "Extra milk, just how you like it." And at the butcher's there was an order waiting under his name, spelled perfectly, double R and all.
On Saturday he gathered his courage and asked the baker: since when, exactly, had he been a regular? She laughed as she wrapped the bread. "Oh, sweetheart. All your life. You used to come in holding your grandmother's hand." "My grandmother never lived here," he said. "I'd never set foot in this neighborhood." The baker placed the package in his hands with an ancient patience. "You say that every time, too."