One of the dozen or so employees at my neighborhood Peet’s coffee is blonde. He is the only blonde employee. Rarely do I see him working, but most mornings he sits outside on one of the two wooden benches and watches people cross the street in front of him. In his left hand is a vintage paperback edition of a classic; today, Paradise Lost. It rests, neglected and dog-eared, on his left knee, tap-dancing to a distracted rhythm as he stares at the shoes shuffling up and down the cross walk.

The pedestrian crosswalk on Lakeshore Avenue is timed for two minute intervals. Exactly two minutes. The crosswalk has a button, but locals know you don’t need to press it. Unless you’re in a hurry, then you press it twice. If you were to keep walking straight, uninterrupted by the allure of sidewalk, you would enter China Lake Express, a Chinese restaurant. To the right are the familiar storefronts of Foot Locker and GAP. To the left is an extended break from corporate America: Arizmendi, a bakery; Glow, a boutique (bootique, not bowtique says Revaz’s girlfriend); Lakeshore Cafe, a restaurant; and Easy, a bar.

The blonde employee smokes Camel lights and wears orange-tinted aviator sunglasses, even on rainy days, like today. He smokes his cigarettes down to the desert-colored filters and then flicks them, not in, but at the trash can. They rest, dozens of yellowish cylinders surrounding the base of the can like devout pilgrims having reached their mecca in ecstatic exhaustion.