The Lit Window

Last Tuesday a fellow I'll call Harlan stood at my front window for ten minutes and never came in. I watched him from the register. He'd put a hand on the door, take it off, look at his shoes, and start over.

When he finally pushed through, he ordered a coffee and said, "I'm not here to play. I'm here because I'm not at the casino." He'd driven past the exit twice on his way home from work. The second time he kept going, and then he pulled into my lot because it was the first place with its lights on.

I told him a coffee and a lit window was a fine place to be.

Here is what I learned the hard way. For forty years I thought walking away was something you did at the table, in the heat, with the game in front of you. I got good at telling other people to do it. I was never good at doing it myself, because the man in that chair is not the man who made the plan. He's hungry, and he's persuasive, and he will say anything.

Harlan did it right, and he didn't know it. He walked away at the exit, not at the table. He left while he was still the fellow who could make a decision. For most of us that's the only time it works. By the time you're in the chair, the leaving has mostly been decided already, one way or the other, by what you did in the parking lot.

We talked about his truck, and his daughter's wedding in the spring, and nothing at all. Around nine he stood up, put a dollar under the saucer, and said he thought he could drive home now.

I didn't tell him he was brave. I told him to come back Thursday, and the coffee would be hot.

If the exit gets loud again, 1-800-MY-RESET is there at any hour.

The best walking I ever did was the walking I did early.

Sal